June 26, 2006

The Awad NGO conglomerate's diversified offerings satisfy all your social activism needs, from conflict tourism to replacement theology

When I initially wrote this post about a useful idiot college student, I didn't know that by connecting the dots I would end up describing a sophisticated multi-pronged effort to delegitemize Israel - most aspects of which I was already familiar with, separately - all revolving around a particular Palestinian Christian family. I finally changed the title of this post to reflect this convoluted reality.

This is becoming drearily predictable: One more posturing fool kidnapped by "militants" for PR or hostage purposes, rescued at great risk and expense, making excuses for his captors. And if he had managed to get himself killed, he'd be the next Rachel Corrie before you can say "kumbaya."

Jewschool is afraid this incident will scare off potential recruits:

This bodes poorly for those of us engaged in Jewish-Palestinian encounter projects, hampering our ability to overcome participants’ fears about seeing the conflict first-hand.

Gee, ya think?

One of the commenters calls this "conflict tourism," which apparently is a market niche in itself, although not without controversy:

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Judith | 06/26/06 at 12:14 PM | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

June 22, 2006

Good news in the Middle East

Two pieces of good news this week:

Egyptian blogger and dissident Alaa is being freed, finally. A worldwide blogger campaign probably had something to do with it.

The Presbyterian campaign to divest from Israel has been defeated. If you haven't been following this saga of the past three years, Solomonia wrote many posts on it as it developed. We were also tracking this campaign (among others) here.

Speaking of Presbyterians, David Paulin has done some research on how Presbyterian seminaries have influenced the attitudes of this generation of clergy toward Jews and Muslims, here and here. (Unfortunately, a similar in-depth study needs to be made of Jewish seminaries.)

UPDATE: The release of Alaa was a real cliffhanger. They transferred him to a really shitty jail for his last night, and finally released him after a crowd of bloggers began to descend on the police station.

UPDATE: Solomonia has more on the PC (USA) General Assembly meeting where the divestment initiative was voted down. For good measure, a resolution was passed condemning suicide bombing as a crime against humanity. Note this Orwellian detail:

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Judith | 06/22/06 at 12:36 AM | 1 Comments | 2 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

February 07, 2006

More Mindboggling Timing

Even a world awash in the Great and utterly contrived Cartoon Jihad of 2006 could not keep the earnest men and women of the General Synod, the established legislative body of the Church of England, from performing their righteous duty of voting for disinventment from Israel.

In a surprise move, the General Synod voted to back a call from the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East for "morally responsible investment in the Palestinian occupied territories".

In particular, the Synod backed the Jerusalem church's call for the Church Commissioners to disinvest from "companies profiting from the illegal occupation", such as Caterpillar Inc. Caterpillar, a US company, manufactures bulldozers used in clearance projects in the occupied territories, and also used by Palestinians in their own rebuilding work.

The motion was passed overwhelmingly, in spite of strong lobbying from leading members of Britain's Jewish community, concerned that Israel's right to protect itself from suicide bombers and other Palestinian terror attacks should not be compromised. No time was made to debate an amending motion put forward by Anglicans for Israel, the new and influential pro-Israel lobby group.

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Alcibiades | 02/07/06 at 09:28 PM | 2 Comments | 1 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

May 04, 2005

The Protestant divestment movement and the new supersessionism

I previously highlighted the work of Dexter Van Zile, a member of United Church of Christ who is very articulate about the hypocrisy and dishonesty of the divestment initiatives of the liberal American churches. Dexter works with the Judeo-Christian Alliance, an initiative of the David Project (which is better-known for making the film Columbia Unbecoming and assisting students to challenge the academic bias in Middle East Studies at Columbia). You can hear a radio interview with him at that site.

Dexter sent me a link to another article he wrote . . .

Continue reading "The Protestant divestment movement and the new supersessionism"

Judith | 05/04/05 at 01:09 PM | 3 Comments | 3 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

April 10, 2005

Divestment update

Solomonia tenaciously tracks the divestment issue and led me to most of the following stories:

Dexter van Zile is spearheading a grassroots confrontation with the Protestant leadership over the initiative to divest from Israel.

He wrote a long deeply-researched report on the topic. He quotes their own theological resolutions back at them (powerful hypocrites really hate that!):

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Judith | 04/10/05 at 08:27 PM | 3 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

April 02, 2005

Divestment update

While some denominations have responded to arguments against divestment, others - the World Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ, and Disciples of Christ - are just beginning to consider divestment initiatives. The renewed peace process and disengagement from Gaza hasn't moved them.

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Judith | 04/02/05 at 08:39 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

January 24, 2005

Divestment update

Someone nominated Kesher Talk for Best Series by a Jewish Blogger, but the series (Jews in Odd Places) hasn't had an entry for some months, and the entries don't link to each other. So think about judging me - in that category - on this series; it's recent, topical, and well-maintained. (Solomonia also tracked this topic closely, since he lives near Somerville.)

Previous post on the (thankfully defeated) Somerville divestment initiative.
Previous post on other divestment initiatives, with links to others in the series.

