RUTHFULLY YOURS

The United Church of Christ (UCC), in what has become typical among the mainline Protestant churches, issued a resolution (July 18, 2021) stating that Israel’s continued oppression of the Palestinian people is a “sin.” The resolution calls on the General Synod to adopt a declaration of requirements for a just peace between Palestine and Israel. The UCC’s most recent resolution was adopted by 83% of its delegates voting on line. The UCC has a membership of 800,000.

The UCC, with its progressive-leftist interpretation of the Bible, its lack of regard for history and Middle East realities, particularly as it applies to Palestinian Islamist terrorism and intimidation, is guilty of the sin of bias. The current UCC resolution, like previous ones, shows a clear anti-Israel bias that is largely influenced by the dhimmified Arab-Palestinian Christians. In order to survive in the increasingly jihadist-Muslim Middle East, including the Islamist Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon (all three funded and supported by Iran), and Fatah in the West Bank, Palestinian Christians must show greater anti-Israel vigilance than their fellow Muslims. The above points are evidenced by the massive exodus of Christians from the Middle East to Europe, and the Americas. The Christians are escaping Arab-Palestinian oppression…not Israeli oppression. In fact, this writer interviewed Bethlehem’s Mayor, Elias Freij, in 1991, and asked him where are the Christians of Bethlehem? He replied, “In Santiago de Chile.” Today Bethlehem’s Christian population is around 7%, in the West Bank as a whole, the Christian population is down to about 2%, and in Hamas ruled Gaza, less than 1%.

Using as supportive “evidence” the following groups; Arab-Palestinian dhimmified Kairos declaration, the World Council of Churches, the anti-Semitic and terrorist dominated United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA), and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel alone, or bringing forth discredited Israeli NGO’s who are funded by European government agencies with the purpose of weakening Israel, only serves to reinforce the one-sided, biased sources employed by the UCC resolution.

The Resolution’s summary says that, “It rejects a future imposed by military power, illegal occupation and dispossession, or unilateral annexation of land, and the use of imperialistic theology as justification.” Then in items 53,54,55, it proclaims, “In 1987, the Synod affirmed its recognition that God’s covenant with the Jewish people has not been rescinded or abrogated by God, but remains in full force, insomuch as ‘The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable (Rom. 11:29).” According to the UCC current resolution, the Biblical prophets of Israel (Jeremiah and Isaiah in particular) must be “imperialistic” because their “theology” points to God’s promise of his people returning (the Jews) to their ancestral homeland, the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel). It means all the land of Israel, particularly Judea and Samaria.

The initiators of this resolution (UCC churches in California, Connecticut, and New Hampshire) conveniently ignored historical events that took place in 1947, 1948, 1967, 2000, and 2008. In November, 1947, the United Nations (UN) voted to partition Mandatory Palestine into Arab (Jews were called Palestinians then) and Jewish states. The Jews of Palestine accepted a shrunken state (after the Holocaust, Jewish survivors in DP camps needed a home). The 1917 Balfour declaration assigned both banks of the Jordan River to be the Jewish homeland. The 1920 San Remo conference confirmed the Balfour declaration. The Arabs (Palestinians) rejected the partition and planned to destroy the nascent Jewish state (proclaimed statehood May, 1948), along with five Arab armies (Egypt, the Emirate of Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria). Haj Amin al-Husseini, the defrocked Mufti of Jerusalem (Hitler’s ally), sought to “finish Hitler’s work against the Jews.” In 1948, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan illegally occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They destroyed the Jewish quarter and expelled its Jewish residents. Britain and Pakistan were the only countries to recognize that illegal act.

In May, 1967, following Egypt’s dictator Abdul Nasser’s provocative acts of war (expelling the UN observers in the Sinai, and closing waterways to Israeli navigation, including the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran), Israel sent a message to King Hussein of Jordan to stay out of the impending war, and that Israel had no intention of attacking Jordan unless attacked by them. Under pressure from Nasser, Jordan attacked Israel (I witnessed that). In the Six Day War, Israel liberated Jerusalem, and recovered the Etzion Bloc, (Jewish owned communities conquered by Jordan in 1948). It captured the historical areas of Judea and Samaria, the cradle of Jewish/Biblical civilization. Israel’s call for peace negotiations was answered in November, 1967 with the infamous 3 No’s at the Arab League summit in Khartoum: No to negotiations with Israel; No to recognition of Israel; and No to peace with Israel.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and its various terrorist components began a terror campaign against Israel and Jews. International aviation (inventing Plane hijacking) became a new target for the Palestinian terrorists. The Jewish/Israeli victims were primarily civilians, women and children in particular. The Oslo Accords signed at the White House lawn in 1993 served as a Trojan horse for PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. In July, 2000, President Clinton arranged a Camp David summit with Arafat and Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak, expressing the Israelis hope for peace, and a peaceful Palestinian state, made far-reaching concessions in order to end the conflict. Arafat, a lifelong terrorist, wouldn’t agree to “end the conflict.” Clinton accused Arafat of harming the future of his people…Arafat then provoked the second Intifada which cost the lives of many Palestinians and over 1,000 Israelis, blown up on buses, and restaurants. Arafat could have had a Palestinian state in July, 2000, but preferred terror instead.

In 2008, it was Arafat’s successor, Mahmud Abbas, who wasted another opportunity to establish a Palestinian state. This time it was Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who exceeded the concessions made by Barak. Abbas, likely fearing assassination, and the difficulties of handling a people weaned on terror, hate, and resistance, found it easier to receive European and American largesse as a way to motivate him to engage in peace negotiations, rather than making peace. Making peace required the Palestinian media, school curriculum, and mosques to end incitement and hate against Jews and Israel, and reach mutual respect with their Israeli/Jewish neighbors. In 2007, the Gaza Strip was under control of the Islamist terrorists Hamas, with Hamas declaring jihad on Israel.

As to “imposed military power,” without the protection of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and it’s manning of checkpoints, Israeli civilians would die at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. I wonder what the folks at the UCC churches in CA, CT, and NH would do with Hamas and Fatah terrorists as their neighbors?

UNSC Resolution 242 called for “territory for peace (but not all territories).” Egypt accepted peace and got back the entire Sinai. In the West Bank though, Jews have as much right to settle as Palestinians do. In a New York Times opinion piece (September 19, 1983), the late Eugene Rostow, who served as Dean of Yale Law School and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Johnson administration, wrote: “Israel has an unassailable legal right to establish settlements in the West Bank.”

Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, not imperialistic conquerors. Exiled by Roman’s in 70CE, Jews never ceased their yearning to return. In 638CE, the real imperialists appeared. The Muslim Caliph Omar colonized Palestine and the Middle East as part of the Islamic imperialistic conquests.