Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: PCUSA

Showing posts with label PCUSA. Show all posts

Sunday, February 13, 2022

Presbyterian Church USA redefines "slavery" to say Palestinians are slaves to Jews

On Martin Luther King Jr. day, Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, offended all decent humans by saying Israeli Jews are slave owners and Palestinians are their slaves:

The continued occupation in Palestine/Israel is 21st-century slavery and should be abolished immediately. Given the history of Jewish humble beginnings and persecution, there should be no ambiguity as to the ethical, moral, and dehumanizing marginalization and enslavement of other human beings. The United States of America must be a major influencer of calling this injustice both immoral and intolerable.

I would also hope that the Jewish community in the United States would influence the call to join the U.S. government in ending the immoral enslavement. Dr. King continuously preached a Gospel of justice, so that all people could live in dignity.

He didn't say it was "like slavery" or "comparable to slavery." This idiot said it is slavery.

And to add to the antisemitism, he called on the Jews who obviously control America to tell the government to stop this "slavery."

On January 22, after criticism, he doubled down:

While my reference to these injustices as “slavery” may seem extreme to many and, of course, offensive to most Israelis, no one who is informed regarding the use of military power and racial bias to control the lives of Palestinian citizens can honestly avoid the truth of this situation.

And now, he triples down on his antisemitic libel, by redefining "slavery" to mean pretty much anything he wants it to mean, with an insane definition of the term. And as "proof" he says that he was enslaved himself as he was growing up.

Yes, really.

People do not have freedom to be who they are in community with everybody else, they are limited.
That is slavery.
They don't have the opportunity to do and have the opportunity to be able to engage the way others are able to engage in society. They are set aside and they are treated as though they are in no way related to the larger context of what it means to live in community. It is taking the power of government, the power of individuals who have money and abilities, to set others aside and keep them away from the wealth of communities and at the same time marginalize them at every part of their lives.
I know that feeling because I experienced it as a child. I grew up in the south and I know that it is equated, again, to slavery through my experience. I don't need anybody to read a book on that one. It's what I have had to learn to live with most of my life.

Silly me, I thought slavery meant owning human beings and depriving them of all rights. I didn't realize that an expert who somehow attended college in the South was enslaved.

And he is mystified how anyone can be offended by his redefining slavery to mean anything Jews do that he doesn't like:

It's difficult for me to see how my sharing words that would encourage something different, a coming together a community of giving individuals opportunities to see their own self-worth. To build bridges of hope to new community, living, and what that means in integrating people and allowing individuals to have the same opportunities. Why is that such a bad context to address on Martin Luther King's birthday?

He's practically saying, "I'm a Black man, how dare you disagree with me about what slavery means?"

We have a pattern here: terms like "apartheid" and "genocide" and "slavery" and "persecution" are given brand new definitions to apply only to Jews.

The irony is that by doing this, the modern antisemites are cheapening the terms themselves, trivializing real slavery (which still exists today in the Arab world) and real persecution and real genocide and real apartheid.

Which means that to these bigots, inciting hate against Jews is more important than actual genocide and slavery and apartheid.

Presbyterian Church leader blames Jews for antisemitism

We've seen the rabid Israel hatred and antisemitism of the Presbyterian Church USA in the past. (Even liberal and progressive Jews have found that PCUSA statements crossed the line into antisemitism.)

That hate continues.

The Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Reverend Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II, issued a statement against the Trump plan that goes way beyond valid criticism into antisemitism territory.

We must speak out on behalf of the Palestinian community, residents of this land for generations. Their land has been stolen. Their holy sites have been denigrated. Their homes and businesses have been destroyed and they all live under the iron fist of Israel’s continuing military occupation. This would not change under this “deal” proposed. As Christians, concerned for our own roots in this “Holy Land,” we cry out in anguish and anger as a kind of social and religious “ethnic cleansing” is occurring under these efforts of current Israeli leadership and of our own president.

What Muslim or Christian religious rights have been curtailed by Israel? On the contrary, if the Muslims controlled the land the way that PCUSA insists, the Jewish rights to worship would be the ones that are denigrated. There is more freedom of religion in the Land of Israel now under Jewish rule than there has been for 1900 years under Christian and Muslim rule. That isn't even in question.

But the statement gets even worse;

One of the deep ironies of the impact of the ongoing illegal taking of Palestinian land and the draconian control on the Palestinian community by Israel and its military is the potential for feeding the growing antisemitism in Europe and the U.S. that we so abhor. More violence is the inevitable fruit of a “deal” such as the one proposed.

This bigoted cleric is saying that Arabs are driven to violence against Jews worldwide and simply cannot stop themselves - meaning they are an inherently violent people. So, just as a pit bull owner is responsible for anyone injured by his pet, Israeli Jews are responsible for any Arabs or Muslims who attack Jews in Europe or America - these subhuman Arabs have no free will and cannot help themselves.

Saying that the Jews defending their people are responsible for haters attacking Jews is supremely antisemitic.

Once Nelson proves his bigotry against Arabs, he must extend it to Jews:

And the Israeli Jewish community should understand, better than anyone, the tragedies of sustained oppression.

This is a thinly veiled accusation that Israeli Jews are acting like Nazis.

I call on all Presbyterians who yearn for peace in The Holy Land to demand of our president a better “deal.” We must make clear to our political leaders that the “land of Israel” will never be at peace until justice is done for all her people, not just members of the Jewish community.

"Justice" is a codeword for allowing Palestinians to reject any and every peace plan they don't like, because they cannot accept anything that doesn't fit with "justice" - and they are the only ones who can define what justice entails. PCUSA is saying that the Palestinians have veto power over any peace plan that allows Israel to exist as a Jewish state, which they do not consider "just."

