Thursday, May 24, 2007
Adam Holland takes off from the post below, Presbyterian Church (USA) Commemorates 40 Years Since Israeli Victory, to point out the naive use of terminology with a definitive history: When it comes to Israel, the Presbyterians don't know their nakba from their naksah:
The well-meaning but ill-informed have long been susceptible to adopting the arguments and terminology both of racist Arab nationalism and the opponents of Israeli existence. Their misunderstanding of the ways in which they have been used is a frequent source of frustration between the people who understand this and the ones who don't and can't understand how their "best of intentions" are causing all this anger. Targeting Christians as dupes in this manner is actually a frequent and intentional tactic.
Thank you.
I hadn't realized the Presbyterians were so anti-Israel. I wonder, do they have any idea of the consequences had Israel lost?
The information about Nasser is fascinating. The inability to link the Arab-Israeli conflict to older and wider conflicts is a major problem. So many people are completely unaware even of Lebanese or Syrian politics, seeing only "the occupation", as though it occured in a vacuum; and clearly can't link modern day events to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, WWII and the Nazis, or the Cold War - yet these events clearly resonate today.
Here's a paragraph from an article about the current fighting in Lebanon, from der Speigel. The interview records the words of a Lebanese soldier:
"The terrain on the edge of the camp where Spiro's soldiers have dug in was still in the hands of the Fatah Islam militants on Tuesday. The rangers moved in at dawn on Wednesday, flattening the reeds that grew there and raising protective mounds of earth among the cypress trees. Ranger Rommel can't say how many people he has killed in the past few days. "It must have been a lot," says the 27-year-old, whose parents named him after the German Field Marshal who commanded the Nazi Afrikakorps. "At first it was a shock to be in a real battle after all the training," Rommel says. Later, he adds, it was like being in a movie. "A drunk state in which you don't care whether you're shooting at children, the elderly or militants."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,484733,00.html
Sol - Presbyterian anti-Israel activists (which represent a small but controlling and unethical faction within the PC(USA)) vary in their usage of terms. I find the use of Nakba as a description of the formation of the state of Israel to be an extremely biased (and frankly quite unacceptably racist) action. To use it for 67 is a peculiar misapplication at best.
However, if the terms are used incorrectly, there is more at work here than simple ignorance. There is a deliberate campaign within the PC(USA) and many mainline denominations to obscure the meaning of words like 'occupation' - in order to deceive their own members. In the case of the PC(USA) and similar organizations, when they claim to support the right of the Israel to exist, then claim to oppose the occupation their hearers within the churches assume they're talking about 1967 and their misreading of UNSC resolutions. When partner organizations receive money and support from these 'churches', however, THEY are usually talking about 1948. That way a policy of activism directed at the destruction of Israel and the rejection of the concept of a Jewish state can be hidden or glossed over by pretending it is solely a rejection of the 'violation' of UN resolutions. Bottom line is that most Presbyterians don't share the hate-filled goals of the anti-Israel contingent, but that contingent is able to operate with the blessing of the denomination - and when it purports to speak for the denomination, then unless Presbyterians act to correct this - that anti-Israel contingent does speak for it.
Presbyterians acted to correct this in 2006. However, the employees of the national church have continued their activism unabated. At this point, unless Presbyterians fire them or demand their resignation, we (I am a Presbyterian) are giving our approval to this program.