8. Further Bias Against Israel: The February 2005 PCUSA Publication of “Steps Toward Peace”

On February 10-12, 2005, the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church sponsored a damage-control conference to communicate the actions of the 216th General Assembly to officials from the synods and presbyteries. An information packet--”Steps Toward Peace in Israel and Palestine,” consisting of twenty-four papers--was prepared for the conference cooperatively by several offices of the church. Some of the papers were professional and informative. Others were marred by omissions or misrepresentations of facts and the presence of considerable anti-Israeli bias.

United States support for Israel is cast as (1) pandering to Jews and some Christian groups, (2) motivated by guilt over the holocaust, and (3) representing economic, political, and security self-interest. (77) Conversely, there is no discussion of support for the Palestinians from Islamic theocracies such as Iran, or such countries as Syria and Saudi Arabia. The occupation is cited as the source of violence in the region. Suicide attacks are said to reflect desperation and hopelessness, and it is reported that most violence perpetrated by Palestinians is directed at military checkpoints, soldiers, and settlers (as opposed to civilians).

The reader is reassuringly told that the Palestinian National Authority has repeatedly condemned suicide bombings inside Israel. (78) No mention is made of the calls by Chairman Arafat for Palestinians to go to Jerusalem “as martyrs by the millions.” (79) No mention is made of PNA Communications Minister Imad Al-Faluji's statement, “The Palestinian Resistance will strike in Tel-Aviv, in Ashkelon, in Jerusalem, and in every inch of the land of natural Palestine.” (80) No mention is made of the operational links between the PNA and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade. (81)

Undeserved sympathy for the plight of many Palestinian refugees is generated by incomplete or incorrect portrayals of history. Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war are described as having fled “from violence or the Israeli army.” (82) Omitted is the fact that many went in response to the call from the Arab League and others for Palestinians to leave their homes, coinciding with invasion of Israel by the Arab League armies. The invasion of five Arab armies in 1948 (with the declared intent of “extermination and momentous massacre of the Jews”) was described in this way: “The Arab nations intervened in violence between Jews and Palestinians.” (83)

In the paper “The Separation Barrier--the Security Barrier--the Wall,” it was acknowledged that terrorism decreased since construction began. However, this decrease is attributable not to the barrier but to “the realization by many Palestinians that such acts damage their cause.” In the paper “Peace Groups in Israel and Palestine,” Al-Awda, the Palestine Right-to-Return Coalition, is prominently featured. (88) Since Al-Awda's vision of a single, “independent, democratic state for all its citizens in all of Palestine” (89) necessitates the dismantling of the current State of Israel, and since Al-Awda also supports “the struggle for the liberation of Palestine,” (90) the description “peace group” is something of a misnomer.

The decision to use one document in the information packet Steps toward Peace in Israel and Palestine is questionable: “Productive Dialogue with Our Jewish and Muslim Neighbors.” (91) It is riddled with patronizing and demeaning statements about Jews.

(i) In Point One the Jewish response is characterized as “highly emotional.”

(ii) Point Six informs the reader: “The clear intention of the Jewish community, in most cases, is to change our minds. This is not, for them, simply an opportunity for open sharing to learn from and better understand one another. It is clear that there is an effort underway to convince and stir up enough Presbyterians to change the decisions of the 216th General Assembly (2004).” While the authors of this paper apparently object to the lack of openness of Jews to learn from Presbyterians, it is unclear what exactly they are expecting Presbyterians to learn from Jews, as they have ruled out the possibility of changing the stance of the General Assembly!

(iii) In Point Eight the reader is told: “Jews feel [emphasis in original] that our actions are an attack on Israel, and that this feels to them like an attack on the Jewish people themselves, which in turn feels like an attack on them as individuals.” And: “Some Jews have said that even when they can understand with their minds that in particular policies we are not attacking Israel, they nevertheless feel fear and an immediate need to go on the defensive.” This is juxtaposed to the “real situation of the Palestinian people.”

(iv) In Point Nine the issue is clarified for the reader: “In the end, the issue is not how American Jews or Muslims feel, nor how American Presbyterians feel, but what will make for peace.”

(v) In Point Ten the reader is warned about the “emotional rhetoric that Presbyterians encounter in conversation with Jews [that] can easily derail the conversation or turn it away from issues of justice and peace.” Yet in the list of ideas for more productive conversations, the reader is advised to “bring the conversation to the level of personal sharing and away from the sharing of positions.” Apparently, Jewish emotions are invalid because they distract from Presbyterian positions, and Jewish positions are invalid because they do not involve personal sharing.

(vi) In Point Ten one potential Jewish argument is portrayed as “introducing an unhelpful level of guilt into the conversation.” This statement is remarkable, given the fact that the PCUSA has demanded an admission of guilt from Israel for the creation of the 1948 refugee situation. Indeed, most of the PCUSA argument is weighted down with guilt-inducing material about the plight of Palestinian persons.

(vii) Point Ten tries to derail the charge of “anti-Semitism” by labeling this charge as an ad-hominem attack.