In one of those actions that either suggests widespread anti-Semitism in the PCUSA or widespread ignorance on the part of commissioners, the General Assembly this evening passed overture 11-01, “On Peace and Justice in Palestine and Israel.”
Why do I suggest that particular either/or? Because of the following connected items. First, the overture states:
2. Endorses the “Amman Call” regarding Arab-Israeli peace, issued by the World Council of Churches’ conference, “Churches Together for Peace and Justice in the Middle East,” at Amman, Jordan, June 18-20, 2007, including its affirmation of the UN resolutions that are the basis of a projected “two-state” solution, a shared Jerusalem, and the human rights of refugees and occupied peoples, its call to resist extremism and push for reconciliation, and its commitment to imperatives of ecumenical solidarity in action for Just Peace, directing that the Amman Call be printed in the Minutes of the General Assembly and considered in any study processes of the church.
What is the “Amman Call”? It’s a statement from participants at a 2007 World Council of Churches International Peace Conference entitled “Church together for Peace and Justice in the Middle East.” It takes the usual position on issues in the Holy Land: two-state solution, condemnation of Israeli settlements, condemnation of Israel’s security fence, even-handed condemnation of violence (because there’s no moral difference between suicide bombings of civilian restaurants and the targeted killing of terrorists), refusal to so much as name the terror gangs that dominate Palestinian life, virulent anti-Semitic propaganda in Palestinian schools and media never mentioned. It demands that the result of negotiations over Jerusalem be pre-determined by giving the Palestinians exactly what they ask for. Finally, and most tellingly, we have this:
9. We have heard the voices of the Christian churches of Palestine and Israel challenging and saying to us:
9.7. Insist with us that all dispossessed peoples, all refugees, have the right to return.
This is, as I’ve said many time before, a call for the destruction by demography of the Jewish state. At the same time that they call for two states, they demand that Palestinians be allowed to become a majority in Israel (which, being a democracy, would soon be a Palestinian-ruled state, at which point dhimmitude would be the fate of Jewish Israelis, if civil war didn’t result).
Here’s why I pose the either/or at the top of the post: either the commissioners hostility to Jews is so great that they believe that Jews, alone among the world’s people, have no right to self-determination or to a homeland of their own; or they have no idea what the Amman Call says and implies, and passed an overture that gave their backing to a statement they don’t understand. Take your pick–I don’t think either one covers the PCUSA with glory.
UPDATE: According to the GA Junkie, the commissioners even had an opportunity to rectify this by voting for an amendment that would have deleted paragraph 2. They refused by 61-39%. The final vote was 74-26%. Incredible.
The Reformed Pastor 
June 27, 2008 at 8:52 pm
Actually, I would go with some version of ignorance/peer pressure/distraction. I think the average commissioner is not well-read, doesn’t follow what’s going on well, and trusts the committee work. There is incredible pressure not to slow down the process with amendments…. that’s my observation and hunch, and you’re right, the alternative is substantially more inconceivable.
Having followed GA closely online from afar for 12 years, and being here now, there is considerably less time to read, absorb, and digest than when doing it from afar.
There’s much more analysis I could do, but I have to get back in. Please keep us in your prayers… this is intense, spiritually and physically.
June 28, 2008 at 5:51 pm
[…] OUR LIBERAL BETTERS! U.S. Presbyterians.. “PCUSA to Jewish State: Drop Dead” …. […]
June 30, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Ignorance cannot be a valid excuse any longer after the protracted discussions held with the Jewish community over the last few years. Awareness is high now. Unfortunately that leaves only prejudice by those pushing this agenda and apathy by those who remain silently unopposed.
July 1, 2008 at 1:36 am
“Ignorance cannot be a valid excuse any longer.”
You’re right. It isn’t an excuse – but it is an accurate description of how things occur. Unfortunately – right of return has been publicly endorsed by the PC(USA) in the 215th and 216th GA’s and by a variety of offices of the church before that. Most don’t recognize the demographic implications of this or the patent unfairness of addressing this without also addressing the comparable numbers of Jewish people forced to leave neighboring countries in 1948. They don’t grasp that the net effect of their policies is to call for a “Jew-free” state of Palestine beside a Jewish minority state of Israel.