Friday, September 23, 2005
This story at The Layman (a Presbyterian paper), "Ecumenical group travels to Mideast in wake of divestment controversy," about yet another interfaith fact-finding trip to the mid-east where everyone already has all the facts but pretends to open their minds one more time caught my attention -- not so much for the story, although the list of participants is interesting, but for the link it leads to...
Here is the transcript of a speech delivered to an ADL meeting by Rev. Dr. Jay T. Rock, Interfaith Coordinator, Presbyterian Church (USA) back in February. I thought Abe Foxman's response (partially quoted in the article above) had some very good sections in it:
We don't hide the fact that the Jewish people supports the state of Israel, believes in its right of existence, believes in its righteousness and its moral obligation to protect and to provide for the safety and the security of the Jewish people. Fine. And so we are at two opposite ends.
But no, Jay, that's not what you do. You tell us here we have to understand each other's narrative. No, the narrative that I thought we were dialoging about is your vision of truth, of God, of faith, of this world, of values. I didn't know that what we're dialoging about is you having accepted the Palestinian narrative and we should therefore -- no, I have enough listening to the Palestinian narrative from the Palestinians. They are the real source. That's who makes a difference, not you, nor us. It's the Israelis and the Palestinians, it's their narrative that has to be -- but all of a sudden we're in dialogue with you about the Palestinian narrative? What for?
But what galls us is that it's based in morality. You wrap it into moral truth and it is moral hypocrisy. You're entitled to your moral view, but say this is the Palestinian position which you have adopted and you give it morality.
But you come here and it's almost, for someone that I know and respect, sophistry just to say it. This is a disinvestment. Disinvestment comes out of South African experience. By saying it isn't so, you can't make it not so.
And then, then you list A, B, C, D. You can engage corporations. You have nothing else to do on the moral plane, on a spiritual plane, and what society needs in terms of better understanding? It's beyond me.
So either it's the ultimate of naiveté, or it's bias. And you know what? We feel it's bias...
...You believe in original sin, I think, I don't know, I'm not an expert. I think Christianity believes in original sin. The original sin was forty-seven, forty-eight, fifty-six, you name it, sixty-seven, the rejection of a state of Israel, the rejection of the being of the Jewish people.
To this day the people's whose narrative you have embraced reject existence of the Jewish people, of Jewish history, of a Jewish state. That's the original sin. That's what has maintained occupation for years and years and years.
And I don't care. Nothing, nothing justifies terrorism. That should be the moral position. Not to equate terrorism, suicide bombers, and occupation. You justify it by putting it like this. You justify it. Morally justify, because you speak in the name of a church. How can you?
And then you want us to understand? How can we understand? You morally justify it by saying one balance is the other. And it is an original sin. And the original sin is in your narrative. Because it was the Palestinians and the Arab states who rejected and rejected and rejected and rejected and we're not sure now they're ready to accept it. Where is your sanctioning of them? Where is your divestment of Arab states who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish people? Where is your sanctioning or talking to corporations who support those? Are you talking to those who have the materials for the suicide bomb chemicals? Are they on your list? Where are the corporations? You want me to find them for you? Do you have a panel meeting with them? No, because that's not in your narrative...
I think there's a lot of meat there, and a lot of explanation of what's bugging those of us who are bugged by some of the basic dishonesty in the divestment effort.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The divestment effort by the PC(USA) and others will have no serious effect in and of itself on anything that either Israel or the corporations it deals with do, and they must know that. It's purely symbolic. And that symbolism will and has already been used by Israel rejectionists to bludgeon the Jewish State with. Christians have created another club which is being used to beat the Jews. Whatever intent is in their hearts, that's the effect...its only effect.
FYI, here's the content of my email some months ago on the Presbyterian disvestment initiative to Norman Geras propietor of "normblog" (UK).
Indeed, not a single reply came from the local churches.