This statement is not a reasoned criticism of the Peace to Prosperity plan. It is an antisemitic and bigoted screed that uses the plan as an excuse to bash Jews and to say that Jew-hatred is justified.

(See also here.)

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What the Presbyterians Lost (Divest This!)

Well it’s another even-numbered year, which means the Presbyterian Church in the USA (or PCUSA) got together for their bi-annual conclave (called a General Assembly) to (1) condemn Israel while ignoring virtually all other suffering in the Middle East; and (2) put a brave face their latest membership decline as their denomination continues towards oblivion.

Throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, I was somewhat obsessed with the ups and downs of the Presbyterians, documenting preparations for each national conference as divestment came onto the agenda even-numbered year after even-numbered year.

The saga began in 2004 when the organization first passed a divestment measure, which was rescinded in 2006 after the church came under attack by both Jewish groups and their own members who were appalled over what was being said and done in their name.

But, as BDS-watchers know all too well, once an organization makes any move towards boycott or divestment, the boycotters have already decided the group belongs to them and exists for one purpose and one purpose only: to pass resolutions encapsulating their propaganda directed at the Jewish state.

And so, despite being rejected by the membership, BDS came back onto the organizations agenda in 2008, 2010 and 2012, being voted down each time, despite efforts by church leadership to box members into having only one choice (their preferred one) of returning the church to its 2004 divestment position.

Now a normal political movement might have gotten the message by then, or might have seen all of the damage their endless campaigning was doing to the church in terms of wrecking internal harmony and destroying the church’s reputation within the wider American society. But, as we all know, BDS is not in the normal business. And so the campaign continued as more and members left PCUSA (either as individuals or as whole congregations which defected to other Presbyterian branches not so obsessed with politics), and as the reputation of the church for fairness and faithful witness also headed into a tailspin.

When divestment was passed in 2004, it was possible for PCUSA leaders to convince the public that this was the democratic vote that represented the will of the membership. But after watching the corrupt leadership of the organization ally with BDS advocates to stack committees considering Middle East issues only with divestment supporters, remove anyone who could make trouble from positions of leadership, refuse members access to information and voices that contradict the BDS narrative, and insist that any “No” vote was just a postponement of an inevitable “Yes,” it became clear well before divestment was restored in 2014 that these votes demonstrated nothing but the lengths to which a degenerate organization would go to hand its reputation over to someone else.

When divestment was voted back in that year, the Jewish community decided enough was enough, refusing bad-faith calls to enter into interfaith dialog with a church dedicated to slapping Jews in the face every two years (all while claiming such slaps were given out of love and concern for their Jewish brethren).

In the meantime, the steady decline of the church continued as PCUSA coupled passage of new anti-Israel calumnies at their bi-annual events with tracking losses of another 5% of its membership. Issues of anti-Israel animus and collapse of the organization are actually linked. For as members died or left the church in disgust, those that remained represented a higher concentration of Israel haters. This was represented by a tendency we see in all organizations where the BDSers think they have the upper hand: overreach. And so, with divestment in their back pocket, the church moved on to condemning Zionism and those that support the Jewish national movement, adding slurs like “Apartheid” to the mix once they realized there were no longer enough fair-minded members ready to stand in their way.

But as the Israel haters wallowed in their “victory” within PCUSA, no one seemed to notice that their pronouncements no longer made news, or even a ripple in the pubic consciousness. Two decades ago, one could claim that a major religious organization making proclamations and condemnations represented moral statements informed by faith that should be taken seriously. But seeing how sausage (in the form of the aforementioned corrupt votes) gets made at General Assemblies for more than 15 years, who could possibly see their statements as expressions of sincere love and faith, rather than the output of venal politics?

Given that the number of Presbyterians nationwide is about to fall below the number of Jews just in New York, it’s also not clear why we need to take what they say any more seriously than they listen to us.

When I was more directly involved with helping those fighting anti-Israel bigotry in the church, I was frequently accused of being an outsider with no real concern for PCUSA and its members, beyond what they were saying about Israel. As I responded then (and continue to respond now): while it’s true I never would have come into PCUSA’s orbit had they not chosen to get into my face in such an aggressive manner, I’m perfectly comfortable that Israel will survive the slings and arrows of a hypocritical and dying organization.

But as someone who appreciates the important role Mainline Protestantism has played in American history, my fear is not for my own tribe but for what it means when this important pillar of national identity gets shattered with the pieces being dragged into the swamp, just so a bunch of anti-Israel bigots can claim to speak in someone else’s name.

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"Progressive" rabbis freaking out over PCUSA's anti-Zionism and antisemitism

I received a very interesting email from a staunchly Zionist Reform rabbi:

I'm living in the twilight zone. Arik Ascherman of "Rabbis for Human Rights" is having issues with Presbyterian Church USA's vote, publicly asking why PCUSA didn't at least propose positive investment as an alternative. The J Street contingent almost seems beside themselves in bewilderment. John Rosove, J Street's Rabbi Mouthpiece, of all people, wrote a pretty good article about PCUSA talking about a friend stabbing a friend in the back.

This resolution was unfair, biased, shameful, ignorant, and a misguided slander of the Jewish people and state of Israel, pure and simple....True friends of the Jewish people would not have passed such a resolution. True friends would have come to Israel to learn first-hand about the reality in which Israelis live. True friends would have toured other countries in the region to understand context. True friends would not have permitted the publication of that propagandist anti-Israel and anti-Semitic screed and would remove it immediately from its website. True friends would have joined with the American Jewish community to support efforts to help Israel and the Palestinians resolve their conflict. True friends do not stab each other in the back.

