The Moral Crime of The Church of Scotland’s War on Judaism

...The moral crime committed by the Church of Scotland—and I use that phrase deliberately—is rooted not just in the trashing of centuries of Jewish learning and scholarship, nor the wholesale fabrication of a Jewish “crime” in the form of the “ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians. More than all of that, this report is a declaration of war against Judaism itself. If the “Temple is finished,” then the only form of Judaism that is acceptable is the one subscribed to by collaborators like Mark Braverman, who want us to adopt an eternal posture of repentance and shame.

Ben Cohen..
The Algemeiner..
12 May '13..

In a recent, exhaustive study of anti-Semitism, the German scholar Clemens Heni explains the significance for Christian theology of the story of Ahasver, a Jewish shoemaker in Jerusalem who, legend has it, refused Jesus a resting place as he made his way to Golgotha bearing the cross on his back. Ahasver’s punishment, says Heni, was to wander the world for eternity, an image that formed the basis for what the Nazis famously called “der ewige Jude”—“the eternal Jew.”

“The attribute ‘eternal’ cries out for redemption,” writes Heni. “For Christianity, it embodies the refusal on the part of the Jewish people to accept the coming of Jesus as the Son of God.” Of course, as Heni points out, this was a particularly strong theme throughout the Middle Ages. What’s notable, though, is that this same noxious depiction of the Jews is enjoying a new lease of life in certain sections of the Church today.

At the beginning of May, the Church of Scotland published a document entitled “The Inheritance of Abraham? A Report on the ‘Promised Land.’” Now, doing what I do, I spend a great deal of time reviewing anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic literature, and I like to think that I am passed being shocked. Reading the Church of Scotland report, was, therefore, something of a rude awakening; so immersed is the text in anti-Semitic clichés and malicious distortions of Jewish theology that I wondered whether I had been transported back to a time when people didn’t wash or brush their teeth, had a lifespan of 30 years or so, and spent their time on this earth living in fear of Jewish devils.

The purpose of the report is to dismiss the claim that the “Hebrew Bible”—heaven forbid that these people should use terms like Torah or Tanakh!—provides grounds for a privileged connection between the Jewish people and the “Promised Land,” which we Jews sinfully refer to as “Eretz Israel.” What follows is frontal assault on Jewish “exclusivism” that deploys the tired old trick of citing a Jew—in this case, Mark Braverman, an arch opponent of Zionism—in order to protect the text from accusations of anti-Semitism.

But anti-Semitic it most definitely is. Some choice excerpts:

Updating the Ancient Infrastructure of Christian Contempt: Sabeel*

by Dexter Van Zile
JCPA
Institute for Global Jewish Affairs
Published January 2011
Jewish Political Studies Review 23:1-2 (Spring 2011)

http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=5&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=625&PID=0&IID=5925&TTL=Updating_the_Ancient_Infrastructure_of_Christian_Contempt:_Sabeel*

Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, headquartered in Jerusalem, has been a persistent source of anti-Zionist agitation in mainline Protestant churches in the United States since its founding in 1994. The organization subjects Israel, Jews, and Judaism to intense scrutiny while remaining nearly silent about Arab and Muslim extremism in the Middle East. In addition to publicizing the writings of its founder, Anglican priest Naim Ateek, Sabeel broadcasts its message via regional conferences in the United States and regular study missions to Israel. Far-Left American and Israeli Jews are given prominent display at Sabeel conferences, where Israel is held up to a strict biblical standard of conduct while its adversaries are held to no standard at all. By giving its followers the sense that they are engaging in a showdown with the forces of evil embodied by Israel and its U.S supporters, Sabeel reenacts the church-synagogue rivalry documented in early Christian writings.

Rolling Out the Anti-Zionist Catechism
In December 2009, a group of Christians and Jews from South Africa, the United States, Europe, and Asia met in Bethlehem to give their blessing to a document written by Palestinian Christian leaders from Jerusalem and the West Bank. The text of the document - which has come to be called the Kairos Palestine Document (KPD) - calls on Christians throughout the world to target Israel with boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions.[1]

The document's stated goal is to bring a word of truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict to the world, but a close reading of the text reveals many of the tropes Arab Christians often use to indict Israel. The conflict is all Israel's fault; the Palestinians are innocent. Israelis sin; Palestinians make mistakes. Palestinian violence is justified; Israeli self-defense is not. Palestinian attacks targeting Israeli civilians are not terrorism motivated by a desire to destroy Israel, but "legal resistance" motivated by a desire to liberate themselves from oppression. The document also affirms a fantasy that Christian peacemakers have long embraced - that the fighting will miraculously come to an end once Israel ends the occupation. It states, "if there were no occupation, there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity."[2]

Being good guests, the visitors responded with some well-worn tropes of their own. One leader dishonestly equated the security barrier - which he called the "Apartheid Wall" - with the Berlin Wall used by East German leaders to keep their own people imprisoned, apparently forgetting that the security barrier was built to stop suicide attacks. Another flattered Palestinian Christians, who have little influence in Palestinian society, as offering a credible witness for peace to their fellow countrymen and to the world. A third lauded the willingness of the document's authors to risk accusations of anti-Semitism. And if the World Council of Churches' (WCC) coverage of the event is to be trusted, no one offered a word of criticism about Muslim and Arab hostility toward Christians, Jews, and Israel in the region.[3]