Minneapolis — July 6, 2010

Note: Events are taking place as this blog entry is being written. Updates to follow.

The Middle East Peacemaking Committee is currently considering major changes to the Middle East Study Committee Report under consideration at the PC(USA)’s General Assembly. The changes would include an explicit affirmation of Israel’s right to exist (which was missing from the original MESC report) and a more nuanced endorsement of the Kairos Document that does not affirm its calls for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel.

The amendments would also delete a specific reference to the World Council of Church’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Israel-Palestine, a controversial organization that like other so-called peace making programs related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, draws attention to Israeli policies while offering little if any testimony to the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
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Gustav Niebuhr after testifying against the MESC report at the Presbyterian General Assembly in Minneapolis. (Dexter Van Zile)

The Middle East Peacemaking Issues Committee of the PC(USA)’s General Assembly has started to make its recommendations regarding a number of overtures that deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

After spending all of the morning and some of the afternoon listening to testimony about the overtures before it, the committee voted to recommend that the General Assembly approve (14-03) which calls on the denomination to “denounce” the company. (July 6, 2010 NOTE: The original version of this entry incorrectly reported that “the committee approved the overture with an amendment that opens the door for divestment in a year if the company does not change its policies.” A review of the resolution on the denomination’s website indicates that this overture was approved without amendment.)

In subsequent proceedings, the committee then voted 34-17-1 that overture 14-03 “answers” the issues raised by two other resolutions, (14-01 and 14-02), that call on the church to divest outright from Caterpillar. In other words, the committee chose to denounce Caterpillar and not divest from the company. It will be up to the General Assembly to decide whether or not to accept the committtee’s recommendations.

The vote indicates that there is a significant minority on the committee willing to take an extreme anti-Israel position and that this minority is offset by a less extreme majority that still views Israel with suspicion.

There are numerous other Israel-related overtures before the committee.
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The moderators of the PC(USA) who apparently have not read the Middle East Study Committee’s report on the Arab-Israeli conflict have endorsed the document, but one member of the committee that prepared the document voted against submitting it to General Assembly.

The report was just too one-sided and did not explicitly affirm Israel’s right to exist.

Byron E. Shafer, pastor emeritus of the Rutgers Presbyterian Church in New York City, told his story at a breakfast held on on July 4, 2010. The breakfast was sponsored by Presbyterians for Middle East Peace, an organization that is calling on the PC(USA)’s 219th General Assembly to reject the report. Rev. Dr. Shafer spoke at the same event where Rachel Lerner, vice president of J Street, condemned the report for its one-sided portrayal of the conflict.

Shafer is critical of both Israelis and Palestinians and asserts that both groups are so locked into their particular perspectives on the history of the region and the current situation that they need the help of third parties to understand “what is right in the other party’s perspectives and what is wrong in their own perspective.”

The only way the PC(USA) can fufill this task is if it regards both the Israelis and the Palestinians with love, Shafer said.

To this end, the PC(USA) needs to refrain from taking one side or the other in the dispute and provide “an independent perspective on what seems to us right and what seems to us wrong in their dramatically differing narratives and perspectives.”

It is for this reason that Shafer, a member of the Middle East Study Committee voted against forwarding the report and its recommendations to the General Assembly. “I believe this report has chosen one side over against the other and does not express a deep love for Israel.”
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Rev. Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem and a proponent of divestment, remonstrates with J Street Vice President Rachel Lerner after she condemned the MESC report. (Dexter Van Zile)

Minneapolis — July 4, 2010 — Rachel Lerner, vice president of J Street, offered a devastating rebuke to the authors of the Middle East Study Committee Report currently under consideration for the PC(USA)’s General Assembly.

“Supporting a Palestinian state does not, should not, and cannot mean tearing down Israel,” she said.

