World Council of Churches issues insane anti-Israel document

I just read a nice article by Dexter Van Zile about the World Council of Churches' statement at the end of their recent conference in Lebanon on the topic of  "Christian Presence and Witness in the Middle East."

Unfortunately, the organization is particularly ill-equipped to address the problem of Islamic violence against Christians. It is, however, quite able to attack Israel and its supporters.

Over the course of its history, the WCC – an umbrella organization of 350 Protestant and Orthodox churches – has worked assiduously to demonize the Jewish state while remaining silent about the sins of its adversaries. It has also made bowing and scraping in the face of Islamic violence a central plank of modern-day ecumenism. Speaking up forcefully on behalf of the victims of such violence is simply beyond the ken of the WCC. The organization is simply incapable of speaking the truth about this problem.

The actual document that was issued is even worse than how Van Zile describes it.

Besides almost completely ignoring the biggest threat to Christianity in the Middle East - which is, simply, Islamic extremism - the WCC is singularly obsessed with Israel.

Palestine continues to be the central issue in the region. Resolving the conflict between Israel and Palestine in accordance with the UN resolutions and international law, will greatly help in resolving the other conflicts in the region. The persistence, after sixty-five years, of continuing dispossession of Palestinian people—Christian and Muslim alike—from their land by Israeli occupation, continuing settlement of land inside the 1967 borders by a nation empowered by overwhelming military strength and external alliances and influence, is central to the turmoil in the region and exacerbated by duplicity of policies of the western powers, especially the United States. Christians have been called to condemn and act against this continuing injustice, affirming the voice and demands of Palestinian Christians, including as heard in the Kairos Palestine document.

To assert, in 2013, from within Lebanon(!), that the central issue in the Middle East is still the Israeli-Arab conflict is to be willfully blind. Syria, Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Yemen - all the tectonic changes happening in the region - have nothing to do with Israel. Not only that, but these same upheavals are the ones that threaten Christians the most.

This is besides the lazy reference to "land inside 1967 borders" as if those borders ever existed and as if there was a "Palestine" on the West Bank before 1967. And besides the dig at the US, whose generally supportive stance of Jewish nationhood is considered "duplicitous." And besides the subtle reference to purported Jewish power ("external alliances and influence.")

Jerusalem today is an occupied city with a government which has adopted discriminatory policies against Christians and Muslims alike. ... Jerusalem must be an open, accessible, inclusive and shared city for two peoples and three religions, with careful protection of their holy places.

I'm sorry, but where exactly is the WCC condemnations of Jordanian rule over the holy places that completely excluded Jews for the "status quo" years of before 1967? I don't think there were any, certainly nothing in the titles of their archives that indicate that they gave a damn about the expulsion of Jews from their holy places in 1948.

This besides the small, possibly relevant fact that Israel does not discriminate against Christians!

Christians who promote “Christian Zionism” distort the interpretation of the Word of God and the historic connection of Palestinians—Christians and Muslims—to the Holy Land, enable the manipulation of public opinion by Zionist lobbies, and damage intra-Christian relations.

Yes, they spend more time talking about this topic - which has little to do with Christians in the Middle East - than they do on Muslim attacks on Christians.

Christians must reject Islamophobia, which mischaracterizes Islam as an undifferentiated whole, and undermines decades of cultivation of co-operation with Muslims, and must refuse the temptation to amalgamation, generalization and sensationalization of our Muslim brothers and sisters.

But not a single word about Muslim and Christian antisemitism that is rampant in the Arab world.

The WCC is obsessed with the Jewish state, beyond all logic and facts. It is essentially willing to adopt a fully Islamic narrative and throw the Jews under the bus.