A reader has sent this exchange along (everything below this paragraph is quoted material):

As you point out, The Presbyterian Church USA is opening its big General Assembly with Al-Marayati, a man who apologizes for suicide bombing.

You really can tell a lot about people by the company they keep.

At the last General Assembly - the one notorious for the divestment vote - the Church made the unusual move of inviting two non-Presbyterians to speak on the topic. Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, and Rt. Rev. Riah Abu el-Assal.

Raheb is the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christian Church in Bethlehem. In his writings, Dr. Raheb states: "Israel, once miraculously delivered from Pharaoh's bondage, has now assumed the role of Pharaoh." Raheb tipifies the Palestinian Liberation Theology (supercessionist) belief that the Palestinians have replaced the Jews in God's scheme for the world. "If the Exodus is the story of any people, it is actually the story of us Palestinians."

Abu el-Assal is just as bad. During the recent four year long year horror of suicide terror attacks on Israel, Riah Abu el-Assal went to Ramallah to publicly side with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Speaking to a crowd that included Muslim leaders, Abu el-Assel offered "Greetings of appreciation to all martyrs that were killed on the Land of Palestine". Abu Asal then said that all martyrs receive eternal life and that they "live in the Kingdom of Heaven". He supported that statement by quoting the Koran verse: "Do not consider those that were killed for the sake of God as dead, but alive with their Lord". A year and a half after offering that endorsement of sending suicide bombers to murder innocent people, Abu el-Assal was honored with an invitation to address the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA.

And the Church kept on issuing dubious invitations even after a story of criticism erupted over the anti-Semitism of its position on Israel.

On February 10-12, 2005, the Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church sponsored a damage-control conference to convince its own members that divestment and the routine Israel-bashing of Israel by PCUSA publications and employees is, well, a good thing and not the evil that it appears. The meeting was chaired by former General Assembly leader Fahed Abu-Akel. Abu Akel denies that Israel has the right to exist, was responsible for inviting a flamingly anti-Semitic speaker to a Presbyterian college, and recently published an anti-Israel canard in the Presbyterian Outlook. Three of the four Palestinian speakers - Sawsan Bitar, Nuha Khoury and Alex Awad - work for organizations that do not acknowledge Israel's right to exist. The conference was described in the press as an "Anti-Israel meeting."

Now, at the pre-assembly meeting of the GA, delegates will be addressed by Al-Marayati, a man who condones terrorism, advocates the destruction of the Jewish State, and slurs Jewish Americans with old-fashioned anti-Semitic canards.

It doesn't look good, so, yesterday, I sent the sample letter you posted to some members of a Presbyterian Church USA governing body, the General Assembly Council. Only one wrote back, Carol G. Hylkema of Dearborn, MI, to say that "I am the chair of the MRTI Committee but I have nothing to do with the planning or preparations for the pre-assembly event you mention in this note."

(Note on governance: members of boards of directors are responsible for the activities of staff. If the staff acts inappropriately (say, by inviting pro-Hezbollah speakers,) you tell them to shape up, or you fire them. You don't shirk responsibility.)

At least two of the Council members to whom I wrote, Frank R. Adams III of Pensacola, FL and Frances D. Irwin of Moses Lake, WA sent my letter to a staff member, General Assembly Council Executive Director, Presbyterian Elder John Detterick. I know this because Detterick carelessly copied me on his response:

Detterick sent that message 3 hours and 14 minutes after I wrote to Frank Adams. Presbyterian officials do understand that they have a problem. Unfortunately, Detterick and others appear to believe that they have a public relations problem, i.e., that Presbyterians and others are upset about divestment and need to be soothed. What they cannot conceive is that this Church may have done something wrong.

The staff instruct members that the Jewish response to the divestment vote has been "highly emotional." (To this I plead guilty. When I hear Presbyterian leaders attack Israel with a divestment motion and even talk about eliminating the Jewish state, I do get upset.)

The staff accuses Jews of intending to change Presbyterian minds. "The clear intention of the Jewish community, in most cases, is to change our minds. This is not, for them, simply an opportunity for open sharing to learn from and better understand one another. It is clear that there is an effort underway to convince and stir up enough Presbyterians to change the decisions of the 216th General Assembly (2004)." Hell, yes.

But they vow not to listen to reason, and instruct Presbyterians not to listen to reason either. Presbyterians should "bring the conversation to the level of personal sharing and away from the sharing of positions."

And its working. This morning I wrote a new letter and sent it to some of the members of the Council to whom I had not written yesterday.

Here is the letter I just got back from Paul J. Masquelier, Jr. of San Jose, CA, Vice Chair of the General Assembly Council. It's a little intemperate. A Presbyterian who gets "highly emotional" when someone criticizes his church for attacking Israel and inviting anti-Semitic speakers. Imagine that:

It seems like Presbyterian leaders have a problem with facts. I have written back to Mr. Masquelier keeping my emotions under control, despite the fact that I do not much care to be accused of telling "outright lies." I sometimes make mistakes (I misspelled college in my letter) but I really try not to violate the ninth commandment. Everything in my letter was documented.

But back to John Detterick.

Detterick once insisted that an Israeli tourism department interviewer record the purpose of his trip as "To better understand the Palestinian situation." (This was in the summer of 2003, when suicide bombing attempts were being at a rate of several per week.) When the tourism official suggested that he meant to say, the "political situation," Detterick insisted that he meant what he had said. He is interested in the situation of the Palestinians, not in understanding the situation of Israelis. During his two-week trip, the only Israelis Detterick met were from the extreme left. Detterick drove through the Hezbollah-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon but did not meet with politically mainstream Israelis. When confronted with the overt anti-Semitism of Arab interlocutors insisting that "Israel is pulling the strings and manipulating the USA for its own benefit," Detterick responded with introspection and understanding: "Their perceptions of the USA are to them just as genuine as mine are to me. These sisters and brothers in Christ were speaking the truth in love to me. Their worldview is the Arab worldview. Their worldview is shaped by being at a very different point of the geographic, economic and social spectrum than we in the USA are. Even so, they spoke in love."

"Israel is pulling the strings and manipulating the USA for its own benefit" is an anti-Semitic statement. John Detterick hears it as "speaking the truth in love."

Small wonder American Christians are deserting the Presbyterian Church USA faster than Arab Christians are fleeing Palestinian Authority controlled territory.