No axis of evil
Sir: Melanie Phillips’s article (‘Beware the new axis of evangelicals and Islamists’, 7 March) contains untruthful statements about me. I have never said that I wish Israel, in her words, ‘to be destroyed’ or to ‘disappear just as did the apartheid regime in South Africa’. I have never believed this and categorically reject any position that threatens the integrity of Israel as a sovereign nation. I have, however, spoken out against Holocaust denial as well as religious extremism. Far from seeking to ‘appease radical Islam’, I have criticised Islamist attacks against Christians in Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan. I have never knowingly, to use her words, ‘given interviews to, endorsed or forwarded material from American white supremacists and Holocaust deniers’. My publishers in the USA, InterVarsity Press, occasionally arrange interviews for me. I trust their judgment.
I do wish to see the present illegal occupation of Gaza, the Golan Heights and the West Bank brought to an end, but only as a consequence of the peaceful implementation of all relevant UN resolutions, the road map to peace previously agreed by the US, EU, Russia and UN in April 2003, the Annapolis Agreement of November 2007 and Quartet Statement of December 2008.
What saddened me most, however, about Melanie Phillips’s article were her concluding remarks criticising the archbishops and bishops of the Church of England. I have been a Christian minister for just short of 30 years but have yet to meet a priest, let alone a bishop or archbishop, who displays ‘extreme hostility towards Israel’ or who wishes to ‘accommodate and appease’ Islam.
Stephen Sizer
Christ Church, Virginia Water, Surrey
Sir: I did not, as Melanie Phillips claims, ‘rubbish’ anyone in my review of Global Jihad.
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