An exchange of e-mails concerning the video, "I Am Israel" Up-Date

Yesterday, November the 16th, out of concern, I wrote an e-mail to Dr. Hunter Farrell, the Director of World Missions for the PCUSA. I expressed my concern over the video “I Am Israel” placed on the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) web site.

As I have explained it is a video made by a radical Muslim and is full of the kind of anti-Semitic lies perpetrated among radical anti-Semitic groups. It includes such lies as:

"I am Israel. I have the power to control American policy. My American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) can make or break any politician of its choosing, and as you see, they all compete to please me. All the forces of the world are powerless against me, including the United Nations as I have the American veto to block any condemnation of my war crimes. As Sharon so eloquently phrased it, 'We control America.' "

Dr. Farrell graciously e-mailed me this morning, the 17th, early, stating that he was in Mexico and had “only intermittent access to Internet.” He stated that he was forwarding my concern on to Victor Makari. Makari, who is the coordinator for the Middle East Mission, was also sent the e-mail.

This evening after seven, I received this e-mail from Makari:

“The Rev. Dr. Hunter Farrell has forwarded to me your communication with him about the Israel/Palestine Mission Network, and asked that I reply on his behalf. As I am just getting ready to go out of town for a week's vacation before the long Thanksgiving weekend, actually to visit my aging father who is 94 in a nursing home, I wanted simply to acknowledge receiving your letter for now. I would ask you the favor of allowing me to reply after my return in the first part of December. By then I will have had an opportunity to read your posting thoughtfully and to send you a considered reply. I believe you deserve an answer that is not sent in haste, late in the evening.

Thank you for your understanding. I will write you again.”

I have, of course responded, suggesting that action on this issue needs to be addressed now.

Perhaps Makari does not realize how troubling is the message of “I Am Israel.” But I know that it should not be allowed to remain on the web site of the IPMN as it is an insult to all Jewish people and to all faithful Presbyterians.

Up-Date: I have received further communication this morning the 18th. This time from the Rev. Jay Rock the Coordinator of the Office of Interfaith Relations:

Here is his e-mail:

Dear Ms Larson,

It is not clear to me whether you are concerned about the "Steadfast Hope" video, or about the video "I am Israel", which is posted on the Israel-Palestine Mission network's blog.

This network is made up of Presbyterians, but is not an entity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). It is an independent group. It has its own officers and makes its own decisions (such as the recent decision to remove the link to an article by a source related to Hezbollah). By its own description, it “works in close cooperation” with offices of the PC(USA), but is not an extension of any one of them. In fact, those of us at the PCUSA Church Center usually learn about the efforts of the Network after they are done, or underway.

As you know well, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voices its official policy and opinion in a limited number of ways. It is at our General Assemblies that the church seeks God’s guidance on the variety of issues of the day and formally adopts policies and stances regarding them. The General Assembly alone determines the positions of the church. Based on these policies, and often directed by them, the Stated Clerk of the General Assembly and a few other staff may also speak for the church in limited ways. Other Presbyterians who speak out do so on the basis of their own conscience and, we hope, guided by the church’s discernment.

Since the network makes its own decisions about what it posts on its website, and what it publishes, please be in touch with them directly about your concerns. I have pasted in the information from their website to make it easier for you to communicate with them.
Steering Committee: [I have not added the list to this posting]

Yours in Christ's service,

Jay T. Rock
Coordinator for Interfaith Relations
Presbyterian Church (USA)
100 Witherspoon Street
Louisville, KY 40202
T: 502-569-5289
F: 502-569-8039
C: 502-802-0019
jay.rock@pcusa.org

Here is my answer:

Dear Rev. Rock,

Although I have written a great deal on the booklet Steadfast Hope, it is the video “I Am Israel” I am writing about. Perhaps you have not watched it, as the Coordinator for Interfaith Relations I believe you should. While I am not sure why you are the person who is responding to my complaint, I will be happy to clarify my reasoning for appealing, in the first place, to the Director of Missions, Hunter Farrell.

