Friday 27 May 2022 05:40 PM C of E vicar faces being kicked out of the Church for anti-Semitism trends now
A vicar faces being kicked out of the Church of England after meeting a Hezbollah commander and posting an article entitled: '9/11: Israel did it.'
Reverend Dr Stephen Sizer has been formally accused of anti-semitism by the Board of Deputies of British Jews for the first time in its 260-year history, a tribunal was told.
The 68-year-old is facing removal from the Church because of accusations that he posted anti-semitic articles online and promoted and shared platforms with Holocaust deniers.
Church tribunals are normally private but Rev Sizer has chosen to hold it in public as he wants to clear his name.
He denies his actions were anti-semitic arguing they were political and aimed at the state of Israel, not Jewish people.
Reverend Dr Stephen Sizer, 68, is facing removal from the Church of England because of accusations that he posted anti-semitic articles online and promoted and shared platforms with Holocaust deniers. (He is pictured outside St Andrew's Courthouse, London, on Monday)
Dr Sizer met the senior Hezbollah commander Sheikh Nabil Kaouk in summer 2006 (pictured together) and is accused of promoting the idea that Israel was behind the September 11 attacks by posting an article entitled: '9/11: Israel did it'
Church tribunals are normally private but Rev Sizer has chosen to hold it in public as he wants to clear his name. He denies his actions were anti-semitic arguing they were political and aimed at the state of Israel, not Jewish people. (Above, Rev Sizer in Tehran in 2014)
Dr Sizer faces 11 separate instances of anti-semitism, beginning in 2005 where he participated in a conference run by the Islamic Human Rights Commission entitled: 'Towards a New Liberation Theology.'
He met the senior Hezbollah commander Sheikh Nabil Kaouk in summer 2006 and is accused of promoting the idea that Israel was behind the September 11 attacks by posting an article entitled: '9/11: Israel did it.'
Alongside the article he wrote that it 'raised so many questions'.
The complaint was brought by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and it is the first time the organisation has raised a complaint of antisemitism to a Church member in its 260-year history.
Nicholas Leviseur, presenting the case, said the Board of Deputies is representative of the opinion of the majority of British Jews.
He said: 'With some 400,000 Jews in the UK, it is not hard to find some who do not want to be part of any representation, but to say that the Board of Deputies, established in 1760, does not in the present represent the views of a vast
