[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

I said earlier that the commissioners to the PC(USA)'s 219th General Assembly are faced with a Solomonic task. They are barraged with:

• calls to divest from Caterpillar;
• calls to condemn Caterpillar;
• a call to endorse the Kairos Palestine document, "A Moment of Truth";
• a call for the PC(USA) to find Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid and to urge the United Nations to take some unspecified action;
• a call to "express extreme disappointment" that Israel continues to be a recipient of US military aid;
• a peculiar report from the ACSWP that, in the entire world, finds ONLY Israel to be guilty of religious discrimination requiring Presbyterian attention;
• a communication from the Israel / Palestine Mission Network of the PC(USA) that objects to the existence of a Jewish state, that blames an increase in antisemitism on Israelis actions, and that accuses - without offer of proof - American Jewish Organizations of burning down a church, that suggests that American Jewish Organizations sent a bomb to PC(USA) headquarters as part of a pattern of intimidation and censorship, and that puts these two terrorist accusations they have leveled on an equal footing with Jewish neighbors visiting Presbyterian churches. This hate-filled communication was apparently supported by they Presbytery of San Francisco.

At the same time, commissioners have been presented with a couple of options that lack the overt hostility toward Israel and the Jewish people seen in the above proposals.

• a call for independent commissions to investigate the actions of both the IDF and Palestinians. (The significant things here that are fairly unique among proposals to the GA are that both are being treated in an equivalent fashion, that the presbytery issuing the call recognizes (the possibility of) flaws with the Goldstone report. Now this is not to say there is equivalency, but in most of the other proposals any report critical of Israel - indeed any criticism of Israel at all - is taken as automatically true.)
• a report on Christians and Jews that acknowledges the role of antisemitism in the modern church - including in many of the elements of the advocacies of the PC(USA) and its partners. (Sometimes, of course, the advocates REALLY ARE UNAWARE of the full anti-Judaic and antisemitic implications of some of their figures of speech. But the report does insist that Presbyterians have a responsibility to see that their actions are free from bigotry.)
• an overture from the Presbytery of San Joaquin that acknowledges the inherent complexity of the conflict between Israel, Palestinians, and neighboring states, that calls on the PC(USA) to defer from taking positions or making policy statements that appear to favor either side in the conflict, and asks the GA to instruct "the General Assembly Mission Council to ensure that staff, council members, entities, affiliated organizations, and networks abide by these directives."

Additionally, commissioners are being asked to consider a proposal to alter the way the PC(USA) makes social policy statements and proposals relating to the Belhar Confession. Both of these would impact the PC(USA) Middle East actions and statements. The social witness policy change would ensure that such actions and statements had broader Presbyterian support, and the Belhar Confession would be used to increase anti-Israel activism.

Those outside of PC(USA) culture (and many Presbyterians) should be aware that every one of these initiatives must be dealt with in some fashion by commissioners to the General Assembly. These can be approved; they can be rejected; they can be amended and then approved; or they can be referred - usually to an appropriate committee in order to be reconsidered by a future General Assembly. In order to accomplish this task, commissioners must sift through a great deal of information. Many of these initiatives include rationales that offer a wide variety of assertions of fact.

One very pronounced weakness of the General Assembly system is the fact that commissioners usually only have the information provided to them to work with. They simply lack the time and wherewithal to go through and check each assertion of fact. is it valid? Is it fair? Is the WHOLE truth being told? Does the speaker have a bias? Is there a larger story? Are the facts in dispute? Commissioners are usually left to their best guess. The other sources of information tend to be testimonies during the committee meetings at the GA, materials presented by various special interest groups, and testimony of PC(USA) staff and representatives. Here again, fact checking is simply not-possible. Here again, questions of speaker bias are a crap-shoot.

In THIS PARTICULAR CASE (i.e. Israelis and Palestinians), that is a fatal flaw. The reason for the problem is simple enough: on every major point, there is conflict among multiple competing narratives. Virtually every offer of fact is disputed by someone, somewhere. Interpretations of facts are equally scattered. The cases submitted will tend to omit any inconvenient details. Here, in this environment, commissioners must sift through everything being said. Is it true? Does it mean what I'm being told it means? Does it make sense? If I can't ascertain that, what course of action can I take? Is there an overwhelming pattern of bias? Is one side being given more credence than another across the board? And if so, why? Is one party being treated differently than all others - essentially in the world? If so, how is this unequal treatment being justified? Do I understand what is going on? Can I predict what the effects of the actions I'm being asked to take will be? If I can't, what is the responsible course? What is the ethical course? Can it be called ethical to do something that might cause harm without knowing (or at least without having enough information to make an educated guess) what the result will be? Is it ethical to affirm biases? Is it ethical to hold one people or one nation to a standard distinct from that of every other nation?