Under the subtitle “Who We Are,” the IPMN states that they were “Established by action of the 2004 General Assembly, the Israel/Palestine Mission Network encourages congregations and presbytery mission committees, task groups and other entities toward specific mission goals that will create currents of wider and deeper involvement with Israel/Palestine.”

Further, they state: “This network works in close cooperation with ecumenical partners and with the Office for the Middle East, the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, the Presbyterian Washington Office, the Presbyterian UN Office and with other appropriate entities of the General Assembly and General Assembly Council.”

I believe that if IPMN was established by the General Assembly and works in relationship with all of these other PCUSA organizations including the Office for the Middle East and the Washington and UN offices they must in some way be accountable to those offices. We are a connectional Church. What one part of the body does effects all. What the IPMN does has connectional consequences on all of those offices. And it has consequences for all members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

They film I am protesting insists that Israel has power over the whole world and over our media. It was made by a militant Muslim. Please read his comment on my blog. This is propaganda coming straight out of the years before World War II. Is this really what all of those Presbyterian Offices listed above want to say to the Jewish people of the United States or even the Jewish people of Israel?

Please do not insist that I go back to the organization that posted the film. The only thing they have written to me is “Thanks for your input.” Please be of some help.

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Viola Larson.

Shattered on the point of anti-Semitism

The direction that some in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are taking has become frightening. The anti-Semitic video, “I Am Israel” that the Israel/Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) placed on their site this last week is the ultimate example. I have a few more thoughts on the video and the anti-Semitism plaguing our denomination.

First I did send a letter to IPMN’s Moderator, Carol Hylkema explaining how offensive the video was. Her only reply was “Thanks for your input.” As a Presbyterian organization IPMN has proven to be anti-Semitic at its core.

Second one of the commenters, Dexter Van Zile, on my first posting pointed out that there is proof that the statement attributed to Ariel Sharon on the video is fraudulent. He links to a page where he has proven that it is false. That is: Syndicated Columnist Georgie Anne Geyer Uses Fabricated Sharon Quote.

Third, if you are interested in knowing how fraudulent the video’s insistence that Israel has power over the world and the United States media is, just check back to World War II and all the Nazi lies, they are the exact same lies radical Muslims and the IPMN are telling in this video. Every time I watch the video I want to gag.

May I recommend Last Days in Babylon: the History of a Family, the Story of a Nation by Marina Benjamin and Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf.

I have read the first book which is about the last years of the Jewish community in Iraq before they were threatened, harassed and pushed out of that nation because of the birth of Israel. The author is the granddaughter of one of those who went into exile. The second book I own, but I have not gotten to it yet accept for a skim read. It does have one recommendation that several of my readers will be very interested in. That is a recommendation by Jewish historian, Benny Morris. He writes:

“Professor Herf’s book is a thorough and important description of Nazi propaganda to the Arab world during World War II, and quite accurately and ominously highlights the parallels between Nazi anti-Semitic tenets and Islamist anti-Semitism.”

Both of those books describe how the Grand Mufti Haj Amin Husseini became an advocate for Hitler and was attempting to bring about the final solution to the Jews in the Middle East. Some of those awful stories such as the lie that the Jews control the world came out of that period. Now they are still used by radical Muslims and are showing up on a Presbyterian web site.

A good friend recently wrote “Tonight I explained to my children that we are living in a time very much like the days of Hitler's rise to power [think Iran] and his attempted destruction of the Jewish people. I told them to not fear, to plan on getting married and having children, and to know that their children will be used of the Most High to continue in the battle that has engaged us. Live well--we only get to do this once.”

Most do not know or have forgotten that there was a time before the Holocaust when some people in the United States were either ambivalent to or even for Hitler and the Nazi state of Germany. The friend I quoted above is right.

At this moment we as a denomination have so much to lose. Our integrity, our goodness, our hope, will all be shattered on the anti-Semitism among us. We will take away with one hand what God is trying to put into the other, the righteousness and holiness of God. If we spit on his ancient people we will eventually spit on God.

