WCC Calls For Israeli Surrender (UPDATED)

The World Council of Churches is having an “International Church Action for Peace in Palestine and Israel” June 4-10, and want you to know what the “action message” for the week is. So they put out one of those stupid pseudo-poetry things with a long list of stuff that needs to happen. I’m reproducing it without the excessive line breaks because…well, I just don’t feel like giving them that much space:

It’s time for Palestine. It’s time for Palestinians and Israelis to share a just peace.

It’s time to respect human lives in the land called holy. It’s time for healing to begin in wounded souls. It’s time to end 60 years of conflict, oppression and fear. It’s time for freedom from occupation.

On another page, the WCC says, “This year is 60 years since the partition of Palestine hardened into a permanent nightmare for Palestinians. It is also 41 years since the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza overwhelmed the peaceful vision of one land, two peoples.” They do not say, however, that it is 60 years since five Arab armies invaded newly born Israel and tried to strangle it in its cradle. They do not say that it is 41 years since four Arab armies prepared to invade Israel again and were only prevented from doing so by a pre-emptive Israeli attack. They do not say that it is 34 years since Arab armies attacked on Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish year and almost destroyed it.

It’s time for equal rights. It’s time to stop discrimination, segregation and restrictions on movement. It’s time for those who put up walls and fences to build them on their own property. It’s time to stop bulldozing one community’s homes and building homes for the other community on land that is not theirs. It’s time to do away with double standards.

It’s time for Israeli citizens to have security and secure borders agreed with their neighbours. It’s time for the international community to implement 60 years of United Nations resolutions. It’s time for Israel’s government to complete the bargain offered in the Arab Peace Initiative. It’s time for those who represent the Palestinian people to all be involved in making peace. It’s time for people who have been refugees for 60 years to regain their rights and a permanent home. It’s time to assist settlers in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to make their home in Israel. It’s time for self-determination.

The first sentence of the above paragraph is the only reference to what Israelis should get out of a peace agreement. By the way, the folks in Geneva seem to have deluded themselves into thinking that Israel accepted in some way the “Arab Peace Initiative” that was offered a few years ago by the Saudis. In fact, there is nothing to complete, given that said initiative called for the demographic destruction of the Jewish state by guaranteeing the “right of return” for the descendants of Palestinians who left Israel 60 years ago.

It’s time for foreigners to visit Bethlehem and other towns imprisoned by the wall. It’s time to see settlements in their comfort and refugee camps in their despair. It’s time for people living 41 years under occupation to feel new solidarity from a watching world.

It’s time to name the shame of collective punishment and to end it in all its forms. It’s time to be revolted by violence against civilians and for civilians on both sides to be safe. It’s time for both sides to release their prisoners and give those justly accused a fair trial. It’s time to reunite the people of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It’s time for all parties to obey international humanitarian and human rights law.

Notice that the reference to “all parties” is about as close as this statement ever gets to naming Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, or any of the other terrorist organizations that have attacked Israel on a daily basis for years. It should also be noted that it is impossible to “reunite” the people of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, who have never at any time in recorded history been united in a single self-governing political entity. Of course, it may be that this is a call for the revival of the Ottoman Empire.

It’s time to share Jerusalem as the capital of two nations and a city holy to three religions. It’s time for Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities to be free to visit their holy sites. It’s time in Palestine as in Israel for olive trees to flourish and grow old.

It’s time to honour all who have suffered, Palestinians and Israelis. It’s time to learn from past wrongs. It’s time to understand pent-up anger and begin to set things right. It’s time for those with blood on their hands to acknowledge what they have done. It’s time to seek forgiveness between communities and to repair a broken land together. It’s time to move forward as human beings who are all made in the image of God.

We are supposed to “understand pent-up anger.” I guess that is Genevese for excusing terrorism. As for “those with blood on their hands,” who would that be, exactly, hmm?

All who are able to speak truth to power must speak it. All who would break the silence surrounding injustice must break it. All who have something to give for peace must give it. For Palestine, for Israel and for a troubled world,

It’s time for peace.

I’m glad they got in “speak truth to power.” I would have felt cheated without it.

