[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

We've already examined the mandate of the Middle East Study Committee, its composition, and part of its process.  From the outset, the committee failed in one portion of its mandate:  its composition was supposed to be drawn from "a broad spectrum of viewpoints from PC(USA) members."  Optimistically, before even beginning their work, 77% of the study committee's members publicly favored one side.  Again, optimistically, three quarters of the PC(USA) staff tasked with supporting the study committee's work had a record of bias against one side.  The study committee spent a lot of time, traveled, and met with a number of people; but 78% of the study committee's contacts represented one perspective.  In all three cases, the weight was toward the Palestinian narrative and against the State of Israel.

Given those circumstances, the Middle East Study Committee produced the report a person might expect. They made sixty recommendations to the General Assembly. These recommendations range from the non-offensive to the odd to the extreme to the patently unfair. I am not going to attempt to examine all of them in this limited space. Instead, I'll confine myself to reporting some of the more colorful ones.

The recommendations section is divided into subsections. (I'm addressing items from four of these subsections.)

1. Affirmation of Human Rights and Moral Principles:

These eleven points are the type of statements commissioners often like to affirm. They tend to be viewed as "no brainers". I mean, who is opposed to "human rights"? Who stands against "moral principles"? Most of these items are designed to sound good to the unsophisticated hearer. Yet - like the "justice and peace" language, the "human rights and moral principles" language is used to mask a rather darker agenda. They may be cast as if they were good and moral ideas, but that does not happen to be the case - at least for some of them.

1 c. Those additional rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights conventions, INCLUDING THE PRINCIPLE OF UNIVERSAL JURISDICTION. This last phrase "universal jurisdiction", sounds innocuous enough, but I seriously doubt that most Presbyterians are that familiar with the concept. The principle of universal jurisdiction allows nations to prosecute alleged crimes that were committed outside the boundaries of that nation. A person might easily wonder why this is included in recommendations focused almost exclusively on Israel and Palestine. What is not said is that this concept is currently being strategically used among fashionable anti-Israel activists to to justify attempts to try alleged Israeli war criminals in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Norway, and Spain. Its potential for prosecutions that are motivated more from a desire for political theater than from any idea of the rule of law or actual justice is being widely realized. The goal of this strategy is to reinforce the status of Israel as a pariah state whose government officials cannot travel to a variety of countries without risk of imprisonment and/or trial. It is NOT EVENLY APPLIED to all parties. And the PC(USA) really can't call it a "human right" with a straight face. If commissioners endorse this they will be endorsing this strategy - whether they realize it or not.

1 g. The moral principle that all refugees have an individual right to return or to adjudicate or negotiate compensation for the loss of home and homeland, wherever those may be. This is applied in one direction only - ALWAYS. I have never heard of any Presbyterian advocate for the right to return or to adjudicate or negotiate compensation for ANY of the 800,000 Jewish persons displaced from Israel's neighboring countries in the 1948 war. I have never heard any Presbyterian mention the property seizures that affected Jewish people. It simply has NEVER COME UP in Presbyterian accounts of the conflict. For PC(USA) commissioners to enshrine this "right of return" principle with the full intention and long history of only applying it in one direction could hardly be construed as "moral". Will commissioners be aware of this double standard?

1 h. The moral goal for nations to create a nuclear-free world and, toward that goal, to sign and comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other relevant treaties. Another targeted "moral goal". It is fine if Presbyterians oppose nuclear weapons - but is this being applied equally? Are Presbyterians focusing on England, France, Russia, India, Pakistan, China? Are they issuing statements on the real or imagined nuclear capabilities of any of these nations? Why the exclusive focus on Israel? Or does this correspond to another fashionable initiative in the world of Palestinian advocacy politics?

2. Affirmation of Previous General Assembly Policies & Statements:

At this point the MESC provides a selective list of PC(USA) policy statements that it wants the 219th General Assembly to reaffirm. It includes the usual suspects: the end of the Israeli occupation, the relocation of the separation barrier, a shared Jerusalem, corporate engagement. Gone are the prior General Assembly calls for fairness and calls to avoid one-sidedness. Gone are General Assembly condemnations of terrorism and suicide bombing as crimes against humanity. A couple of these raise eyebrows.

