It bothers me a lot that my national church body takes the side of terrorists against the one democratic state in the Middle East, Israel. Here are some excerpts from an article by David Meir-Levi in Front Page Magazine:
The leadership of the Presbyterian Church recently decided to encourage its governing body to promote divestment from companies that do business with Israel. Shortly thereafter, the Anglican church, the Lutheran church and the World Council of Churches (WCC, with 347 member denominations world-wide) followed suit with the explanation that divestment "(is) a new way to work for peace, by looking at ways to not participate economically in illegal activities related to the Israeli occupation." (1) These churches are among those often referred to as "mainline" churches.
There are no comparable petitions seeking action against other countries that really do enslave minorities, imprison dissidents, murder political opponents, torture suspected activists, and generally maintain totalitarian repressive governments that deny human rights to their citizenry.
The proponents of anti-Israel divestment ignore:
* the cultural and linguistic genocide of Tibetans under Chinese occupation.
* Syria’s 30-year occupation of Lebanon, with its consequent casualties numbering more than 100,000 (a significant number of whom are Christians) with c. 500,000 homeless.
* Numerous violations of human rights, oppression of women and minorities, persecution of homosexuals, abuse of children, and general absence of even-handed justice in their courts whose penalties include beheading, stoning, hanging and shooting in Arab and Muslim states.
* Arab repression of tens of millions of religious and ethnic minorities including Maronite, Assyrian, Chaldean and Coptic Christians, Berbers, Sudanese, Kurds, Bahá'ís, Druse, Jews. Even their own Muslim citizenry who subscribe to variant Muslim sects or are deemed by the authorities to be insufficiently Muslim.
* Saudi Arabia’s brutal gender apartheid with its extreme repression of women.
In sharp contrast, Israel's record on human rights is among the best in the world, and certainly the best in the region. Israel is a vibrant and participatory democracy, which has a completely free press that is often highly critical of the Israeli government. No Arab country has a free press, nor does the Palestinian Authority. Israel has a completely independent judiciary, the only one in the entire area. Its Supreme Court, one of the best in the world, is the only court in which an Arab in the Middle East can expect to get justice in lawsuits brought against any government. Palestinians have won lawsuits against the Israeli government and the Israeli military. The rights of women, gays and others are far more fully recognized, protected and implemented in Israel than anywhere in the Arab world or in much of the rest of the world. The Israeli army does not discriminate against gays, as even the American army does, and the Israeli Knesset now includes an openly gay member. Israeli Arabs sit in the Knesset, serve on the Israeli Supreme Court and have their own newspapers. (3) Israeli Arabs have choices of five different Arab political parties, which is four more than are currently available to any citizen of any Totalitarian Arab country in the world.
So it sounds to me like Israel is the good guy in the Middle East. Why do the mainline churches in the US want to isolate them economically and politically? Could it be that they are following the Democratic Party line? Hmmm. Oh, and click on the title to read the entire article. It looks like the disvestment policies could be against US law.
---Katie
No comments:
Post a Comment