Thursday, October 14th

The NCC and the IRD, again

The IRD's report on human rights advocacy in the mainline churches is back in the news. This time, John Leo weighs in at US News & World Report. He jumps off from the Presbyterian Church (USA) threat of divestment from companies doing business in Israel:

How do the Presbyterians go about adopting stances like this? Apparently they cast a stern moral glance around the world, look for possible abuses in China, North Korea, and Iran, and seeing nothing disturbing there, decide to focus once again on Israel. The conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) released a measured and devastating report on the human-rights efforts of mainline churches and groups–the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), plus the reliably leftist National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches. The report, covering the years 2000 to 2003, found that of 197 human-rights criticisms by mainline churches and groups, 37 percent were aimed at Israel and 32 percent at the United States. Only 19 percent of these criticisms were directed at nations listed as "unfree" in Freedom House's respected annual listing of free, partly free, and unfree nations. So Israel was twice as likely to be hammered by the mainliners as all the unfree authoritarian nations put together. The fixation on Israel left little time and inclination for these churches to notice the most dangerous violations of human rights around the world. Not one nation bordering Israel was criticized by a single mainline church or group, the IRD report says. No criticisms at all were leveled at China, Libya, Syria, or North Korea.

That provoked the wrath of the Rev. Bob Edgar of the NCC. In a press release, he took Leo to task for not talking to anyone at the NCC first (may be a legitimate complaint, though opinion columnists don't operate by the same standards of balance that news reporters do), but also makes some really wild and inaccurate charges. The release says that Leo "suggested the Council's criticisms of the government of Israel were 'anti-Semitic.'" What Leo actually wrote was:

Many Jews see the divestment movement as an instrument of anti-Semitism. Maybe it is, but the efforts of the woeful mainline churches are better seen as classic knee-jerk leftism, an expression of hard-core loathing for the United States and the West, with Israel as a stand-in for America.

That may constitute a "suggestion," but in any case it relates to divestment, which the Council hasn't said anything about. Interestingly, Edgar doesn't respond to the charges of being anti-American or knee-jerk leftist. Instead he goes on to accuse Leo of employing "the smear tactics of McCarthy-era propaganda [a charge which has itself become a form of McCarthyite smear, in that no argument is made, just names called], and contributes to the abuse of religious belief as a tool of partisan politics," despite the fact that Leo never mentions any political party.

Here's the heart of the Bob's response:

The column had claimed that 37 per cent of the churches' human rights resolutions (and 80 percent of the NCC's) were aimed at Israel. Yet, Edgar noted, in the entire 54-year history of the National Council of Churches, only two policy statements have referred to Israel and Palestine. And out of 650 resolutions adopted during that time, fewer than 40 have dealt with the Middle East, many of those concerned such matters as Christians in Egypt, hostages in Iran and Lebanon, and war in Kuwait and Iraq. Only five NCC statements about Israel were issued during the period of the IRD's survey, and several of those also criticized Palestinian leaders.

I don't know how to parse the difference between "policy statements," "resolutions," and "NCC statements" (though the IRD report set up a very specific standard of what was considered), so I thought I'd simply check the NCC Web site and see what I could find. There's no index of the 650 resolutions to which Edgar refers, so I checked the results of the last four General Assemblies. Here are the results:

*One resolution (here) from the 2000 Assembly that explicitly condemns Israeli military action and "de facto imprisonment of the Palestinian population" while making no mention of Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.

*Nothing from 2001, when the focus was on 9/11 and its aftermath.

*One resolution (here) from the 2002 Assembly on post-9/11 US policy that called on the US government to "insist on Israeli compliance with all relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions" and referred to the "cycle of violence" between Israelis and Palestinians without ever mentioning Palestinian terrorism. Another resolution (here) condemned Israel for its treatment if the Gree Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem without mentioning the support for Palestinian terrorism on the part of one of the priests from the Patriarchate office.

*One resolution (here) from the 2003 Assembly that calls for dismantling the separation fence. This statement does mention Palestinians violence, but does so by equating Israeli military action against terrorists with Palestinian targeting of civilians: "We, as people of faith, are deeply troubled by the systematic violence against Palestinians, and equally troubled by bombing campaigns against Israelis." While it calls for the tearing down of the fence, it says absolutely nothing about what Palestinians need to do, and in particular doesn't call for an end to the suicide bombing campaign being carried out by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and elements of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The previous year's statement about the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem was re-passed.

I don't know about years previous to 2000, but that's five resolutions in four years dealing with the MIddle East, and doing so in an almost entirely one-sided fashion. Were there really only 35 resolutions in the previous 50 years of the NCC that dealt with the Middle East? So Edgar says.

As for statements, I found things that looked like "statements about Israel" here, here, here, here, here, and here. Some of these are letters to government officials that I counted because they were sent in the name of the NCC. And I didn't include any news releases that included statements critical of Israel. Read these on your own and see if they bespeak a one-sided view of the conflict.

Finally, to go back to Edgar's response to Leo, I have to point out that at no point does he take issue with the central concern of both Leo and the IRD report: that the NCC and its fellow institutions have been one-sided in their drumbeat of criticism directed at Israel (and the US), while giving many of the world's most oppressive regimes a pass. At no point in any of his reaction to the IRD has Edgar bothered to cite a single criticism of the human rights records of China, North Korea, Syria, etc.

So, Bob: when are you going to stop whining about criticism and actually, substantively respond to it?