Here is a wonderful piece in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which is a conservative paper, a Richard Mellon Scaife paper, by Leila Richards, called “It’s not about Israel, it’s about freedom.” It is important because it goes right at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs letter signed by many Jewish leaders that threatens a breach in interfaith relations if the Presbyterians divest. I think this is a trend: Protestants being much more direct about human rights and being able to dismiss the overwhelming Jewish fears as inappropriate.
Yet the [JCPA] letter does not say a word about the principal Presbyterian concern: Israel’s military occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land.
The letter argues that divestment would somehow “justify the violence perpetrated against Israeli civilians — including children.”
It does no such thing. We find such violence abhorrent. And the threat of undoing Jewish-Christian relations is intended to make us shrink from principled support for Palestinian rights in the face of decades of Israeli oppression.
We will not.
The three companies targeted by the Presbyterian divestment proposal provide strategic assistance to the occupation and profit from it. Caterpillar bulldozers demolish homes, uproot olive trees and build settlements and the Wall…
The letter to the Presbyterian commissioners ignores the fact that more than 500,000 Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are living on land that, according to international law, has been illegally confiscated.
We urge our Jewish brothers and sisters in so many battles for civil and human rights to see the occupation for themselves and get on the right side of history.
Leila Richards is a member of the East Liberty Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. She served as a physician at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza from 1988-89 and as a volunteer with the World Council of Churches in the West Bank in 2004.
One other thing Richards does is make olive trees prominent. I think this is a very important tactic. Five Broken Cameras makes a point of showing us the burning skeletons of olive trees. Extremely powerful imagery. The trees are innocent, the trees were planted by the villagers’ grandparents. I believe such images will impact Americans in a way that other images cannot.
Both Danaa (Jewish and Israeli, now American) and I (Gentile) have been saying for two years at MW that the mood in Fly-By-Country has changed and is changing.
Operation Cast Lead changed it. Irrevocably. Wasting over 50% of congressional time on laws for Israel when the American middle class needs congressional action to fix the economy exacerbated it. Letting Netanyahu appear before Congress to shiv the US President highlighted it. Allowing Dershowitz to brand Alice Walker a Neo-Nazi cemented it.
The intellectually and culturally superior of NYC, DC, and NPR don’t have their ears to the ground. The excerpt of the letter above proves it. It’s not anti-semitism out here. It’s revulsion at the rapaciousness, disdain, and lack of fairness. It’s a matter of principle.
That is indeed a great piece and thanks as always for keeping your finger on the pulse in bringing us all the information you publish on your website. I find it invaluable.
The JCPA is as prolific as cockroaches, though less profound.
It’s about time traditional Christians grew a spine and tried to live up to there own ethical and moral principles. The irony is I grew up learning how those groups did not do enough to help the Jews, and/or indeed, were complicit with Nazis. By the time I turned 25, they were not doing enough to help the Palestinians, some of whom were/are Christians. And so it has been for decades now.
Isn’t it interesting how much so many Jews I’ve known have a knee jerk hate of Polish people, and yet, time after time, I read of some Jewish leader in USA or Israel who was saved by Poles?
The test of virtue is power.
Poles were squeezed between Hitler and Stalin. Yet individually, it seems to me they risked, did more than nearly any American I know would under the same circumstances.
And Israel, speaks for itself; yes, there are a handful of Israeli Jews who do care about non-jewish humans and risk for that empathy. Even a few American Jews, where they risk comparatively nothing, eh?
It’s a stupid threat anyway. If there’s anything Christians love, it’s being able to make a principled stand that doesn’t actually involve them getting their house taken away or anything like that.
I’m going to have to go check with my rock-ribbed Alabama Presbyterian conservative. See what his response to this is.