The invective is telling. The Presbyterian Church USA’s razor thin vote to divest from three American companies that aid the Israeli occupation is, opponents of the move tell us, irrelevant, because Presbyterians are irrelevant. The language used to make this point is not particularly ecumenical: here Rabbi Shmuley Boteach inveighs against the PC-USA’s vote by referring to the “rotting corpse of the Presbyterian church.” One suspects that if a prominent Presbyterian cleric used comparable language about a branch of Judaism, it would attract some negative attention.
To influence the general assembly vote of this allegedly “dying” and “irrelevant” denomination, Zionist groups mobilized like mad, chastising the resolution and coordinating with Presbyterian groups created to oppose it, like the misnamed “Presbyterians for Middle East Peace.” Opponents of the resolution more often than not claimed that while they didn’t like Israel’s policies either, they balked at taking even symbolic action to oppose them. Amorphous threats were cast by leading Jewish establishment figures. Presbyterians would become isolated as anti-Semites, some charged. The interfaith dialogue between Presbyterians and Jews would be “called into question.” (One wonders about the value of dialogue with people who consider you a “rotting corpse.”) The Israeli embassy implicitly accused the Presbyterians of supporting terrorism.
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