Yesterday, the Simon Wiesenthal Center launched a distortion campaign against the Presbyterian Church’s Middle East Study Committee, which I’ve been working on for close to two years. When Elizabeth and I lived in Palestine and wrote about the experience of living under Israeli occupation, we became all too familiar with such attacks. It is, in a nutshell, unpleasant.
Agreeing to serve on this committee, I expected some of this again. But I can’t say it’s fun. Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly, has a wonderful response to the attack which I have posted below. You can also read the Wiesenthal Center’s claims about our report, as well as a further smear piece from its director Rabbi Abraham Cooper, which I’ve provided links for:
Please help spread the word about this, so that cooler heads might prevail:
A statement from the Reverend Gradye Parsons, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) regarding the work of the General Assembly Middle East Study Team.
A human rights organization within the Jewish community has issued a statement about the report to the 219th General Assembly (2010) from the General Assembly committee to prepare a comprehensive study focused on Israel/Palestine . The statement says, “…we are deeply troubled that current moves underway in the Church radically depart from its 2008 commitment that its review of Middle East policies would be balanced and fair.”
We want to be sure to say to you in no uncertain terms: We support the existence of Israel as a sovereign nation within secure and recognized borders. No “but,” no “let’s get this out of the way so we can say what we really want to say.” We support Israel’s existence as granted by the U.N. General Assembly. We support Israel’s existence as a home for the Jewish people. We have said this before, and we say this again. We say it because we believe it; we say it because we want it to continue to be true.
The team, which engaged in intensive study, meetings, and travel to the Middle East since their appointment following the 218th General Assembly (2008), continues:
And, at the same time, we are distressed by the continued policies that surround the Occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights, in particular. Many of us come to this work out of a love for Israel. And it is because of this love that we continue to say the things we say about the excesses of Occupation, the settlement infrastructure, and the absolute death knell it is sounding for the hopes of a two-state solution, a solution that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has supported for more than sixty years.
Several previous General Assemblies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have adopted statements about Israel/Palestine. Two excerpts:
In 2004: The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has approved numerous resolutions on Israel and Palestine, repeatedly affirming, clearly and unequivocally, Israel’s right to exist within permanent, recognized, and “secure” borders (for example: 1969, 1974, 1977, 1983, 1989, etc.). It has deplored the cycle of escalating violence—carried out by both Palestinians and Israelis—which is rooted in Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian territories (cf. statements of successive assemblies since 1967). Presbyterians have continued to be concerned about the loss of so many innocent lives of Israelis and Palestinians (see “Resolution on the Middle East,” approved in 1997, and “Resolution on Israel and Palestine: End the Occupation Now,” approved in 2003).” GA Minutes, 2004, p. 66.
In 2006: We call upon the church…”To work through peaceful means with American and Israeli Jewish, American and Palestinian Muslim, and Palestinian Christian communities and their affiliated organizations towards the creation of a socially, economically, geographically, and politically viable and secure Palestinian state, alongside an equally viable and secure Israeli state, both of which have a right to exist.” GA Minutes, 2006, p. 945.
I join the Middle East Study Team that will be reporting to this summer’s General Assembly in asking all people to continue to pray, and work, for the peace of Jerusalem.
The Reverend Gradye Parsons is Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Thanks so much for your good work and for letting us know abou this latest distortion. Prayers.
[…] it to say, not everyone is happy. A colleague of mine in Atlanta, Marthame Sanders, who served on the committee has shared on his blog some of the recent concerns raised by the […]
Just linked to your post on my blog.
I just shared this with Darrel Meyers and friends from Middle East Fellowship of Southern California. You can count on prayer and articulate responses!
Marthame: Before we call the Wiesenthal Center’s press release a distortion, we should examine how it came to be. It is commenting on a Presbyterian News Service article about the work of your Study Group. If the report by PNS is accurate, I would not say that all of the charges made by the Wiesenthal Center are inappropriate. If the Study Team does, in fact, endorse the Palestinian Kairos document, then it is asking the PCUSA to move away from many of its historic affirmations about the region. The Kairos document calls for divestment from and economic boycott of Israel. In addition, it wants an Israel that is secular, not Jewish, in identity. Both of these positions are far from what the PCUSA has held historically and, in my opinion, far from what the PCUSA wants today.