That is what the Presbyterian Church (USA) did, all disclaimers aside – and it hurts!

Meanwhile my movement's rabbis are having a conniption all of a sudden about Zionism Unsettled. I'm not sure that Rick Jacobs wasn't channeling Bibi on the URJ's conference call about the vote Thursday and said that Zionism Unsettled was anti-Jewish and the worst thing he'd seen since the infamous Zionism=Racism UN resolution in the 1970s. Add to that the numerous Reform rabbis quoting Bibi, actually quoting Bibi, about Christians in other nations in the region. I've seen this quoted a half dozen times by very left leaning Reform Rabbis in the past couple of days alone, "Let them come and visit Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, the only country where Christianity is growing and see for themselves what is going on. Then let them take a bus tour to Libya, or Syria. I have two suggests for them, 1) make sure the bus is armored plated and 2) don't tell them you are Christians."

Strange things happen when friends stab you in the back, I guess.

I would add that strange things can also happen in the non-Jewish world when people who claim to represent Judaism all but abandon the Jewish state, publicly and repeatedly. Say what you want about Muslims but the number of Islamic leaders who publicly criticize Arab countries are tiny, because they understand the importance of a public united front.

Jew-haters laughably claim that Jews have an all-knowing, highly cohesive secret conspiracy that works behind the scenes to undermine everyone else, but the opposite is the case - and the Jewish "leaders" who publicly berate Israel are a large part of the reason that the world can criticize Israel so breezily. They give those criticisms a veneer of respectability, and haters like the leaders of PCUSA are very happy to quote so-called "rabbis" to justify their own antisemitism.

PCUSA's antisemitic moves come in no small part because they are exploiting the divisions in the Jewish world about Israel.

David Duke congratulates PCUSA for "standing up to Jewish racism and supremacism"

The Presbyterian Church USA has a prominent supporter for its anti-Israel resolutions - white supremacist David Duke:

“The [sic] tried to threaten the voters by saying that “David Duke” supports this policy and that the Church will get a bad name by supporting something that Dr.Duke has been tied to in the media,” Said Melissa Anderson who was there with close friends who voted on the divestment. “But, people are just not listening to the Jewish racist threats anymore, they are starting to stand up for real justice.”

Dr. David Duke, currently on a lecture tour, was reached for and he made this official comment:
..[T]hrough ethnic racism and tribalism they discriminate against Gentiles and take over media and other institutions.

Their racist power over the media and government is why Israel can get away with it all.

But people can stand up.

Bravo to the Presbyterian Church for standing up to Jewish racism and supremacism!

The world is waking up to Jewish supremacism!”

PCUSA must be so proud!

(h/t Will Spotts)

What the PCUSA is saying (Zvi)

I noted on Friday that PCUSA had passed a resolution that included this language:

In The Jewish Daily Forward, August 2013, Larry Derfner writes on racism in Israel:

The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] goes after anti-Semitism with a fist, it goes after Israeli racism with a sigh. As a matter of fact, the ADL and the entire American Jewish establishment should suspend their campaigns against anti-Semitism indefinitely and take a look at what’s going on in Israel.

Derfner, of course, is the columnist who was fired from the Jerusalem Post for writing that Palestinian Arab terror is justified.

It would be hard to imagine PCUSA saying that African Americans must stop whining about racism because Zimbabwe is racist against whites, or that Muslims must shut up about Islamophobia as long as Bibles continue to be confiscated in Saudi Arabia. For some reason, PCUSA is only interested in attacking a single ethno-religious-national group.

Zvi commented:

They are saying that destroying Israel takes precedence over fighting hatred and anti-Semitism.

What the Presbyterian Church leadership has just demanded is that American Jews:

* Stop trying to fight against hate-mongers who preach hatred against us because we are Jews, and
* Stop trying to prevent people from spreading anti-Semitic blood libels in order to cause naive idiots like the PCUSA leadership to hate us because we are Jews, and
* Stop trying to prevent deranged followers of anti-Semitic ideologies from gunning us down in the streets because we are Jews, and
* Stop disputing their hateful fictions about our history, which we are better qualified to discuss than they are, and
* Instead, to help hate-mongers in the US to destroy the world's only Jewish state, and
* Instead, to support thugs in the Middle East whose goal is the obliteration of the world's only Jewish state and the slaughter of its people.

PCUSA passes resolution that includes "the map that lies"

Perhaps the most problematic resolution passed by the Presbyterian Church USA was not the divestment resolution that has received all the headlines, but this one that calls for for the church to revisit whether they support a two-state solution at all.

Part of its rationale:

B. The Two-State Solution Then and Now

[See Map 1 and Map 2 under “Additional Resources.”]

These maps clearly delineate the present status of the so-called “two-states” of Israel and Palestine. Map 1 shows the erosion of the Palestinian territory, over six decades, which was to provide for a viable state. In the panel outlining the U.N. Partition Plan in 1947, as well as the panel showing a significant loss of territory from 1949–1967, a two-state solution still appeared viable. As can be seen in the panel showing the present state of Palestine since 2005, it is hard to look at this portion of the map and think that a two-state solution can ever be achieved. It is important to remember that all the white space in what once was a contiguous West Bank (named because it is west of the Jordan River) represents land now controlled by the Israeli military. The green splotches (often referred to as Bantustans or cantons) are separated by thirty foot concrete walls, electrified and barbed wire fencing systems, and checkpoints managed by the Israeli military through which all Palestinians, as well as others (tourists, for instance), must pass to travel between Palestinian cantons or into Israel proper. Tourists pass through easily, of course, as they go to visit holy sites on the Palestinian side of the walls (Bethlehem, for instance). Palestinians do not. They are prevented from visiting friends and family in other regions, conducting business, receiving adequate medical care, pursuing an education, or even getting to their olive groves for planting and harvest. As it presently stands, the “Palestinian state” has no contiguity and the matrix of Israeli occupation prevents free movement among Palestinians.

