Jewish Weeklies Wield Poison Pens Against Christian Jerusalem Ad

By Richard H. Curtiss

“As Christians committed to working for peace, we support a negotiated solution for Jerusalem that respects the human and political rights of both Palestinians and Israelis, as well as the rights of the three religious communities. We urge Jews, Christians and Muslims to open dialogue on those issues.”—From paid advertisement in Dec. 21 New York Times by Churches for Middle East Peace.

Anyone who assumes that the two sentences above read like the lowest common denominator to emerge from an interfaith meeting of well-meaning clerics seeking to deal sensitively with issues in which emotions run high would be right. But anyone who also assumes that the bland call for “Jews, Christians and Muslims to open dialogue on those issues” could not possibly offend anyone would be dead wrong!

The brief paid advertisement (see box at end of “Lobby Watch”) from which the quotation was extracted was “blunt…biased and hypocritical” according to a Jan. 2 editorial in the Washington Jewish Week. In fact, according to the WJW editor, the writers “should be silent now—if they won’t speak up for continued Israeli control.”

So much for the First Amendment rights of those Christians who felt they had to pay for an advertisement to get their views published in The New York Times. And who were they? The Washington Jewish Week referred to them as “something called Churches for Middle East Peace.”

In fact, as the editor of the Washington Jewish Week knows if he actually read the ad upon which he expended so much bluster, bile and bigotry, Churches for Middle East Peace is a coalition of the Washington representatives of a giant swath of the denominations that represent something called Christianity in the United States. Specifically, according to the advertisement, “Churches for Middle East Peace is a joint program of the Washington offices of American Baptist Churches, USA, American Friends Service Committee, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Church of the Brethren, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, Mennonite Central Committee, the National Council of Churches, Presbyterian Church (USA), Catholic Conference of Major Superiors of Men’s Institutes, Unitarian Universalist Association, United Church of Christ (and) United Methodist Church.”

What’s as alarming as its editorial is the Washington Jewish Week’s boast in print that “sources told us” about the forthcoming ad “several months ago.” Does that mean that management of The New York Times checks with national Jewish leaders or the weekly Jewish press before deciding whether or not to run advertisments from Christian churches?

Perhaps The New York Times will want to discuss this with its readers, some of whom may be something called Christians. Or, if the WJW got the tip from some Times employee acting on his or her own hook, let whistleblowers beware. Any anonymous information concerning Israel that you pass on to a New York Times reporter may quickly find its way to some witchhunting editor of a Jewish weekly.

But why get exercised about the nutcake reaction of the Washington Jewish Week that only preaches to the choir? Well, the WJW wasn’t alone. Take this sample from the Jan. 3 issue of The Jewish Week, which has huge circulation in the tri-state New York metropolitan area because it is partially owned by a federation of Jewish fund-raising organizations there:

“The ad by Churches for Middle East Peace, a leading blame-Israel-first coalition of 16 Christian groups, was mischievous in the extreme. It sought to exploit the passions surrounding Jerusalem to serve the institutional agendas of groups whose members don’t live in Israel, and thus will not have to face the consequences of a failure to take full advantage of the current, tenuous movement toward peace. The ad calling for a ‘shared Jerusalem’ was blatantly one-sided…By calling for Jerusalem’s division at this delicate moment of negotiations, the church groups revealed that despite their pro-peace rhetoric, their real interest is in seeking a division of Jerusalem imposed from outside, with Christian religious bodies grabbing significant control and the Holy City turned into a kind of international protectorate…By urging Washington to take a position clearly unacceptable to an overwhelming majority of Israelis, the signers are displaying a willingness to pursue their own narrow agenda even if it destroys a peace process they say they support.”

That’s blatant editorial distortion of the text of the ad and misrepresentation of the intentions of its Christian and Unitarian sponsors. But such hate speech is not confined to the Jewish weeklies, whose bread and butter is whipping their Jewish subscribers into paranoid frenzies.

From an article distributed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, source of much of the national and international news in American Jewish weeklies, here are comments compiled by staff writer Debra Nussbaum Cohen from national Jewish leaders attacking and distorting not only the bland Christian advertisement, but the “intentions” and “records” of its sponsors:

“It is not surprising, Jews say, because sponsors of the campaign have a long history of criticizing Israel even as they work closely with Jewish groups on domestic issues of common concern…

“Churches for Middle East Peace ‘has had a long record’ of opposition to Israeli interests, said Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee. ‘They cannot stand Jews with power. They can deal with Jews as a minority, as individuals, as purely a religious group, but when they see Jews with power…it sticks in their throat,’ he said.

“Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of interfaith affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, agreed. Their ‘constant criticism of the State of Israel is the new way of theological anti-Judaism, of the teaching of contempt,’ he said.”

That’s real Ku Klux Klan rhetoric. It reveals who revs up the editors of Jewish weeklies to write for the record their rednecky rhetoric. However, staff writer Cohen, in keeping with JTA’s generally balanced approach, also interviewed Corinne Whitlatch, Washington, DC-based director of Churches for Middle East Peace.

“Our ultimate goal is to open up the debate a bit,” Whitlach told Cohen. “In many people’s minds there are only two options for Jerusalem: Greater Jerusalem under the sole sovereignty of Israel or a divided Jerusalem. The definition of a shared Jerusalem is more a construct of the mind and the attitude.”

So, it seems, is the extremely hostile reception by some national Jewish leaders and the weekly Jewish press to any suggestions about Jerusalem offered by the city’s Muslim or Christian inhabitants, or their international co-religionists, who comprise nearly half of something called the human race.

Having read the hysterical reactions cited above, it might interest Washington Report readers to re-examine the CMEP advertisement—already printed in the November-December Washington Report—but which the two Jewish weeklies quoted did not reproduce for their readers. Most of the full-page advertisement consisted of a listing of the 16 denominations and organizations comprising CMEP, the names of the hundreds of clergy, churches, organizations, and individuals sponsoring the ad, and a coupon readers could fill out and mail expressing agreement. The actual text of the advertisement, in its entirety, is in the box below.

SIDEBAR

A BAD HEADLINE ON A GOOD STORY

It’s taken most mainstream Christian churches in the United States a very long time to take a strong public stand against persecution of Christian, and Muslim, Palestinians in the Holy Land by the Israeli government. One reason, apparently, is that although the human rights violations by Israelis are egregious, ultra fair-minded—or perhaps merely timid—liberal U.S. clergy did not wish to appear to be taking sides just because some of Israel’s victims were their co-religionists.

Another reason, obviously, is that all Christian clergy remain sensitive to charges that the massive genocide against Jews in Europe of only two generations ago was carried out by German Nazis whose leaders, though for the most part not church-going Christians, had, after all, grown up in Christian homes.

Now, however, when mainstream Christian clergy are speaking out on Middle Eastern issues clearly within the realm of religion such as the sharing of Jerusalem, the city sacred to the three Abrahamic religions, and persistent, legalized Israeli religious discrimination against non-Jews, you would never know it from reading the mainstream press. That’s one reason Churches for Middle East Peace, an organization representing much of America’s Protestant, Catholic and Unitarian clergy, felt forced to buy an ad in the Dec. 21 New York Times to express its views on Jerusalem.

Predictably, the ad elicited vicious attacks from national Jewish leaders and organizations on the hundreds of Christian clergy, congregations and denominations who signed it. B’nai B’rith’s Anti Defamation League (ADL), which many Americans don’t realize is a Jewish organization since it has dropped the “B’nai B’rith” from its name, called the ad “unhelpful and a potentially dangerous intrusion into the Middle East peace process and U.S. policy making.”

Representatives of the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella organization for more than 50 national Jewish groups, asked for a meeting with one of the groups that had signed the ad, the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA.

What followed is truly shocking, reflecting disgrace not on the Christian clergy, but on America’s mainstream media. The Washington Post headlined its Jan. 25 religion page article reporting on the meeting, “Council of Churches to Revise Mideast Policy After Criticism from Jews.”

However, even the most superficial reading of the Post’s quarter-page article, by Ira Rifkin of “Religion News Service,” reveals that the Council of Churches agreed to no such thing. The Council of Churches general secretary, the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, said the NCC would review its Middle East policy and consult Jewish leaders along with the 33 Orthodox and Protestant denominations the Council represents. She said Palestinian, Armenian and other Christians living in Israel, the West Bank, and elsewhere in the Middle East also will be consulted and may disagree with the input from Jewish leaders.

And, finally, she predicted that “differences in points of view that will be difficult to resolve” will remain between the Council of Churches and the Jewish community. That’s very, very different from the impression created by the Washington Post headline that somehow the National Council of Churches had gotten out of line with its members on the Middle East and was backtracking.

Shown the article with its misleading headline, David Weaver, director of the NCCs Middle East Office, made his organization’s position very clear. “Our current policy was adopted by our board in 1980,” he told the Washington Report. “A review would update it in the light of current events such as the peace process. But it would not result in any significant alteration of our policy. In fact, it might strengthen that policy.”

Americans are entitled to learn what Catholic and mainstream Protestant clergy are saying about Jerusalem and about Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights. They aren’t getting this knowledge from either of America’s two “newspapers of record,” The New York Times and The Washington Post.—RHC