“Jews and all Christians and people of faith who truly care about peace should make it clear that so long as the Presbyterian Church USA is waging war on the Jews, they will treat it as a hate group masquerading as a community of faith.”

As a Presbyterian, albeit a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) it grieves me to see headlines like this, from Commentary: Presbyterians Escalate War on Jews. This story follows another, called Presbyterians Declare War on the Jews, and details the Presbyterian Church, USA’s outright embrace of anti-Semitism. Fresh off a closely defeated attempt to join the fringe BDS movement, the church has actually disseminated racist tracts and shunned a leader who had the audacity to visit Israel in cooperation with mainstream Jewish groups. Jonathan Tobin explains,first regarding the anti-Semitic tract:

As the Times of Israel reports, the Presbyterians’ Israel Palestinian Mission Network (IPMN) has issued a “study guide” about the Middle East conflict that will forever change the relationship between the church and the Jewish people. The 74-page illustrated booklet and companion DVD entitled Zionism Unsettled was published last month for use by the church’s 2.4 million members. Unlike other left-wing critiques of Israel, the Presbyterian pamphlet isn’t content to register disapproval of Israeli policies and West Bank settlements or to lament the plight of the Palestinians. The booklet is a full-blown attack against the very concept of Zionism and seeks to compare Zionism to the Christian anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust and other historical atrocities. Its purpose is to brand Israel as an illegitimate entity and to treat its American Jewish supporters as having strayed from the values of their religion. Zionism Unsettled not only swallows the Palestinian narrative about Middle East history whole, it is nothing less than a declaration of war on Israel and American Jewry.

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