Lerner offered this rebuke at a breakfast at a breakfast held at the Hyatt in Minneapolis a few blocks from the convention center where the PC(USA)‘s General Assembly is taking place. The breakfast was organized by Presbyterians for Middle East Peace, a group calling on the General Assembly to reject the MESC report.

Lerner told the audience of approximately 150 that the report was so one-sided in its depiction of the Arab-Israeli conflict that J Street activists would not want to partner with the PC(USA) in its peacemaking activism if the report were to be approved “because it will push them into a corner a force them into a defensive stance.” She continued:

I want to be very clear about this — this is not meant to be a threat. If this is passed we will not be issuing a directive to our locals that they cannot partner with local Presbyterian churches — but with the passage of this study, the Church will alienate us and as a result our activists will not want to work with you and this will damage completely the possibility of a future relationship.”

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Given the distorted history and theology evident in the report issued by the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Middle East Study Committee (MESC) in March, it would seem reasonable that Presbyterian staffers and elected officials would engage in some soul-searching prior to the denomination’s General Assembly (which began today) where the report will be debated and possibly affirmed.

Nope.

Instead of admitting the report omits crucial facts of history, Presbyterian leaders and peace activists have tried to make it appear that the only way the PC(USA) can demonstrate its commitment to peace in the Middle East and for the well-being of the Palestinian people is if the General Assembly affirms the report, as if good intentions somehow make it unnecessary for Presbyterians to tell the story of the Arab-Israeli conflict with a modicum of integrity.
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Several weeks before the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s General Assembly, which begins tomorrow, July 3, the denomination sponsored a “webinar” about the report issued by the Middle East Study Committee. Speaking in favor of the report was Rev. Ron Shive, a Presbyterian Minister from North Carolina. Rev. John Wimberly, a Presbyterian minister in Washington, D.C. spoke in opposition to the report. During the question and answer period, Rev. Shive was forced to acknowledge that the committee’s fact-finding efforts did not include a trip to Sderot, the target of thousands of rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip prior to the 2006 war.

Rev. Wimberly calls on Presbyterians to reject the report. “The committee’s methodology involves primarily speaking with people who favor the Palestinian narrative,” he said. “The consious choice was made not to seek the input of 74 percent of Presbyterians (this is from a poll in the report) who choose to maintain a close diplomatic and military relationship between the U.S. and Israel.”

Rev. Wimberly quite simply demolishes the report.

But don’t take Snapshots‘s word for it. Watch the whole thing.

Robin Shepherd and Melanie Phillips comment on an outrageous judgement in southern England exonerating seven criminals who illegally entered and vandalized an arms factory that sold military equipment to Israel because they claimed their motive was to thwart Israeli “war crimes.” Although they admitted to a crime causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage that would ordinarily carry a heavy sentence, the judge, George Bathurst-Norman, reportedly sent the jury off to deliberate with the following words, “You may well think that hell on earth would not be an understatement of what the Gazans suffered in that time.”

Robin Shepherd comments:

Bigotry against the Jewish state is now so entrenched in contemporary British society that juries have begun to acquit criminals merely if they can show that they acted against Israeli interests. No other defence is necessary….

Ms. Phillips comments:

Under the combined weight of ideology and bigotry, the rule of law itself seems to be breaking down in Britain.

She further points out that this British judge is “no bleeding heart liberal”, that in 2003, he jailed a man for three months for beheading a statue of Margaret Thatcher. At that time, he said that ” smashing up property deserved a custodial sentence.”

Ms. Phillips provides more interesting details about the judge, which may provide a clue as to why “this apparent law’n’order zealot gave the people who smashed up this factory a free pass in this way”.

UK’s Just Journalism notes:

Though many and crucial differences exist between the cases of the alleged Russian spy ring arrested in the US yesterday and the suspected assassination by Israeli agents of a Hamas leader in Dubai in January this year, the common misuse of British and Irish passports is worth noting. In the latter case, expressions of political and media outrage were abundant; in the former, not so much on either front.

Read the rest here.