Presbytery Vote - Part Two

Historian Normal Finkelstein writes:

European Jews for a Just Peace issued a statement headlined, “German Jews Say NO to Israeli Army Killings.” In Canada eight Jewish women occupying the Israeli consulate called on “all Jews to speak out against this “massacre,” and celebrated Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti declared, “The unbelievable war crimes that Israel is committing in Gaza … make me ashamed to be a Jew.” In Australia two award winning novelists and a former federal cabinet minister signed a statement by Jews condemning Israel’s “grossly disproportionate assault.”[1]

In Georgia, the Presbytery voted to raise no objection to Israel’s abuse of Palestinians. About the same time that the Presbytery was voting to say “nothing,” NEWSWEEK Magazine quoted Ruth Dayan, the widow of Israeli military “hero” Moshe Dayan, criticizing Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians:[2]

What’s going on today is awful. They’re ruining this country. .. I am a peacemaker, but the current Israeli government does not know how to make peace. We move from war to war, and this will never stop. I think Zionism has run its course.

Today, we use foreign labor to work in Israel because Palestinians are not allowed. And this continuous expansion of the settlements everywhere – I cannot accept it. I cannot tolerate this deterioration in the territories and the road blocks everywhere. And that horrible wall! It’s not right.

For Netanyahu, peace is just a word, and that (current Foreign Minister Avigdor) Leiberman … he is the most terrible man in this country. … I reject Netanyahu’s policy; it is a recipe for disaster…. The number of settlements has increased from 60 to 200, the military checkpoints are everywhere, and freedom of movement is virtually non existent. Violence is still the only spoken word.

Avindav Begin, grandson of former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who refuses to stand during the Israeli national anthem and participates in protests against the apartheid wall, speaks with even harsher words: “Murderous blood flows in Israeli arteries.”[3]

While a 2003 poll of the European Union named Israel the biggest threat to world peace, a 2008 survey of global opinion named Israel the biggest obstacle to achieving peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the late Tony Judt asserted that “Israel today is bad news for the Jews.” Philip Slater, author of the classic sociological study The Pursuit of Loneliness declared, “The Gaza strip is little more than a large Israeli concentration camp, in which Palestinians are attacked at will, starved of food, fuel, energy – even deprived of hospital supplies." American Jews for a Just Peace, circulated a partition calling on “Israeli soldiers to Stop War Crimes” [4]

Students of Cornell University, the University of Rochester, University of Massachusetts, New York University, Columbia University, Haverford University, Bryn Mawr College and Hampton College among others have demonstrated to “divest from American corporations that directly profit from the occupation.” When historians, journalists, artists, numerous human rights organizations and even students are speaking out, where is the voice of the church?

Our Presbytery had nothing to say, 37 to 65.


Thomas Are
November 17, 2011


[1] Norman G, Finkelstein, This Time We Went Too Far, (OR Books, New York, 2011) p 120
[2] Newsweek, November 7, 2011. p. 58-63.
[3] Interview with Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, February 13, 2010,
[4] Finkelstein, p. 111 - 124

Presbytery Vote - Part One

I went to bed sad. I woke up angry. Where is the church? I am not talking about the building on the corner, but the church envisioned by Jesus. The church which seeks to be faithful to the teachings of Jesus.

His very first sermon was; The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor… proclaim release to the captives … to set at liberty those who are oppressed…. to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. His last sermon was; I was hungry and you fed me…when you did it to the least of these, you did it unto me. His parables almost always included the marginalized; Invite the poor to your banquet… Sell what you have and give to the poor… Whatever it cost to restore him to health, I will pay it. On and on; when you give a banquet, invite the poor and the lame. During his ministry, Jesus hung around the poor, the sick, and a large group whom he simply referred to as sinners, prostitutes and tax collectors.” There is no doubt about the focus of his heart.

