By Peter Smith
A group commissioned by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to promote “a just peace in Israel/Palestine” publishes a study guide that includes depictions of Zionism as a heresy at the root of the Middle East crisis.
Meanwhile, a major governing body recommends that the church pull its investments in three corporations linked to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.
The two actions, while taking place separately in recent weeks, drew praise from advocates for Palestinians but have combined to roil already-tense relations between Presbyterians and Jews, both locally and nationally.
Representatives of Pittsburgh Presbytery — one of the denomination’s largest regional bodies in the nation — met with local Jewish leaders late last week to talk over the controversies.
“We rediscovered what we already knew, which is our fundamental agreement on the two-state solution to the problem, and our fundamental agreement that the Palestinian situation is intolerable as it is and needs to be corrected,” said the Rev. Sheldon Sorge, general minister for the presbytery.
The study guide, “Zionism Unsettled,” while not an official church declaration, represents the work of a group created by the denomination 10 years ago. The illustrated 72-page guide, produced by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), decries what it calls years of fruitless talk over a two-state solution, saying Israel has effectively been creating a single state with apartheid-style oppression of Palestinians. It decried Israel for “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians from hundreds of communities in 1948 and said the state resulted from a “toxic relationship between theology and politics.”
3 Comments. Leave new
Fortunately, the positions taken by and the statements made by the study group do not represent the official PC(USA) position. It represents a small group of extremists with a specific agenda and is not a truly ecumenical position. It ignores many facts and glosses over others while making unsubstantiated challenges. Hopefully this flawed study will be dismissed at the GA in June.
There are indeed faults in the study guide, which Sam Dechter apparently hasn’t bothered to purchase and read. The first chapter – “Toward a New Framework” – is much too verbose and unnecessarily delays immersion in the matter of discussion – the Jewish oppression of the Palestinian minority. During my five years in Israel and study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in conjunction with my work on The Samuel Scroll from Qumran, STJD 43, Leiden (Brill), 2001 (reconstruction of the Hebrew scroll from fragments found by the Bedouins in 1952) I witnessed the depressed situation of the Palestinian students, their fastidiousness in letting not a drop of water from the tap in the dormitory go to waste, as if it were a luxury they didn’t have at home. Four or five years ago when I went back to discuss my PhD application with my mentor and head of the Dead Sea scrolls publications – Emmanuel Tov – I was shocked when walking by the old city from the hostel to Mount Scopus – from which perch the university glares out over the whole city – to find the Arab merchants- who graced from time immemorial the areas outside the Old City walls- gone. Jerusalem, until 1967 the capital of the Palestinian state, is – or was several years ago – devoid of Arabs. My hope and prayer is that those of you enthralled in schismatic neo-reformationism will read what your own colleague – the evangelical Wheaton professor, Gary Burge – has to say in Chapter 7, “Evangelicals and Christian Zionism.” You will – like I – fall on your knees in gratitude to the PCUSA for providing this valuable compendium of information.
Yet another Presbyterian expert whose lack of factual knowledge cannot be excused as mere ignorance as he claims he has actually studied there. Just consider his statements about the Old City of Jerusalem. Mr Fincke says that “Jerusalem, until 1967 the capital of the Palestinian state is – or was several years ago – devoid of Arabs”. FACT – Jerusalem was not the capital of the Palestinian state. From 1948 until 1967 the walled city of Jerusalem, with all of its holy sites, was a city in Jordan. There was no Palestinian state. The Jordanian army captured the Old City in 1948 and expelled all Jews from the ancient Jewish Quarter . Despite the FACT that the Jordanian-Israel armistice agreement specified that Jews would be able to visit our holy sites, all of us were excluded, including American Jews – and this was under the moderate King Hussein. This true ethnic cleansing of the ancient walled city of Jerusalem persisted until 1967 – and without any protest by Presbyterians. Since Israel recaptured Jerusalem from the Jordanians in 1967, after begging them not to join with Egypt and Syria in the Six Day War (FACT), there has never been a time when the Old City did not have a majority of Arabs (FACT), rather than, as Mr Fincke claims, being “devoid of Arabs”. But the Israelis have reclaimed the Jewish quarter, from which Mr Fincke and his colleagues would once more want to expel them as illegal settlers, despite the FACT that many of the Israelis who lived in the Old City could trace their ancestry in Jerusalem back 10-20 generations.