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By Lloyd Mackey
THE 40th General Council (GC) of the United Church of Canada wrestled with four
proposals concerning Israeli-Palestinian issues.
The four were the most controversial of the 173 proposals considered by about
600 ‘commissioners’ meeting on the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus in Kelowna August
9 – 15.
One of the four proposals came from the church’s Montreal-Ottawa Conference and three from Toronto conferences. One of the
latter called for “a comprehensive boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions at the
national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding
and subsidies to these institutions.”
It also called for “support (of) Palestinian academic and cultural institutions.”
This proposal had “elements of anti-Semitic behaviour,” according to Eric Vernon, Canadian Jewish Congress government affairs director,
because such sanctions have been “a weapon used by Israel’s enemies to destroy it.”
Frank Dimant, vice president of B’nai Brith Canada, spoke in even stronger terms. In the National Post, he suggested that “at a time when we are fighting Islamofascism around the world . . . the attempt
by these resolutions is to hurt in a most profound way one of the countries at
the forefront of the battle.”
Debate on these proposals at the General Council occurred in two stages.
On August 11, commissioners voted to repudiate language contained in the
background papers for the Toronto conference proposals. Some of that language
included references to Israel being an “apartheid” state – in effect, equating the Jewish state’s treatment of Palestinians with the racist policies of South Africa.
Jewish leaders from both the mainstream Canadian Jewish Congress and the more
conservative B’nai Brith welcomed this decision.
General Council programs officer Bruce Gregersen told BCCN that the Council “has never used [such] language.” He added that the Toronto South Conference “has a small and passionate activist group” who “made a mistake” due to “their passion and concern for . . . the Palestinians.”
Two days later, the General Council rejected the proposal for boycotts against
Israel. Instead, the GC voted to encourage peace in the Middle East and the
building of viable Israeli and Palestinian states.
This ‘two-state option’ has been advocated by the denomination since 2003. It is also supported by B’nai Brith and by the ‘quartet’ consisting of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United
Nations.
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Their most striking disagreements relate to whether the post-1948 or post-1967
Israeli boundaries should prevail.
But the Council, in the words of Gregersen, also encouraged member bodies of the
church – congregations, presbyteries and conferences – to feel free “to study, discern and pray, and to undertake their own initiatives.”
Those initiatives, he added, “may include economic boycotts as a means to ending the occupation [of
Palestine].”
That move, in the view B’nai Brith’s Dimant, negated the apartheid repudiation. He said his organization is “fighting a constant uphill battle against a coalition of hate, involving
Islamofascists, neo-Nazis and the radical left wing, including extreme trade
unions.”
Dimant said the GC’s call to dismantle Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem
amounted to “an ethnic cleansing of Jews.”
Dimant also regretted that the GC had not invited any of the kinds of Christians
who believe biblical prophecy is being fulfilled through the Jewish people “coming home” to Israel.
Gregersen allowed that “no one has an easy answer regarding East Jerusalem. There are proposals for
trading off land as part of the process. But the [Israeli] occupation
continues, and that makes final resolution harder to achieve.”
Gregersen said he hopes United Church congregations and Jewish groups – as well as other religious groups and leaders – will continue to work their way through the peace-making process.
To him, the key question was: “How do we help both those in Israel and in Palestine, so peace will have a
chance?”
September 2009
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