Wiesenthal Center Reponds to UCC's One-Sided Ignoring of Israeli Suffering

July 30, 2006

Wiesenthal Center Reponds to UCC's One-Sided Ignoring of Israeli Suffering

The following is the text of "A Pastoral Letter to Palestinian Friends and Partners" by Reverend John H. Thomas, General Minister and President United Church of Christ (USA), which can also be found at   http://www.ucc.org/disaster/d071706.htm

July, 2006

Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ:

As I write this letter, dear friends, the military and humanitarian crisis intensifies around you. We watch with horror and outrage as Israel punishes an entire population for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier in Gaza, and as belligerence escalates with Hizb Allah's attack on military personnel near Lebanon. While we pray for the Israeli soldiers? release and safe return to family, we also know that these incidents have become an occasion for the further oppression of the Palestinian community, for the massive destruction of economic infrastructure and for the tragic loss of much innocent life. Meanwhile, the separation barrier continues to restrict travel, even for the purpose of meeting desperate human need, and sanctions against the Palestinian Authority have caused a financial strangulation of vital political, educational and humanitarian institutions. The complicity of our own government in these sanctions is cause for particular grief.

Making this situation even more burdensome is the recognition that there are many in the United States, including many Christians, who see only Israel?s need for security, who focus only on a few terrorist acts which you yourselves condemn. In doing so, they largely ignore the systemic oppression of an entire people in what increasingly amounts to a virtual prison in which almost every aspect of Palestinian life is controlled by Israel. Many in our own churches are subject to intense lobbying by Jewish groups demonizing the Palestinian community in general, and many of you in particular. Even some of our denominational gatherings of ecumenical partners here in the United States sound what may seem to you to be an uncertain voice.

In the face of such suffering and the temptation for despair, I write to assure you of the prayers and solidarity of the United Church of Christ. I am grateful that this is being signified personally by Peter Makari?s presence in the region this summer, accompanied by several of my colleagues. Know that we continue to be guided by our commitment to peace with justice, to negotiations leading toward a future in which Israel and Palestine mutually co-exist within secure and internationally recognized borders, to a shared Jerusalem, and to full protection and access to holy sites. In addition, we remain steadfast in our denunciation of Israel?s separation barrier, articulated in last summer?s General Synod resolution, and in our readiness to use our church?s economic resources, including the possibility of divestment, to press for an end to the Occupation and to support peacemaking and the Palestinian community. Finally, we will not remain silent in the face of our own government?s policies which continue to reward Israel while failing to press in significant ways for the "road map? it has proposed.

Centuries ago, in the midst of equally urgent times, our Reformed forebears asked, "What is your only comfort in life and in death?? They answered, "that we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to ourselves but to our faithful savior Jesus Christ.? May this comfort sustain you, and may the knowledge that we belong together in bonds of mutual affection and shared commitment be encouraging in these desperately challenging days.

In Christ,

John H. Thomas
General Minister and President
United Church of Christ (USA)

Simon Wiesenthal Center Response to Reverend Thomas

Dear President Thomas,

We appreciate the clarity of your “Pastoral Letter to Palestinian Friends and Partners.” You have made the sides abundantly clear. On one side are Israel, the United States, the G8, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. All of these faulted the unprovoked murderous cross-border attacks and kidnappings by Hezbollah that have led to suffering of the citizens of both Israel and Lebanon. On the other side are Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, the UCC and John Thomas, who see things differently. We also understand why your remarks during this week of death and misery address only the suffering of your Palestinian friends. History teaches that silence is admittance and your silence over innocent Jewish victims speaks volumes.

We would have thought that your hostility against the Jewish state in the past would have been tempered by developments of the past year, even before the Hezbollah attacks. Israel’s painful dismantling of her Gaza communities; the Palestinian response in directing hundreds of Kassams into civilian populations within Israel’s internationally recognized pre-1967 borders, and then electing a Hamas government; the rabid hatemongering of Iran’s Ahmadinejad (which you yourself noted and reacted against) - any of these might have provided you with an opportunity to add some new words in your lexicon, like balance and responsibility. Instead, you piously advise Israel to lay bare her Jewish, Christian and Moslem citizens to continuous murderous attacks by demanding the removal of the anti-terrorism separation barrier without ever even offering a suggestion of an alternative. You mourn the degradation of Palestinian buildings, but ignore the deliberate targeting of civilians in Israel, including the two Israeli Arab children killed this week by a Hezbollah rocket. You have nothing to say about the hundreds upon hundreds of Kassams and Katyushas that continue to rain down upon Israel’s cities and towns, in the latest attempt to eradicate the Jewish State.

Why now? Perhaps you provide cover for Hezbollah in order to justify your previous behavior. Not too many Americans have had the opportunity of face to face meetings with Hezbollah, but when you first encountered them, as you wrote in your travel diary in 2003, you did so with an attitude of bemusement that they were in the audience. Most Americans, we think, would have bolted in distaste from those who killed hundreds of Marines in Beirut. Has Che Guevara replaced G-d in your theology, so that no "underdog" can ever be called evil, no matter what his actions or moral platform? And why have you abandoned your Christian coreligionists in Lebanon! Can you not see what even Arab heads of state and a UN resolution have noted: that the people of Lebanon are being used as human sandbags by Hezbollah and their masters in Syria and Iran?

At least you are honest. You used to rail about the pressure from the “pro-Israel lobby.” You’ve dropped the code language. It’s Jews you’re talking about, as you admit in your current letter. Your irritation is puzzling, though. You have done a near perfect job keeping those pesky Jews from your offices, and from your convention floor when resolutions about the fate of Israelis came up. If we didn’t know better, we would think you simply don’t like outside interference and pressure. But you have no problem with the pressure from organizations like Sabeel and Al-Awda, both of whom reject the legitimacy of a Jewish state, and both of whom have either partnered with the UCC, or have been listed as a resource. And you don’t mind twisting a few arms yourself, do you? Remember the infamous “midnight meeting” at your General Synod in 2005, when you didn’t like the committee recommendation to the floor, so you substituted your own language, without anyone realizing it and had delegates adopt a resolution different from what they thought they were approving?

Most confusing, perhaps, is what your bias and hostility have to do with Christianity and Christian love. Mercifully, you are not the only Christian role model around. We hope that Jews and Christians alike will not confuse your convoluted thinking with the genuine regard and concern we have seen in other circles, ranging from the Evangelical Right to our very good friends in the Reformed traditions, such as those who successfully led the battle at the recent Presbyterian General Assembly to rewrite policies on divestment and the security fence that were unfair and unbalanced.

In Israel, united in its determination to end the scourge of missiles in the hands of terrorists, people nonetheless stop to read, think, and debate about the calamitous effects of war on people on the other side of the border, particularly civilians. In the midst of their trying circumstances, with two million Israelis in the north hunkering down in shelters, they find room to commiserate with others. Here in America, leaders of other church groups, including those who differ politically with Israel’s decisions, responded to the losses of both Israelis and Lebanese. We strongly suspect that peace will only become possible when both sides at least acknowledge the pain and suffering of the other, even as they pursue their separate agendas. Failure to evidence that mutuality of pain was a missed opportunity for you to teach others what undoubtedly is in the hearts of many of the rank and file of the UCC.

We hope and pray that the good will and good sense that serves as the basis for Christian-Jewish relations in America will continue to prevail, and that one day you too may know the blessings of its spirit.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
Director, Interfaith Affairs

Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Associate Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center