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

At a PC(USA) General Assembly, committees offer recommendations to the entire GA; these recommendations are usually - but not always - accepted.

· Committee 8 rejected the report on Christians and Jews. They accepted the recommendation from the Presbytery of San Francisco that contained (in an appended letter from the IPMN) blatant lies about the actions of American Jewish organizations. They refer the report for revision to the Office of Interfaith Relations and the Office of Theology and Worship - to rewrite after "broader consultation to include the National Middle East Presbyterian Caucus, PC(USA) partner churches and agencies in the Middle East, relevant mission networks of the PC(USA), the ACREC, and the ACSWP.

In short, Committee 8 insists that anything positive in this report - namely a move by the PC(USA) away from anti-Judaic and antisemitic discourse - be completely gutted.

· Committee 11 has approved the ACSWP Human Rights Report 2010 that takes an inexplicably bigoted stance in uniquely singling out Israel for criticism for religious discrimination and violations of religious freedom.

· Committee 14 has decided:

a. to denounce Caterpillar (and not to divest from Caterpillar). This is a distinction without a difference, but divestment might be regarded as having slightly more symbolic weight.

b. to approve the overture from Chicago expressing extreme disappointment with the U.S. government that the State of Israel continues to be a recipient of U.S. military aid.

c. to reject the overture from the Presbytery of San Francisco finding Israel guilty of the crime of apartheid.

d. to approve a "perfected" MESC report. This report has undergone several changes. Some are purely cosmetic. One looks like an improvement but is actually worse. A couple are clearly changes for the better. One of these is quite significant.

The problem is, the perfected MESC is still highly biased, its recommendations are remarkably weighted against Israel - and these give every indication of having been painstakingly chosen to do the most possible damage to Israel. While the perfected MESC is clearly different than the original, it is a matter of choosing between a very bad report and a somewhat less very bad report. The MESC coming out of committee 14 still poses insurmountable problems for people concerned with basic fairness and accuracy in Presbyterian policy statements.

· Committee 16 has approved the Belhar Confession.

The General Assembly has already acted on the recommendation of Committee 16 and chosen to add the Belhar Confession to the PC(USA)'s Book of Confessions. Because it involves a change to the Book of Confessions, this action must be ratified by the presbyteries.