Sunday, August 6, 2006
James Berkley, Presbyterian Church (USA) member and Director of Presbyterian Action, expresses concern and cynicism at a request by the PC(USA) to contribute to the Middle East Council of Churches. Berkley: I wish I could trust the PCUSA
So Tomeh is found to be the controversial Presbyterian link time and again to Hezbollah. Does that inspire you? Does it seem a good idea to send money to the very guy who appears to be in Hezbollah’s back pocket?
“Safe passage for aid convoys remains a major problem,” says another spokesperson for the Middle East Council of Churches. Could it be that the MECC is at all compromised by their coziness with Hezbollah itself and thus not trusted? Could it be that Hezbollah has a habit of operating right in among vulnerable civilians, thus causing the security problem for aid convoys? Using civilians as human sand bags for their military operations does not particularly ennoble the Hezbollah as warriors!
Hezbollah caused the current war. Hezbollah is responsible for causing civilian deaths and suffering by operating their war from the midst of populated centers. Hezbollah is proudly hurtling unaimable rockets at just any old civilian population in Israel, hoping to knock off whoever happens to be under the rockets’ arc when they drop. And Hezbollah is the close buddy of “our man” in Lebanon.
Somehow, that doesn’t inspire my confidence. It's a sad thing, because the need truly is there.
(And where’s the aid appeal for the Israelis, who likewise are being killed and displaced by Hezbollah aggression? Not a word about that. Why am I not surprised?)
Nuhad Tomeh is indeed the "fixer" in the region who has acted as a go-between for Presbyterian meetings with Hizballah.
But that's not the rest of the story. Appearing in Berkley's comments is none other than Marthame Sanders. Readers may remember Elizabeth and Marthame Sanders as the Middle East based couple who had a recommended article on their web site by none other than the virulently anti-Semitic Israel Shamir, and who resisted calls to remove the article, instead insisting that it was an example of "intra-Jewish dialog" (Shamir claims to have been born Jewish). The Sanders are part and parcel of the full-time anti-Israel PC(USA) establishment, so it's understandable that they would be defensive over the fact that their particular bias may be cause for a loss of funding to Church efforts. Berkley has been unceremoniously denounced in a letter to PresbyWeb:
The Middle East Council of Churches brings together Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic Christians across the region, engaged together in ministries of compassion, peacemaking, and witness. The MECC includes Presbyterian brothers and sisters; it includes believers in both Lebanon and Israel.
It is this body which Berkeley slanders, all but saying that money given to the Middle East Council of Churches is money given to Hezbollah, effectively painting all the churches in the Middle East as terrorists.
Berkley’s ecclesiology (or lack thereof) has abandoned these precious brothers and sisters. Whither the Church?
Wither the Church indeed. Berkley is right to be concerned about the MECC. As Dexter Van Zile has explained:
Examples of the Sanders' film work can be found at their web site, here. Readers may decide for themselves whether Berkley is justified in refusing to give money to a cause championed by the Sanders and through the MECC.
