PCUSA Middle East Report Tilts against Israel

The 172-page report of the special Middle East Study Committee of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may set a record for length of a proposal coming to the denomination’s General Assembly. It is also remarkable for the division it has engendered even before this year’s assembly opens July 3 in Minneapolis.  

Major Jewish groups sounded loud alarms about the report. The Anti-Defamation League denounced it as “a toxic mix of bad history, politically motivated distortions and offensive attacks on Judaism and Israel.” On the other hand, the pro-Palestinian Friends of Sabeel North America praised the PCUSA for being “a leader in confronting the issues of the illegal occupation of the Palestinian land by the state of Israel.”

The report is not an easy read. It is a mishmash of sections with a variety of authors and styles. There is no consistent pagination. The most important section, the recommendations, is buried some 40 pages into the report.

Nevertheless, a careful reading of those recommendations confirms that this is a document with a sharp pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel slant. The background material is, if anything, even more strongly biased than the recommendations.

A Long List of Demands against Israel

The recommendations proceed from the assumption that “the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is playing a central role in exacerbating region-wide grief and grievance.” From the report’s perspective, the main “grief and grievance” in the struggle is the Israeli presence in disputed territories. “Le us be clear,” the recommendations declare, “we do affirm the legitimacy of Israel as a state, but consider the continuing occupation of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) to be illegitimate, illegal under international law, and an enduring threat to peace in the region.” The report has comparatively little to say about other sources of suffering and conflict in the Middle East.

The recommendations offer a litany of criticisms of specific Israeli government policies, and a long list of demands for specific changes in those policies. For example, they insist on:

• “the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and diversion of water resources;”
• “an immediate freeze both on the establishment or expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank” and East Jerusalem;
• “the relocation by Israel of the Separation Barrier to the 1967 border;”
• Israeli concessions allowing “a shared status for Jerusalem”;
• “equal rights for Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel;”
• Israeli action “to end immediately its blockade of Gaza”;
• various measures “to extend religious freedoms … throughout Israel without discrimination and prejudice against non-Jews.”

By contrast, there is only one polite request to the Palestinian political leadership: “We call upon the various Palestinian political factions to negotiate a unified government prepared to recognize Israel’s existence.” There is no sense here that recognizing Israel would require a profound change of direction in the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza. Hamas’s charter vows that “the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise” that Muslims will kill Jews and destroy Israel. It claims all “the land of Palestine [including Israel] as an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day.” It declares, “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

The proposed PCUSA report does not directly explain or condemn this Islamist ideology. It expresses a general desire for “an immediate cessation of all violence, whether perpetrated by Israelis or Palestinians.” While the Israeli government is clearly held responsible for Israeli use of force against the Palestinians, the report does not identify the parties responsible for Palestinian violence. By lumping disparate activities under the single term “violence,” the report implicitly treats Israeli army strikes against suspected terrorists as morally equivalent to Hamas terrorist attacks on civilians.

Moral Equivalence—or Lack Thereof

This same kind of moral equivalence appears repeatedly in the recommendations. Wherever a concern is raised about any of Israel’s antagonists, that concern is immediately paired with a slam against Israel. For example, in rejecting “rhetoric and actions that demonize others,” the recommendations target “anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.” Criticism of “threats by Iranians and members of Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel” is balanced by criticism of “Israeli efforts to deny the Nakba [Palestinian refugee flight during the 1948-49 Israeli War of Independence] and threats of a mass transfer (expulsion) of the Palestinians into Jordan or elsewhere.”

Concerns about Iran’s drive to develop nuclear weapons (which it threatens to use against Israel) are equated with concerns about Israel’s longtime presumed possession of nuclear weapons (which it has never used). Condemnation of “the interference of one government in the internal politics of another country” includes “American complicity in the Israeli occupation” alongside “Iranian support for Hamas and Hezbollah” and “Syrian interference in the Lebanese political process.” An affirmation of the U.S. “goal of guaranteeing continued security for Israel from an atmosphere of fear of rocket attacks or other forms of violence” is followed by a nod to “Palestinian needs for security and a just resolution of the conflict with Israel.”

The reverse logic, however, is not followed. There are dozens of criticisms of Israel that are not matched by any concerns about Israel’s neighbors.

