Protestant Minister Says Clergymen Who Accused Israel of Atrocities Are ‘liars’

A Protestant minister who was an eyewitness to Arab-Israeli hostilities in Jerusalem during last June’s war, said here that clergymen and others who circulated stories of alleged Israeli atrocities and desecration of churches were, in effect, “liars.”

“I would hate to say that such nice people were liars, but there you are,” the Rev. B. Douglas Young, president of the Institute of Holy Land Studies, told the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society at Toronto Bible College. “I saw many Arab cruelties but none by Israelis. The very first shells from Jordan fell on the Hadassah Medical Center, near our home. What kind of war is that?” he asked. Rev. Young said that “throughout, the Arabs used anti-personnel and fragmentation bombs to cause maximum pain and death to human beings.” He attributed much of the criticism of Israel to “leftist” churchmen in Canada and the U.S. “because Israel is the only obstacle to Russian expansionism in the Middle East.”

The Nova Scotia-born cleric, who has a doctorate from Dropsie College, Philadelphia, has taught in Jerusalem since 1963. He said reports circulated by some Canadian and American clergymen that Israelis desecrated churches were “absolute nonsense.”