Stand alone guy tells why
By Parker T. Williamson, The Layman, July 4, 2010
MINNEAPOLIS – When the Middle East Study Committee signed off on its controversial report to the General Assembly, one member kept his hands in his pockets. The Rev. Byron Shafer declined to sign.
The Rev. Byron Shafer
Judging from comments made by committee chair Susan Andrews and others, Shafer earned more than one Purple Heart during his tenure on the committee’s roster. During Saturday’s “Riverside Conversation” with General Assembly commissioners, Andrews said, “our committee process was intense, emotional and tough. Almost every word was negotiated, negotiated and negotiated.”
With Shafer’s outing, we now know one who sat on the skinny side of the table. Heavily weighted with members favoring an extreme pro-Palestinian position, the committee had only a handful that might have moderated its report. But in the final count, all caved except Shafer.
Opting for a pro-Peace position
It was he who questioned the committee’s composition, the one-sided program that was laid out for its study trips, and the narrow range within which conversation partners were chosen. Shafer told a breakfast meeting of commissioners and observers today that during his most recent trip to the Middle East, a man whom he deeply respected called him aside and said, “When you go home to America, do not be pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. Be pro-peace.”
“I reflected on his words,” recalled Shafer, “and I concluded that to be pro-peace, we must be both pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian. We must try to express our love for both, not just one side.”
“In the current situation, he continued, “many Israelis and Palestinians are so locked into their perspectives that it is hard for them to appreciate what is right in the other person’s position and what is wrong in their own. This is where a third party can be so valuable.”
Shafer became convinced that a third party, one that sided with neither of the other parties but was a friend to both, was desperately needed. That, he believes, is the role that Presbyterian Church (USA) peacemakers might play, but it was not a role for which he could find much committee support.
Shafer took the position that to play the peacemaker role, “we must refrain from taking one side.” He also encouraged the committee to try to forge an independent position on the things that can make for peace rather than simply to parrot what members heard from one side. That independent position, he said, should display the qualities of “integrity and humility.”
Why he voted “no”
Why did Shafer vote against the report? “The report is heavily one-sided,” he said. “It does not express a deep love for Israel. Were this General Assembly to adopt it, we would pour fuel on the fire, not further the cause of peace.”
Shafer said a major flaw in the report is its failure to “explicitly affirm Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation.” During their deliberations, some of his fellow committee members denied outright that Israel had any right to exist. Others sought compromise by using descriptive rather than proscriptive language.
Shafer called attention to the fact that when the report speaks of the General Assembly’s affirmation, it simply refers descriptively to explicit affirmations that previous GAs have voiced. While a superficial reading of the report might lead one to think that this explicit position is reaffirmed, a closer look reveals that this committee’s language is merely a summary of previous GA policy.
“This was intentional,” he said, referring to committee discussions on the wording. What is missing is “an explicit affirmation of Israel’s right to exist rather than a mere acknowledgement of the fact that Israel exists.”
“On page 44 of our report, we list previous General Assembly actions that we affirm. Israel’s right to exist is left out of that list. This is a retreat from the church’s historic position,” he said.
Shafer said that the report is also seriously flawed by the fact that it “accepts at face value the Palestinian claim that if there were no occupation, there would be no violence.” This, said Shafer is simply false. Violence against Israel preceded its occupation of Palestinian territory and was, in fact, one of the reasons for that occupation. Referring to current conditions, he said “just look at Hamas.”
Faulty ‘history’
Shafer took issue with the report’s inaccurate recitation of the region’s history. “Its description of the 1967 war is erroneous,” he said. Shafer quoted the report’s ‘historical’ narrative: “’In June 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, Jordan and Syria. At the end of six days, Israel had taken the Gaza strip and the Sinai from Egypt, East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan from Syria.’ That’s it,” said Shafer. “Egypt’s blockade and numerous attacks on Israel by the other countries that provoked the 1967 attack goes completely unreported.”
The narrative, said Shafer, reads as if Israel’s 1967 strike was simply an act of aggression for the purpose of seizing neighboring lands, rather than a pre-emptive strike based on previous acts of aggression and for the purpose of warding off future attacks against Israeli civilians.
Stacking the deck
Shafer also objected to the committee’s inclusion of various “resource” or “study” materials in the appendix. He observed that the attachments were “overwhelmingly one-sided.” He said that the final draft was not available for committee review until January. When it appeared, it was so slanted that part of the material was moved from Part One to Part Three, and some of the material was reformatted as the opinion of specified authors rather than the position of the committee.
The study materials came back to the committee for final approval by conference telephone call “just days before the March printing deadline … The result was a section with eight pages of Israeli narrative and seventy seven pages of Palestinian narrative.”
Third party opportunity lost
Shafer said that he had advocated for an independent narrative that was written by the committee rather than a copy and paste narrative that came from outside sources. But it became obvious that the composition of the committee would mandate against the creation of a truly independent narrative. At the very least, he said, if the committee wanted to do the work of a true third party, “we should have been critically selective in what we accepted from each narrative … We forfeited our opportunity to play a third party role.”
Shafer ended his remarks by expressing his hope for an outcome at this General Assembly:
“We must convey in writing a genuine, deep love for both people.”
“We must be unequivocal and unapologetic in our position that both have a right to exist.”
“We must therefore stand for a negotiated, two-state solution with Jerusalem as the capital of each nation.”
“And we must support the existence of a vital Christian community in both states.”
The Middle East Study Committee Report, “Breaking Down the Walls,” will come before Commissioners’ Committee #14 on Monday for hearings, amendment and recommendation. From there it will be referred to the full GA later in the week for final action.