On the other hand, there are only a couple instances where Israel’s foes receive unmitigated criticism. The recommendations state that “we oppose the government of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its sponsorship of international guerrilla warfare, and the threat these pose both to Israel and to Arab states.” Likewise, they salute “the bravery and courage of Iranians who have taken to the streets peacefully to demand their democratic rights and call on the Iranian government to cease its repression of democratic and religious freedom.” Apparently, Iran is the one anti-Israel regime that the report’s authors feel free to condemn. They also request “the Lebanese government to address immediately the plight of Palestinian refugees living within its borders.”

The recommendations assert “[t]he moral principle that all refugees have an individual right of return or to adjudicate or negotiate compensation for the loss of home and homeland.” This principle would seem to apply most directly to an estimated 4.7 million Palestinian refugees—some in their third or fourth generation of exile—who would claim a “right of return” to Israel or the Palestinian territories. Israelis fear that, if all were allowed to return, Jews would quickly be submerged under an Arab majority and the character of Israel as a Jewish state would be lost. The proposed PCUSA report does not address this Israeli fear. Nor does it indicate how the “right of return” might apply to Sephardic Jews who fled Arab countries in large numbers during the decades after Israel’s establishment.

Bringing Pressure upon Israel Alone

To back up its demands for change in the Middle East, the report seeks to direct pressure against Israel. It “[c]alls on the U.S. government to exercise strategically its international influence, including the possible withholding of military aid as a means of bringing Israel to compliance with international law and peacemaking efforts.” Even more strongly, the recommendations insist on “the withholding of U.S. government aid to the state of Israel as long as Israel persists in creating new West Bank settlements.”

This pressure is one-sided. The recommendations do not contemplate any similar withholding of aid from the Palestinian Authority, which receives hundreds of millions of dollars annually in U.S. economic and security assistance. On the contrary, they seek an increased flow of funds to the Palestinian Authority. The recommendations urge the U.S. government “to redirect adequate allocations of aid toward (1) the rebuilding of Gaza and humanitarian assistance for its people, and (2) Palestinian reuse or dismantling of the remaining settlement infrastructure following the establishment of a Palestinian state.” They also demand that Israel “release, without any further delay, withheld Palestinian tax moneys to the Palestinian National Authority.”

The recommendations raise the theoretical possibility that there might be nations besides Israel to which U.S. aid could be denied. They call for “the withholding of financial, economic, and military aid to countries other than Israel … until such a time as the civil, religious, and other freedoms of their people are fully exercised.” But the report does not name any such countries. The only place besides Israel where it specifically denounces human rights violations is Iran, which is not a recipient of U.S. aid.

After Israel, the nation most harshly criticized in the recommendations is the United States. They summon “the U.S. government to repent of its sinful behavior vis-à-vis the Middle East, including its ongoing war in Iraq, its selectively undermining or supporting the democratic process in places such as Iran and the Palestinian National Authority, its continuing support of nondemocratic regimes for the sake of oil or leverage over oil, or its involvement with security services and contractors who engage in torture, surveillance, and other human rights violations.”

Endorsing a Radical Manifesto

Perhaps the most extreme point in the recommendations is the proposed endorsement of a December 2009 political manifesto from selected Palestinian Christian leaders. The PCUSA General Assembly is being asked to “endorse the Kairos Palestine document (‘A Moment of Truth’) in its emphases on hope for liberation, nonviolence, love of enemy, and reconciliation.” Any commonsense reading of this sentence would take it as unqualified backing for “Kairos Palestine,” based upon the document’s supposed “emphases on hope for liberation, nonviolence, love of enemy, and reconciliation.” If the authors of the proposed PCUSA report have any disagreements with the Palestinian manifesto, they do not mention them.

Unfortunately, “Kairos Palestine” (included as an appendix to the PCUSA Middle East report) is far from the gentle, irenic, pastoral document that is portrayed. It is, on the contrary, a radical and divisive document.

The manifesto rejects the identity of Israel as a Jewish state. “Trying to make the state a religious state, Jewish or Islamic, suffocates the state, confines it within narrow limits, and transforms it into a state that practices discrimination, preferring one citizen over another,” it warns. “Kairos Palestine” seems to prefer a single state encompassing both Jews and Palestinians, arguing: “This is indeed possible. God has put us here as two people, and God gives us the capacity, if we have the will, to live together and establish in it [the land] justice and peace.”

Israelis fear that, given current demographic trends, a single state would soon have an Arab majority that would overwhelm and crush the Jewish minority. “Kairos Palestine” offers nothing to assuage such fears.