Last week, I attended the meeting of a Presbytery, (a representative gathering of leaders from all the Presbyterian churches in a district). I joined the rhetoric of their worship literature. Almost every prayer, litany and song included such words as “justice” and “peace.” Those words rolled from our lips with ease. Yet, when it came time for a vote to seek “justice and peace” for the oppressed people of Palestine, there was a major disconnect.

I have never known a Presbytery to do a better job of offering its members an opportunity to be informed as to why a ‘justice for the oppressed’ motion was coming up for a vote. At its previous meeting, the JUSTPEACE Committee had arranged for the Presbytery to meet and hear Mark Braverman, a Jewish activist who is seeking to apply his Jewish faith to the policies and conduct of the State of Israel. In addition to Braverman, the Presbytery heard Dr. Fahed abu Akel, past moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, and a Palestinian, tell his story of being separated when 4 years old, from his mother during the bitter displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians by the Israelis in 1948. In addition to having these eyewitnesses address the Presbytery, the JUSTPEACE committee sponsored three workshops within the Presbytery to address the motions which would support justice and peace for the Palestinians.[i]

The Presbytery had been asked to respond to THE KAIROS DOTRINE, a plea by Christian leaders in Israel and the occupied territories to the church in Americas to know what is happening to them. In the midst of pledging peace and love for their Jewish oppressors they acknowledged that they were rapidly coming to the end of their rope, saying:.

We, a group of Christian Palestinians, after prayer, reflection and exchange of opinions, cry out from within the suffering of our country, under the Israeli occupation, with a cry of hope in the absence of all hope, a cry full of prayer and faith in a God ever vigilant, in God’s divine providence for all the inhabitants of this land.

Why Now? Because today we have reached a dead end in the tragedy of the Palestinian people.[ii]


The Presbytery voted to kill both motions. The Palestinians were left to be forgotten and on their own. I listened to the debate in astonishment:

--- The first speaker said that she was going to vote against the motion because she knew so little about the situation there. (I sat silently thinking that if she announced the first part, that she was going to vote against the motion, she did not have to confess to the second part. It would be obvious that she knew very little about the situation.
--- Several speakers described Hamas as a terrorist government that sponsored suicide bombers and had pledged to wipe Israel off the map.
--- Another said that he could not vote “against Israel” because the people there were happy and their faces were full of smiles and laughter, that we should not take anything away from the Jews who are the “Children of God.”

---Several people supporting the motions spoke from their experience of actually having seen the conditions in Israel/Palestine. They were rebutted by a pious plea that, before we do anything, we must hear “the Jewish side.” (As if we ever hear anything else on the news or from our pulpits.)

I was a “visitor” at this meeting of Presbytery and did not have the privilege of the floor or the right to speak, therefore, I sat there feeling a great disappointment for those who had worked so hard to inform the voting members of the urgency of these motions and feeling a personal frustration that ignorance so easily prevailed. Mainly, I felt deep concern for the men, women and children living in deplorable conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. Had those voting members known what is happening in the Occupied Territories, they would have been totally on the side of the oppressed.

So I will take out my frustration on you. I will address those points of debate in my next several blogs. In the meantime, I will feel frustration remembering the words of Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” That is exactly what the Presbytery did; 37 to 65.


Thomas Are
November 14, 2011

[i] JUSTPEACE made two motions

First motion:

JUSTPEACE, the Justice and Peacemaking Action Team, with the support of the Spiritual Formation and Discernment Ministry Team, requests the Presbytery to approve the following statements and actions:

