Via Christian Hate?, the heartening story of a Christian seeing through the anti-Zionist propaganda and backing away from a stance which is, at its roots, anti-Semitic.

Catholic Cath Palasz was once a Palestine Solidarity Campaign activist. She was at the forefront of the Boycott Israel movement, but is evidently a thoughtful person, prepared to listen to the views of others. Unfortunately, initially, she was only exposed to one view. As Cyrus writes:

What I find striking about her account is the sense of a finely woven net of anti-Zionist propaganda which, once you fall into it, will ensure that you simply never hear a reasoned exposition of the other side of the story. This is precisely the impression I got when having a fairly heated debate with the EAPPI volunteer at my church on Sunday. Things which I had assumed he was deliberately downplaying turn out to be, apparently, completely off his radar. He seemed, for instance, genuinely surprised at the suggestion that the post-1948 exodus of Jews from Arab countries was comparable in scale to that of Palestinians from Israel. He thought that Jews had been living in perfect harmony in Iraq until Mossad started planting bombs to scare them away. Baghdad pogrom, 1941, 180 dead minimum? He'd never heard of it. Though you can bet your bottom shekel that he's heard of Deir Yassin.

Read her own words in Engage: Christian anti-Zionist, Cath Palasz explains why she has changed her mind

The comments are also interesting and it’s reassuring to know that good-hearted people who come under the baleful influence of such as Revd Michael Prior and Revd Stephen Sizer don’t necessarily suffer lasting damage.