2 b. the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories AND DIVERSION OF WATER RESOURCES

2 c. an immediate freeze both on the establishment or expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and on the ISRAELI ACQUISITION OF PALESTINIAN LAND AND BUILDINGS IN EAST JERUSALEM

2 e. THE WITHHOLDING OF US GOVERNMENT AID TO ISRAEL as long as Israel persists in creating new West Bank settlements

2 i. the cessation of systematic violation of human rights by any party, specifically, practices of administrative detention, collective punishment, the torture of prisoners and suspects, home demolitions and evictions, and the deportation of dissidents; The significance of this particular item is that all of the "violations of human rights" listed are accusations that the PC(USA)'s advocacy community level against Israel. No mention whatsoever is made of Palestinian violations of human rights. It is true that the PA and Hamas authorities have practiced an equivalent of administrative detention, torture of prisoners, murder of suspected collaborators, murder of dissidents, and home demolitions. But these items are NOT EVER THE OBJECT OF PRESBYTERIAN FOCUS.

3. For the Witness of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.):

This mystifying category includes a series of rather unrelated initiatives oddly lumped together.

3 a. ... Travel opportunities with a particular emphasis on visits with the Christian communities, study of Reformed theological understandings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of historical understandings that ENCOMPASSES VARIOUS NARRATIVES AND VERIFIABLE SOURCES, [the very thing the Middle East Study Committee entirely failed to do] itineration throughout the U.S. by Middle Eastern Christian partners, local dialogues and shared projects with American Jews and Muslims, participation in the ECUMENICAL ACCOMPANIMENT PROGRAM (EAPPI) in Palestine and Israel of the World Council of Churches, and robust publicity and promotion of these activities.

3 b. The Middle East Study Committee makes itself into a monitoring group that continues to exert its heavily weighted influence in guiding Presbyterian policy over the next two years.

3 c. STRONGLY DENOUNCES CATERPILLAR's continued profit-making from non-peaceful uses of its products and presses Caterpillar to review carefully its involvement in obstacles to a just and lasting peace in Israel-Palestine and to take affirmative steps to end its complicity in the violation of human rights.

3 d. Calls on denominational agencies and entities, presbyteries, congregations, and individual members to invest positively, after due vetting, in sustainable economic development projects for the West Bank and Gaza (that do not support the occupation) sponsored by Palestinians or jointly by Palestinians and Israelis in equitable partnership.

3 f. Endorses the Kairos Palestine document ("A Moment of Truth") in its emphases on hope for liberation, nonviolence, love of enemy, and reconciliation. This is a remarkably dishonest statement. It implies that commissioners can endorse a document without endorsing it. Claiming to support the unspecified good parts of the document is a claim to nothing. Without an indication of what exactly the GA is supporting and is not supporting, such a statement is open ended. For instance, the Kairos document rejects the existence of the Jewish State. Is this part of the emphasis on hope for liberation, nonviolence, love of enemy, and reconciliation? Or isn't it? The PC(USA) cannot endorse this document without rejecting the existence of the Jewish State. So is it an endorsement or isn't it? Similarly, the Kairos document cites the occupation as the source of Palestinian resistance and claims that when Israelis end the occupation, "Then they will see a new world in which there is no fear, no threat but rather security, justice and peace." The claim is absurd - perhaps naive if one wants to give the benefit of the doubt - but absurd nonetheless. Is this a claim the PC(USA) is endorsing? Is it part of the "emphasis on hope...."?

4. Urgent Actions Toward Justice and Peace in Israel, the Occupied Territories of Palestine, and Jerusalem

It is at this point that the Middle East Study Committee really runs off the tracks and turns into something between a wish list of anti-Israel activists and an oversimplification of the realities of the conflict.

4 b. Calls on the U.S. government to exercise strategically its international influence, INCLUDING THE POSSIBLE WITHHOLDING OF MILITARY AID as a means of bringing Israel to compliance with international law and peacemaking efforts. Seeing the similarity to recommendation 2 e, a reader might be tempted to think the Middle East Study Committee has gotten repetitive. That is not really the case. In this instance the MESC is wanting to use the withholding of military aid in the service of international law (which is vague enough) and unspecified peacemaking efforts. What efforts? Whose? What constitute peacemaking efforts?