We hear the cry of you, our Christian brothers and sisters in Palestine, and we acknowledge the realities of why the Christian population is dwindling that you communicate to us in Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth recommended for study by the 2010 General Assembly. In response:
-- we will continue to study Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth carefully and prayerfully,
-- we repent of our own silence, indifference, and lack of communion,
-- we affirm the need of the Church to ―speak the Word of God courageously,
-- we pledge to resist evil in all its forms with methods that enter into the logic of love,
-- we will come, as we are able, to visit you, our brothers and sisters, to see for ourselves what
injustices you face,
-- we endorse JUSTPEACE‘s decision to pledge $1,000 of our Presbytery‘s portion of the
Peacemaking Offering to help underwrite the November 10-12, 2011, Friends of Sabeel--North
America (FOSNA) Regional Conference at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, to spread
your story,
-- we will pray and work that the Kingdom of God come, ―a kingdom of justice, peace and
dignity,
-- we will explore other ways in which we as a Presbytery can act on behalf of justice for you,
our Palestinian brothers and sisters in order to secure a lasting peace for you, the Israelis and all
the people of the Middle East, and
-- we will communicate these commitments to you so that your hope may be strengthened.
Vote: 37 YES, 65 NO, 1 UNDECIDED

Second motion:

JUSTPEACE also requests the Presbytery to approve the following statements
and actions:

-- we will join in the boycott of products produced in the West Bank as recommended by and
updated by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the PC(USA), and
-- we support the recommendation of the Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) of the PC(USA) to divest all PC(USA) funds from Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard, all of whom sell products which support in significant ways the occupation of the West Bank and the oppression of Gaza and will communicate this support to the 220th General Assembly.
Vote: 40 YES, 58 NO

[ii] Kairos Palestine Doctrine

Two Letters

I have suggested to many of our fellow travelers that they write to their political leaders. Almost invariably their response is, “I wouldn’t know what to say.” Thus, below are two letters. One is a letter I sent to my Senator, Johnny Isakson, this week and the other is a letter to the Editor written by a friend in Nashville. I think it would be wonderful if each of us would write a letter to someone in Washington expressing concern for America’s ignorant support of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. .

October 18, 2009
Dear Senator,

It has just come to my attention that you have again cast votes seeking to block the Palestinian’s quest for statehood. I have in mind your letters to President Obama and to various African leaders seeking to influence their vote at the U.N. Then you voted to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority unless they withdraw their request to the United Nations.

The peace talks you promote are a joke. Only one side of the negotiating teams has anything with which to negotiate. Only one side has an army with tanks and bulldozers. In the last “war” with the citizens of Gaza, the kill ratio was 100 to 1. Only one side had the capacity to fight and Israel knew it.

I am sure that you want peace for Israel. However, the problem is the OCCUPATION with its settlements, road blocks, apartheid wall, the uprooting of trees and crops and the assassination of Palestinian leaders.

I agree, it may be too late for a two state solution for all the “facts on the ground” listed above. Perhaps the only route to peace is a democratic Israel for all its citizens including those living in the occupied territories, with a constitution guaranteeing equal rights to all.

I have no authority except my voice, but I am sure that you are aware that the mood toward Israel in America is changing, including and perhaps most significantly, among our younger Jewish citizens.

I urge you to learn more about what is actually happening in the West Bank and Gaza before you cut off funds.

Sincerely,

The second letter is by my friend Iley Behr to his local newspaper:

THE TENNESSEAN
Tuesday, September, 27, 2011

Gaza, West Bank conditions are overlooked in Debate .

“Dad, is the coffee you drink fair-trade coffee?”

“Isabel,” I replied, “do you even know what fair trade means?”

I didn’t expect my 10-year-old to know it, but she was pretty close. “It means a fairer price for those who are down.” So when she asked what my bumper sticker, “Free Palestine, End the Occupation” means, I didn’t get into discussions of settlements, restricted movement within one’s own country, checkpoints, and very tall walls. I simply said, “It’s a fairer way of life for those who are being put down.” She understood that.

I hope our 81 congressmen who recently visited Israel were shown the conditions in which people are forced to live in Gaza and the West Bank, but my hunch is they may not have heard a single word about Palestinian human rights.

“Dad, will ending the occupation work?” Isabel asked. I didn’t get into money and politics. I said, “Yes, in time because there can be no Israeli peace without Palestinian justice, and peace and justice are a fairer way to live.”

My goodness, what will she ask me when she turns 21?
Iley Behr

I don’t write my political leaders as often as I should. But the important thing is not that they get more letters from one or two people, but that they receive something from many different people. I wish you would write a letter to someone/anyone in Congress asking about justice for the Palestinians.

