Wiesenthal Center: "We Urge Presbyterian Church Rank and File to Defeat Church Leaders' Embrace of Anti-Zionism."

June 12, 2014

Leading Jewish group severed dialogue after PCUSA posted report that labeled Jewish State racist and Illegal

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, one of the largest Jewish human rights organizations, is urging the rank and file of the U.S. Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) flocking to Detroit this weekend for the group's national meeting to defeat the leadership's embrace of extreme anti-Israel positions, including a report that called Israel racist and Illegal.

"We are severing all dialogue with PCUSA, because of a pattern of malicious behavior on the part of church administration," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Center, pointing to Zionism Unsettled, a 74-page document released in December and sold on PCUSA's website. "This demonization of an entire nation and its supporters around the world is an outrage that makes further conversation with this church impossible. Zionism Unsettled does not merely attack Israeli policies, but calls the quest for a Jewish State racist and illegal. This invokes memories of the UN's notorious 'Zionism is racism' resolution of 1974—which was repealed in 1991 – but this time PCUSA has substituted theological language to dismiss the Jewish people's 3,500 year presence in and association with the Holy Land," Cooper added. "The long-standing protocols of interfaith dialogue have always demanded that no partner attack the core beliefs of the other. This document, and the cynical response of church leaders to criticism of it from other Presbyterians, is a frontal assault on the central place of the Jewish State in Jewish life and thought," the rabbi said.

In 2004, PCUSA became the first mainline denomination to vote for divestment from Israel. Strong opposition by church rank and file led to an overturning of that resolution in 2006. "While Israel enjoyed strong support from the ordinary worshipers and pastors of this church – including a large cadre of tireless workers for balance and fairness to all peoples of the Middle East – their wishes were frustrated by church leadership bent on taking the church in a different direction," said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, the Center's Director of Interfaith Affairs.
"After every defeat at a biennial General Assembly, the church administration raised the ante, building partnerships with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that abandoned the very two-state solution that was the historic policy of the church. It gerrymandered key committee appointments, and tolerated overt anti-Semitism on church websites," he added.
"We stayed in an abusive relationship too long. We will continue to love Presbyterians, but we will inform our community that PCUSA is a group that disrespects the Jewish People," Rabbi Adlerstein concluded.


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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).