AP
_________
"BTW, Norm, I got off on a Israel divestment tangent following Eve Garrard's
recent posting on Normblog re the AUT abomination now underway, and found
lotsa stuff on the American equivalent, more or less: the Presbyterian
Church's (PC(USA)) equally swinish initiative. The more I looked, the more
swinish it got.
Do call up the second URL below. Turns out that the PC(USA) leadership is
more PC (so to speak) than the PC(USA) clergy and way more PC than the
PC(USA) rank-and-file, which isn't isn't very PC at all.. so it appears.
Also PC(USA) HQ in Louisville, KY is sufficiently computer savvy to provide
a link by postal code to all their affiliated churches. So its easy enough
to find snailmail/email addresses of pastors and elders of PC(USA) churches,
say within a radius of 5km, 10km, 50 km, whatever... depending on how many
digits of the full ZIP (i.e., postal) code one punches into the query.
So I'm just trying this out with about 25 Presbyterian congregations here in
Northern Illinois, which is mostly rural/small town. Let's see what, if
anything, the preachers have to say in response.
The Presbyterians in the USA are very mainline Protestant, and are just
below the Episcopalians (i.e., the Anglican church USA) on the traditional
WASP social pecking order here.
The idea is that Real Jews (or about as real as me and you, if I can
presume...) establish neighborly virtual contact on this issue with some/all
nearby PC(USA) affiliated congregations. One of the more swinish quotes in
the press release cited below is how Hezbollah in Lebanon turned out to be
vastly more affable to a leading PC divine than the American Jews he had
encountered.
In part this is a political triangulation by PC(USA), which like all the
American whitebread establishment Protestant sects has been hemorrhaging
their membership over to the way-juicier evangelical sects, which are
usually rabidly pro-Isreal "Christian Zionists"... Perhaps a mixed blessing
perhaps not
Best,
Alan
------ Forwarded Message
From: Alan Potkin
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 15:29:05 -0500
To:
Subject: Israel divestment
Dear Neighbors:
Here's my email to the Presbyterian New Service that
you might find interesting:
blogosphere again right now and you will probably be receiving considerable
feedback on this in the coming days.
In the interests of coming up with my own fair-minded analysis of the
situation, I have been surfing through quite a bit of material from various
sites representing PC(USA) factions.
Among them was the official Presbyterian News Service release dated 11 Nov
2004 regarding the dismissal of
two PC(USA) staffers at its Louisville HQ, following the flap over
Hizballah's obvious exploitation for domestic consumption of a PC(USA)
fact-finding visit to a site in Lebanon.
The PNS release described the venue as "the Khiam Detention Center, a former
Israeli prison and torture site in southern Lebanon, which is now a
Hezbollah-run museum and memorial."
Could you please provide to me the proven details known to PC(USA) of any
"torture" suffered by the inmates at Khiam at the hands of the Israelis.
Otherwise I will have to assume that PC(USA) has accepted this inflammatory
terminology solely on the basis of Hizballah's assertion that torture took
place at Khiam.
I look forward to your speedy reply.
Sincerely,
My apologies for that somewhat garbled cut-and-paste posting yesterday re: Foxman on divestment.
What was s'pozed to have appeared in the comments box was first, my note to Norm Geras; second, my cover letter to the twenty or so neighboring Presbyterian churches to my home in northern Illinois; and third, my original email to PC USA HQ asking for clarification or proof of their allegations of Israeli torture at the Hiam Detention Ctr.
The only response to any of this was from Norm himself.
AP
Thanks, I got it. :)
I'm a little surprised you never got a response from *anyone*, but they may have felt at a loss as how to. The individual Presbyteries certainly aren't responsible for every pronouncement of the national office, but again, I'm surprised none even replied.
Foxman's credibility is fitful. Similar to the way a David Dalin can serve as a corrective to some of Goldhagen's excesses, Foxman requires a thoughtful, critical approach as well. Nonetheless, concerning the issue of divestment, Foxman is spot on.
That such letters can be written to churches without so much as a single reply can be variously interpreted, but surely one valid piece of the interpretation will reflect, to put it in polite terms, a lack of moral coherence and cogency on the part of those churches.