The Israel/Palestine Mission Network posts a film put together by those espousing radical Islamic views of Israel. UP-date

The Israel/Palestine Mission Network has posted a video on their site entitled “I Am Israel.” Ever hopeful, I thought it would perhaps have something good to say about Israel.

The person who placed the video there writes, “The following video entitled I Am Israel is a powerful and tragically beautiful presentation of the triumphs of Israel as it emerged to become a powerful Middle Eastern state in the modern world of today; an emergence of a people from the tragedy of World War II.”

It is not that at all. Instead the words which are vile were written by Hashem Said who is evidently very radical. He is a member of Hayaat which is supposedly a Washington University student organization for Palestinian human rights.

The video was put together by Jihane Al Quds. Whoever this person is they have a blog profile that lists only the title of their film, “I Am Israel,” with the words to the film and a blog without postings entitled Tulkarem. He also has the You-Tube site that IPMN is linked to where he says he lives in the United States.

The words are bad by themselves but placed over the images of the film they are sheer propaganda.



The words, “I came to a land without a people for a people without a land. Those people who happened to be here, had no right to be here, and my people showed them they had to leave or die, razing 480 Palestinian villages to the ground, erasing their history,” leaves out so much while adding lies.

All of this is putting words into the mouths of those the radical Muslims hate. Words that they did not say. The Israelis did not show them that they had “to leave or die”-instead they fought for their own survival as many Arab nations attacked them.

The words, “carved in 1948 out of 78% of the land of Palestine, dispossessing its inhabitants and replacing them with Jews from Europe and other parts of the world,” are untrue.

As Mitchell G. Bard puts it in his book, Myths and Facts: A Guide To the Arab-Israeli Conflict:

“Nearly 80 percent of what was the historic land of Palestine and the Jewish National Home, as defined by the League of Nations, was severed by the British in 1922 and allocated to what became Transjordan. Jewish settlement there was barred. The UN partitioned the remaining 20 percent of Palestine into two states. With Jordan’s annexation the West Bank in 1950, Arabs controlled approximately 80 percent of the territory of the Mandate, while the Jewish State held a bare 17.5 percent (Gaza, occupied by Egypt, was the remainder.)”

Is it even necessary to refute such words as “I have the power to control American policy. My American Israel Public Affairs Committee can make or break any politician of its choosing, and as you see, they all compete to please me. All the forces of the world are powerless against me, including the UN as I have the American veto to block any condemnation of my war crimes. As Sharon so eloquently phrased it, We control America.”

That is a truly anti-Semitic statement suggesting that Israel controls the world.

And this, “I influence American mainstream media too, and you will always find the news tailored to my favor. I have invested millions of dollars into PR representation, and CNN, New York Times, and others have been doing an excellent job of promoting my propaganda. Look at other international news sources and you will see the difference,” should remind the reader of Henry Ford’s The International Jew, an anti-Semitic diatribe written in praise of Hitler's Germany.

The lies about the 1948 War fought by Israel against her Arab neighbors who attacked her, and the total disregard for Israel’s need to defend herself against those terrorist groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, who believe Israel has no right to exist, is captured in this film.

The fact that the Israel/Palestine Mission Network continues on unabated by the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. is damaging to the souls of this denomination. I believe we have lost our will and integrity. May God help us.

Up-date-

The person who made this video has visited my comment section. He has complained that I lied because I put up the IPMN introduction to his video.

He thought I was saying he wrote that introduction. Which was "The following video entitled I Am Israel is a powerful and tragically beautiful presentation of the triumphs of Israel as it emerged to become a powerful Middle Eastern state in the modern world of today; an emergence of a people from the tragedy of World War II. But it is also a powerful presentation of the tragedy of the Palestinian people on whose land powerful Israel now resides. It reminds us of the tragedy of two people, one living in Europe before the founding of Israel and the other in Palestine."

The maker of the video understands that he was saying nothing good about Israel. Was the IPMN trying to fool the public with that lead in that made even the video maker mad?!