Here is PCUSA's version of "the map that lies":

As I've discussed in much greater detail in the past, the first three maps are complete lies.

The white sections in Map 1 were privately owned Jewish land but the green portions were not Arab-owned land by any definition; most of it was state land.

Map 2 shows the UN partition plan, though of course the UN didn't refer to the green areas as "Palestinian land" but as "Arab." Either way, the Jews accepted it, the Arabs didn't, and it has no importance except for what could have been if Jews had been accepted as a nation that deserves self-determination.

Map 3 shows no "Palestinian" land since the green areas were either annexed by Jordan or taken over by Egypt. At the time, virtually no Palestinian Arabs demanded an independent state in those territories - but they did demand that Israel be destroyed, as the majority do today.

So what does it mean when a resolution is based on lies?

It means that PCUSA cares as little for the truth as they do about Jewish national rights - something that this resolution will try to undermine even further.

PCUSA considered replacing "Israel" in prayers and hymns - too inflammatory

There was another resolution that was considered by the Presbyterian Church USA that did not pass, but the comments to that resolution show that they took it very seriously:

The Presbytery of Chicago overtures the 221st General Assembly (2014) of the Presbyterian Church, (U.S.A.), to

1. distinguish between the biblical terms that refer to the ancient land of Israel and the modern political State of Israel;

2. develop educational materials, with the help of our Presbyterian seminaries, for clergy, church musicians, worship leaders, and Christian educators regarding the “ancient Israel/modern Israel” distinction; and

3. inform our ecumenical partners of this action, nationally and globally—particularly within Israel and Palestine.

Rationale
This overture was prompted by the publication of the beautiful new publication of Glory to God, The Presbyterian Hymnal, 2013, which has a section of hymns under the unfortunate heading: “God’s covenant with Israel.”

The use of the phrase “God’s covenant with Israel,” is open to interpretation by the reader/singer. Is this “biblical Israel”? Is it the “modern State of Israel”? As one Palestinian American Presbyterian who is a ruling elder said in a letter to those responsible for the publication of the new hymnal:

“Because I am a Palestinian Christian, I am uneasy with the word “Israel” in “God’s Covenant with Israel”—I am always told, however, that what is meant by “Israel” is Biblical Israel and not today’s Israel; but do all Christians know this? With the prevalence of Christian Zionism, which the G.A. repudiated in 2004, I highly doubt it. Even if not intentional, this language is inflammatory, misleading, and hurtful” (Open Letter, October 2, 2013).

One response would be to rephrase it as “God’s Covenant with Ancient Israel,” or, as Thomas Are, retired Presbyterian minister, said in a recent blog, “God’s covenant with the Poor, or even “Our Covenant with the Oppressed” [11.26.13; http://thomas-l-are.blogspot.com/2013_11_01_archive.html], but there are other examples of the problem. In Advent, we sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel. …” Does that justify the modern political State of Israel? At the least, it is confusing and unclear. Our Christian Palestinian brothers and sisters call us to make this distinction clearly.

Mitri Raheb, pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, says: “The establishment of the State of Israel created … an intended confusion. … Huge efforts were put by the State of Israel and Jewish organizations in branding the new State of Israel as a “biblical entity” (The Invention of History: A century of interplay between theology and politics in Palestine, Mitri Raheb, editor, 2011; Diyar Consortium, pp. 18–19).

While it was rejected, the underlying theme was considered a major issue:

The Advisory Committee advises that this overture be answered with the following action:

“The 221st General Assembly (2014) instructs the Office of Theology and Worship of the Presbyterian Mission Agency to develop a short insert or sticker for publications used in congregational worship and study with wording similar in meaning to the following:

“‘Please note in using these texts that the biblical and liturgical “land of Israel” is not the same as the State of Israel established in 1948, which is a contemporary nation state. The Bible contains differing descriptions of the parameters of Israel. Promises of land generally come with obligations to God for justice to be practiced with all inhabitants. Later in Scripture, the Gospel is to be preached to ‘all nations’; in Jesus Christ all peoples are included in God’s promise. Similarly, ‘Zion’ is frequently used in the Bible as a reference to the city of Jerusalem, but in Christian tradition this does not refer primarily to a specific geographical location or political entity but to ‘the city of God’ found throughout history and to the completion of God’s purpose in the age to come. Presbyterian General Assemblies have affirmed the principle that the current physical Jerusalem be shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, both Palestinians and Israelis, living in peace with justice.”

“Further, the General Assembly directs that the Office of Theology and Worship and the Office of the General Assembly share the insert language with an explanatory letter encouraging its use within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and among our church partners internationally, particularly in Israel and Palestine, noting where fuller treatment of the concern may be found.”

(h/t Irene)

PCUSA passes resolution that calls on ADL to stop fighting antisemitism

The Presbyterian Church USA has passed Resolution 04-09, "Resolution on Equal Rights for All Inhabitants of Israel and Palestine and on Conversations with Prophetic Voices."

