On June 10, hundreds of boisterous activists for the Palestinian cause marked the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day Mideast War of 1967. With many church groups participating, and one prominent United Methodist official among the speakers, the activists rallied on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol.
According to emcee Phyllis Bennis, this event was a part of an “international day of protests” around the world “for boycotts, sanctions, and divestment” against Israel. Speakers hurled harsh imprecations against the Jewish state, whose destruction some of them favored. Extreme theories of Zionist conspiracies were peddled from the podium. There were few, if any, criticisms directed at Palestinian leaders.
Activists from official and unofficial Roman Catholic, United Methodist, Presbyterian,
Episcopal, Church of God (Anderson, IN), Mennonite, Quaker, and ecumenical groups demonstrated alongside such groups as the International Socialist Organization and the United States Green Party.
The event was sponsored by two leftist umbrella coalitions, United for Peace and Justice and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. The latter’s steering committee includes United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries official David Wildman and the Rev. Diane Ford Jones of Every Church a Peace Church. The Rev. Dr. Fahed Abu-Akel, former moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), serves on its advisory board.
These church leaders apparently exerted no moderating influence. All of the speakers treated Israel’s victory in the 1967 war as a disaster. None acknowledged the complexities of the situation: that in 1967 Israel was responding to its Arab neighbors’ massing of troops in a bid to annihilate the Jewish state, and that today
Middle East Israel still faces threats to its existence from Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists sponsored by Syria and Iran. While a few of the speakers declared they held no ill will toward the Israeli people, such occasional expressions of nuance were relatively sparse.
Israel’s “illegal and immoral occupation” of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem was consistently denounced as “racist and brutal” and flying “in the face of everything we stand for as human beings.” Israeli security concerns were glibly dismissed.
Mazin Qumsiyeh of the Palestinian American Congress dreamed of “a post-Zionist society.” While claiming that such a new nation would include Jews “who do not believe in exceptionalism,” he gave no hint of what would happen to mainstream Jews who did believe they were a chosen people.
Israel was repeatedly identified with apartheid South Africa. Its behavior was also compared to the Holocaust, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and genocide against Native Americans. Afif Safieh, chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Mission to the United States, charged that slavery and genocide were the “shared values” that formed the basis of the “strategic partnership” between the United States and Israel.
According to Andy Shallal of Iraqi Voices for Peace, Israel brazenly disregards Palestinian lives and the authority of the United Nations “while the U.S. and its allies sit on the side getting their marching orders from Tel Aviv.” America and Israel are allegedly plotting a new world order in which “Israel continues to terrorize the region” and anyone who opposes the twin powers “will be crushed.”
Kyung Za Yim, national President of United Methodist Women (UMW), was the most prominent church official to speak. Yim boasted that she was “proud to be here” alongside such anti-Israel radicals, that her group was a founding member of the U.S.
Campaign, and that “many United Methodists from across the country” had come to this protest. “We are here to demand that the U.S. end its military, economic, and corporate support of Israel’s illegal occupation!” she thundered.
Yim reported that UMW will be “educating” thousands of church women about the conflict this summer. She went on to give an incomplete quote from the United Methodist Social Principles, misrepresenting her church as a pacifist denomination. Based on this rhetorical sleight of hand, the United Methodist Women leader vehemently “oppose[d] any U.S. military action against Iran” and “urge[d] the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and U.S.-funded mercenaries in Iraq.”
The church-supported rally concluded with a performance by a foul-mouthed Arab hip-hop group and a march to the White House, past a sizeable contingent of counter-protesters.
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