Something Wonderful Happened
I’ve just returned from Minneapolis, having attended the 219th
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA at the invitation of
the denomination’s Israel Palestine Mission Network. The PC(USA) is at
the epicenter of the struggle of the Christian community in the U.S. to
come to terms with the challenge of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
A victory had already been achieved before the start of the
Assembly. Overtures from presbyteries from around the country
urging action on justice for Palestinians would amount to over 40% of
the actions considered by the Assembly. These included revisiting
the 2004 decision to undertake phased divestment from companies
implicated in the illegal occupation of Palestinian land and an overture
affirming that Israel’s actions meet the United Nations definition for
the crime of Apartheid. A centerpiece of Presbyterian actions was the
call to approve the
report of the Middle East Study Committee. The MESC, commissioned by
the 2008 General Assembly, had produced a 170 page report entitled
“Breaking Down the Walls.” The report documents the committee’s
first-hand observation of the Israeli occupation’s impact on Palestinian
society and includes specific recommendations, including urging the
U.S. government to make military aid to Israel contingent on ending the
occupation.
Predictably, the forces of opposition had gathered. As early as
February of this year, the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked the report,
calling it a “poisonous document by the Presbyterian Church [that] will
be nothing short of a declaration of war on Israel.” This broadside by
the Los Angeles-based Jewish advocacy group went on to declare that the
report “shakes the foundations of interfaith relations.” This is the
tack that has been taken for years by the mainstream Jewish community –
both secular organizations like Wiesenthal as well as the religious
denominations — claiming that any questions about Israel’s policies or
the Zionist project itself partakes of anti-Semitism. The charge of
anti-Semitism and the prospect of a disruption in the “interfaith
partnership” has been effective in stifling the discourse and in
thwarting actions directed at Israel’s policies. Implicit and sometime
explicit in these statements is the threat that such “unfriendly”
behavior by Christians will result in the removal of Jewish friendship.
This strategy has intensified in recent years in response to efforts by
church denominations to take a principled stand on the Israel-Palestine
issue. Most recently, the biweekly Christian Century published
an article by Ted Smith and Amy-Jill Levine, professors at Vanderbilt
Seminary. Appearing the week preceding the PC(USA) General Assembly, the
article, entitled “Habits of
Anti-Judaism,” strongly critiqued the MESC report. In the opening to
a letter to the Christian Century I wrote the following:
“The intent of the Presbyterian Middle
East Study Committee Report “Breaking Down the Walls” is clear: “to
break down these walls that stand in the way of the realization of God’s
peaceful and just kingdom.” But in their critique of the report
published in your June 29 issue, Ted Smith and Amy-Jill Levine
of Vanderbilt Seminary strike at the heart of this message. They ask us
to believe that the report advocates “a historical narrative that points
indirectly to a single state—a new social body—in which a Palestinian
majority displaces Jews.” In a shocking distortion of the Study Group’s
evocation of Ephesians 2:14, they claim that “’Breaking down the walls’
in order to form ‘one new humanity in the place of two’ evokes old
echoes of theological supersessionism and transposes them into a
political key.” “Old habits die hard,” lament Smith and Levine. But it
is the habit of crying anti-Semitism whenever Jewish sensibilities are
disturbed or the actions of the State of Israel are questioned that we
must urgently confront.”
(Full text of the letter.)
The aim of the article was clear – to strengthen the hand of those
who wanted to prevent passage of the report. And why not? This is a
time-honored approach — it has always worked. I feared that it would
prove just as effective in this case. I arrived in Minneapolis convinced
that, except for the efforts of a courageous but small and embattled
minority within the denomination, the natural commitment to social
justice and support for the oppressed on the part of most Presbyterians
would again be trumped by concern for preserving the relationship with
the Jewish community. I was betting that the tactics of the Wiesenthal
Center and the arguments of Smith and Levine would serve, as they always
have, to muzzle the conversation and block actions that might offend
Jewish sensibilities or be perceived as hostile to the Jewish state.
A thing of beauty
I was wrong. Yes, the concerns about the feelings of Jews when Israel
is “attacked” are still there, and they exert a powerful pull on
Presbyterians’ decisions. But something wonderful happened last week in
Minneapolis.
I watched as the committee charged with studying “Breaking Down the
Walls,” and recommending action to the GA debated the matter. I listened
to the arguments for and against approval of the report. Those in favor
passionately talked about the suffering of the Palestinians under
occupation. Those against spoke just as passionately about the report’s
seeming “anti-Israel” bias, claiming that to approve the report would be
to cut off dialogue with the Jewish community. I noted what seemed like
a universe of disagreement between the two positions. I despaired that
anyone who, unlike the study group itself, had not seen the occupation
with his or her own eyes would understand that the report was not biased
– that it was simply telling the truth and recommending that the church
respond accordingly.