Essentially calling Jews in Israel racists, the resolution cherry picks Haaretz quotes to prove its point. One of the quotes comes from Larry Derfner writing in the Forward:

In The Jewish Daily Forward, August 2013, Larry Derfner writes on racism in Israel:

The ADL [Anti-Defamation League] goes after anti-Semitism with a fist, it goes after Israeli racism with a sigh. As a matter of fact, the ADL and the entire American Jewish establishment should suspend their campaigns against anti-Semitism indefinitely and take a look at what’s going on in Israel. http://forward.com/articles/182171/israels-everyday-racism-and-how-american-jews-tu/#ixzz2xdzNqUEV

Yup...that passed, including that section.

(h/t Will Spotts)

Wiesenthal Center will boycott PCUSA conference, and their "tough love" of Israel

From the Wiesenthal Center website:

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, one of the largest Jewish human rights organizations, is urging the rank and file of the U.S. Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) flocking to Detroit this weekend for the group's national meeting to defeat the leadership's embrace of extreme anti-Israel positions, including a report that called Israel racist and Illegal.

"We are severing all dialogue with PCUSA, because of a pattern of malicious behavior on the part of church administration," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Center, pointing to Zionism Unsettled, a 74-page document released in December and sold on PCUSA's website. "This demonization of an entire nation and its supporters around the world is an outrage that makes further conversation with this church impossible. Zionism Unsettled does not merely attack Israeli policies, but calls the quest for a Jewish State racist and illegal. This invokes memories of the UN's notorious 'Zionism is racism' resolution of 1974—which was repealed in 1991 – but this time PCUSA has substituted theological language to dismiss the Jewish people's 3,500 year presence in and association with the Holy Land," Cooper added. "The long-standing protocols of interfaith dialogue have always demanded that no partner attack the core beliefs of the other. This document, and the cynical response of church leaders to criticism of it from other Presbyterians, is a frontal assault on the central place of the Jewish State in Jewish life and thought," the rabbi said.

From Yitzchak Alderstein and Abraham Cooper in JPost:

We will be sitting it out not because we wouldn’t be welcome. The laity and clergy of this church – whether they’ve agreed or disagreed –always welcomed us as observers, and we’ve been enriched by our dialogue. This Church’s administration has been quite a different story.

PCUSA was, in 2004, the first mainline church to adopt a resolution calling for divestment from Israel.

Immensely unpopular with the people in the pews, it was undone in 2006, but the minority pledged never to give up the fight. So every two years Jewish organizations squandered months of time, beating back the latest anti-Israel resolutions encouraged by the salaried and agendized “insiders” at corporate headquarters in Louisville. The good ordinary folks of the denomination, whatever their views on Israel/Palestine, were dismayed by the investment of valuable time on resolutions that didn’t bring the Middle East closer to peace, but alienated Jews and Presbyterians from each other.

Other denominations got it, and avoided incendiary moves. PCUSA’s leaders chose not to. After each defeat at a biennial General Assembly, they raised the ante, backing the anti-peace Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that openly seeks the eradication of the Jewish state – even though it flies in the face of the decades-long stated policy of the church. At each GA they pushed for ever more outrageous resolutions, forcing Jewish organizations to debate not Israel’s policies, but her very existence.

Enough! For years before, we tolerated double crosses, broken deals, deception. We watched as church officials had to resign after visiting with terrorist leaders. We participated in midnight meetings that brokered new “understandings” – only to learn weeks later that words were cheap to these church leaders. We saw crucial committees stacked with supposedly neutral but always pro-Palestinian “resource personnel” who were allowed unlimited time to testify (while we had 60 seconds to testify on the most complex conflict on the globe).

We saw real, unadulterated anti-Semitism on the webpages of the Israel-Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) – one of the radical groups behind the incessant anti-Israel resolutions. When we pointed this out, church leadership denied that IPMN spoke for the church – even as it continued to link to them from its own webpages and provided their IRS charitable organization status.

We recently witnessed a chairman of the committee scheduled to debate anti-Israel measures, a person known for his fairness and neutrality, summarily asked to resign because he had visited Israel on a Jewish-sponsored tour. No matter that the church pushes its own, carefully designed pro-Palestinian tours. We watched in disgust as they trotted out “Jewish voices” to allege that Jews themselves were now completely divided about Israel, despite the fact that those spokespeople were as representative of the Jewish community as flatearth advocates are of geographers.

The entire piece is possibly the best, single-article indictment of the PCUSA's actions.

Meanwhile, Israel-haters within and outside the church are pretending that the church leadership's antisemitism and single-minded hate for Zionism is merely "tough love."

Oh, so this is love?

Larry Grimm, a leading Presbyterian advocate of boycotting Israel, wrote a Facebook message that shows his "tough love" immediately before endorsing that article. He was quoted as saying "Come home to America, Jewish friends." He then followed up by saying "America is the Promised Land. We all know this. Come to the land of opportunity. Quit feeling guilt about what you are doing in Palestine, Jewish friends. Stop it. Come home to America!"

The irony of an American with a name that indicates German ancestry advocating that Jews should abandon their historic homeland and occupy Native American territory is apparently lost on most Presbyterian Church leaders.

Luckily, within the PCUSA there are prominent members who disagree with the direction the church is heading:

AS PASTORS AND LEADERS, we are deeply disturbed by the escalating conflict within the PC(USA) over the Church’s policies toward Israel/Palestine. Conflict over these issues, of course, is nothing new; what is new is the focus and tone of that conflict. For decades, the PC(USA) has argued passionately over how best to express our opposition to the 1967 Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. But through all that time, we have consistently maintained that we oppose the occupation, not Israel.

