This understanding denies the connection between today’s Jews and Moses, Jeremiah and Isaiah. It marks a return to “replacement theology…” For centuries, that view was the theological basis for denying rights to Jews in Church-dominated Europe.

In many ways, the second half of the 20th century was a high point for Jewish-Christian relations. Today, however, the anti-Israel politics of certain powerful Christian bodies hampers interfaith relations and threatens to breathe new life into medieval doctrine that demonized Jews for hundreds of years.

In 2007, the World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of mostly liberal Protestants claiming a membership of 580 million worshippers, convened the “Churches Together for Peace and Justice in the Middle East Conference.” The conference produced the Amman Call, a document that condemned violence and endorsed a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but denied Israel’s right to a future as a Jewish state.

It did so by insisting that millions of Palestinians—the grandchildren of those who left and were expelled from Palestine in 1948—have the “right of return” to Israel. As is well known, granting all third-generation Palestinians such a right would mean Israel’s quick disappearance and its replacement by another Middle Eastern Mullahcracy or dictatorship.

The Amman Call also labeled the barrier Israel has built to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers—which has effectively saved untold Jewish, Muslim and Christian lives—a “grave breach of international law” that must be removed.

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