The Middle East and Peacemaking Committee and the shadows of Veterans Today-Correction

I wasn’t going to blog until I left Georgia but despite my joy in listening to the cicadas and watching the beautiful lightening bugs in the warm twilight evening of yesterday, of listening to sharp cracks of thunder during this evening’s storm I am very troubled by something I just saw and read. There is a storm of vileness brewing in the PCUSA. The information has to do with the work of committee 15, The Middle East and Peacemaking Issues committee, at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly.

In my posting, "The 220th GA's Middle East and Peacemaking Issues committee and too many controls" I pointed to many of the connecting links among those pushing for divestment. Tonight reading an article about the PCUSA and divestment by Eileen Fleming on the loathsome web site Veterans Today I discovered further connects that tie anti-Semitism to the denomination.

At the top of the article, “Dear Presbyterians: why it is Apartheid,” is a picture of many of those I saw working as resource people for committee 15 to help bring about the passage of not only a divestment item but also an apartheid item as well as other items working against Israel. They were also in the plenary.

Fleming, the author of the article writes for Veterans Today and several other sister sites. And as I have reported over and over VT and its sister sites accuse Israel of being behind 9-11, often deny the Holocaust, accuse Israel of trying to control the world and use just about every ploy that the propaganda machine in Nazi Germany used.

In the comments below the article Fleming states about the picture:

I did not shoot the photo-it came in an email from Rae Abileah [bottom right keeling] and Anna Baltzer [standing second from right] and I also see Hedy Epstein in second row-3rd from left, but I do not know anybody else.

Rae Abileah, is one of the young Jewish women who were pushing for boycotting products from Israel an overture which did pass. What I did not realize when I saw her is that she is co-director of CODEPINK. Their web site offers this information:

Rae Abileah is the co-director of CODEPINK Women for Peace and is a co-organizer of Occupy AIPAC, Stolen Beauty boycott of Ahava cosmetics, and Women Occupy

The Israel/Palestine Mission Network sent a tweet of thanks to Abileah:

IPMN ‏@IPMN @raeabileah it was an honor to work with you at ‪#PCUSA‬ ‪#ga220‬ Thx for your support!

I wrote about Anna Baltzer who was introduced as a resouce person for the Presbyterian Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns .[see correction below] I wrote:

Another resource person who was introduced was Anna Baltzer, a Jewish activist who is part of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. [2] She is also co-founder of US Campaign member group, the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee.

The fact that both Abileah and Baltzer knew Fleming, and sent her a photo of part of the working group for committee 15, links many resource people to a group of vile Jew haters. (And that despite the fact that most of the people in the picture are Jewish.)

There are also summaries by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network posted in the comments section. However the summaries are news releases and could have been simply picked up by Fleming and posted. I would hope the IPMN did not post them there. But the fact remains that the PCUSA by promoting a one-sided stance toward those in the midst of conflict in the Middle East are pulling in as cohorts those involved in hatred of the Jews.

Correction: Some of the information I gave on Anna Baltzer has been corrected. I stated that she was introduced as a member of ACREC, but she was introduced as a resource person for ACREC. This still afforded a non-Presbyterian activist more time than other Presbyterians who wished to testify for fairness for both the Israelis and Palestinians.