Anti-Semitic remarks made at Presbyterian college event
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, October 31, 2005
A two-day conference at Coe College, a Presbyterian school in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the disputes between Israel and the Palestinians included some anti-Semitic remarks and other “breaches of civility,” a Coe professor said in a letter to a Jewish rabbi.
Anti-Caterpillar poster promotes Sabeel Center’s demand for divestment.But the conference, which was sponsored by the Iowa Friends of Sabeel and the college’s Department of Philosophy and Religion, was not in the whole anti-Semitic, according to the professor, Dr. John Lemos, chairman of the department.
“We regret any harm that may have been caused by such anti-Semitic statements and/or uncivil behavior and we very much hope that our department will be able to continue to interact in a cordial and fruitful manner with the members of Temple Judah and the broader Jewish community,” Lemos said in his letter to Rabbi Aaron Sherman of Temple Judah.
Lemos told The Layman Online that his letter was not an apology and that its purpose was intentionally vague because he was unsure exactly what was said that could be considered anti-Semitic. He said he attended the conference, which was financially supported by a $1,000 contribution made by the Presbytery of East Iowa, but was not present when any anti-Semitic remarks were made.
One of the participants in the conference was Naim Ateek, director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem and one of the driving forces behind the call for Christian denominations and other groups, including colleges, to divest of their holdings in corporations that do business with Israel.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is one of the few groups that have followed that advice, although the World Council of Churches, the Episcopal Church (USA) and the United Methodist Church all expressed their opposition to Israel’s occupation of parts of the region called Palestine and Israel’s construction of a separation wall to protect its citizens from suicide bombers.
The conference at Coe College on Oct. 15-16 was one of many sponsored by Presbyterian organizations that support the resolution by the 216th General Assembly, which called for “phased, selective divestment” of Presbyterian holdings from corporations that do business with Israel. Sabeel has especially targeted Caterpillar, which has sold earth-moving equipment to Israel that has been used in constructing the wall. The Sabeel material includes an anti-Caterpillar poster.
Those conferences, most featuring Ateek, have occurred in response to widespread criticism of the General Assembly resolution, which the resolution’s opponents view as an expression of political bias against Israelis and an attempt to undermine Israel’s security.
Lemos said that on a couple of occasions during the Coe College conference attendees who disagreed with some of the pro-Palestinian views were shouted down when they tried to raise questions. Most of the attendees at the conference were from nearby churches, including Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations and other denominations, Lemos said. Few students attended because the conference coincided with fall break, he said.
Rabbi Sherman was one of the attendees who expressed concern over anti-Semitic remarks. The Layman Online was unable to reach Sherman by telephone today. Lemos said he wrote the letter to Sherman because he did not want the event to damage the college’s good relationship with Jews in the community.
Although Lemos offered no apology for the conference in his letter, he did include a disclaimer. “Let it be known that the members of our department find anti-Semitism of any kind to be deplorable and inexcusable, and that we also object to uncivil behavior,” he said.
He added, “The Department’s sponsorship of the Sabeel Conference reflects our recognition of the importance of the issues that were raised in it. However, we want to make it clear that our sponsorship of this event should not be taken as an endorsement of the views or attitudes expressed by the speakers. Our department offers sponsorship to a wide variety of events and speakers without any intent to endorse the views expressed by the speakers. This is commonplace at colleges and universities.”
“We regret any harm that may have been caused by such anti-Semitic statements and/or uncivil behavior and we very much hope that our department will be able to continue to interact in a cordial and fruitful manner with the members of Temple Judah and the broader Jewish community.”
Two Jewish rabbis in Iowa City did express concern about the Coe College conference before the event was staged. In a guest opinion published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen, Gerald L. Sorokin and Jeffrey R. Portman, quoted Ateek as having written, “It has taken me years to accept the establishment of the state of Israel and its need – although not its right – to exist.”
“He apparently understands that the Jews have been oppressed around the world, leaving millions of them dead or stateless,” the Iowa rabbis said. “But he does not see any right to Jewish national self-determination that would parallel a Palestinian right.”
Sorokin and Portman also quoted another panelist, Mub-arak Awad, as having stated, “I am telling you loud and clear there cannot be a Jewish state in the Middle East. It is impossible.”
Sorokin, who is executive director of the Hillel Foundation at the University of Iowa, and Portman, rabbi of the Agudas Akim Congregation in Iowa City, added, “Even the Jewish participants on the program, Marc Ellis and Jeff Halper, take positions so extreme – blaming Palestinian suffering on Jewish revenge for the Holocaust, denying the need for a Jewish state and calling instead for a single state in Palestine – that they are outside the bounds of regular discourse.”
Sorokin and Portman said they chose not to participate in the conference for a number of reasons: “We have had experience in dealing with a number of the Iowa-based participants in the conference and have found them to have made accusations about Israel that border on the libelous, including the rationalization of the use of terrorism. It is clear that their position as a group is so one-sided that their forum is rigged.”
This not the first ruckus raised on a Presbyterian college campus as a result of a presentation that could be considered pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli.
In 2003, Fahed Abu-Akel, a native Palestinian who served as moderator of the 214th General Assembly of the PCUSA, received a request from the PCUSA’s Peacemaking Program to speak on the Palestinian-Israeli issue at Wooster College in Ohio. But Abu-Akel had a scheduling conflict and recommended that a friend of his, Samir Makhlouf of Atlanta, make the presentation.
Makhlouf’s address included a slide show that depicted the Star of David morphing into a swastika and used materials from Third Reich propaganda that alleged that the Jews were conspiring to take over the world.
“Most unfortunately and to the surprise and shock of those in attendance, Mr. Makhlouf … made anti-Semitic statements about the state of Israel and about Jewish people based on documents that are widely acknowledged to be forgeries and are a direct statement of bigotry and hatred,” R. Stanton Hales, Wooster’s president, said in an apology.
Much of what Makhlouf said at Wooster was based on a propaganda document titled The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was used by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich as part of its rationale for annihilating the Jews. The Protocols have also been used by the Ku Klux Klan and other supremacist groups in their racist appeals.
Known to be a hoax and believed to have been created by Hitler’s propagandists, The Protocols were the forged minutes of a fictional meeting of Jewish leaders at the First Zionist Congress in Basil, Switzerland, in 1897, in which Jewish leaders allegedly plotted to take over the world. In fact, The Protocols, which originated in Russia, are believed to have been copied from an obscure satire on Napoleon III by Maurice Joly titled Dialogue aux Enfers.
Few of the Sabeel Center’s views can be considered anti-Semitic on par with The Protocols. But there is a strong Palestinian bias based on the liberation theology view that God sides with the oppressed people in disputes.
When Yassir Arafat, long-time president of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, died in November of 2004, the Sabeel Center issued a statement lionizing the man who collected money to send even children into Israel with bombs strapped to their bodies to kill themselves and whoever was nearby.
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As a graduate of Coe College, and a member of the PC (USA) in the Shenango Presbytery, Pennsylvania, I was surprised to see this reference to Coe College as “a Presbyterian school”, when in fact Coe has not been anything but historically tied to the Presbyterian Church for many many years, and had severed direct ties to the church long before I graduated in 1986.
Some better due diligence would be prudent.