What’s in a Name?
Posted on April 15, 2014 by Barbara Anderson http://watchtowerdocuments.org/whats-in-a-name/
One morning at Bethel in 1989, after the usual text discussion before breakfast, there was an announcement to the staff about the legalization of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Poland. We were told that no longer were the Witnesses banned although the Watchtower had been given legal recognition in that country for some years.1
The announcement left me perplexed. Later, while walking home with Governing Body member Dan Sydlik (now deceased) after work, I asked him, “How come the Polish government didn’t know that the Watchtower and Jehovah’s Witnesses were one and the same?”
Dan thought for a moment and then turned a serious face to me and said, “Well, they’re Polish, you know.”
I laughed heartily over Dan’s playful remark and forgot all about my question. After Dan went his way and I went mine, I chuckled all the way home and could hardly wait to tell my husband, Joe, about Dan’s comical observation.
(Dan was of Polish descent as I was. And Joe loved the Polish jokes popular in those years and oft-times repeated them knowing that I didn’t take offense but enjoyed them too.)2
“Mitzpe L’Yisrael”
As strange as it might seem, I never gave another thought to the question I asked Dan about until I read an article on Israel’s National News Internet site, Arutz Sheva, about “Mitzpe L’Yisrael,”a non-profit organization that rented space at a school in Netanya in 2001 to conduct daily afternoon activities. The article stated that the school authorities canceled the contract with the group when they discovered Mitzpe L’Yisrael was in reality the “notorious missionary sect of Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Mitzpe L’Yisrael quickly filed a lawsuit against the school authorities for voiding the lease. It was on February 2, 2014 when the Tel Aviv Magistrates Court announced the rejection of the lawsuit. When I read the news article on March 11, 2014, I wondered who in the world was Mitzpe L’Yisrael?3
It was later that day when I found out the name “Mitzpe L’Yisrael” in English meant “Israel’s Watchtower,” or “Watchtower Society of Israel,” and immediately I had an “aha!” moment. The actions of the Watchtower not to use the name Jehovah’s Witnesses when renting the space in an Israeli school fit with the Polish government not being aware that Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower were the same organization.
In light of the actions of the Witness organization in Poland and in Israel over twenty-five years later, I realized that this must be a long-standing practice for Jehovah’s Witnesses to hide their “notorious” identity by using Watchtower as their front in unwelcoming countries – or even in circumstances where people are not favorable to the beliefs and actions of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The United Nations
My “aha!” moment started a chain reaction in my head and I recalled a conversation I had around 2002 with a former Jehovah’s Witness who was a secretary in one of the departments at the United Nations headquarters in New York. This person told me that after the publicity about the Watchtower’s ten-year association with the United Nations agreeing to uphold its charter as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) under the direction of the UNs Department of Public Information (DPI), she decided to ask a DPI official why the Watchtower was approved for association in 1991 by DPI when Watchtower leaders routinely condemned the UN in their literature? Here is the official’s reply which I have never shared before:
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