Charity Executive Uses Position to Bash Israel: Will Directors Act?

Note: The following article by CAMERA analyst Dexter Van Zile appeared on Breaking Israel News on July, 23, 2015. The original link is here.
 
Jeremy Moodey, chief executive officer of the English charity Embrace the Middle East, seems intent on converting anti-Israel sentiment into charitable donations. In his semi-regular rants about Israel, Moodey portrays the Jewish state as singularly responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Moodey’s writings might prompt Israel-haters in Great Britain to open their wallets and reward Embrace the Middle East with donations, but is that how the organization really wants to operate, by using anti-Israel animus to generate income? Apparently so.
One example of Moodey’s tendency to demonize Israel is a 2012 blog entry on Embrace the Middle East’s website. The entry highlights the tragic death of Omar Misharawi. In the entry, Moodey wrote, “Omar Misharawi was killed by shrapnel when an Israeli bomb hit their family home in Gaza City on 14 November.”
Invoking the iconic picture of Omar’s father Jihad holding his dead son, Moodey adds that the image does not conform to Western stereotypes of Palestinian men. Omar’s father, who works for the BBC, lacks the Islamist beard and Hamas uniform we expect to see, Moodey reports, adding that Jihad is “A man whose innocent baby child has just been murdered; his pregnant sister-in-law was also killed, and his brother seriously injured.” Read what Moodey wrote closely and you’ll see that he’s accusing the Jewish state of murdering a baby.
But according to a UN report issued in 2013, Omar’s death was likely caused by a Hamas rocket that fell onto his home. The board of directors at Embrace the Middle East may not be paying attention, but the fact remains, their organization’s CEO has propagated a blood libel at Israel and no one involved with the charity has seen fit to offer a correction when it becomes clear that the allegation is false. Moodey’s libelous blog entry has not been updated two years later.
In another blog entry, also posted in November, 2012, Moodey directs all of his ire at Israel and fails to hold Hamas accountable for its misdeeds before and during the fighting in 2012. In the entry he makes no specific mention of Hamas launching rockets into Israel prior to and during the fighting in 2012 and exaggerates the number of Palestinian civilians during the fighting. He also praises Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, for courageously pursuing a policy of non-violence, as if this is somehow supposed to change how Israel responds to attacks from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
He closed this entry with a one-sided call for Israel to act: “The Jewish state needs leaders with a true vision for peace and the courage to end the occupation, and withdraw some 650,000 illegal settlers. Sadly, there is precious little evidence of such vision or courage, and in the meantime it is ordinary Palestinians who will pay the price.”
What Moodey fails to acknowledge, however, is that Israel withdrew thousands of settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 only to be met with an increase in rocket attacks; and still he wants more withdrawals from Israel. Apparently, Moodey supports a “land for rockets” peace process.
Moodey’s defamation of the Jewish state continues. In an article published on the website “Christian Today” on July 10, 2015, Moodey predictably targeted all of his criticism at Israel and none of it at Hamas. He began his piece by reminding readers that last year Israel launched attacks into the Gaza Strip “supposedly in response to Hamas rocket attacks.” Moodey’s use of the word “supposedly” in this sentence is a clue to the reader that he thinks Israel’s attack against Hamas was prompted by something other than the hundreds of rockets.
And when he writes that Israel has prevented the passage of “desperately needed, aggregate, wood, steel bars and cement into the territory,” Moodey is simply getting it wrong. Israel has allowed tons of construction material into the Gaza Strip since the end of last year’s war. According to the United Nations, Israel allowed 390 trucks with construction materials into Gaza between June 30, 2015 and July 6, 2015. More than 11,000 truckloads with construction materials have been allowed into Gaza since the beginning of the year. These deliveries have been allowed to proceed despite ample evidence that Hamas is using these materials to construct tunnels into Israel that it can use to attack villages inside the Jewish state.
Moodey even defends Hamas from the charge that it has used human shields, stating that it was debunked in a Huffington Post blog entry. But Hamas leaders themselves admit to putting civilians in harm’s way. In 2014 a Hamas spokesman praised the willingness of people to climb on rooftops in the face of Israeli attacks, stating it “reflects the character of our brave, courageous people. We call upon our people to adopt this policy in order to protect Palestinian homes.”
In sum, Jeremy Moodey, CEO of a prominent Christian charity in England, Embrace the Middle East, has repeatedly used misinformation to demonize the Jewish state and hinder its ability to defend its citizens and to give Hamas a free hand in its campaign to terrorize civilians. Through the actions of its CEO, Embrace the Middle East, a humanitarian NGO, has become a party to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has enlisted in the propaganda war against the Jewish state.
Why have the directors of this organization failed to act?

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