‘Fresh impetus’ for movement seeking to convert Jews, says Phillips

Right-wing social commentator Melanie Phillips has said that there is a Palestinian-Christian movement seeking to convert Jews and that this has been given “fresh impetus” by Mahmoud Abbas’ push for Palestinian statehood.

Writing in Commentary magazine this week, the British journalist says a new “fusion of Palestinian political aspirations and Christian thinking” is the modern-day descendent of the “demonology” behind the pogroms.

Citing an idea attributed to a biblical figure born 1,800 years ago, Phillips says: “This idea holds that, because the Jews denied the divinity of Jesus, all the promises God had made to them now belong to Christians.”

She added: “After Auschwitz, this vicious theology unsurprisingly disappeared from view. But it turns out that it only went underground.

“For now it has returned with a fresh geopolitical impetus furnished by Palestinian liberation theology.”