The morality of the
American people now resides, insecurely, in the Presbyterian Church. Every other
institution of American society -- the evangelical churches, the
bought-and-paid-for American media, both houses of Congress, the executive
branch, both political parties, the corporations, the financial sector, the
universities -- all support Israel's genocide against the Palestinians. Only the
Presbyterians dissent.
The genocide is cloaked
behind the propaganda that no Palestinians lived in Palestine until after the
Israelis arrived, that all Palestinians are terrorists who want to murder
innocent peace-loving Israelis, and that the terrorist Palestinians are armed by
the few remaining Muslim governments that so far have escaped becoming American
puppet states.
The solution, of course,
is for the few remaining independent countries in the Middle East to be brought
by force under US and Israeli hegemony.
The Presbyterian Church,
as it is the only US organization that is not under the Israel Lobby's
suzerainty, is included among the independent institutions that must be brought
to heel.
The Presbyterian Church,
which alone in America has a moral conscience, has been disturbed for some time
by the Israeli/American policy of Palestinian extermination. In violation of
international law and under the protection of US diplomacy and America's UN
veto, Israel has evicted Palestinians from their homes and villages since the
Israeli occupation of the West Bank in 1967 and even before. The remaining small
parts of the West Bank in which Palestinians still reside have been turned by
Israel into ghettos cut off from the rest of Palestine.
The Presbyterians, being
meek Christians, have only mild criticisms of Israel, which are packaged
together in the church's Middle
East Study Committee's report with
the Presbyterians' commitment to Israel's continued existence and to "our American Jewish Friends." The Presbyterian report even disavows divestment from
Caterpillar, the US company that supplies Israel with the machines that destroy
Palestinian homes, thus driving Palestinians from their lands so that zionist
settlers can confiscate their properties. It was a Caterpillar bulldozer that
killed the American Rachel Corrie who was protesting Israel's destruction of
Palestinian homes.
The Presbyterian report
expresses concern that "the window of opportunity for an end to the occupation
and the viability of a two-state solution is rapidly closing." The Presbyterians
fear that violence begets violence, and that the two sides are sliding into
wanton willful murder of one another in violation of God's
commandments.
The Presbyterian document
states: "We do affirm the legitimacy of Israel as a state, but consider the
continuing occupation of Palestine (West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem) to be
illegitimate, illegal under international law, and an enduring threat to peace
in the region. Furthermore, we recognize that any support for that occupation
weakens the moral standing of our nation internationally and our
security."
For Israel and the vast
media and American political apparatus that Israel controls, this was too much.
Israel is never guilty of anything. Only Palestinians are guilty. Anyone who
criticizes Israel is anti-semitic and aligned with terrorists who want a second
Holocaust.
The extreme Zionist
Jerusalem Post; the moderate American Jewish newspaper, the
Forward, and even a Mormon blog declared war on the Presbyterian
Christians.
Israel, of course, denies
that there is any illegal occupation of Palestine despite this being the finding
of every country, the UN, and even Israel's American protector, the US
government. The Jerusalem Post accuses the Presbyterians of expressing
"contempt for Israel" attempting "to delegitimize Israel" and justifying
"Palestinian terror against the Jewish state."
And there you have it. Any
person or organization that is not all apologies for Israel's dispossession of
Palestinians from their homes, villages, and lands, any person or organization
that does not accept that 5-year old Palestinian children shot down in the
streets by Israeli soldiers or zionist settlers were terrorists about to bring
down the Israeli state, anyone who does not genuflect before the Israeli line on
everything is an anti-semite who wants to renew the Holocaust and exterminate
the Jewish people.
The Rabbis in every
American community will buttonhole the Presbyterian ministers and ask them to
explain why they are anti-semites and beat their wives. The Presbyterian General
Assembly, which meets in July, will again be intimidated, as it was previously,
and vote down the recommendations in the church's report on the
Israeli/Palestinian issue.
The weak forces of
morality will again be defeated by the Israelis, and the extermination of the
Palestinians will continue.
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