A Curious Silence: Example 2

Study Guide Published by the “General Board of Global Ministries” of a Mainline Denomination

[The producers of this “Study Guide” claim to provide a balanced survey of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One is involved with at least two other denominations and trans-denominational organizations. Instead of a “balanced” survey, what they have produced is a collection of virtually every harsh criticism leveled at the State of Israel, factual distortions, juxtaposed to virtually no criticism of Israel’s neighbors or Palestinian actions. The argument is essentially predicated on the idea that the creation of the State of Israel was the ‘original sin’ – or more accurately, the immigration of Jews to Ottoman Palestine and Mandate Palestine are this ‘original sin’ – that then justifies every subsequent violent action committed against them. Jewish immigration is viewed as a colonialist, imperialist endeavor, yet no acknowledgement is given of the imperialist tendencies of non-European or non-Jewish nations (including, for example, the Ottoman Empire). The “Study Guide” producers arbitrarily select which facts they which to view, and which parties’ claims they wish to grant legitimacy.]

Examples of Errors of Fact, Omissions, and Misleading Presentation of Study Guide

“At the June 1974 Palestinian National Council Meeting, the PLO leaders relinquished the vision of a secular democratic state in all of Palestine and adopted the goal of an independent Palestinian state in any part of Palestine liberated from Occupation. Implicit in this change was the recognition of Israel, as required by Resolution 242.” – page 108 [This assertion is both laughable and tragic. Implicit compliance? The writers, if they are sane, cannot seriously be suggesting that the PLO recognized the State of Israel in 1974. Yet assert this they do. It bears observing – if the writers intended to give anything remotely resembling an accurate account – that the very 10 point program they cite included the eventual aim of “completing the liberation of all Palestinian territory” – and that this territory was identical to the State of Israel. Whether or not this language was intended as a concession to more ‘radical’ groups – the fact that the writers of this “study guide” ignore it is indefensible.]
“In contrast to the Israeli leadership, Arafat was willing to do almost anything to gain a concrete agreement, including abandoning most of the principles and aspirations that had held the Palestinians and the PLO together through all its years of failure, struggle, and hardship.” – p 121
“For most of Jewish post-biblical history, the notion of a return home was not a serious expectation for the majority of Jews … in the course of their long history, a return to Zion was not a significant factor … Not until the nineteenth century did any concrete idea of a return to Palestine become of significant interest.” – page 24 [This is at best an incomplete an inaccurate representation. The author admits as much when he refers later to an “age-old Messianic longing for Zion”, but the statement appears designed to falsely suggest to readers that real Judaism has no interest in the land of Israel.]
“Following the 1881 pogroms in Russia, Jews came in what Israel refers to as the first Aliyah (return of the Jews). [sic] But this was a misnomer. They were not “returning”. They were settlers with a nineteenth-century colonial ideology emigrating to a land that, until after the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, was part of the Ottoman Empire for almost 700 years.” – page 29 [The author appears to provide a false definition of ‘aliyah’, and then object to the falsehood he has provided. However, the failure to see the numerous ironies in this paragraph is extraordinarily myopic.]
The 1921 Jaffa riot is described in this way: “That the outbreak was caused by inter-Jewish rivalries, and that Mopsi came to be despised by the larger immigrant community did not negate the disturbing reality of the growing hatred and strain between Palestinians and Jews.” – page 46 [The author acknowledges the psychological effect on Jewish immigrants, but his characterization of the event is absurd and offensive. He patently ignores the findings of the Commission of Inquiry that stated, among other things, “The racial strife was begun by the Arabs … the Arab majority, who were generally the aggressors, inflicted most of the casualties … A large part of the Moslem and Christian communities condoned it … certain of the educated Arabs appear to have incited the mob.” To dismiss this as a product of inter-Jewish rivalries is inexcusable.]
“The conference failed, but the government followed up with a new White Paper in 1939 that for the first time reversed its previous policies and responded to Palestinian concerns.” – page 55 And “In defiance of the apparent rollback of the Balfour Declaration in the 1939 White Paper, the Zionists took matters into their own hands. The Jewish Agency took on a diplomatic campaign to counter the provisions of the White Paper.” – page 56. [This one treatment is beyond morally reprehensible. It suggests that the problem with the White Paper was that it seemed to roll back the Balfour Declaration – it fails to acknowledge in even the remotest manner that this one document played a key role in insuring the murders of millions of Jewish people. Does the author seriously mean to imply that doing so reflected the legitimate concerns of non-Jewish residents of the Palestine Mandate? When this is combined with the other failure of the author to mention in any way, shape, or form the actions of the Grand Mufti and his subsequent influence in the region, it creates a document that not only fails to advance understanding of the region but actively hinders it.]
“With the war [WWII] drawing to a close, the Zionists shifted their energies to a terrorist campaign against the British.” – page 58
“Neither Palestinians nor any other Arab residents of the Middle East were protagonists in the actions of Nazi Germany.” – page 101 [The author appears to either be or want his audience to be unfamiliar with the Grand Mufti.]