So let’s sum up, shall we? In the case of this manifesto, the WCC makes an assortment of demands that can apply only to Israel: stop bulldozing houses, ripping up olive trees, building the security fence, tear down settlements and relocate the occupants to Israel so the West Bank can be as Judenrein as Gaza, divide Jerusalem, stop “collective punishment,” agree to demographic suicide, and cease restricting the movements of Palestinians (presumably including suicide bombers). As for the Palestinians, the WCC demands…nothing. Nothing that is specific to them, nothing that doesn’t involve simply acting like civilized human beings (you know, like not blowing up civilians). At no point, for instance, do they call on Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist, or to acknowledge that Jews should be allowed to live in the Levant. Heck, they don’t even suggest that maybe Palestinians should stop killing one another in the pursuit of political power, and demonstrate that they have the political maturity to actually govern themselves. So, like virtually everything else the WCC has ever said about the Arab-Israeli conflict, this statement takes sides, and re-confirms for Israelis that the mainline Christian world that is represented by the WCC is fundamentally anti-Israel, and so blinded by its disdain for Israel that it is incapable of playing any kind of useful role in ending the conflict.

Nice work, Geneva. I would have expected nothing less.

UPDATE: Maybe the WCC could use its next statement on the Middle East to address the chances of peace given this reality, reported by the New York Times:

A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.

The survey also shows unprecedented support for the shooting of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

According to the poll, conducted last week with 1,270 Palestinians in face-to-face interviews, 84 percent supported the March 6 attack on the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, one of Israel’s most prominent centers of religious Zionism and ideological wellspring of the settler movement in the West Bank.

On negotiations between Ehud Olmert, prime minister of Israel, and Mr. Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, 75 percent said they were without benefit and should be terminated. Regarding the thousands of rockets that have been launched on Israeli towns like Sderot and Ashkelon, 64 percent support it.

The polling was done by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which according to the Times “is widely viewed as among the few independent and reliable gauges of Palestinian public opinion.”

 

Cone, Wright, and the Theology of Race

The firestorm of controversy around the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, senior pastor of Barack Obama’s church in Chicago, continues unabated. This morning, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal, in his “Best of the Web” column, picks up an item from an Asia Times columnist who goes by the nom de cyber of “Spengler.” It is a quote from James Cone, professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York and probably the world’s foremost proponent of “black theology.” Come has been read on the subject by thousands of ministerial students for at least a couple of decades now, and his popularity in mainline seminaries makes this quote all the more shocking:

Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community … Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love.

A footnote on the Asia Times piece indicates that this comes from a William R. Jones essay entitled “Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology,” found in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, edited by Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press). You can find this book for yourself at Google Books, though the essay is not present in its entirety, and unfortunately the footnote that would provide a source for Cone’s quote isn’t present.

Taken on its own, this quote is a testimony to both racism and heresy. The racism is in the claim that God, to be for black people, must stand against white people and help blacks to destroy their white enemies. The heresy is in the rejection of the New Testament’s declaration that in Christ, the walls between people have collapsed, and that now there is “neither Jew nor Greek,” which is to say that race and ethnicity no longer separate humanity into hostile camps, because Christ has overcome those hostilities in His triumph over sin and all that opposes God.

But given Cone’s stature as a theologian, it’s important to avoid using isolated quotes. I’d like to ask if any Reformed Pastor readers have this book, and can provide a citation for this quote; if so, e-mail me or put it in a comment. Even better, if you can provide this original article or book from which it came, that would be very helpful. I’d like to know whether James Cone is the racist and heretic that he seems to be in this quote, or if this was wrenched out of context by Jones and then passed along in the popular press. Getting a better picture of Cone may help in getting a better picture of Wright, and that in turn may tell us a lot about a man who might be the next president of the United States.

UPDATE: No word yet on the source for Spengler’s quote. But this came in via the comments:

For white people, God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ means that God has made black people a beautiful people; and if they are going to be in relationship with God, they must enter by means of their black brothers, who are a manifestation of God’s presence on earth. The assumption that one can know God without knowing blackness is the basic heresy of the white churches. They want God without blackness, Christ without obedience, love without death. What they fail to realize is that in Amereica, God’s revelation on earth has always been black, red, or some other shocking shade, but never white. Whiteness, as revealed in the history of America, is the expression of what is wrong with man. It is a symbol of man’s depravity. God cannot be white even though white churches have portrayed him as white. When we look at what whiteness has done to the minds of men in this country, we can see clearly what the New Testament meant when it spoke of the principalities and powers. To speak of Satan and his powers becomes not just a way of speaking but a fact of reality. When we can see a people who are controlled by an ideology of whiteness, then we know what reconciliation must mean. The coming of Christ means a denial of what we thought we were. It means destroying the white devil in us. Reconciliation to God means that white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ (black ghetto).

That’s from James Cone (Black Theology and Black Power) and is quoted in The Decline of African American Theology: From Biblical Faith to Cultural Captivity by Thabiti M. Anyabwile (Orbis), page 150. Once again, racism and heresy combined.