Two years ago, American Jewish community relations groups were congratulating themselves for a victory in turning back the attempt by anti-Israel radicals to hijack the Presbyterian Church USA.
After the Presbyterians became the first Protestant church to embrace divestment from companies doing business in Israel in 2004, Jewish groups worked hard to overturn the decision.
When the church voted to back away from this stand in 2006, it was seen as a triumph not just for friends of Israel, but for the tactic of outreach itself as years of tenacious diplomacy paid off.
The celebrations seem to have been premature.
The church recently released “Vigilance Against Anti-Jewish Bias in the Pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian Peace.” This document was supposed to help its members avoid anti-Semitic rhetoric when discussing the Middle East.
Instead, it is a compendium of charges aimed at de-legitimizing Israel. (The document can be seen on the Web site www.pcusa.org.)
The document avoids discussing Arab support for terrorism and, rather than serve as a warning against bias, it justifies anti-Israel invective since it places sole blame for the conflict on Israel, rather than on those attempting to destroy it.
If anything, the document should serve to reinvigorate those who have been pushing for divestment, which is a declaration of economic war on Israel and the Jewish people.
In itself, this should justify the anger and the feelings of betrayal voiced by centrist and liberal Jewish denominations and organizations that worked to reverse the previous Presbyterian stand on Israel.
Demonizing theology
But also buried in the document is a strand of thought relevant not only to this battle for the soul of a powerful mainline liberal Protestant church, but to the mindset of American Jews themselves.
Amid a list of anti-Israel measures in the Presbyterian statement — including opposition to the security fence that ended the Palestinian suicide bombing campaign — was the assertion that “Christian faithfulness, as well as the policies of our church, demands that we maintain our commitments … to criticize forms of Christian Zionism that negatively affect the lives of Israelis, Palestinians and others in the Middle East.”
So in the same document in which they urged its members to avoid attacking Israel in ways that could be labeled anti-Semitic, Presbyterian leaders attack fellow Christians who support the idea that the Jewish people have a right to sovereignty over their historic homeland.
To support the contention that Christian Zionists are wrongheaded, the Presbyterian document cited in a footnote Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of the Union for Reform Judaism, who in a December 2007 speech warned Jews to avoid alliances with the pro-Israel Christian right.
Yoffie, whose Reform movement joined the Jewish groups that condemned the Presbyterian reversal, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (June 17 article by Ben Harris) that he is “infuriated” about the Presbyterians “embedding” his words in a “doctrine that is so hostile to Israel.”
The Reform leader is right to be embarrassed. But rather than merely being annoyed by the church’s chutzpah, he ought to rethink his own bashing of right-wing Christian Zionists.
Indeed, the Presbyterians’ renewed flirtation with anti-Zionism should wake-up the American Jews clinging to prejudices about Evangelicals, despite the change in the Protestant world in the last generation.
In the past, Jews instinctively looked to mainline liberal Protestant churches — like the Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans and Anglicans, who have all been debating divestment measures against Israel in recent years — as allies.
At the same time, Jews generally assumed that Evangelicals, who generally lived outside the coastal urban enclaves where Jewish life has thrived in America, were liable to be anti-Semitic.
But in 2008 America, the Evangelicals of the Christian right are instinctively supportive of Israel, while our traditional allies on the Christian left are flirting with a theology that demonizes Israel and the Jews.
Not good enough
Though the gap between the Christian right and most Jews on domestic issues is still vast, when it comes to Israel’s survival, it is the Evangelicals and not the Presbyterians who stand with Israel.
Unfortunately, that isn’t good enough for many Jews who tirelessly make unsupported and false accusations that the Evangelicals actually hate Jews and want to destroy us. This has only encouraged the Presbyterians to use this issue to bolster their own attempt to isolate Israel.
The point here is not to claim that the Christian right has become Israel’s only American friends, though they are among the most active and effective.
In fact, in the mainline churches that are dabbling in anti-Zionist rhetoric and considering divestment, most of the rank-and-file members don’t support the campaign against Israel.
Indeed, it is doubtful that most are even aware that their spiritual home is being hijacked by radical left-wing elements.
As frustrated as many Jews are with the Presbyterian betrayal, the Jewish community-relations councils’ outreach campaigns must continue.
Most American Protestants rightly see Israel as sharing common democratic values with the United States and want nothing to do with the anti-Zionism that has won a foothold among mainline church activists.
They need to understand that their silence will be taken as complicity with the actions of these radicals. They must understand that their churches cannot pretend to be friends with their Jewish neighbors while supporting an economic war on the Jewish state. And they must be prodded to act to rescind such measures enacted in their names.
At the same time, U.S. Jews must cease living in the past when it comes to understanding contemporary America’s religious and political landscape.
At a time when Hamas, Hezbollah and their Iranian sponsors are plotting a new Holocaust for Israel and its 6 million Jews, treating Protestants who actually love Israel as pariahs is a strategy devoid of truth or sense.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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