Posted on 02/09/2008 5:44:00 PM PST by APRPEH
The United Methodist Church has recently published Israel-Palestine: 2007-2008, an adult "study guide" written by the not impressed:
The pattern of presenting biased opinions against Israel repeats itself over and over again in the mission study....Take, for example, the mission study's bibliography, which is available for downloading from the board's Web site. The first item listed is an article titled "Remember the Liberty." Published by a group called Americans for Middle East Understanding, the article claims Israel deliberately attacked an American Navy ship during the Six-Day War in 1967. No countervailing view is included.
Indeed, in his book Goldstein describes the incident as having been "covered up for 30 years." To get what he calls the "full story," Goldstein directs readers to none other than the Web site of Americans for Middle East Understanding.
In both the bibliography and the book itself, some of Israel's harshest critics - including Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, George Ball, Robert Fisk and Ilan Pappe - are given overwhelming representation.
One section of the bibliography is titled "Jewish Religious Fundamentalism and the Place of Religion in Judaism and Israeli Society." No comparable section addressing Islamic religious fundamentalism in Arab societies - let alone the role of radical Islamists in fomenting terrorism - is to be found.
Study mission participants are directed to download photos from the United Methodist Church's Web site. The photos of Israelis focus on soldiers, tanks and the "wall." The photos of Palestinians feature hugging children, a woman sewing and men smiling.
Absent from the Web site are photos showing the effects of Palestinian terrorist bombings on Israeli civilians. The message is clear.
The mission study takes the view that Israel and Zionism are mostly at fault for the elusiveness of peace. It assumes the mantle of psychoanalyzing an entire society, and its tone and tenor are suffused with hostility and group stereotyping.
One example: "To this day there is a latent hysteria in Israeli life that springs directly from [the Holocaust]. It explains the paranoiac sense of isolation that has been a main characteristic of the Israeli temper since 1948. And it has been the single most significant factor in Israel's unwillingness to trust their Arab neighbors or the Palestinians. Since 1948 the Holocaust and the fear of antisemitism have also created a consciousness that has contributed significantly to preventing Israel from making peace with its Arab neighbors."
Or another: "The viewpoint of the early settlers was that of Western European colonialists. Today we would surely judge that outlook as basically racist, and it still is." As proof of this assertion, Goldstein quotes at length the infamous "Zionism is Racism" 1975 resolution passed by the United Nations in 1975 and rescinded in 1991.
Equally unsettling is the collection of recommended handout material [pdf]. Handout Number Two, Section Three is titled "Jesus Dies on the Cross," and pairs the following two quotes:
A reading from Luke 23:44-47: Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. When the centurion saw what had taken places, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was innocent.”
Listen as we hear a contemporary reflection by Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb (I Am a Palestinian Christian, Fortress: Minneapolis, 1995, p. 103):
God forbids us to shed our enemy’s blood. But God also summons us to resist our enemy, if that enemy attempts to shed the blood of our neighbor. We do not want to kill our enemy, but we will not let him kill our brother or sister either.
The United Methodist Church has recently published Israel-Palestine: 2007-2008, an adult "study guide" written by the Stephen Goldstein.
Yitzhak Santis, the director of Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Community Relations Council in San Francisco has read the guide, and is not impressed:
No surprise here, UMC has been taken over by radical liberals just as a few other denominations.
Even the most radical leftists so far didn’t call Jews “monsters” or say “Jesus died on the cross (wink wink Jews killed him).” This is a new low. But now it gives a permission for everyone to do the same.
A good article, except the phrase “Under these circumstances, the Methodist leadership should now engage seriously with the Jewish community, which overwhelmingly opposes divestment from left to right.”
No, the Jewish community should reject all attempts at dialog until Methodist leadership both suspend this flawed and fraudulent study mission and publicly repents. Something more serious than divestment is at stake here. The report contains a whole set of libels (at any rate de-facto libels, even if they cannot be legally labeled as such), and we Jews know where libels lead.
interesting. welcome to FR.
As for the Liberty attack? It was deliberate no doubt. I don't think the goings on onboard LIBERTY had anything to do with it but I think LBJ and his state department likely were double dealing with Syria and others whom Israel was facing.
That era had another Johnson foreign and national defense policy boo boo called PUEBLO. I think Israel had caught LBJ and because he would have likely been impeached LBJ and company was more than glad to shut things up over the whole event. This is a period of about six months and Johnson played the PUEBLO incident to the hilt. The original Wag the Dog. Reading Pueblo's story there was no reason for it to happen except for Johnson's stupidity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.