According to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) database, in December 2024-October 2028, the European Commission will provide Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center with €1 million for a project entitled “Faithful Futures: Religious Leaders for Accountability, Justice and Peace through the Two-State Solution.” As described in the database, the project, apparently funded through the EU Peacebuilding Initiative instrument (approved under the previous Commission), “seeks to preserve from further erosion and possibly reverse the negative public perception of the prospect for peace and a two-state solution.” 

Yet, in blatant  contrast to the project’s goal and EU policy, Sabeel states that its “ideal and best solution” is “a bi-national state in Palestine-Israel,” “one state for two nations and three religions” (emphasis added). Sabeel, through its “liberation theology” agenda (see section below), demonizes the existence of Israel and promotes antisemitic tropes. As such, Sabeel should be disqualified as a recipient of and a partner in any government-funded peace or development project.

Sabeel 

Sabeel is a Jerusalem-based NGO, presenting itself as an “ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians” that “encourages Christians from around the world to work for justice and to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.” 

Applying “liberation theology,” Sabeel casts Palestinians as the modern-day version of Jesus, blaming the State of Israel and Zionism for their “suffering”. The NGO regularly publishes imagery that violates provisions of the IHRA Working definition of antisemitism, endorsed and used by the European Union, thus also violating EU funding guidelines.1 In particular, Sabeel’s rhetoric conforms to the Working Definition’s examples of contemporary antisemitism is public life, such as:

  • Using the “symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”
  • “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”
  • “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

For example:

  • In April 2024, Sabeel published a prayer: “Crucified Messiah, we behold how you were tortured, mocked, beaten, stripped, and killed on the cross. Your cry ‘My God my God why I have you forsaken me’ (Matthew 27:46) is an exclamation we are saying for more than 75 years , and now more than ever” (emphasis added). The reference to “75 years” makes clear that Israel’s very existence is illegitimate, causing inherent suffering to Palestinians – who are equated to Jesus.
  • In April 2024, Sabeel published a statement marking the Jewish holiday Passover, stating that “no one [Jews around the world] can celebrate the essence of Passover if they are enslaving others and promoting supremacy.” 
  • In December 2023, Sabeel published a statement: “While the world is celebrating the Christmas season by decorating trees and holding Christmas parties, in Palestine, we are commemorating Christmas by foregoing the usual celebrations, waiting for God to deliver us from 75 years of settler colonial violence. Indeed, we are living out the reality of the Christmas story” (emphasis added). The imagery attached to the statement shows Jesus as a baby wrapped with a Palestinian keffiyeh and Santa Claus looking for kids in the ruins of a building in Gaza. 

  • In 2017 and 2021, marking the Balfour declaration, Sabeel published posts with imagery portraying Jesus and a man tearing apart the Balfour Declaration, a way to undermine the legitimacy of Zionism and the existence of the State of Israel. According to Sabeel, the declaration started the “process that led to our dispossession.”

Sabeel’s antisemitism is also manifest in statements made by the NGO’s founder,  former director, and still influential and active member Reverend Naim Ateek:

  • In a statement from Sabeel for New Year’s 2025, Ateek stated that “Our people will fear neither Israeli genocide nor Israeli erasure because, with our Muslim brothers and sisters, we say, God is Greater, knowing that God indeed stands above Israel’s evil snares and conspiracies and God will ultimately defeat the evil schemes of Zionism” (emphasis added).
  • In a 2011 speech during a Sabeel conference in Bethlehem, Ateek declared  that “the establishment of Israel was a relapse to the most primitive concepts of an exclusive, tribal God” (emphasis added).
  • In his book, Justice and Only Justice, Ateek writes, “It has taken me years to accept the establishment of the State of Israel and its need – although not its right – to exist” (emphasis added).
  • In 2006, Ateek reportedly declared that “if the Jewish people had a right to a homeland it should be in Germany, not Palestine.”
  • In 2001, Ateek declared:  “As we approach Holy Week and Easter, the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago, is lived out again in Palestine…In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull” (emphases added).

Statements on the Oct 7th Hamas-Orchestrated Massacre

On October 11, 2023, Sabeel published a statement referring to EU-designated Palestinian terror organizations as “armed Palestinian resistance groups.” Sabeel contextualized the worst attack against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, asserting that “it is pivotal to remember: Palestinians have been under attack, suffering dispossession and dehumanization from Zionism, for over 75 years; The continuation of Israel’s policies related to displacement, apartheid, and occupation has been facilitated by the backing of several dominant global powers, notably the U.S., which remains deeply involved in this conflict”(emphases added).

Since then, Sabeel has accused Israel of “genocide” and a “mass extermination campaign.

Apartheid

Sabeel has used the apartheid libel to deny Israel’s legitimacy since at least 2008.

On January 20, 2023, in a response to a parliamentary question, then European Commission HRVP Josep Borrell rejected the apartheid label against Israel, emphasizing that “the Commission uses the non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA definition) as a practical guidance tool and a basis for its work to combat antisemitism. Claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour is amongst the illustrative examples included under the IHRA definition.”