This has now changed. With the publication of Zionism Unsettled, a “study guide” on Zionism produced by the PC(USA)’s Israel/Palestine Mission Network, and a series of overtures pending before the 2014 General Assembly that reflect its arguments, we are no longer debating how the occupation should end, but whether Israel should exist. Zionism Unsettled announces this shift from its opening section, saying: “put simply, the problem is Zionism.” It makes no distinction between different forms of Zionism, arguing that any form of Zionism is inherently discriminatory. Some forms of Zionism have been violent and exclusionary; the same is true of any form of nationalism (American, British, Chinese, Palestinian, etc.). But to argue that any Jewish desire for any form of statehood within their historic homeland is inherently discriminatory is not only patently false but morally indefensible. And the conclusion is obvious: if Zionism is the problem, then ending Zionism (i.e., Israel) is the solution.

It is telling that one of the earliest and loudest affirmations of Zionism Unsettled was by David Duke, perhaps the most notorious white supremacist and anti-Semite in the United States today, who said: In a major breakthrough in the worldwide struggle against Zionist extremism, the largest Presbyterian church in the United States, the PC(USA), has issued a formal statement calling Zionism “Jewish Supremacism” — a term first coined and made popular by Dr. David Duke.

The reality that David Duke would endorse a Presbyterian study guide available for purchase on the PC(USA) website is sickening to us, and should give all Presbyterians great pause in considering the arguments and language of this document and Zionism Unsettled’s ideological relationship to the overtures coming before the General Assembly.

Of course, they are being shouted down (and their points completely ignored) by those who pretend to want "peace" but are silent when Jews are attacked.

How PCUSA twists history to justify their hate of Israel

I finally got a copy of "Zionism Unsettled," the Presbyterian Church USA's 80-page "study guide" to teach Presbyterians how awful Israel is that was in the news a month ago.

Others have done a good job showing how bad it is - and it is very bad. For example:

After describing how much pressure Jews are under to not say anything bad about Zionism, it goes on to quote a hundred years' worth of anti-Zionist writings by Jews.
It has a sidebar of an "unsung hero of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising" - because he was anti-Zionist.
It gives Brant Rosen, the anti-Zionist reconstructionist "rabbi," an entire chapter to describe his pseudo-theological basis for hating Israel.
It shows The Map That Lies.
It says in a pull-quote "There are similarities between Zionism, South African apartheid, and Jim Crow segregation in the Southern US."

I thought it would be helpful to reproduce the PCUSA's timeline of the region's history to show how easy it is to lie with facts and factoids - when you get to select which ones to use.

Like all anti-Israel histories of the conflict, they start with the 19th century. Jewish people living in the Land of Israel from Biblical times aren't good to mention because that undercuts the fundamental argument that the land is Arab land that Jews came and took away.

And the "First Aliya" was hardly the first wave of Jews to return to Israel. They came throughout the centuries, perhaps not in waves but there was always a desire in Jewish culture to return. Major rabbis made "aliya" from Babylonia to the Land of Israel in the 2nd-5th centuries CE. They never stopped coming.

Also not mentioned is that the large majority of Palestinian Arabs in this timeframe did not want an independent state but they wanted to be part of Syria, just to forestall the possibility of a Jewish state. Then, as now, the point was not to establish a state but to end one.

Notice anything missing?

They don't want to mention the deadly anti-Jewish attacks in 1920, 1921 and of course the pogroms in 1929 where many Jews lost their lives and many more lost their homes. Yes, Jews were driven out of their homes by Arabs (in Jaffa, Hebron, parts of Jerusalem and elsewhere) long before the "nakba." Yet only one set of people have rights according to PCUSA.

The 1936-9 revolt was not only against Jewish immigration - it was against Jews altogether. It was a violent uprising and hundreds were killed. Not worth mentioning, of course.

Here the writers are engaging in sophisticated deception. Zionism of course predates the Holocaust and by the eve of World War II there was already a functioning Jewish government in Palestine in readiness for statehood. No such parallel government existed on the Arab side.

But PCUSA wants to frame Israel's founding completely as a result of the Holocaust, with the implication that the Arabs did nothing to deserve suffering at the hands of the Holocaust victims. Of course, the Holocaust contributed to the urgency of establishing a haven for Jews (as well as Western reticence at accepting hundreds of thousands of refugees) but the timeline minimizes Zionism's pre-war accomplishments.

The last item is a lie. There were zero Arabs displaced by Zionists in mid-November, 1947. In fact, before the partition vote Jews were forced out of their homes in Jaffa in August 1947 - once again, the first victims were Jews. Arabs shot at the Jews from minarets of mosques.

Tens of thousands of Arabs did flee at the first attacks of Arabs against Jews in the hours after the partition vote. They remembered 1936-39 and those who had the means decided to flee to Lebanon and elsewhere to sit out the fighting. It was completely voluntary.

Why put "war of liberation" in scare quotes? Well, if you don't believe that Jews have a right to their historic land, then it isn't liberation, is it?

Plan Dalet is not described here, but it is certainly being misrepresented as a plan to ethnically cleanse Arabs. This is a lie.

Deir Yassin is mentioned - but not the Hadassah hospital convoy massacre a few days later which had a similar number of victims. How's that for bias?

Why is the UN adopting the UDHR mentioned here? Obviously because PCUSA claims that Jews violated it - and not Arabs.

Wars just somehow break out. Nothing about incessant fedayeen attacks on Israel in the 1950s and 1960s. Nothing about Arab threats to annihilate Israel and throw the Jews into the sea. Nothing about Yasir Arafat's first terror attack in 1965, before "occupation." Nothing about how the original PLO charter specifically excluded the West Bank and Gaza from its goals. Nothing about Israel warning Jordan to stay out of the war, but Jordan attacking anyway - and losing the West Bank. No, we cannot have Jews feeling real fear, can we?

Also missing: Black September, when Jordan killed and expelled thousands of Palestinians.