4 c. Calls upon Israel to release, without any further delay, withheld Palestinian tax moneys to the Palestinian National Authority.

4 d. Calls on the Israeli government to end immediately its blockade of Gaza, and on the U.S. government to end any support it is giving to the blockade, and also calls on the Egyptian government to facilitate the passage of humanitarian supplies into Gaza as well as consumer goods from the strip.

4 e. Urges the main Palestinian political parties (Fatah and Hamas) to set aside their differences, to pursue an ideology of nonviolence, to reconcile immediately, and to work for peace with each other and with their neighbor, Israel, for the sake of their people, and also calls on the U.S. government to offer support for such reconciliation.

4 f. Supports the establishment of an international council for Jerusalem to ensure the nondiscriminatory treatment of all Jerusalemites, including fair allocation of housing and family unification permits, free movement of religious workers of all faiths, fair provision of city services in exchange for taxes, protection of all religious and historic sites, international scientific review of all archeological sites and labeling of historic sites, and equitably accessible mass transit from both Israeli and Palestinian areas and links to the West Bank and Gaza. Before commissioners approve this item, they might want to give thought to the composition of such an "international council" and the difficulties in finding neutral parties. This difficulty, while plainly evident, seems to be entirely lost on the MESC.

4 h. Calls for Bethlehem to be a free and open city accessible to all people. What exactly is being asked in this recommendation? Is the PC(USA) being asked to make its requirement for Bethlehem the same as those for Jerusalem? How would it enforce its "free and open city" policy and universal accessibility while it remained a part of a sovereign nation? Or is it to be internationalized like Jerusalem? I'm curious why they don't just suggest doing that with the whole area - Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem. Why not reverse the 1948 partition? Why not have a new mandate administered by the United Nations?

The function of this report is to gather issues that affect Israelis and Palestinians into one neat package. It creates a climate in which it is very easy for commissioners to accept these recommendations together and it is very difficult for commissioners to examine each proposal on its individual merits. This report re-iterates items covered in overtures from various presbyteries and in reports and recommendations of other committees. THIS IS THE INSTITUTIONAL PACKAGE. As such it embodies systemic institutional biases against Israel and at times against the Jewish people. It will be presented to commissioners as if it were moderate and broad based. It is not. It represents the views of relatively small minorities of Presbyterians AND it represents the views of significant majorities of national employees, committee members, networks and some affinity groups of the PC(USA).

On a personal level, when I see these items gathered in one place, I find the total picture appalling. To be sure, there have been, within this reports, some brief attempts at even-handedness. But the overwhelming effect is heavily weighted against Israel. Most of the negative action items are directed at Israel. Many of the suggestions are favorites among radical anti-Israel activists. All of this is couched in the language of peace and justice and human rights and witness and moral principles. But taken together, these recommendations will do little to bring about peace; their human rights emphases are one-sided - sometimes egregiously so. On a deeper level, justice can never result from unjust church actions. A weighted committee, staffed by people who have led the Presbyterian charge against Israel, meeting with a list of contacts heavily supportive of only one opinion - is, in itself, unjust. Justice cannot be obtained through this process.

I appeal to commissioners: look at each recommendation on its own merits. Look at the total picture. Is it one sided? Is it fair? Have you been provided with all the relevant information? Are you being asked to treat Israel in a manner distinct from the way you treat all other nations? Do you really believe Israel is the unique in the annals of human rights abuses? Is the existence of a Jewish state the problem? If so - what about the existence of Islamic states? What about the existence of ethnically based states? What about the existence of an Arab league? Who are the honest brokers? Is Israel being held to a different standard? Clearly, many Middle Eastern Christians express a particular opinion. Hearing that opinion is certainly important - but does that automatically make it right or true? Are you somehow obliged to take the same political positions as you hear being advocated by some Middle Eastern Christians? If so, why? And why are the opinions of large segments of Christians who disagree being ignored? Are your sources of information biased? How do you justify that? This is not an easy task. No one is pretending otherwise. You have been posed with a moral quandary. But approving this without examining all of its aspects is immoral. There are people who will tell you to trust the work of the committee. They spent two years on these issues; they know what they're doing. But they're not the ones required to make this choice. And they're not the ones accountable for this choice. Like it or not, that falls to you.

Will Spotts