Rather than denouncing the Wiesenthal Center, I think you would have been better off questioning why the PNS would describe a report that, to my understanding, is not yet finalized. The PNS story created what was to be expected: a response from other interested parties. Had the PNS not reported on a report none of us have read, the Wiesenthal Center would not have needed to issue a response to the PNS story.
We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. However, rather thanpublicly tossing around terms like distortion, how about we simply ask everyone to refrain from further comment until we can all read the final report?
Thanks for this blog post. I read the Wiesenthal statement and wondered what the Middle East Study Committee actually said. Knowing you, I was certain that the Wiesenthal statement was bogus, but it is nice to hear the stated clerk’s reply.
John,
You know as well as I do that Presbyterian committee meetings are mandated as open meetings. We’re meeting in Louisville; of course PNS is going to do a story. That’s part of our transparency.
As to using the term distortion, I’m not tossing it around. It’s a fair statement. Two points to that:
Look carefully at the PNS story again. The endorsement of the Kairos document is of “the emphases on hope, love, non-violence, and reconciliation.” For the Wiesenthal Center to take this and rewrite it as “embracing” Kairos and supporting boycott and sanctions is nothing short of distortion. Be careful what you’re reading into the document as well.
There are many other distortions between the press release and Cooper’s screed against PCUSA (see the link above). I’ll simply point out one which I assume you’ll agree with, where it accuses Susan Andrews of having “promoted the divestment overture at the 216th GA in 2004.”
I’m not even gonna touch their smear of mine and Elizabeth’s personal character. It ain’t worth my time.
Oh, and somehow I forgot the most obvious distortion, the headline: “Presbyterian Church USA Ready to Declare War on Israel.” Whatever you think of PCUSA policy on Israel/Palestine, can you really, in all honesty and fairness, say that we’re ready to “declare war?”
Marthame: First, I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the PCUSA, the Kairos Document and the MIddle East in general and yet I did not read the PNS press release as you are interpreting it. I can see now what you mean. But it is very unclear, at the least, to someone who wasn’t involved in the creation of your report. I very much thought you all were endorsing the whole of the Kairos document with “the emphases….” If you folks did not endorse the entire report, what you didn’t endorse needs to be as clear as what you did endorse.
Second, I don’t need to read anything into your report since it hasn’t been released. As for the Kairos document, I am most definitely not reading into it a quite call for a boycott and divestment from Israel.
Third, I totally disagree that the PNS needed to do a story. They could have done a story saying that the committee was still working on its report and it will be out at such and such a date. The fact that they chose to leak what they perceive to be the heart of the report is something I would expect from the Layman, not the PNS.
Fourth, personal smears against anyone are totally out of bounds. I wrote an email to SWC within minutes of reading the attacks. I hope you have done the same.
Thanks. john
Thanks, John. I appreciate you writing to SWC. I know how much you dislike personal attacks, and I appreciate it.
We might disagree on the PNS thing, but another thing SWC is at least misleading about is that this wasn’t a “leak”. PNS and the Outlook were both at the meeting b/c of our open meetings policy. I was surprised, in fact, that the Layman didn’t show up.
With both there, the committee is the one that put out the press release. It’s on the PCUSA site. Don’t know if you’ve seen the Outlook story as well.
I put links to them all on a different blog entry:
Thanks for the clarification. Then I guess I would pick my bone with the Study Group itself. To release portions of the report without the context of the entire report created this unnecessary and nasty firestorm. That isn’t to say the whole report won’t create another even more ferocious firestorm! However, I think the wise thing would have been to wait and release the report. At any rate, I hope your lenten season goes well. We are all in need of some repentance, at least I am!
Honestly, the early release of the bare-bones of this report just serves to test the waters. Getting some preliminary sense of the response will help prepare for the conversations that will be necessary once the full report is released.
Have portions of the report been released? All I’ve seen are descriptions, absent any meaningful supporting text.