Recently at
one of the meetings of the women’s groups at my church I asked them to pray for
me because I was becoming depressed reading all the stories of what had
happened to some of the people in Israel. I felt I needed to read and listen to
better understand so that I could write out of factual empathy. And I admit I
wrote some out of anger. I sometimes went to bed weeping. I have placed a video
at the end of this which will hopefully allow you to see and understand why the
Presbyterian USA’s seminar is a travesty.
The
Presbyterian Church USA is sponsoring a video seminar about what they call
Christian Zionism. It is not totally about Christian Zionism which is only
mentioned a few times, but is about simply Zionism and the wish that the Jewish
state did not exist. Some familiar groups and people are a part of it: The
Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the PCUSA, World Mission’s Middle East and
Europe office, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, Office of Public Witness,
Rev. Munther Isaac and a Rabbi from the Reconstruction Jewish Group.
I thought
about attempting to write on all speakers but that is a long posting and basically
they are all saying the same thing. There
are some parts I want to address. They do recommend the booklet produced by the
Israel/Palestine Mission Network, Zionism Unsettled, a horribly
antisemitic work. In past years when I was in the Presbyterian Church USA I
wrote about this book at Telling
stories that hurt and destroy: A review of Zionism Unsettled.
The authors
of the booklet state and use various other antisemite’s statements to slander
Zionism. They state that the Israelites who reside in Israel have no connection
to ancient Israel an antisemite trope used by the vilest of antisemites. They
fail to explain that five Arab nations started the 1948 war. After writing of how respectful Muslims are they
state of Zionism ““Zionism, however, has not reciprocated this respect for all
peoples. Instead says Abu Sway, Zionism is by nature a system of discrimination
and exclusion.” They defame God and Holy Scriptures by stating, “Zionism
has succeeded in reanimating the nationalist tradition within Judaism. Its
inspiration has been drawn not from the profound thoughts of the Hebrew
Scriptures, but from those portions that betray a narrow and exclusive concept
of a tribal god.” As I have pointed out in my earlier posting that is not only
antisemitic but gnostic.
In the first
video of the seminar Munther Isaac does speak at first of Christian Zionism but
uses political terms putting aside the religious views. Using progressive
definitions Isaac speaks of Israel as a state as “a settler colonial entity. He
also speaks of the Oct.7th massacre as being separated by Western
press from its context. He seemingly believes that Hamas was justified in their
actions of rape, killing, mutilations and burning Jewish people alive while at
the same time denouncing the just war theory. There is a lot of confusion in
his statements.
I have
listened to most of the first two videos, there is supposedly a third but I
have not yet seen it. I want to end this posting by using a new documentary
recently placed on YouTube. It is Screams Before Silence directed by Anat
Stalinsky. I am doing this after listening to Isaac attempt to justify what
happened on Oct. 7th, and after understanding all the years the
PCUSA and the Israel/Palestine Mission Network maligned and attacked Israel as
well as American Jews. There is no justification for what happened. Adults, not
children, need to know what really happened—although for some this will be
impossible to watch.
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