Thomas Are
October 28, 2011

We Need a Declaration of Independence ... from Israel

How I wish for a Thomas Jefferson. The United States needs another Declaration of Independence. This time, from Israel.

Like Thomas Paine’s 1776 plea, in his Common Sense, for America’s independence from England, I fail to see, in 2011, a single advantage that America reaps by being connected with Israel.

As for the bad effects of the “unbroken bond” our politicians continue to cement, I think of the loss of so many American lives because of our blind support of Israel’s conduct, such as: the 34 sailors who died in Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty in 1967, the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Lebanon killing 241, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 by angry extremist which took the lives of 17 sailors, and at least partially, according to the declarations of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, the attack on the World Trade Center which pulled us into a war with Afghanistan and Iraq.[1]

The argument is made that Israel is like our aircraft carrier in the Middle East in case of a war with one of the radical Islamic nations. I ask, why would any Muslim nation want to declare war on the US were it not for Israel’s abuse of its Muslim neighbors, including and especially, the Palestinians?

The injury and pain we have sustained by our connection with Israel are without number. Any dependence upon Israel has a tendency to involve the U.S. in wars and quarrels and sets us up at odds with nations who would otherwise seek our friendship.

Paine said, “Everything that is right or reasonable pleads for separation.”[2] I say that the death of so many of our men and women, the cost of oil embargos, the loss of our reputation as a righteous and “justice for all” nation cry out, it’s time for a Declaration of Independence from Israel.

Without our backing, who knows, Israel might be forced to act more as a neighbor in the Middle East community and less as a bully.

Thomas Are
October 2, 2011
[1] Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” (published in The Guardian, November 24, 2002): ask, “Why are we fighting and opposing you? Because you attacked us and continue to attack us in Palestine.” Ilan Pappe, Jewish author of The Forgotten Palestinian reminds us of Hussein’s promise to withdraw his army from Kuwait if the Israeli army left the Palestinian occupied territories.” (p. 192)
[2] See A Peoples History of the United States, By Howard Zinn. p. 69.

Let's Knock 'em Down Again

Come on. Let’s knock ‘em down one more time. After all, we are America so we can do anything we want and who is there to stop us.

We, the United States/Israel have:

- Taken their country
- Stolen their land
- Up-rooted their trees
- Torn down their homes
- Built an apartheid wall through their towns and farms
- Locked them behind barbed wire fences and check points
- Bombed their schools, mosques and hospitals
- Attacked any relief vessel ship or truck attempting to deliver supplies
- Checker-boarded their land with Jewish only roads.

So, come on. If they ask for recognition by the United Nations, let’s threaten to cut off all aid to them and any UN member who would vote to include them.

After all, we are America, the nation that goes to war to defend democracy everywhere in the world, even where it doesn’t exist, like in Israel.

“If they really wanted peace,“ politicians say, “Why don’t they come to the table and negotiate?”

Why? Because they have been to the table, over and over again while Israel continued to build the wall snaking down through Palestinian lands walling off water, farms and communities, stepped up the building of Jewish settlements, created more checkpoints and continued to arrest, imprison and assassinate Palestinian leaders. All this was done with the encouragement, protection and money supplied by the United States.

I don’t know what is going to happen this week at the United Nations but if the vote looks like the slightest criticism of Israel, or the slightest concern for the Palestinians, the US will knock ‘em down one more time.

And, somebody, on the evening news, or on the presidential debate platform or from a pulpit needs to ask, “What have the Palestinians ever done to the United States or Americans to deserve our wrath?”

Thomas Are
September 23, 2011

The Best Congress Israel can Rent

I can understand why the president needs a vacation. But I doubt that ten days at Martha’s Vineyard will do it. I am not sure that the President of the United States ever gets a vacation. I can imagine that there is always someone following him around wherever he goes with a telephone and news reports. He would probably love to have a few days beyond the criticism of those who seem to be appalled that during a time of financial crisis he could think of anything but addressing their concerns.

