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The Methodist Church of Great Britain is currently holding its annual conference in Portsmouth, England. At the conference, which began on June 24, 2010, delegates will vote on a report about the Arab-Israeli conflict titled “Justice for Palestine and Israel.”

The 50-plus page report calls on Methodists in Great Britain to embrace the Kairos Document issued by Palestinian Christian leaders late last year and to participate in a boycott of Israeli goods produced in the West Bank. The arguments used to justify these actions are similar to those offered in statements and resolutions about the Arab-Israeli conflict offered by mainline churches in the U.S. during the past decade.

The document subjects Israeli policy and Jewish self-understanding to intense scrutiny but offers nary a word of criticism of the anti-Semitic ideologies used to justify violence against Israel and to deny its right to exist. The report also puts forth a narrative in which Israel can bring a unilateral end to the conflict through concessions and withdrawals without acknowledging that such actions have not worked in the past.

In sum, the report takes the anti-Zionist narrative put forth by Israel’s adversaries in the Middle East, repackages it a bit, and then offers it up for approval to Methodists in England in the guise of fair-minded analysis and peacemaking.

On this score, the document provides more insight about its authors than it does the conflict they are purportedly trying to end. In particular, the document reveals its authors are obsessed with Israeli use of force and indifferent to the ideologically and theologically motivated hostility toward Jews and Israel that afflicts many quarters of the Middle East.

As expressions of anti-Semitism become increasingly prevalent throughout the world, particularly in Europe, the authors of this document have seen fit to fan the flames by portraying the Jewish state as the primary source of conflict in the Middle East and the world.

In this context, Israel’s supporters, particularly those who are Jewish, become complicit in the suffering of the world by supporting the Jewish self-determination. Under the logic of the narrative offered in this report, Jewish sovereignty itself becomes a great obstacle to human rights and peace in the Middle East and its supporters, enemies of mankind.

Like the anti-war socialists in pre-World War II France, the authors of this report have chosen to view the Jewish people through the eyes of their enemies in the apparent belief that the Jews must have done something to deserve the enmity of fascists who seek their destruction, with the Methodist report being their effort to tell us exactly what. This mind set is described by Paul Berman in his 2003 text, Terror and Liberalism (W.W. Norton and Company). Berman writes:

The anti-war Socialists wanted to know: why shouldn’t the French government show a little flexibility in the face of Hitler’s demands? Why not recognize that some of Hitler’s points were well taken? Why not look for ways to conciliate the outraged German people and, in that way, to conciliate the Nazis? (Page 125)

In a desire to avoid the next Verdun, Berman writes, French socialists went out of their way to root hostility toward the Jews in the behavior of Jews themselves. Stirred by the “antique idea” that people are universally motivated by notions of Western rationalism, “anti-war Socialists gazed across the Rhine and simply refused to believe that millions of upstanding Germans had enlisted in a political movement whose animating principles were paranoid conspiracy theories, blood-curdling hatreds, medieval superstitions, and the lure of murder.” Berman continues:

At Auschwitz the SS said, “Here there is no why.” The anti-war socialists in France believed no such thing. In their eyes, there was always a why.

Hitler and the Nazis ranted about the Jews, yes, and the rants were medieval, and the tones of hatred and superstition grated on the ear. Still, the anti-war Socialists wanted to understand their enemies and not simply dismiss them—everyone wanted to seek out whatever was comprehensible, the points on which everyone could agree. And so listening to the Nazis make their wildest speeches, the anti-war Socialists, in a thoughtful mood, asked themselves what is anti-Semitism anyway. Does every single criticism of the Jews reflect the superstitions of the Middle Ages? (Page 126).

This habit of mind, Berman reports, was embraced by intellectuals in the West confronted with suicide attacks against Israel during the Second Intifada. These attacks were motivated by a violent mass movement that regarded death as its goal, Berman reports, but this reality “seemed unthinkable” to many people in the West.

And, all over the world, the temptation became great, became irresistible, to conclude that, no, the world remains a rational place, and pathological movements do not exist, and slanderers are weaving lies on behalf of narrow material interests. No, suicide terror must be—it has to be, perhaps in ways invisible to the naked eye—a rational response to real life conditions. (Pages 133-134)

This temptation is clearly present in the Methodist report. And in order to make their story work, the authors of the Methodist report ignore Arab and Muslim misdeeds in the Middle East and the ideas that motivate them and focus almost exclusively on Israeli actins and their impacts on Palestinians.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 26th, 2010 at 10:52 am and is filed under Webmaster's Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.