A group of churchmen organized by the National Council of Churches, along with Churches on Middle East Peace, has called for "bold American leadership" to end the conflict:
Both sides must take steps to move the process forward, and we support the President’s efforts to end Israeli settlement growth, to halt Palestinian violence and incitement. It is now time to move to the next stage of diplomacy and to address the tough issues that must be resolved to bring this conflict to an end.
Why do "concerned," supposedly well-intentioned, people not study the problem more? The American churches finally support the two-state solution when Israel has stolen so much Palestinian property that all Palestine is now crushed into a single state, yet the churches intone the reductive [Likud] mantra that,
"we support the President’s efforts to end Israeli settlement growth, to halt Palestinian violence and incitement."
At last they say aloud that settlements are a hindrance to peace, but do not call for them to be dismantled. We heard more calls for reparations in one twelve-minute 60 Minutes segment about Bernard Madoff’s victims, than from "mainstream" groups ever about the land that the Israeli government has taken from the people of Palestine. Always, when I hear accusations of "violence," I can’t help assuming that the speaker must mean IDF war crimes and settler [murderous] mayhem. Even more, "incitement" seems infinitely true of official Israeli government policy: pretend to be open to peace and then commit some literally unspeakable provocation–unspeakable in that Israel knows that "our" press will censor the facts–in order to set up some retaliation that Likud-AIPAC can blame for its fantasy of existential threats. What kills me is that it’s our American fault. We pay for it all.