In the text of the booklet, PCUSA says "Sadat had taken the initiative by his historic trip to Jerusalem in November 1977. Begin resisted responding to Sadat's peace initiative until public pressure forced his hand." This is a flat-out lie. Israel responded to Sadat's speech in Cairo within hours with an invitation to Jerusalem. Begin had made numerous contacts with his Arab neighbors to negotiate peace between entering office and Sadat's trip to Jerusalem.

Who massacred the Arabs in Sabra/Shatila? PCUSA implies it is Israel, because they haven't said a word about Lebanese Christians, so who else could it be?

The 1994 entry shows how one can write a completely factual statement and still lie.

The first Arab suicide attack in Israel was in 1989 and it killed 16 people- but it wasn't a bomb.

There were two other suicide attacks against Israelis in 1993 - but they were in Judea and Samaria.

PCUSA mentions the Hebron massacre first to imply that Palestinian Arab terror was in reaction to it. That is clearly not true. But they only publish the facts that make their anti-Israel case.

There were dozens of terror attacks during the 1990s. Over 150 Israelis were killed in suicide bombings. Not worth mentioning. But PCUSA wants to imply that the second intifada was the result of Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount - in reality is was an excuse, not a cause.

Israel's peace offers in 2000 and 2001 (and 2007) that were rejected by the Palestinian Arabs are not mentioned. The unacceptable Arab League proposal which could have destroyed the Jewish state demographically is highlighted, so Israel alone appears rejectionist.

Notice that Hamas is not mentioned here as a terrorist or even an Islamist group. Hamas rejected the roadmap outright, but that is not worth mentioning either.

Ah, so Hamas has some militants -but they only attack Fatah militants. They never do anything bad to their oppressor Jews.

Not a single mention of thousands of Hamas rockets being shot at Israeli civilians. Not a mention of who started the war in Gaza (by calling it a war on Gaza PCUSA is purposefully ignoring the Gaza rockets during the war.)

This is only the tip of the iceberg, but the pattern is clear - PCUSA will not write up any history that makes Israeli Jews look like anything but a bloodthirsty aggressors hell bent on dominating and controlling poor, innocent Arabs. (It will not mention that some IDF soldiers, politicians and diplomats are Arab and Druze, because they want to imply that Jewish exceptionalism - a major theme of the booklet - is responsible for all ills.) If anything contradicts that narrative it must not be mentioned.

People who are not familiar with the real history of the region see a timeline and they assume that it must be an accurate portrayal of history. Yet the lies and omissions are all in the same direction - to demonize Israel and to whitewash Arab threats and terror, which are virtually nonexistent in the 80 pages of the booklet.

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how Israel-haters lie with cherry-picked facts.

(h/t Ari)

PCUSA members defeat divestment proposal; BDSers whine (updated)

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

By a hairbreadth vote of 333-331, the Presbyterian Church USA rejected a proposal Thursday to divest from companies whose products are used by Israel to enforce occupation of the West Bank.

The vote, at the church's biennial meeting held this year at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown, followed weeks of lobbying and days of impassioned testimony by American Jews, Palestinian Christians and Presbyterians. In proceedings that are being watched around the world, Presbyterians voted to replace the divestment proposal with a separate one calling for positive investment in businesses in the West Bank.

The vote represented a surprising reversal after a smaller committee voted by a 3-to-1 margin earlier this week to support divestment.

The vote brings PCUSA into line with other mainline U.S. Protestant denominations that have rejected divestment. The United Methodist Church voted in May not to divest from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions, the same three companies targeted by PCUSA. The Evangelical Lutheran Church rejected divestment in 2007 and 2011.

The Rev. Matthew Miller from Iowa said before the body that divestment would "privilege Palestinian suffering over the suffering of Israelis" and jeopardize close collaboration with American Jews.

"No one cares about our symbolic action," he said. "It will achieve nothing other than alienation."

The Rev. Susan Andrews, a former moderator of the General Assembly and an influential liberal in the church, said she had been to the West Bank but opposed divestment.
She explained that the church's twin moral imperatives to "stand in solidarity against the pain and oppression" of Palestinians and to "stand in solidarity with our historic Jewish partners in Israel and the U.S." demanded that it take a more positive course.

The BDSers threw everything they had at this, and after the committee vote it looked like they would win.

But apparently, those who make the most noise are not always the the ones who carry the day.

Now the BDSers are howling on Twitter. A typically funny line that they are retweeting like crazy is "Palestinians are not victims in need of aid, they're an occupied people in need of freedom" - a pithy statement that is deceptive on at least four levels:

PalArabs beg for more and more aid all the time
PCUSA was not advocating aid but investment in the West Bank, something that the pro-Israel crowd has no problem with
They aren't "occupied" for many reasons, legal and definitional
Divestment from those three companies wouldn't bring "freedom" any closer; only negotiating with Israel would

The vast majority of American Jews were not even aware of the PCUSA convention. All the Israel-haters were. Yet with their 100% effort, filling sessions with stories of poor oppressed Palestinian Arabs, they still lost.

That's gotta hurt.

UPDATE: My understanding is that the BDSers have some procedural options; one to resubmit the same proposal and one to only vote to divest from Caterpillar. We'll see.

UPDATE 2: They did overwhelmingly vote to boycott Ahava. Peter Beinart was cited to help them make that decision.

UPDATE 3: They overwhelmingly defeated a declaration that Israel practices apartheid against Palestinians.

PCUSA may boycott HP. Excellent.

