Saturday, July 10, 2010
[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]
Whatever may happen with the rest of the items on the PC(USA) 219th General Assembly Middle East agenda, it has taken definitive action on one thing. Presbyterians now own it.
The General Assembly has approved the overture from the Presbytery of San Francisco, "On Referring 'Christians and Jews: People of God' and 'Understanding Christian-Muslim Relations'". Well, more precisely, it decided to ONLY refer "Christians and Jews: People of God" for a re-write.
According to its rationale, this overture is based on a communication from the Israel/Palestine Mission Network. This communication is fraught with problems.
This action of the 219th General Assembly cannot be divorced from the rationale or from the IPMN communication that sparked it.
Among its many problems, it contains three elements that stand out.
1. The IPMN displays a strong animosity toward the existence of a Jewish State. The IPMN letter states it in this way:
"What the report fails to recognize is that expansionist forms of political and religious Zionism have been major ideological forces behind the confiscation of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by every Israeli administration since 1948. The literature on this subject is vast and the reality undeniable. The push by the current government of Netanyahu for recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state" is one example of this ideology."
2. the IPMN clearly places blame on Judaism rather than Israel or "Zionists" only.
"By neglecting the reality on the ground, this report would "make nice" with certain American Jewish organizations to avoid unwarranted charges of anti-Semitism. These are the organizations that have provided financial and political support for the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands since 1948, and used threat and intimidation to censor debate about Israel within and without the Jewish community.1 A report that confesses Christian guilt for the past and calls for changes in our theology and practice but neglects to mention the CONTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN SYNAGOGUES to the oppression of Palestinians over the past six decades appears to us as inauthentic interfaith dialogue."
In their footnote, the IPMN says (in offensive and patently false terms):
The package (a bomb?) sent to 100 Witherspoon St in 2004, the fire in a Rochester church, the picketing of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship event at GA when Professor Norman Finkelstein was a featured speaker, and the many visits of teams of Jewish neighbors to local Presbyterian churches are examples of these tactics.
3. In the same letter, the IPMN says:
This "anti-Jewish rhetoric" [referred to in the paper] does not arise out of a vacuum, or some inchoate reservoir of anti-Semitism. In fact, the case can be made that it is a reaction to the actions of the state of Israel. And that this is related to the American Middle East wars, which, combined with the U.S. defense of Israel internationally, fuels anti-Jewish stereotypes and some classic anti-Semitic beliefs.
When considered in conjunction with the substance of the original paper (with its clear rejection of Christian antisemitism) and with the false footnote, two elements of this are unavoidably antisemitic. Whatever may happen with the MESC, with divestment, with denunciation, with the apartheid label - the General Assembly of the PC(USA) has already embraced antisemitism. That is now the official policy of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
