More than 50 local organizations to participate in gathering

Scores of local organizations are planning to rally outside the Old South Church in Boston this Friday in response to a weekend conference sponsored by Sabeel, the controversial Christian Palestinian human rights group.

The conference, "The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel: Issues of Justice and Equality," will feature Sabeel leaders and the Reverend Desmond Tutu, who, along with Sabeel, has been criticized for his portrayal of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More than 50 organizations plan to join in Friday’s demonstration.

"We respect the right of the Old South Church to have the conference because we believe in freedom of speech, but we absolutely denounce the message," said Nancy K. Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston. "The public needs to understand that [Sabeel] is anti-Israel and against Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state."

The JCRC has teamed up with religious and human rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the United Assembly of God of Framingham, to demonstrate against this weekend’s event.

"They have a right to demonstrate," said Nancy S. Taylor, senior minister at Old South Church. "The people rallying outside the event have legitimate concerns, and the people speaking inside have legitimate concerns. There is more than one truth."...

...Ateek has invoked the notion of the wandering, defenseless Jew as a good thing by writing that Jewish statehood contradicts the Jewish call to suffer. This type of language has been regarded as taboo by responsible Christians since the Holocaust, and its reemergence in Ateek's writing is as ominous as a noose hanging from a tree.

This is not peacemaking; it is demonization. Such language might have been tolerable in the Old South, but not today.

Not in Boston's Old South.