GBCS’ Selective Outrage: Israeli Sewage Edition

on January 14, 2014

The book of Isaiah tells us that there is no rest for the wicked, but there’s really none for the just either. In our sick world, there is war, famine, disease, persecution, and poverty in nearly every corner of the world. With limited resources, we must often discern which issues deserve our immediate attention and which, while regrettable, must take the backseat to more important issues. There is a reason, to give one example, that the National Cancer Institute spends 51.3% of its research budget on lung and breast cancer (158,00 and 41,000 US deaths a year respectively) and less than 1% on thyroid cancer (1,850 US deaths a year).

In theory, the advocacy arm of a church, such as the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), aids in this difficult process by lobbying the U.S. government on how it should invest its massive resources according to the principles of the church. But the GBCS has far too often focused on issues based not on which issues are the most pressing, or of the most concern to rank-and-file United Methodists, but based on a general pattern of liberal advocacy. Never has this trend been clearer than during the GBCS’ recent tireless advocacy on the issue of Israeli sewage.

IRD’s John Lomperis did an excellent job summarizing last year how under the leadership of out-going General Secretary Jim Winkler, the GBCS’s focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been one-sided and over-the-top:

In 2004, Winkler… blamed the Iraq war (on which IRD took no position) as a sort of Zionist conspiracy. In their February 2011 meeting, GBCS directors, with the apparent support of Winkler, voted to join a far-left campaign of targeted boycotts and divestment against Israel, putting themselves to the left of even the very liberal leadership of the Episcopal Church. At that same meeting, GBCS directors also voted to make the GBCS a member of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which promotes “comprehensive divestment” against the world’s lone Jewish state as part of its efforts “to isolate Israel economically, socially, and culturally.”

If there’s anything to be said for the GBCS’ advocacy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, up until recently their focus has been the major issues surrounding the conflict. But in recent months, their focus has been on the relatively minor issue of Israeli sewage flowing into a single Palestinian village. The West Bank village of Wadi Foquin has suffered due to the flow of sewage from a neighboring Israeli settlement, damaging their crops and water quality. The situation has been exacerbated in recent years by land seizures to build a “separation wall” intended to deter suicide bombings.

The plight of Wadi Foquin is indeed troubling, but almost certainly not worthy of the odd amount of attention its received from GBCS (Wadi Foquin’s population of 1,400 represents around three-hundredths of a percent of the Palestinian Territories’ 4 million inhabitants). Back in November, GBCS sponsored a full Congressional briefing on Capitol Hill for members of Congress and their staff on the singular issue of Wadi Foquin, featuring villagers flown in from Palestine. In addition, GBCS staff wrote two posts on Wadi Foquin within the course of a week, and tweeted about the issue four times in the past two months. “Time for Israelis to cut the crap?” reads one typical tweet, “Raw sewage from illegal Israeli settlement poisoning Palestinian farmland below.”

The most frustrating part of GCBS’ sewage advocacy is that comes nine months after the Israeli government already ordered the Israeli settlement to stop polluting.  According to Haaretz back in February, “The Environmental Protection Ministry has instructed the Betar Ilit municipality in the West Bank to stop the repeated sewage contamination of a nearby Palestinian village’s fields, after a group of settlers interceded on the villagers’ behalf.”

Haaretz (which typically takes a left-wing stance on foreign issues) also notes an aspect of the problem that went unmentioned by GCBS: “Usually it is Israel which accuses the Palestinians of letting their sewage flow to the settlements…” Indeed, the Israel Parks and Nature Authority reported in July that roughly 90% of sewage in the West Bank goes entirely untreated, which then contaminates Palestinian and Israeli water sources alike. By contrast, the report found that only 15% of Jewish settlements in the West Bank sent their sewage into the environment, making the situation in Wadi Foquin something of an outlier.

In other words, as is usually the case in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the crap flows both ways.

The hardships faced by the people of Wadi Faquin should not be diminished and the suffering of even one person is a tragedy. But there are literally hundreds of issue the GCBS could have brought before Congress before Israeli sewage. One that immediately comes to mind is the persecution of Christians abroad. One annual survey found that the number of Christians martyred for their faith doubled in 2013. There was the spate of church bombings during the Christmas season killing 37 in Iraq. There was death of 85 Pakistani Christians in church bombings in September. The same month, there was the 52 Coptic churches attacked in a coordinated attack in Egypt. None of these attacks received the same attention Israeli sewage did. If GCBS really wanted a Palestinian angle, they might have mentioned the foiled plot by Hamas to bomb Egyptian churches this Christmas. But that might have reflected poorly on their designated victim of the conflict, especially if it came with an admission that Israel is only Middle Eastern country where the number of Christians are growing.

To be fair, GBCS officials did show last year that they are committed to fairness when it comes to chastising countries for their ills. At a Capitol Hill hearing, they called out the Obama State Department for its lopsided foreign policy… that punished Iran. “You all make my job difficult,” said GCBS’s Mark Harrison, “You treat Iran really harshly, but then you’re nicer to other countries who also commit human rights violations …You’re never fair…I have a hard time getting my mind around that and explaining to people why the American government does this…” Let us only hope in the future, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict receives the same nuance and caution GBCS affords to the Ayatollah.

  1. Comment by cleareyedtruthmeister on January 14, 2014 at 3:40 pm

    Mr. Harrison, of course, indicts himself and his agency when he talks of being “fair,” something the GBCS almost never is to any group whose ideology is to the right of Che Gueverra.

    Anyone–even President Obama–who makes Harrison’s job “difficult” is on the right path. But, truth be told, criticism of the Obama administration by GBCS officials is mainly tokenism, certainly when compared to the unhinged hatred they expressed toward George W. Bush.

  2. Comment by gary on January 15, 2014 at 7:04 pm

    I find it amusing that the GBCS wants no borders in the U.S. and are not a bit about illegal immigrants who pour over the borders here but they are very vocal about Israel encroaching on supposed Palestinain land and call it illegal. If the US borders should be open then wouldn’t you think that they would want Palestian borders to be open also? Odd logic isn’t it?

The work of IRD is made possible by your generous contributions.

Receive expert analysis in your inbox.