All of this SHOULD BE in the forefront of a commissioner's mind. Sadly, I suspect that will not be the case. I once heard the General Assembly described as Disneyland for Presbyterians. That assessment was, of course, made jokingly, but it contains a particle of truth. It is very easy for commissioners to get carried away, to view themselves as better informed, more competent, having greater moral clarity than they actually possess. It is very easy for commissioners to give in to an almost pep-rally ethic that permits them to view their actions and pronouncements as the work of the Holy Spirit and to push for ground breaking statements that are treated as if they were somehow prophetic. In fact, many GA's and many Presbyterians have actually used the word "prophetic" to describe GA actions and decisions.

Add to this the fact that majorities of commissioners - precisely because of the level of involvement in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) that being a commissioner of necessity entails - have a pro-institutional mindset. It becomes extremely difficult for them to distrust the information provided to them by Presbyterian staff, national committees, networks, and governing bodies. Unfortunately, in this particular case, that trust is being misplaced. The very people tasked with making these decisions are the least likely to see what is patently obvious to most people outside of the denomination: the record of various PC(USA) entities on Israel and Palestine has historically failed the test of fundamental fairness. These have indulged in statements biased against Israel, and often they have crossed whatever lines exist between pro-Palestinian activism, anti-Israel bias, and anti-Jewish bigotry.

What I have described would be the situation if the above items were the sum total of statements on Israel and Palestine that commissioners to the 219th General Assembly had to address. It would be a very taxing process posing a number of difficulties. However, this year's General Assembly must also deal with a lurking behemoth: the 172 page Middle East Study Committee report with its numerous recommendations. This report, in spite of its mandate, provides the centerpiece for the institutional PC(USA) case against Israel.

Item 14-08 "Breaking Down the Walls" from the Middle East Study Committee.

The Middle East Study Committee of the PC(USA) was formed by an action of the 2008 General Assembly.

The original proposal in 2008 called for this study to be produced by the General Assembly Mission Council in conjunction with the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy. This item was modified in 2008 to require the selection of an entirely new committee. Only one real qualification was placed on this selection by the GA: it must include "a broad spectrum of viewpoints from PC(USA) members".

This Middle East Study Committee was given a somewhat broad mandate. The moderators who selected its members were also given only that one requirement. Had they followed it, had they selected members from a broad spectrum of viewpoints, and had the committee met with people and consulted sources from a broad spectrum of viewpoints, they might have produced a truly helpful document. The MESC could have offered the commissioners to the 219th General Assembly of the PC(USA) a document that reflected a variety of perspectives, that provided timely and factual information, that gave commissioners a real sense of the complexity of the issues, that indicated genuinely fair and productive ways forward for Presbyterians.

If, on the other hand, the moderators stacked the deck - chose a committee weighted in one direction, and if the national PC(USA) staff persons that supported the committee helped guide them to seek only a limited range of opinions from the parties involved, the result would be disappointing and predictable. If, for example, the moderators selected a committee membership that ranged from the moderately anti-Israel to the devoutly anti-Israel, and if they assigned national employees whose records of fundamental fairness towards Israel were lacking, any chance of a helpful contribution from this group would evaporate. Instead, a group of this kind, in spite of their perceived differences, would tend to form an ever more radicalized echo chamber. That situation would almost guarantee that 219th General Assembly commissioners, Presbyterians generally, and the rest of the world are to be treated to business as usual - yet another one-sided document that affirms one people at the expense of another, that places blame exclusively and unjustly on one party, that becomes ever more shrill in the tone of its criticism, that regurgitates one narrative while ignoring contrary facts, that really does more to muddle than to clarify.

Unfortunately, as we will see in the next post, the direction of one-sidedness and imbalance against Israel has been chosen. And the work product of this Middle East Study Committee profoundly reflects that choice.

Will Spotts