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Photo: Yissachar Ruas
| | | At 2010 Jerusalem Conference, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Jewish community leader Melanie Rechnitz; and Rabbi Cooper, who spoke on: "Goldstone Report and Lawfare's Anti-Israel Theological Twin"
click here to read full speech... | A group of activists hostile to Israel, including theologians and others in some prominent Protestant churches have launched a dangerous campaign to use theology to delegitimize the Jewish State and her supporters. They may be only days away from putting the policy of a large Protestant denomination on a collision course with Israel's survival — unless we raise our voices in protest.
This comes just as Israel's right to defend her citizens is denounced as 'war crimes and crimes against humanity' by the UN's Goldstone Report; when Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was verbally attacked at Oxford University with chants of "Slaughter the Jews"; and when screaming Muslim "activists" tried to silence or censor the speech by Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, at the University of California, Irvine. | | | | | Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Liberal Protestant churches pose growing threat to Israel
Read article... | In 2004, The Presbyterian Church in the US (PCUSA) became the first mainline
Protestant denomination to approve a policy of divestment from Israel. Unpopular with church members, it was later rescinded.
But in 2008, church leaders supposedly seeking to balance PCUSA'a Middle East policies, instead, created a committee dominated by seven activists holding strong anti-Israel beliefs. The lone member sympathetic to Israel, quit in protest when he saw their radical agenda.
Here's what we know about their report from a press release leaked by the committee last month: •the report calls for the US to withhold financial and military aid to Israel
•it apologizes to Palestinians for even conceding that Israel has a right to exist
•it declares that Israel, if defined as a Jewish State, must be inherently racist
•it embraces the Kairos Palestine Document, produced by Palestinian Christians, calling for boycott and sanctions against Israel and endorses full Palestinian 'right of return' to Israel which would lead to the demise of the Jewish democratic state
•it denies any connection between biblical covenants and the Jewish people. Israel's history, it claims, begins only with the Holocaust, a nation mistakenly created by Western powers at the expense of the Palestinian people to solve the 'Jewish problem' Adoption of this poisonous document by the Presbyterian Church will be nothing short of a declaration of war on Israel and her supporters.
It will be negatively impact interfaith relations, and could have significant repercussions in the political domain, with 46 Members of the US Congress and Senate who are Presbyterians.
And these initiatives, encouraged by the Geneva-based World Council of Churches, will cause a ripple effect on other denominations.
Which is why we urgently ask you to do two things:
1) Protest directly to the top leadership of the PCUSA urging them to stop this dangerous campaign which denies the legitimacy and security of Israel.
2) Reach out to your Presbyterian friends and ask them to speak out against this potential rewriting of PCUSA's policy towards Israel that will destroy the era of good will that has been fostered with the Jewish community for decades.
There are many staunch friends of Israel in PCUSA whose voices are being drowned out by a few determined activists, who are relentlessly pursuing a radical political anti-Israel agenda.
Act now: It is not too late for you to make a difference.
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