Church of Scotland decides Israeli viewpoints are irrelevant

From TheJC:

The Scottish Church will no longer consider the Israeli perspective when campaigning on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its General Assembly has voted.

Delegates in Edinburgh at the annual conference of Scotland’s largest church, which has over 450,000 members, overwhelmingly voted against a motion to “ensure a proper balance between the Israeli and Palestinian perspectives” at a session on Gaza.

It followed the adoption of a special report and vote instructing the church to lobby the British government to “end the inhumane blockade of Gaza and related violence”. The report suggested the church may stop support for a two-state solution, but also condemned rocket attacks on Israel.

When urged by a delegate to reverse the one-sided approach at last Monday’s assembly meeting of the Church and Society Council, convenor Rev Ian Galloway said: “There could never be a truly balanced view between Israel and Palestine”.

The vote means future reports and resource material produced by the church for its members would not present an Israeli narrative.

A Church of Scotland spokesperson said: “After debate the Assembly agreed overwhelmingly that the [Gaza] report was balanced as it stood. The thrust of the report was not to inform commissioners or congregations about the political explanations of either side but to report on the experiences shared by people living and working in Gaza.”

It did not take long in looking a this "balanced" report to immediately see two examples that show how it deliberately twists facts.

The first comes from the first paragraph:

The Council’s report to the 2008 General Assembly detailed the deteriorating situation in the Gaza Strip, quoting a report from Ha’aretz of 19/12/07. “Gaza”, it said, “is surrounded and starved.”

If you look at the actual Ha'aretz article, it is not a "report" but a typical anti-Zionist op-ed and its characterization of Gaza as "starving" is not factual but hyperbole. (After watching reports out of Gaza for nearly eight years now amid charges of "starvation" by people like Jimmy Carter, I have still not seen a single example of someone who starved to death. Even the media finally realized the lie of starvation and changed their memes on Gaza a couple of years ago, something the Church apparently hasn't caught up with.)

Another proof of deliberate bias comes from this:

Exports from Gaza are very limited. In the first two weeks of October 2011 no exports left Gaza whatsoever.

The reason? Because the harvest for Gaza exports begins in November! Given that this report was written after seven months of exports of tons of goods from Gaza, this is clearly a purposeful distortion of the situation. It simply doesn't bother to mention the 600 tons of strawberries, 250 tons of tomatoes, 50 tons of pepper and 10,000,000 flowers exported since then.

Because the truth is not what the Scottish Church wants to push - but a one-sided agenda.

At least they are now up front about it.

(h/t Ron)