In what had to be a response to the exposure by me and Viola Larson of their links to anti-Semites, whoever manages the PCUSA’s Israel Palestine Mission Network Facebook page grew quite circumspect in recent weeks. He or more likely she stopped linking to garbage like Veterans Today, instead taking many links from legitimate news organizations such as the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. Unfortunately, old habits die hard. This morning, IPMN got a couple of whoppers up.
First, there’s the Free Palestine Movement. Proudly endorsed by a collection of moonbats and anti-Semites including Cynthia McKinney, Noam Chomsky, Cindy Sheehan, Franklin Lamb of Veterans Today, the mainline church supported U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and Australians for Palestine, the FPM is dedicated to the proposition that the creation of Israel stole Palestine from its rightful owners, and that Israel, if it should exist at all, should have no enforceable borders. On one of its pages it features this graphic
which is both inaccurate and meaningless unless the point is to claim that Israel shouldn’t exist. They also explicitly support the right of return, which would have the effect of making Israel a Palestinian state from which, if history is any guide, Jews would soon be expelled. They’ve also made the fallacious and essentially anti-Semitic equation of Israel and Nazi Germany.
Then there’s the link to the Facebook page “Christians United for Peace.” I don’t think this is an organization of any kind, since it says on the info page that it was started by a “former Christian Zionist.” The IPMN’s Darlene Justice, however, thought enough of this page to link to it on the network’s page with a plea, “please help us grow!”
“Christians United for Peace” seems to be anything but. Within the last 24 hours, it linked to a four-part video from YouTube that is beyond a shadow of a doubt anti-Semitic if that term has any meaning at all. Here it–see for yourself:
I guess that’s the kind of stuff the IPMN wants Presbyterians to consider in formulating their opinions on the Middle East.
UPDATE: Chalk up another one for the good guys. I don’t know when it happened, but sometime in the last seven hours after this post the “Christians United for Peace” page was altered to remove the links to the above videos. Not that it matters–we still know what the person or persons behind this page are about. Especially since Viola has pointed out to me that this page also linked to the loathsome Strait Gate Ministries, run by Hamas supporter Charles Carlson. Strait Gate runs a bookstore that offers such titles as:
•Facts are Facts by Benjamin Freedman espousing the discredited and anti-Semitic “Khazar hypothesis” (i.e., most moderns Jews aren’t connected to the ancient Jewish people);
•The Nameless War by notorious British anti-Semite and Holocaust denier A.H.M. Ramsay, who claimed that World War II was the result of a Jewish/Communist conspiracy;
•The Zionist Factor by one-time Rhodesian politician and apartheid supporter/Holocaust denier Ivor Benson, and many, many more!
The Reformed Pastor 
February 16, 2011 at 5:39 pm
Hi David,
I started a posting on this after reading yours. I also sent a message to Darlene Justice complaining about the videos. She sent me back one asking me which ones that she would look at them. But the time I got back they were gone.
but I am working from another angle. The site is connected to Straight Gate Ministry which is very much against Christian Zionist but is also anti-Semitic even having books in their book store which were written by Holocaust deniers.
This is from a letter I wrote to what was the Witherspoon Society in 2004 it is about the founder of Straight Gate Ministry.
“Carlson was recently noted as one of the featured speakers at the International Revisionist Conferences in Sacramento, California. The Revisionists insist that the holocaust never happened. Chuck Carlson offers at his ministries book store, various conspiracy and anti-Semitic books, including Elizabeth Dilling’s book, Plot Against Christianity, which pushes the idea that the Jewish Talmud was influential in shaping Communism, and The Thirteenth Tribe by Arthur Koestler who attempted to prove that most Jewish people today are descendents of a medieval tribe in Eastern Europe and are not related to ancient Israel. They also offer books by Gordon Ginn who is not only an anti-Semite, but is also a revisionist.”
Found at:http://www.witherspoonsociety.org/2004/israel_actions_arch_1.htm#its%20antisemitic
February 16, 2011 at 5:40 pm
Sorry, I forgot to edit that before posting.
February 16, 2011 at 7:18 pm
I got it for you.
February 18, 2011 at 1:42 pm
Viola – I just want to make sure I’m understanding you correctly – were these videos pulled in response to your inquiry?
If so – that is a surprisingly good thing. It doesn’t change the perspective of the ones posting things of this kind in the first place, but it may indicate a (even if slight) willingness to reconsider some items.
February 18, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Will: They may have been pulled as a response to Viola’s inquiry or to my post. I’d like to think it was a little of both. 🙂 But it was probably Viola.
I’m glad she was willing to reconsider, but you’ve got to wonder about the perspective and mindset of a person who would watch those and think they made a legitimate contribution to the debate in the first place.
February 18, 2011 at 3:36 pm
You’re preaching to the choir here. But – for me, it makes a (very small perhaps, but still present) difference why it was pulled.
The reason being is the fact that there are 2 separate issues. The first is political – e.g. is one supportive of Israel? Is one supportive of Palestinians? Can one be supportive of Palestinians and Palestinian concerns without also being anti-Israel? While all of these might have theological underpinnings, they are more political concerns and there are different perspectives. (One of the more troubling aspects of issues dealing with Israel, Palestinians, and their neighbors tend to be rather complicated. Yet many voices – on both sides (though in churches, colleges, etc – far more on the ‘pro-Palestinian’ side – are very quick to absurdly oversimplify the situation.)
Yet there is another issue here that you, Viola, and to a degree I – have been talking about pretty consistently for a number of years:
To what degree has antisemitism entered the activist position?
February 18, 2011 at 3:42 pm
For me, that is THE central issue. I think many who notice the quantifiable anti-Israel biases coming from IPMN and a host of other PC(USA) activists (and MANY in other denominatioins) – have erred a little. They treat it on its political merits. But ultimately, antisemitic discourse is a moral issue. It is always immoral. That is a moral imperative.
I think the PC(USA) would be in a far better position today if Presbyterians had (or would even start now), instead of treating it as political disagreement within the denomination, pushed for a zero tolerance policy for antisemitic discourse.
Sure, you’d have to live with the political bias … and you’d have to live with shortsighted political statements. But time and time again, it has bled over from political bias into blatant antisemitism. This is unacceptible. Yet it gets treated as if it were just a feature of the many voices of political disagreement.
August 15, 2013 at 11:58 am
Hello – I’ve just stumbled upon this (two and a half years later) and clicked on the videos but without seeing them all (because I found them so disturbing) do you know why that woman was being stoned???
August 15, 2013 at 1:02 pm
Suzy: to which video are you referring?
August 15, 2013 at 1:16 pm
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly – it was the 2nd of the above four videos you posted and it is right at the beginning.