Pro Palestine Protestors Block Philadelphia Pride Parade

[wnylib]

99. Your specific congregation might not be taking sides or discussing

the I/P issues, but the one in my community definitely is. One of the priests there led a local pro Palestinian march to push for divestment from Israeli businesses and immediate ceasefire in Gaza. That same priest compares South African apartheid to Israel, refers to Israelis as outsider colonialists who lack legitimate ties to the region, and refers to Palestinians as the true indigenous people of the area. I heard the priest give a sermon comparing the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of Jews to Jesus' suffering at the hands of Jews and urging people today to have more courage than Pilate did in standing up to Jewish killers.

I am not a member of the church, but I've been involved in some of their community outreach programs and attended a few services there, as well as a fund-raising meeting for the Jerusalem Diocese. That meeting was open to anyone but was attended mostly by a group of regular members. It included a biased film produced by Al Jazeera that falsely claimed that Palestinians had never been given the opportunity to have their own nation state. One very outspoken person at the meeting complained about Israel's fight against Hamas because Hamas was the duly elected government in Gaza. Therefore Israel's fight against Hamas was illegal and security measures on the Gaza border were discriminatory. Never mind that 10/7 had just proven the need for border security as well as past terrorist attacks inside Israel from Palestinians crossing the border during intifadas.

I was surprised, to say the least, to hear those views at that church because it was contrary to my previous (pre 10/7) impression of the church. So I looked up websites for the national church body. I found there some condemnations of the 10/7 attacks and announcements of taking donations for Israeli victims as well as for Palestinian victims of the Hamas-Israel war. No bias there like in the local church in my community.

But, I also learned in my online search about the Sabeel organization founded by a Palestinian Anglican priest, Naim Ateek. Sabeel is Arabic for "The Way." Ateek has stated that Israel does not have the right to a nation state in the region. His view is that they needed a place to go during the Holocaust, but he denies their centuries (millennia) long connection to the land. He advocates for a temporary two state solution for peace now, but a long term single state requiring the dissolution of Israel as a nation state. Rev. Ateek also called for Anglican clergy to use the kind of Biblical comparisons between Jesus and "the Jews" to modern Israel and Palestinians that I heard in the local sermon.

The PCUSA (liberal Presbyterians) is closely partnered with Sabeel and has been criticized by the ADL (Jewish Anti Defamation League) for its anti-Semitic statements immediately after the 10/7 attacks as well as for past actions like meetings with Hezbollah. The ADL has issued statements about some Anglican views in alignment with Sabeel, but commended them for not being as extreme as the PCUSA. The ELCA (liberal Lutherans) take a more neutral position on the I/P issues, but they do list Sabeel as one organization that they affiliate with.