“The injustice against the Palestinian people which is the Israeli occupation is an evil that must be resisted,” the manifesto declares. “It is an evil and a sin that must be resisted and removed.” It rages against how “Israeli settlements ravage our land in the name of God” and the Israeli separation barrier “has turned out towns and villages into prisons.” Israel is condemned for “the cruel war Israel launched against it [the Hamas regime in Gaza] during December 2008.” It is charged with “contempt” and “disregard of international law and international resolutions.” The manifesto contains not a single criticism of the Palestinian Authority or any other Arab state or movement.

The means of anti-Israel “resistance” favored by “Kairos Palestine” are nonviolent. It calls for an international “system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel.” But the manifesto also seems to justify violent “resistance” by blaming it on Israel: “Yes, there is Palestinian resistance to the occupation. However, if there were no occupation, there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity.” It promises that if Israelis would end the occupation, “they will see a new world in which there is no fear, no threat but rather security, justice and peace.” This promise overlooks the historical fact that terrorist attacks against Israel, and military efforts to destroy it, long predated the 1967 War in which Israel troops took over the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

“Kairos Palestine” encloses the word “terrorism” in sneer quotes, as if to doubt the existence of the phenomenon. “The roots of ‘terrorism’ are in the human injustice committed and in the evil of the occupation,” it claims. “These must be removed if there be a since intention to remove ‘terrorism.’” Regarding violent Islamist movements like Hamas and Hezbollah, the manifesto maintains that “Muslims are neither to be stereotyped as the enemy nor caricatured as terrorists but rather to be lived with in peace and engaged with in dialogue.”

Thus at several points the Palestinian manifesto contradicts the stated policies of the PCUSA General Assembly. “Kairos Palestine” favors a single-state solution whereas the PCUSA supports a two-state solution. “Kairos Palestine” rejects the identity of Israel as a Jewish state whereas the PCUSA affirms Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland. “Kairos Palestine” advocates sanctions and boycott against Israel—a tactic that the PCUSA has not so far blessed. “Kairos Palestine” justifies violent Palestinian “resistance” against Israel whereas the PCUSA affirms nonviolence. A 2010 General Assembly endorsement of “Kairos Palestine,” as proposed in the Middle East Study Committee report, would seem to muddy and confuse the church’s position on all these points.

Blaming Israel First, Last, and Often

The report’s recommendations include “strongly denounc[ing] Caterpillar’s continued profit-making from non-peaceful uses of its products.” The complaint is that Caterpillar construction equipment has been used by the Israeli military in building the separation barrier and in knocking down buildings allegedly used by Palestinian terrorists. Caterpillar executives have said that they cannot be responsible for how customers use their equipment. The PCUSA report does not propose any denunciations of corporations possible complicit in anti-Israel violence.

The recommendations uphold “tolerance of religious pluralism, freedom of worship, and protection of Christian communities” in the Middle East. They express “alarm at increasing waves of Christian emigration thus diminishing Christian presence and witness in the Middle East.” Even though Christian emigration is a region-wide phenomenon, and the Christian population in Israel and the West Bank is growing in absolute (although not relative) terms, the PCUSA report casts blame mostly on Israel. It speaks of “the increasingly rapid exodus of Christians from Israel/Palestine caused by anti-Palestinian discrimination and oppression, the growth of Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism, and the occupation-related absence of economic opportunity.”

Among all the governments in the region, only Israel’s is specifically faulted for restricting the free exercise of religion. The recommendations urge the Israeli government to “extend religious freedoms … throughout Israel without discrimination and prejudice against non-Jews.”

Much more delicately, the recommendations ask the Iraqi government to “strengthen the protection of minority communities, especially Christian communities under threat.” The source of those threats against Iraqi Christians is not identified.

The recommendations cite as “positive counter-examples the inclusion and fuller participation of Christians” under the Syrian dictatorship and the Jordanian monarchy. It “[r]ecognizes the efforts made by the Egyptian government and civil society to ease the growing climate of tension between the country’s Christians and Muslims.” Unremarked is the fact that Christians suffer more severe restrictions of religious freedom in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan than in Israel, and that the rate of Christian emigration is as high or higher than in Israel/Palestine.

The proposed PCUSA report prefers to blame Israel first, last, and often—rather than take a balanced view of the many causes of oppression and suffering in the Middle East.