What I don’t understand is how so many members of our Congress who delight in questioning the President’s loyalty to the American people can take their own recess to spend time, not among their constituents, but in Israel. During this time of financial anxiety, members of Congress from all across America, are not home listening to the concerns of their own people. They are in Israel listening to the moans of the Israeli government. While Americans plead for action, our law makers are focused on the expansionist ambitions of another country. What a profound commitment for those elected to represent the needs of the people who voted for them.

I am also offended that the media in such countries as Britain, Iran, India and Lebanon found this conduct news worthy, while our own U.S. media has offered little, if any, coverage of this action of about a fifth of our congress who act as thought they have been elected to represent Israel.

Of course, to be fair, I understand that their first class trip to Israel is not just a free junket. In the words of Stephen Walt, our 55 Republican and 26 Democrat members of Congress are expected to dance to the piper’s tune:

Why do Congresspersons do this, especially when it is obvious that they ought to be worrying about conditions here at home? Mostly because such junkets burnish a legislator’s ‘pro-Israel’ credentials and facilitate campaign fundraising. … Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) has reassured Israelis that financial challenges “will not have any adverse effect on America’s determination to meet its promise to Israel.” Translation: we may be cutting Medicare and Social Security for U.S. citizens, but Israelis – whose country has the 27th highest per capita income in the world – will continue to get generous subsidies from Uncle Sucker.[1]

Josh Ruebner is more specific:

Members of Congress will be expected to sing for their lavish dinners by honoring President Bush’s 2007 pledge to provide the Israeli military with $30 billion of taxpayer-funded weapons, between 2009 and 2018. So far, proposed increases in military aid to Israel have been spared from the budgetary chopping block by President Obama and a compliant Congress that treats Israeli militarism as more sacrosanct than medical care for seniors.[2]

One thing for sure, our eighty-one will not be shown the conditions in which people are forced to live in Gaza and the West Bank. They will celebrate the greatness of Israel without giving one thought to the blood, pain and suffering that other people are paying for that “greatness.” They will not hear a word about Palestinian human rights or the right of Palestinians to live free of occupation. They will come home filled with the memory of Yad Vashem and a fear of saying anything that might offend Benjamin Netanyahu.

My main concern is not just the inability of Congress to address the financial needs of so many Americans but the lack of compassion on the part of our leaders for the suffering people of Palestine they so eagerly finance. Money to Israel means misery for the Palestinians. It’s unbelievable that our leaders cannot see this, or worse still, can see it very well and just don’t care.

Thomas Are
August 26, 2011

[1] Stephen M. Walt, The Greatest Elected Body that Money can Buy, (Antiwar.com, August 11, 2011).
[2] Josh Ruebner, Robbing Peter to Pay Israel, (Antiw ar.com. August 12, 20110

I Would Hate To Be President

I would hate to be the president of the United States. I can only imagine the agony of knowing what you were elected to do and being unable to follow through because to do so would cost you your job. And it’s not just a job; it’s having the opportunity to make so many other things right, or at least better… such as health care, protecting the environment, gay rights, welfare for the needy and race relations.

The thing that bothers me the most is how a president who seeks so hard to care for the “least of these,” can do so little to address the suffering of the Palestinian people.

“ Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different,” said the president when sending bombs against Muammar Qaddafi. of Libya. At the same time he was silent when Israel bombarded Gaza, killing more than 1400 people. including 350 children.

Others spoke out.[i] According to Norman Finkelstein:

Israel had to cope with a mountain of human rights reports condemning its crimes in Gaza that began to accumulate after the ceasefire. Because of the sheer number of them, the wide array of reputable organizations issuing them, and the uniformity of their major conclusions, these reports could not be easily dismissed.”[ii] I don’t think this humanitarian crisis is easily dismissed by Barack Obama, but Israel’s conduct is in every affect dismissed, even when it cost American lives.

