Israel-Palestine debate rages
long before General Assembly
By Edward Terry, The Layman, March 16, 2010
Less than a week after its full release, there’s no shortage of criticism of “Breaking Down the Walls,” the 172-page report of the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Middle East Study Committee. But there are some defenders of the report as well, offering a preview of the heated debate that’s to come at this summer’s PCUSA General Assembly.
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Even before the document went public, the report was panned as blatantly pro-Palestine and anti-Israel. Opposition to the report gained steam with the section-by-section release of the report in early March.
The PCUSA’s report has been criticized most recently by the Anti-Defamation League, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America and the New York Daily News. Even though the Daily News article overestimates PCUSA membership by about 850,000 members, its opinion of the report is not at all understated.
“The U.S. Presbyterian Church is on the verge of a blunder that would severely damage interfaith harmony,” the Daily News editorial said, adding that lay members must call leadership to its senses and that withholding U.S. aid implies tightening the screws until Israel stops defending itself against terrorism. “No similar tactics are recommended against anyone else in the region. Not against Hamas, which fires rockets at Israeli homes and schools. Not against Iran, which pursues nukes and dreams of erasing Israel. Not against Hezbollah.”
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In a news release on March 15, the Washington-based Jewish Council for Public Affairs urged the denomination to revise the report.
“JCPA said the report is ‘blatantly anti-Israel and reduces the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a caricature of right and wrong,’” the news release states. “The group said the report ‘makes highly selective use of sacred texts, historic events and current realities to build a narrative against the Jewish state.’”
The most common criticism of the report has been its alleged “anti-Zionist” slant. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) specifically calls out the report’s “historical analysis” section, which other critical groups focused on as well.
“This passage reveals an explicit hostility toward the notion of Jewish sovereignty,” the CAMERA article states. “The message offered here is that if the Jews who entered Palestine in 1948 had only been better behaved – and acted more like Armenians who came previously – then none of the tragic history that took place after 1948 would have happened.”
Calling the report an “offensive attack,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has used some of the strongest language thus far.
“Rather than take a neutral and balanced approach, the Presbyterian Church committee has offered up a toxic mix of bad history, politically motivated distortions and offensive attacks on Judaism and Israel,” said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of ADL. “It is an affront to Americans, the Jewish people, Israel and raises serious questions about PCUSA’s credibility as a partner in interfaith dialogue with the Jewish community.”
Allies speak up
The criticism is no surprise to the Middle East Study Committee, based on a pre-emptive statement in the report acknowledging anticipated questions about balance and fairness.
“We believe that our report, however, is quite fair,” the committee said in a letter to “American Jewish Friends” as part of the report. “Our analysis, both through careful research and through our experience of being in the Middle East, is that Israel is the most powerful party to the conflict. Therefore, Israel has both the responsibility and the ability to reverse the course of the current precipitous decline through the region.”
The Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN), just as the criticism began to flare, defended the report on the Witherspoon Society’s Web site. Its focus was on the Wiesenthal Center’s highly-publicized opposition, which included the urging of Presbyterians to speak out on the issue.
“The organization’s Web site has sounded an alert calling on its constituency as well as rank-and-file Presbyterians to flood the PCUSA offices in Louisville with e-mails in opposition to MESG’s yet-to-be published findings,” IPMN said. “This action seeks to do exactly what groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center often rail against when the same is done to the Jewish community: take an entity endowed with diverse opinion and many different gifts and turn it into a monolith for the purpose of demonization.”
PCUSA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons came to the report’s defense, pointing out a letter to the American Jewish community that expressed support for the Israel’s existence but derides policies surrounding the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights.
Also applauding the report, in a Louisville Courier-Journal article, is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
“(The) settlement issue is the key roadblock toward the forward movement of a just peace in the region,” CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said in the article. “Anything that can show our nation’s displeasure with the booming settlement issue is useful.”
CAIR has been accused of having ties to Hamas and was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an alleged conspiracy to support Hamas and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in 2007, according to the New York Sun.
Offering another supporter of the PCUSA’s efforts, the Courier-Journal article also quotes the chairman of Friends of Sabeel North America, which supports Palestinian Christians protesting Israeli occupation and is listed on the ADL’s list of anti-Israel groups. Its parent organization, SABEEL Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, receives financial support from PCUSA.
Committee member: Read the report, then decide
Committee member the Rev. John Huffman is hoping that Presbyterians will read the report and decide for themselves before passing judgment. He said the group took great care to make sure it was balanced an
d the Israeli perspective was represented – a claim that several critics have rejected.
Huffman said the Wiesenthal Center is disseminating false information.
“What I’m finding is the Jewish lobby in the United States has terrific influence in Washington,” said Huffman, who is a retired PCUSA minister. “They are in the process now of trying to destroy each of the nine members who were part of this task force. … I, for one, refused to allow the report to go in any finished form without a Jewish perspective that would be comparable and offsetting to Nahida (Gordon), who’s a Palestinian whose family lost their property.”
Huffman said the report clearly calls for the support of the state of Israel, its viability and protection, but it’s also specific in calling for justice and Israel to be held accountable for its actions for the last several decades. He defends the group’s efforts to make sure the report was fair and points to four vignettes written by committee members to add additional context and perspective.
Huffman, who calls himself “a moderate pro-Zionist,” said he accepted the invitation to join the task force knowing “how viciously attacked any truth-tellers are by majority voices in the American Jewish community.” He describes his own experiences when visiting the Middle East throughout his life. He also compares Israeli domestic and foreign policy to apartheid.
“I have been perplexed by the complexity of the situation, troubled by acts of terrorism on both sides, and ultimately appalled by the arbitrary expropriation of Palestinian land and the exponential increase of that expropriation since 1967 and the use of that land in violation of international law, the most visible evidence of that being the building of Israeli settlements housing what soon will be one-half million settlers.” Huffman said in his vignette.
Though the debate already has begun, the PCUSA’s General Assembly will consider the report and its recommendations as it meets July 3-10 in Minneapolis, Minn.
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