A harsh and unfair portrayal of Israeli policy
As I wrote this, news was breaking that a Palestinian rocket attack on a college in Sderot, Israel had killed a 47-year-old father of four and wounded several others. It was inevitable that the daily rocket attacks, which usually cause more psychological terror than physical injury, would claim an innocent life. All in the name of…what, exactly? Israel left Gaza, from where the Qassam rockets are launched, in 2005. Instead of focusing on building a better life for themselves now that they're free of Israeli settlers and soldiers in their midst, extremist Palestinians focus on building better rockets.
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently wrote about Sderot. "In Europe and elsewhere, where activists are just plain dizzy from their own moral virtue, Israel is denounced for inflicting suffering on Gaza. But the protesters say nothing about the Qassams raining from the sky - sometimes as many as 40 a day. The adjectives for the Qassams are innocuous: crude, inaccurate. Yes, but they have killed 13 in the past seven years, and they make life here almost unbearable."
I couldn't help but think of Sderot when I had the misfortune of perusing an amazingly unjust and unreasonable publication of a study group within the United Methodist Church. "Israel-Palestine: A Mission Study for 2007-2008", is, according to its preface, a "balanced survey" designed to help "the reader understand the complexities of this conflict." Instead, this study is a one way street of compromised reason and judgment. Rather than providing balance, it skews so heavily in its rush to condemn Israeli policy that it reads like a Palestinian Ministry of Information pamphlet.
Even some in the Methodist Church have criticized the report. Rev. Dr. L.T. Archer Summers, Senior Minister of the First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto, Calif. notes, in a letter he co-authored for the Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, that the Mission Study harshly stereotypes Jews and is replete with errors.
We are all entitled to have our views on who's right and who's wrong in this ongoing conflict. It's reassuring to know that in poll after poll most Americans feel as I do, have a kinship toward Israel, and believe peace will come when Palestinians stop with the terror and the demagoguery and assume some responsibility for their actions.
Not so, apparently, to authors of this study. To read it is to enter a world in which Israel is always the guilty party, in which Palestinian rejectionist policies, suicide bombing terror campaigns, hateful imagery of Jews and Judaism, well, they don't account for all that much. Of course Israel has done wrong, name a country with nothing to be ashamed of. But to amplify Israel's warts to such a crescendo, to leave out the context in which Israel finds itself - in a part of the world not long on promoting mutual understanding - makes a mockery of any attempt at balance. In this publication, Israel is the oppressor, the instigator, the guilty party. There is no room for cross examination.
The study comes out at a time when some in the United Methodist Church want to introduce a resolution at its April quadrennial conference to divest from Peoria-based Caterpillar because it sells bulldozers to Israel. Let's hope the many good Methodists who want to help bring peace to both parties will carry the day in that vote.