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

[In order to understand what is going on in the PC(USA) this year; we will need to examine all the relevant business items coming before this year's General Assembly; we'll need to review the PC(USA)'s overall record; we'll need to understand the distribution of Presbyterian opinion - from the people in the pews, to pulpit pastors, to institutional insiders; and we'll need to see where the PC(USA) fits into the landscape of "Mainline" Christian Denominations and the broader Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions landscape. Before we can get to any of that, I need to try to clarify a few things. Specifically, the major choice that confronts commissioners to the 219th General Assembly is this: will you be pro-Palestinian? Will you be anti-Israel? Or will you be antisemitic? Those, quite simply, seem to be the options.]

If we go back over the actions and public statements of several mainline denominations -something seemed to have changed during 1980s and early 1990s. During this period a pro-Palestinian emphasis began to emerge as a priority; but along with that emphasis, various statements began to take on a markedly anti-Israel character. Subsequently, clearly biased anti-Israel statements and actions have become increasingly interspersed with what more overtly anti-Jewish ones. How it happened that these themes came to be tied together remains unclear, but for certain groups within the American church they clearly have.

I have been, frankly, puzzled - not so much by the incidence of bias and antisemitism, as by the ease with which these have corrupted the actions and 'witness' of various denominations. Most importantly, I have been amazed by the lack of reaction among 'ordinary' Christians. It is as if these 'ordinary' Christians - who are not themselves antisemitic, and who do not, themselves hold Israel to a double standard - remain perfectly content for organizations to which they belong to do so. It is as if they do not recognize their responsibility and culpability for the actions of churches where both their membership and their financial contributions are voluntary.

Because I want to seriously consider the topic, I need to say a few things upfront - in the naïve hope of warding off the acolytes of the idiot coalition*.

1. The history of Christian antisemitism is both well documented and well known to anyone who has paid the least attention to the subject. This represents a complex phenomenon that has been occurring off and on for the better part of two millennia. In some places and times it was absent, in some situations it was worse than in others, and it led to varying degrees of bad treatment ranging from social isolation to outright mass murder. I will not assay to unravel the reasons for this in this post - though that story must indeed be explored; for now, it is sufficient to mark the fact that the pattern has been one of virtually unremitting hostility.
2. With that observation comes a corollary: this rank and long-standing bigotry was a fundamental violation of Christianity as described in the Christian Bible. When Christians (or organizations or societies that labeled themselves 'christian') indulged in biased and bigoted behaviors, their own religion condemned them
3. It is self-evident that professing Christians have demonstrated biases in addition to anti-Jewish bias, and it is self-evident that others beside Christians have demonstrated biases against the Jewish people. But because of the peculiar relationship between the origins of Christianity and Judaism, this anti-Jewish bias is extraordinary and jarring; more alarming is the fact that the Jewish people have been singled out by professing Christians more frequently and with more vitriol than have been any other people - with the possible exception of periodic internecine Christian fights (say, for example among Protestants, Catholics, and the radical Reformed groups).
4. It is possible for a person to be pro-Palestinian without being particularly anti-Israeli. This is not a comfortable political space to occupy, but it can be done. It is possible for a person to be anti-Israel without being, of necessity, antisemitic; this is more difficult (yet still possible) distinction to make. It is possible for a person to be well-intentioned, yet easily and inadvertently slip from one of these into the others. It is also relevant that biases are not always consciously owned - a person may demonstrate even extreme bias without being aware that his or her perspective is warped.
5. I have tended to avoid employing the word 'antisemitic' for a couple of reasons. One is that people often reflexively respond to the charge by saying, "Anyone who criticizes Israel's policies is accused of antisemitism". (Usually this charge is followed by the phrase, "by the powerful Jewish Lobby" - which kind of speaks for itself.) Those who advance this assertion often inexplicably turn things around in their minds to suggest that because the accusation has been leveled in differing circumstances it is therefore untrue. The fact is that people who oppose the anti-Israel activism of groups like various professedly Christian denominations are not making the charge their detractors claim. These usually go far out of their way to avoid leveling a charge of antisemitism as it is regarded as unhelpful at best, and if present, unconscious. Today I reject this - because the proponents of anti-Israel activism DO DEMONSTRATE A BIAS, and it is, in many cases, overtly antisemitic; I see no reason to attempt to sugar-coat this any longer; and the activists in question have been frequently alerted to the blatantly antisemitic content of some of the statements and information they provide. That they have chosen not to correct it dictates that they can no longer claim to be acting innocently in good faith.
6. The second reason I have frequently resisted using the word 'antisemitic' is linguistic; one invariably hears a response from some member of the anti-Israel brain trust: "Jews are not the only Semites ... therefore someone who opposes the racist, evil, colonialist, settler state of Israel and its Jewish supporters is not anti-Semitic because he is supporting the Palestinian and Arab Semites." In one sense, I concur - Jews are, in fact, not the only semitic people; obviously Arabs and others share the semitic family of languages as well. There are only two problems with this argument: it is solely a semantic distraction, and it is based on a very ill-informed understanding of the history of the word 'antisemitic'. The word 'antisemite' itself was apparently coined by Wilhelm Marr when he formed the German 'Antisemitic League' ("Antisemiten-Liga") specifically to combat the 'Jewish threat to Germany'. Marr also used the phrase "Jew hatred" (Judenhass) in a pretty much equivalent fashion. Marr's emphasis was placed on non-religious, race based opposition to the Jewish people. The word 'antisemitic' came to be preferred over 'Jew hatred' because it seemed to provide a thin, pseudo-scientific veneer for the whole concept. [It should be noted that the related word 'antisemitische' appeared to have been employed a few years earlier - but this equally exclusively indicated Jews.] In any case, the use of the word itself is really an irrelevance: whether one wants to employ the label 'antisemitism' or the label 'Jew-hatred' is quite beside the point. What one is indicating by either word is that there is an overt anti-Jewish bias that is being demonstrated by factions in various Christian denominations. This could be religious, cultural, or race based; it could be some overlap of the three. Semantic arguments simply evade the issue.

With those preliminary considerations out of the way, we can turn our attention to the original question. Will commissioners choose a pro-Palestinian posture? Will they choose a posture of anti-Israel bias? Or will they choose a posture of anti-Judaism and antisemitism? The first posture is commendable; the second is not; the third is reprehensible. Yet it is very easy to slip from one into another without even being fully aware of it - especially when required to make decisions with limited time and limited information. I can only hope that they will take their responsibilities seriously enough that they go to great pains to steer clear of these pitfalls.

There are five classes of actions and statements that represent serious ethical problems in church advocacy:

#1 Israeli exceptionalism - a peculiar singularity of focus on Israel as distinct from that applied to all other nations.

#2 Presentation of One-Sided Information

#3 Religious Imagery of Demonization

#4 Speaking FOR Another Religion - as if your interpretation of that religion's beliefs is more correct than that of its own members.

#5 Generic Statements Directed Against "the Jews"

All of these behaviors pose moral and ethical problems for a church. Sometimes justifications for them can be offered - though they are rarely sufficient to excuse the action. In my next post I will examine them more carefully.

Will Spotts

[Portions of this post are taken from an article "Church Anti-Israel Activism and Antisemitism".

* When I use the phrase "idiot coalition" I refer to people who seek to evade the relevant topic with meaningless tangents.]