The unholy lunacy of Israel-bashing churches
The campaign to isolate and delegitimize Israel picked up ammunition last week when the United Church of Christ called for divestment from companies it says profit from the occupation of Palestinian territories.
Two other Protestant denominations, the Episcopal Church and the Mennonite Church, took up but failed to pass similar measures.
None of this actually comes as any surprise: All three churches have long actively crusaded against Israel.
Indeed, a majority of the UCC synod last week also endorsed a resolution declaring Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza to be acts of apartheid. (It didn’t quite pass because it lacked a two-thirds majority.)
The UCC says it acted out of concern about “violence perpetuated through acts of terror and the Occupation” — itself a false moral equivalence, pretending that violence targeting innocent civilians is the same as Israel’s refusal to simply abandon the Palestinian territories.
Let’s be clear here: Jerusalem would like nothing more than to see a Palestinian state under peaceful Arab rule. But it can’t find any takers. (The Palestinian Authority keeps demanding impossible conditions — and when Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza, the PA quickly lost control of the area to Hamas, which is dedicated to Israel’s destruction.)
In any case, the UCC resolution is completely one-sided, with no concern about terror. It focuses entirely on Israel as the sole evil.
This, even as the UCC and the other denominations completely ignore the outright slaughter of Christians and Muslims throughout the Middle East by Hamas, ISIS and other terrorist forces. Ancient Christian communities face genocide, yet these American churches can’t stop obsessing about Israel.
Though ostensibly intended to push both sides to a peaceful solution to the Middle East, the divestment resolutions accomplish precisely the opposite.
Incidentally, the measures also include a boycott of Israeli West Bank products — which would hurt the Palestinians who’d lose jobs as a result far more than it would Israel’s economy.
Worst of all, the resolutions encourage Palestinian leaders not to negotiate by holding out the hope that the world will force the Jewish state to accept a suicidal peace deal. Which is not, as Israel’s foreign ministry rightly noted, either “a moral stance or a reality-based position.”
And no lofty expressions about yearning for peace can pretend otherwise
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