Hey Jew boy Jesus is one of us after all.
On Sun, 3 Feb 2008 20:57:13 -0800 (PST), VivaChavez
<TruthSetsUFree1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> IT'S ABOUT TIME....BUT STILL A LITTLE TOO LATE....
>
>THEY HAVE THE BLOOD OF OVER A MILLION ARAB MEN. WOMEN AND CHILDREN ON
>THEIR HANDS.
>
>WILL JESUS FORGIVE THE GENOCIDAL CHRISTIANS???
>
>
>U.S. Methodist Church renews drive for divestment from Israel
>
>By Nathan Guttman, The Forward
>
>Tags: Divestment, U.S.
>
>Tensions are re-emerging between Jewish organizations and some
>mainline Protestant churches in the wake of a renewed drive for
>churches to divest from companies doing business with Israel.
>
>The United Methodist Church opened discussions last Friday on a
>resolution calling for divestment from Caterpillar, the tractor
>manufacturer, because the company supplies Israel with bulldozers used
>in building the separation barrier and in demoli****ng Palestinian
>homes. The divestment resolution comes only months after the
>publication of a church-sponsored re****t referring to the creation of
>the State of Israel as the "original sin."
>
>Relations with the Presbyterian Church (USA) are also strained,
>following remarks by church officials criticizing Israel because of
>the Gaza closure. A recent study by an affiliate of the Presbyterian
>Church called on American Jews to "get a life" instead of focusing on
>defending Israeli policies.
> Advertisement
>
>"This reflects a very disturbing trend in these churches," said Ethan
>Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public
>Affairs. "These developments are a result of work of several very
>wicked forces that play in the church."
>
>The divestment campaign, thought by many in the Jewish community to be
>dormant, is still active among mainline Protestant churches and is re-
>emerging as a main issue on the agenda of Jewish groups. Attempts to
>block the divestment drive, which began four years ago, have proved
>only partially successful. Interreligious dialogue efforts and public
>pressure managed to mute some churchwide calls for divestment, but
>other initiatives are still gaining sup****t.
>
>The Methodist meeting, held on January 25 in Fort Worth, Texas, was an
>initial orientation meeting for delegation heads who will lead their
>groups at the church's quadrennial conference in April. Delegation
>leaders were presented with speakers both sup****tive and opposed to
>the draft divestment resolution, which calls for removing all
>Methodist pension fund holdings from Caterpillar.
>
>"The United Methodist Church holds $141 million of pension funds in
>companies that sustain the occupation," said Susan Hoder, a member of
>the church's Interfaith Peace Initiative. "This has to stop. We have
>to cut our ties to the occupation."
>
>Hoder, who strongly favors passage of divestment measures, went on to
>claim that American taxpayer dollars are used to fund Israeli
>military. "A lot of this money goes into the pockets of Israeli
>military leaders and politicians who get rich while the population of
>Israel suffers," she said.
>
>With 11 million members, The United Methodist Church is the largest
>mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. The upcoming April
>general conference, the church's main forum for making policy
>decisions, will first discuss the divestment resolution in a
>subcommittee. Afterward, the panel's recommendations will be put to a
>general vote to make them official policy.
>
>A spokesman for the United Methodist Church did not return calls from
>the Forward seeking comments on the divestment drive.
>
>Arrangers of the pre-conference meeting last Friday in Fort Worth
>allowed a representative of the organized Jewish community to speak on
>the issue. Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, the American Jewish Committee's
>director of interreligious affairs, told the Methodist delegates that
>the Jewish community was concerned about the resolution. "I told them
>that while they may think it is not anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish,
>for us it feels anti-Israel and feels anti-Jewish," Greenebaum told
>the Forward after the meeting.
>
>At the same time, Greenebaum warned the Jewish community against
>overreacting to anti-Israel sentiments in the church. Protestant
>churches, he said, "care very deeply about their relations with the
>Jewish community."
>
>What prompted Jewish activists to take action was not only the renewed
>divestment drive but also a re****t from the women's division of the
>Methodist church, which addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
>The 225-page re****t, compiled by the Rev. Stephen Goldstein, attempts
>to outline the historical and current contours of the conflict, but
>according to Felson, the re****t amounts to "the most egregious thing
>that has crossed my desk that was not put out by an overt hate
>group."
>
>Among the statements in the re****t that irked Jewish community
>activists are a reference to the founding of the State of Israel as
>"the original sin," a passage calling Israeli founding father David
>Ben-Gurion an "extremist" and a passage defining Israeli actions as
>acts of "terror." Discussing the impact of the Holocaust on Israeli
>society, the Methodist re****t claims it has been the cause for
>"hysteria" and "paranoiac sense" among Israelis.
>
>"Are we not called to testify when oppressors use their identity as
>the
>oppressed with stories of sixty years ago but through some failure of
>perception cannot see what transpires now in the shadow of the
>Holocaust?" the re****t goes on to ask.
>
>After letting four months pass without a formal response, last week
>four Jewish women's groups sent a letter to heads of the Methodist
>church, calling the re****t "inflammatory, inaccurate, and polemical."
>Hadassah and women's groups affiliated with Conservative Judaism,
>Reform Judaism and United Jewish Communities signed the letter.
>
>Another expected step by Jewish organizations is the launching of a
>new Web site that will call for a "return to civility" and condemn
>anti-Israeli voices among Protestant churches.
>
>The Presbyterian Church, the first to come up with resolutions calling
>for divestment, has so far avoided taking action on this issue, but it
>still sup****ts a line seen by Jewish activists as anti-Israel. In
>recent weeks, a heated exchange of letters took place between Jewish
>community leaders and heads of the Presbyterian Church, following the
>church?s criticism of Israel over the situation in Gaza. In a letter
>to the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, head of the church's general
>assembly, 12 Jewish organizational leaders complained that "the anti-
>Israel tone of your statement calls into serious question whether the
>season of mutual understanding we welcomed in July 2006 has yet
>arrived."
>
>
>http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/950666.html
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