Opinion-Perfidy!

By Beryl Wajsman, August 22nd, 2012

So,  in the face of a world of horrors, the General Council of the United Church of Canada chose to vote for a boycott of products produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank because the Council claims that the settlements are the primary impediment to a two-state solution. Reasonable people can debate the settlements. But where is the Council's concern over Hamas' thousands of murders of their own people as well as Israelis? Where is the Council's concern over the utter failure of the Palestinian Authority to stop suicide bombers operating from its territory against Israel? Where is the Council's concern over Palestinian children being taught anti-Jewish, yes anti-Jewish not anti-Israeli, hate in PA schools from textbooks paid for in part by Western foreign aid dollars? Whether or not one supports the settlements, to announce that they are the major impediment to peace is a travesty of truth.
And another question arises. Is settlement productivity that gives jobs to Palestinians really the crucial world issue? What, no boycott of Iran that threatens the world with a nuclear war? No boycott of Islamist regimes where women are treated like chattel and little girls have acid thrown in their faces if they have the temerity to go to school? No boycott of China that harvests organs from Falun Gong prisoners and keeps hundreds of millions of its own people in slave labour? No, those targets would have been too difficult. Too big. Too dangerous. So let's pick on Israel, a small democracy but the giant frontline defender of our liberal pluralism against existential threat. Defender of the very freedoms that allow the General Council the luxury of indulgence in such unbridled hypocrisy.
But perhaps no one should be surprised. Because the answer to why the Council took this repulsive action lies in its own history and in its own words. They are eloquent and sufficient testimony to condemn the Council for such perfidy.
In 1997, the 36th General Council authorized the publication of a 125-page document to improve relations with Jews, educate its own members on the Jewish roots of Christianity and come to terms with the Church's own checkered past in confronting anti-Semitism. It was overwhelmingly approved at the 38th General Council in 2003.
In the preamble, the document lists the reasons why such a report was necessary. The third and fourth reasons were the following: "Because there is rising anti-Judaism, anti-Semitism, white supremacy, and neo-Nazism in Canada and other countries in the name of Jesus Christ; Because we are finally understanding that Christian denial of Jesus’ Jewishness contributed to pogroms, the Holocaust, the refusal to admit refugees, and other horrors against Jewish people." The document was called "Bearing Faithful Witness." The actions of this Council are a betrayal of faithful witness.
The General Council's actions today are, sadly, too rooted in the lesser angels of the Church's nature. Canada is poorer for it.