Obama is not the first president to turn his back on American citizens in peril. In 1967 Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty, an intelligence gathering ship with no combat capability, killing 34 U.S. service men and wounding 171 others, two thirds of it crew. When the Aircraft Carrier, The U.S.S. Saratoga, thirty minutes away, launched fighter jets in response to the Liberty’s call for help, Lyndon Johnson, unwilling to embarrass an ally, ordered them back. It was dawn of the next day, 15 hours after the attack, before medical aid reached our wounded. Of course, Israel said it was a “mistake.” Immediately, Johnson ordered a cover-up. The surviving crew, upon pain of court marshal, were ordered to not speak of the attack to anyone, not even their families.
Admiral Thomas Moorer, no less than Chair of the Joint Chief of Staff said,

The clampdown was not actually for security reasons but for domestic political reasons. I don’t think there is any question about it. What other reason could there have been? President Johnson was worried about the reaction of Jewish voters… I will never buy the idea that the pilots did not know this was an American ship. The attack was deliberate.[iii]

Dean Rusk, Secretary of State agreed, “I never accepted the Israeli explanation.”

Even if it was a mistake, which no one believes anymore, deliberately shooting up life rafts in the water of a ship in distress is a war crime. If it’s not, it should be. Yet, to this day, there has been no congressional investigation of the attack on the Liberty. Was Johnson afraid of Israel? Hardly. He was afraid of the ire of the American Jewish voting community and its lobby.

George Ball, former undersecretary of state wrote, “If America’s leaders did not have the courage to punish Israel for the blatant murder of American citizens, it seemed clear that their American friends would let them get away with almost anything.[iv]

That was in 1967. Little has changed. Last month, Stephen Zunes, professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco charged:

The Obama administration appears to have given a green light to an Israeli attack on an unarmed flotilla, carrying peace and human rights activists – including a vessel with 50 Americans on board – bound for the besieged Gaza Strip. At a press conference on June 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the flotilla organized by the Free Gaza Campaign by saying it would “provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves.”[v]

Two questions need to be addressed; Since when did the entire Mediterranean become Israel’s waters and in what way does an unarmed humanitarian ship threaten any civilized nation? This effort is one of a series of flotilla seeking to deliver aid to Gaza. The previous one (May 13, 2010) resulted in a commando rid on the Mavi Marmara which killed nine people, including an American.

How can our elected officials be so blind to Israel? I remember our congress jumping up and down like a jack in the box, 29 times giving standing ovations to Benjamin Netanyahu. One can only imagine what President Obama could do for the American people and the hurting people of the world if congress would give that kind of support to him. And why does he not have that support? Does anyone think our politicians, who after being elected and sent to Washington to represent us, might be afraid of AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, an anemic media and the Christian Right’s obsession with a wild haired end of the world scenario?

There are times when I wish the president would simply declare himself to be a one term president and do the things he knows are right and just. On the other hand, I realize that it would not just be his downfall, but many others in congress. Those who would be defeated in 2012 would be the very ones who in their hearts support the kind of peace through justice for which so many of us are working. Again, I would hate to be the president of the United States.

Thomas Are
August 5, 2011

[i] Some of those organization who have consistently condemned Israel for its abuse of the Palestinians would include: The International Court of Justice. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Selem, International Red Cross, Save the Children, Doctors without Borders. and the United Nations Human Rights Council. In fact, I have read of no critic of Israel who after investigation became pro-Israel.

[ii] Norman Finkelstein, This Time We Went Too Far., (OR Books, New York, 2011) p.55.
[iii] Paul Findley, They Dare to Speak Out. (Lawrence Hill, New York., 1989) p. 179
[iv] James Scott, The Attack on the Liberty, Simon and Schuster, 2009.) p.287.
[v] Stephen Zunes, Washington Okays Attack on Unarmed U.S. Ship, Antiwar.com, July 2, 2011. As of July 19, 2011, The American Ship, The Audacity of Hope is being held up in Greece. Two other ships of the flotilla have been sabotaged and severely damaged.