But something happened. The committee clearly wanted to find a
way to have the report adopted. A group from the committee stayed
up all night to craft a number of changes. Problems with perceived bias
against Israel were fixed. The obligatory language about Israel’s right
to exist was inserted. None of these changes touched the faithful
witness and prophetic heart of the report. While strongly asserting
the church’s commitment to Israel’s security and wellbeing, the Study
Committee’s report as presented to the General Assembly clearly presents
the narrative of Palestinian dispossession and suffering. It asserts
that Israel’s actions, illegal and in violation of international law,
are an “enduring threat to peace in the region.” It receives the Palestinian
Kairos document, a courageous and heartfelt call of Palestinian
Christians “from the heart of Palestinian suffering” to the churches of
the world, and recommends it for study by Presbyterians. It calls on the
U.S. government to end aid to Israel unless the country stops
settlement expansion in Palestinian territories.
The report came before the 730+ commissions on Friday June 9 and was
approved by a vote of 82%. When the results were displayed on the
screen, the assembled broke into applause – which is against the rules
but in this case the moderator, smiling, allowed the spontaneous
outburst to go on! The applause, breaking through these restraints,
meant one thing: this is where the denomination wants to go. Then
something else unusual happened – the Moderator, Cindy Bolbach, offered a
prayer, thanking God for guiding the assembled to this act, for
breaking down the walls dividing people and standing in the way of
peace. The thousands of people in the hall bowed their heads in
reverence. They knew that something important had happened.
It is not always clear from down on the floor, in the thick of
things. But looking back, I see that the PC(USA) General Assembly is a
thing of beauty. This church is committed to tearing down walls.
Watching the plenary, one witnessed a courageous and heartfelt struggle
with things that matter: gay and lesbian ordination and
honoring of marriages; benefits for civil union partners; how to
respond to state laws that violate the rights of immigrants. With
respect to the Israel-Palestine question, the struggle will continue.
Other overtures did not fare as well as the MESC report. Even though
overtures to divest denomination pension funds — close to 10 million
dollars — from Caterpillar (the company manufactures the bulldozers that
destroy Palestinian homes and build the separation wall) have been
proposed at every General Assembly since 2004 (actually it passed in
2004 and then withdrawn in the face of a juggernaut of institutional
Jewish pressure, but that’s another story), the overture failed. In
addition, Presbyterians could not bring themselves to approve the
overture naming Israel’s policies as Apartheid.
But here is the thing: it is clear to me that all but a small
minority of the 36 who voted against that overture in committee (the
vote was 16-36) agree that Israel’s actions meet the UN definition of
the crime of Apartheid. What drove the vote was not the substance of the
overture but rather the belief, as stated in a comment on the vote
inserted by the committee, “that dialogue is hampered by words like
‘apartheid.’” It was also clear to me in listening to the debate that,
despite the stubborn unwillingness to move to divestment, all but a
fringe within the denomination agree that Caterpillar is building
machines that illegally and criminally destroy Palestinian life and that
the denomination must pressure the company to stop (the Assembly did
pass an overture that “denounces” the corporation). The issues are not
in question. What is in question for a steadily decreasing percentage —
again, this is clear if you are paying attention — is the proper method
for action.
To the Presbyterians: learning to love us
Sixty five years ago, Christians, confronted with the horror of the
Nazi genocide, began a painful, faithful process of reconciling with the
Jewish people. Presbyterians today didn’t choose to be in the difficult
position of having to choose between their commitment to justice and
preserving their hard-won friendship with the Jews. But the hard fact is
that there has been no getting around this conflict. It has come about
because of the policies of the State of Israel and the choice, so far,
of the American Jewish establishment to adopt a bullying, defensive
stance in response to Christian efforts to address the injustice. Under
these challenging conditions, you have had to struggle to learn how to
love us well and rightly. And that you are doing. The more you call us
to account for our sins and challenge us to be true to the values of our
tradition, the more you show your commitment to our friendship. The
spirit and the specifics of the MESC report are fully in line with
Jewish aspirations and beliefs. More than that – in its powerful plea to
break down the walls, it takes my people where we urgently need to go
today – to tear down the walls – both psychological and physical – that
we have erected between ourselves and the people with whom we share a
land and a common history. For thousands of years, our survival as Jews
depended on building walls. Now it depends on tearing them down.
In commissioning and producing this precious and faithful document of
“Breaking Down the Walls” you have demonstrated your love for us. It
is love in the deepest, truest sense – love as Jesus and Paul teach us
to love – love the way Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Jeremiah taught us
when they spoke truth to power and reminded us of our responsibility to
our fellow creatures and to the earth itself. In going back into the
fray, year after year, to consider divestment from the companies that
are participating in our sin, and to call us to account for building an
apartheid state in full view of the world, you are loving us well. This
year, the arguments marshaled against these faithful actions of the
denomination, calling them biased and unbalanced, claiming that they
will disrupt your “partnership” with us, simply sounded tired.
Minneapolis is the beginning of the end of all that.
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