I had noted several months ago (links in the posts above) instances of individual clergy dissenting from the Presbyterian divestment movement. I think a counter-movement is taking shape. A few weeks ago I got an email:

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Judith | 01/24/05 at 11:23 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

December 28, 2004

Somerville divestment update

Previous post here with links back to the others. My anonymous informant sent me some correspondence he had with one of the Somerville aldermen (or alderwoman, in this case). You can see the typical "progressive" argument here, complete with cherry-picked quotes from sources supporting her position, capitalizing "the Occupation" in order to dramatize the issue, no acknowledgement of any Palestinian responsibility for the peace process, nor any acknowledgement of the reality of Palestinian terrorism or the toll in Israeli lives.

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Judith | 12/28/04 at 06:22 PM | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

December 17, 2004

Israel Divestment watch

Remember the Presbyterian and Episcopalian divestment movements? More Episcopalians are dissenting from their leaders' decisions, and the chorus is growing to reverse the Presbyterian position.

Remember the stealth Somerville, MA, divestment initiative? Thanks to a lot of publicity and rapid mobilization, it was defeated. (Notice the Orwellian language.)

Oh great, we start to turn the tide on church and municipal divestment, and now the academic divestment assholes start up again. Is this ever going to end?

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Judith | 12/17/04 at 03:43 PM | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

November 26, 2004

More on antisemitism in ultra-violet America

I got an email (author wishes to remain anonymous) in reference to the Somerville divestment initiative:

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Judith | 11/26/04 at 03:50 PM | 7 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

November 22, 2004

Fighting antisemitism in ultraviolet America

Leftist antisemitism in Europe may be growing without much public protest, but in the US we are doing a pretty good job of confronting it, even in the bluest of blue communities, now that more of us have woken up. (I remember reading an editorial in Moment in 2001, pleading for Jewish organizations and parents to recognize the antisemitism on college campuses and help the Jewish students take a stand.)

For example, a group tried to sneak a divestment resolution past the Board of Aldermen of Somerville, an extremely liberal suburb of Boston. But there are a fair number of Jews in Somerville, and even lefty Ivy League post-graduate Jews tend to balk at divesting from Israel.

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Judith | 11/22/04 at 07:55 PM | 4 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

October 27, 2004

Nope, no antisemitism here, move along Dept.

In our last entirely predictable installment, we reported on the selective "social activism" of the Presbyterians, which tracks closely with the preferences of the Arab bloc at the UN. William Sjostrom notes some related "Church folks" activities, including speculations by one George Hunsinger of the Princeton Theological Seminarythat Saddam didn't really gas the Kurds. (Insert aghastness at latest Rowen Williams pronouncement here.)

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Judith | 10/27/04 at 10:38 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

October 22, 2004

Nope, no antisemitism here Dept.

Meryl has the links to the latest Presbyterian outrage, and the latest nasty noises from Israel's neighbors.

Eugene Volokh has a survey of "Human Rights Advocacy in the Mainline Protestant Churches (2000-2003)." According to this report:

. . . criticisms of Israel amounted to 37 percent of the 197 human rights criticisms offered by the churches during those years, only slightly higher than the 32 percent of criticisms leveled at the United States. The remaining 31 percent of criticisms were shared by twenty other nations. For every one criticism of any other foreign nation, one criticism was made of the United States and one of Israel. Nearly all churches demonstrated this focus on the United States and Israel in their legislative actions, their statements, their news sources, or all three.

Continue reading "Nope, no antisemitism here Dept."

Judith | 10/22/04 at 02:00 PM | 3 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

July 25, 2004

Interfaith Relations, cont.

Looks like the Presbyterian leadership is starting to backtrack on their proposal to divest from Israel as the outrage catches up with them.

4. The assembly authorized exploration of a selective divestment of church funds from those companies whose business in Israel is found to be directly or indirectly causing harm or suffering to innocent people, Palestinian or Israeli. It did not approve a blanket divestment from companies that do business in Israel, as is being reported in some places.

(Start with that paragraph and read down about 5 more.)

But that's okay, because Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams is doing enough dhimmi duty for the whole left end of the Christian world.

The head of the worldwide Anglican Church, the archbishop of Canterbury, will reportedly mark the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks by praising Islam in an address from the pulpit of an Egyptian mosque. Rowan Williams had accepted an invitation to speak at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, considered by many to be the Muslim world's most important centre of learning, Britain's Sunday Times said today. He would speak of the common ground between Christianity and Islam with their shared inheritance as "children of Abraham", the report said.

Does anyone else notice any Oedipal overtones in that last sentence?

Judith | 07/25/04 at 03:48 PM | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch

July 16, 2004

Interfaith relations

It's one step forward for the Catholic Church, which just signed a statement equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

The joint declaration stated: �These past forty years of our fraternal dialogue stand in stark contrast to almost two millennia of a �teaching of contempt� and all its painful consequences. We draw encouragement from the fruits of our collective strivings, which include the recognition of the unique and unbroken covenantal relationship between God and the Jewish people and the total rejection of anti-Semitism in all its forms, including anti-Zionism as a more recent manifestation of anti-Semitism. The document later focused on terrorism. Terror, in all its forms, and killing "in the name of God" can never be justified. Terror is a sin against man and God,� it said.

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Judith | 07/16/04 at 12:06 AM | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBacks | Categories: - Divestment watch