By Lloyd Mackey

A SERIES of proposals on the Middle East, to be debated at the United Church's 40th General Council (GC) this week in Kelowna, has drawn some attention in Christian and Jewish groups beyond the confines of Canada's largest Protestant denomination.

At the same time, in a much less public forum, a couple dozen members of parliament, mostly Conservatives, are being circulated with a paper written by Christian analyst Dexter Van Zile, entitled Key

Mennonite Institutions Against Israel.

The proposals are coming forward, in part, because Canadian foreign policy has arguably shifted somewhat toward a more pro-Israel position since the GC last met three years ago. At the same time, a new government in Israel is taking a relatively harder line toward Palestinian relations.

One of the four Middle East-related proposals comes from the Montreal-Ottawa Conference of the United Church of Canada (UCC).

It asks the GC, among other things, to urge Israelis to withdraw their forces from Gaza and to call for the denunciation of past human rights abuses "committed by Israel and Palestine, as documented by Amnesty International and the United Nations."

It also urges the Canadian government and United Nations member states to support international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza.

The other three proposals come from the UCC's Toronto Conferences.

One Toronto proposal calls for the Canadian government to denounce policies of all governments that enforce discrimination based on race, religion or ethnicity, rather than "providing strong support for (Israel's) occupation (of Palestine) politically, economically and militarily."

Another proposal urges the GC to "advocate 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."

A third excludes a call for an academic boycott, but urges "divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination".

GC leaders are taking pains to point out that there are only four proposals regarding the Middle East, out of a total of 173 on the Kelowna agenda. Further, they suggest, the proposals can be adopted, amended or defeated.

Nevertheless, they stirred up enough angst among Canadian Jewish leaders that considerable newsprint was consumed, mostly in the National Post, in getting both Jewish critique and United Church responses onto the record.

The fiscal divestment policy has "elements of anti-Semitic behaviour," according to Eric Vernon, government affairs director for the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Frank Dimant, CEO of B'nai Brith Canada spoke in even strong terms. Quoted 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."

While United Church officials have been reluctant to talk off the cuff before the proposals are actually debated, UCC moderator David Giuliano wrote an open letter published in the National Post August 4. In it, he noted that the denomination, since 2003, has advocated peace in the Middle East through recognition by Israelis and Palestinians of both Israel's right to exist with secure borders and the emergence of the state of Palestine.

This concept is known as the two-state solution. It is an increasingly widely accepted "middle ground" between more radical positions.

One of those two positions would be a traditional Zionist approach which suggests the Bible mandates a single Israeli state, with Palestinians being resettled elsewhere in the Arab world. The other, as advanced by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would call for the elimination of a Jewish state or its resettlement elsewhere -- perhaps Alaska.

The two-state solution was the core of the Road Map for Peace cobbled together in 2003 by a "quartet" involving the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations. While the Israelis and the Palestinians have accepted the general premise of the road map, such matters as the continued settlement of Israelis in Palestinian territory and the missile attacks on Israel from Hamas-controlled Gaza have created obstacles to its timely implementation.

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Meanwhile, the Key Mennonite Institutions against Israel document has captured the attention of around a dozen Conservative MPs who have some past or present ties with Mennonite churches or organizations.

While the document is in the public domain, CC.com has learned that the members of parliament had been quietly circulated with its contents for information purposes. One Mennonite-connected MP suggested, in forwarding it to a larger group, that "it is interesting how the Mennonite community is viewed by some."

The document was written this summer by Dexter Van Zile, who is described as a "Christian media analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America."

Van Zile focuses mainly on Mennonite Central Committee and Christian Peacemaker Teams. The former is a well-regarded relief and development agency with ties to most major Mennonite denominations worldwide. The latter was started in the 1980s by a team including Ron Sider, a social activist evangelical and Mennonite theologian and author.

Van Zile's main points, summarized in his introduction to the paper, are that:

1. Mennonite-supported peacemaking institutions portray Jewish sovereignty as the cause of conflict and suffering in the Middle East and downplay Muslim and Arab hostility toward Jews and Israel.
2. The prescription for peace offered by these groups is for Israeli Jews to abandon their insistence on maintaining Israel as a sovereign Jewish state and acquiesce to a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
3. Mennonite anti-Zionism is emblematic of an inability to deal with the reality of evil and the power needed to confront it.

"MCC does not take a stance on whether a two-state or single joint Israeli-Palestinian state is the right one," she said.

Epp-Tiessen maintained that the agency works with "interested Jewish, Christian and Muslim, Israeli and Palestinian groups in the interests of human rights and non-violence."

With respect to the Van Zile paper, and particularly with respect to its contention that MCC advocates only a single state, she said Van Zile "makes many sweeping generalizations without documenting them. He doesn't really understand the Christian pacifist commitment."

"Most of the world does not yet recognize the power of peace and non-violence and its ability to change and confront evil. Last century, (in several instances) people overthrew oppressive regimes through non-violent means," Epp-Tiessen added.

The Israeli settlements in the West Bank are a key obstacle to any Israeli-Palestinian solution fitting into the Road Map of Peace, Epp-Tiessen maintained.

As to what might happen, coming out of the United Church deliberations, she agreed that there is pressure on the Canadian government to be careful just how far it advances its pro-Israeli positions -- which, she noted, began under the Liberal regime that preceded the Harper government.

She also allowed that, while the GC deliberations put a public profile on the Middle East issues, the fact that Mennonite-influenced MPs are examining the ways in which Christian Zionist supporters are critiquing them provides pause for thought below the surface.

Related stories:

Why single out Israel?
As if there weren't 50 other boycottable countries that routinely and intentionally inflict these things on their citizens in a wholly undifferentiated way, without the mitigating features of Israeli rule -- democratic checks and balances, a code and ethos of individual rights, rules of engagement for the military and the police, a free press, economic freedom and an independent judiciary.
Colby Cosh, National Post, July 31

Standing

up for Israelis and Palestinians
What may be surprising to some readers is that the United Church is willing to wrestle with such contentious issues in public. But that is the democratic nature of our church.
Reverend

David Giuliano, National Post, August 4

August 7/2009