The Presbyterian Church-USA seems to be on the verge of approving divestment from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard:

The country’s largest Presbyterian church has agreed to vote by week’s end on divesting its portfolio from three companies that it is says has resisted the request to stop providing services that aid Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly’s Middle East Committee voted 36 to 11 with one abstention in favoring of divesting its portfolio from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. The Committee said the company’s [sic] helped “Israel’s use of their products in violations of Palestinian human rights.”

The reasons are the usual idiocy. As described in an email I received:

Hewlett-Packard is rated one of the top socially responsible investment companies, but that was never mentioned. Motorola Solutions is a new corporation, having been spun off from its parent company in 2011 - but its unresponsiveness to MRTI entreaties was explained only as indifference to the suffering of Palestinians. The main focus, though, was Caterpillar. No attention was given to the fact that the equipment in question was sold to the U.S. government in the same form as any other bulldozer. Or that the modifications to the equipment that occur after market do not bring the company any profit. Or that the MRTI engagement was done alongside groups that interrupt Caterpillar annual meetings - not groups that a company would recognize as interested in dialogue or engagement.

But facts and logic are not on the radar of the divestment crowd, and this time it looks like they have enough followers who are swayed by emotional one-sided stories of Jewish brutality to win.

However, since BDS likes to claim that anything that happens on the planet is a victory for them, even when it has nothing to do with anything they did, I'm going to do the same.

You see, Hewlett Packard is one of the few major US companies that routinely refer to the Palestinian territories as "occupied," meaning that they have swallowed the Palestinian Arab narrative that Palestinian Arabs live under "occupation."

(Briefly, for those late to the game, the legal definition of "occupation" comes from the Hague convention of 1907, and under that definition the people who are in Areas A and probably B - over 97% of Palestinian Arabs - are not living in "occupied territory" since Israel does not have the ability to replace the local PA government. Area C is disputed, not occupied, but under humanitarian law the people should be treated with the same rules as those under belligerent occupation, and they are.)

On HP's website they have dozens of drop-down boxes that look like this:

So if PCUSA divests from HP, that means that they are listening to my call to boycott Hewlett Packard for following a false narrative. As well as being anti-alphabetization, which may also be a crime against humanity according to some expert I can find if I need to.

I feel a victory coming!

Presbyterians have double standard on State of Israel

A divestment policy that punishes one side in Mideast conflict won't bring peace
A. JAMES RUDIN

Religion News Service

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is facing a self-inflicted firestorm of criticism, much of it coming from the denomination's own clergy and lay leaders. This past summer the PCUSA's national policy-making body, the General Assembly, adopted a sweeping resolution calling for 'phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel in accordance' with church 'policy on social investing.'

But the PCUSA's top executive, Clifton Kirkpatrick, placed his own interpretation on the loosely worded General Assembly statement. He maintained that phased divestment is aimed only at 'those companies ... found to be directly or indirectly causing harm or suffering to innocent people.' He did not explain how his church would make such determinations. A report on divestment is due in early March 2005.

The possibility that the nation's ninth largest Christian body would embark on a project that could result in the withdrawal of hard-earned church funds from various companies doing business in Israel has drawn sharp negative reactions from a large number of irate Presbyterians.

The PCUSA Board of Pensions, which provides health and retirement benefits for ministers and church employees, has a $6.2 billion investment portfolio, while the Presbyterian Foundation, with a $1.1 billion portfolio, funds much of the mission program. The Pension Fund must provide benefits that plan members have earned. As a result, there are serious legal impediments to any divestment proposal that may harm fund participants. But there are other equally significant grounds to criticize the proposal.

Among the critics is Presbyterians Concerned for Jewish-Christian Relations, a group committed to building mutual respect and understanding between the two faith communities. The organization's key leaders are Donald Shriver, president emeritus of Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, and William Harter, pastor of the Falling Spring Presbyterian Church in Chambersburg, Pa. Harter is a past member of the National Council of Churches Committee on Christian-Jewish Relations and the World Council of Churches Consultation on the Church and the Jewish People.

Their group has publicly assailed the divestment resolution: 'We are deeply distressed by any suggestion that divestment policies of the church relating to Israel should uniquely target that country in ways that do not apply to every other country. ... We must be careful not to attack the economic life of the Israeli people, or to undermine Jewish survival in any way.'

But the criticism of the General Assembly's action went even further: 'We categorically denounce any equation between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and (the former South African policy of) apartheid.'

Mark Brewer, pastor of the Los Angeles Bel Air Presbyterian Church where President Reagan was a member, was particularly bitter in his criticism: The General Assembly 'fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch going down. The idea that withholding funds is going to make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is ridiculous.'

The PCUSA's Confessing Churches, a group of theologically conservative Presbyterians, is also highly critical of any divestment plans.

The PCUSA has once again used a double standard when it comes to Israel. The Presbyterians Concerned group correctly noted the divestment resolution is 'uniquely' aimed at Israel. Singling out Israel for special punishment is an unfair policy, one that runs counter to the PCUSA's oft-proclaimed attempt to be a genuine voice of Christian conscience and reconciliation.

But controversy within the PCUSA is nothing new. There has been continuing criticism on a host of issues coming from 'grass-roots' members, all aimed at the church's national staff in Louisville, Ky. But the divestment issue has created one of the most heated backlashes to date.

Unfair divestment aimed at Israel should be rescinded and replaced by a balanced PCUSA peace-making effort that does not punish Israel as if the Jewish state were the Middle East conflict's guilty party.

Divestment aimed at Israel alone will discredit the Presbyterian Church and will not hasten peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Those two peoples need something much better than a one-sided divestment strategy from a church that is so painfully and publicly divided.
Rabbi James Rudin, the American Jewish Committee's senior interreligious adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.