Various Quotes from Study Guide

“Although some would suggest that the past is something to be gotten past, I take the view that the original sin against the Palestinians directly connects to contemporary events.” – page 106
“Israel chose once more to destroy a country instead of addressing the prior injustices.” – page 108
“The nascent debate in the United States regarding the lobbying power of the pro-Israel Jewish organizations and their influence on United States foreign policy may create some energy to reevaluate whether unwavering support for Israel really serves US interests. As of the summer of 2006, little has changed.” – page 113
“Trying to comprehend what I was seeing and hearing, I said to him out of my own sense of anger and pain that I feared we (Jews) [sic] were becoming monsters. His response was, “We have already become monsters.” – page 115 [One item in this description is extraordinary: the author, a minister in a ‘mainline’ Christian denomination seems to regard himself as able to speak for the Jewish people – as if he were somehow representative. It is true that the author shares his Jewish background at the beginning of the study guide, but his perspective could hardly be called normative.]
“The denial of the validity of the word Palestinian reveals a racism that considers Arabs less than human” – page 30 [The authors (deliberately?) conceal the fluid nature of the meaning of that term – when once it was often used to indicate Jewish residents of the British Mandate, and was only fairly recently used exclusively in its current manner.]
“‘[N]o hint is evident ‘on the ground’ that Israel ever contemplated the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.’ [Quote from Jeff Halper – to which the author adds the following] It is my contention that this has been part of Israeli policy since statehood, through the years of the initial colonization and during the Mandate years. To counter such a persistent policy will surely involve many acts of faith and require significant avenues of activism for justice.” – page 127 [Note that this author (with the official imprimatur of a “ mainline” denomination) regards the entire existence of the State of Israel as objectionable. The author goes farther, rejecting the emigration of Jews to Israel historically.]
“It [sabra] is also the symbol of Palestine in Arabic. It translates as patience, a very Palestinian quality, but only remotely Israeli.” – page 30 [This bigoted statement speaks for itself.]
“One of the great failures that still besets Israeli attitudes is that they do not see Palestinians as human beings like themselves.” – page 32
“Zionism was neither a cultural movement nor a religious movement. Zionism at its inception was a movement that ‘advocated not so much the defense of an ethnic group, as the formation of such a group in Palestine, where those who were thought to fit a certain semi-racial category were to find refuge.’” – page 32 [huh? Is this suggesting that Jews do not form an ethnicity, but a semi-racial category? What exactly does that mean?]
“The Nazi’s brutality to their victims had the effect of ensuring latitude to the Jewish terrorists for their brutality, if not by the British, then in growing public opinion. The establishment of a Jewish state (as well as extensive propaganda) made them the victors and bestowed a moral legitimacy on their cause in the public perception, which erases in large part the means by which they attained their state.” – page 59
“Even though the United States had been supportive of (or at least did not seek to stop) the Israeli aggression, on June 8 Israel attacked an intelligence-gathering navel vessel, the U.S.S. Liberty … In a grim way, this little-known incident also illustrates US support for Israel, even when it is against US interests and cost the lives of innocent Americans.” – page 86
“Often prior to US presidential elections, subsidized flights return these Israelis to the United States in order to exercise their franchise” – page 96
“These parties [religious parties] are proponents of a religious racism which some scholars insist is inherent in some of the traditional writings and interpretations of Rabbinic Judaism regarding the non-Jew” – page 96 [I find myself wondering if the author would be embarrassed to list the “scholars” who insist this.]
[In a remarkable section of this book, the author appears to want to help Jews get over the holocaust by pointing to the example of Marc Ellis.] “Ellis asks his questions within a radical critique of Jewish power and struggles with the full integrity of his thought and his identity as a modern Jew, and also within the context of listening to what Christian thinkers have said about the same concerns. Ellis sees, I believe, a glimmer of the cross and of resurrection as constructs in his search for meaning in our post-Holocaust world. While not embracing Christianity, he is willing to cross the barrier between the two faiths to find a just answer to both Auschwitz and the Occupation.” – page 104