The World Council of Churches (WCC) is training volunteers to promote boycotts of Israel and engage in antisemitic rhetoric, with funding from several Western governments and the EU, as well as support from the United Nations, a new report by research institute NGO Monitor has found.
The WCC flagship project – Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) – has sent 1,800 “ecumenical accompaniers” from around the world to serve as observers in the West Bank and Jerusalem over the past 15 years, and aim to have 25 to 30 of these unofficial observers on the ground at all times. This is the only program of this kind run by the WCC.
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The WCC calls itself the broadest organized group of churches, and says it seeks to represent 350 member churches in 110 countries and 500 million Christians throughout the world. Its website says that the group’s goal is Christian unity.
Yet one of the ways it seems to achieve that is through anti-Israel advocacy, which at times has explicit antisemitic overtones, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This definition has been accepted by the EU, which along with some of its member countries, provides funding for the EAPPI.
WCC leadership and EAPPI volunteers have repeatedly made comparisons of Israeli actions to those of Nazi Germany in their advocacy sessions. For example, WCC general secretary Dr. Olav Fyske Tveit said: “I heard about the occupation of my country during the five years of World War II as the story of my parents. Now I see and hear the stories of 50 years of occupation.”
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The WCC supports boycotts and divestment from settlements, but EAPPI activists have called for a boycott of all of Israel.
The EAPPI publication “Faith Under Occupation” called in 2012 for “sanctions and suspension of US aid to Israel,” to “challenge Israel in local and international courts” and “economic boycotts.”
EAPPI National Coordinator in South Africa Dudu Mahlangu-Masango signed a letter to then-president Jacob Zuma calling “on our government and civil society to instigate broad-based boycott, divestment and sanctions on Israel” in 2012. She repeated this call in a 2018 television interview, calling for “total sanctions” on Israel.
The organization also seeks to combat Christian Zionism. In a 2015 WCC event, Zionism was called “heresy” under Christian theology, modern Israelis were said to have no connection to ancient Israelites, and Israeli society was noted to be “full with racism and light skin privilege.” Their leadership also compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.
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