Church Denominations Stand Strong in the Face of Jewish Establishment Uproar Over Letter to Congress!

• Church denominations stand strong in the face of Jewish establishment uproar over letter to Congress! 
  by Alex Kane, http://mondoweiss.net/ 
  When 15 leaders of Christian denominations sent a letter (pdf) to Congress earlier this month asking for an investigation into whether military aid to Israel complies with U.S. law, the Jewish organizational world reacted with fury.
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  Jewish establishment groups pulled out of a planned interfaith dialogue scheduled for late October, pressured church leaders to attend a “summit” in lieu of the interfaith dialogue and flung around accusations of anti-Semitism. The vice-president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Ethan Felson, threatened to ask Congress to investigate “delegitimizers” of Israel.  
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  But the pressure hasn’t worked. Interviews with people involved with Palestine solidarity work inside church denominations and other advocates reveal that the Christian denominations have no intention of backing down from their stance. No response has yet been forthcoming to the invitation for a high-level official “summit,” and a collective response to the invitation and the charges from the Jewish establishment is being drafted.  The fact that the pressure hasn’t worked could be significant to the prospects of Christian denominations having a strong voice on Israel/Palestine in the years to come as the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate.
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  “The significance of these courageous 15 church leaders calling on Congress to hold Israel accountable for its misuse of U.S. weapons to commit human rights abuses of Palestinians cannot be overstated. Until now, this demand was largely constricted to the margins of the political debate, but now it is moving to the mainstream,” wrote Josh Ruebner, National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, in an e-mail. “The taboo now has been broken and the Israel lobby, as evidenced by its hysterical reaction to the letter, is quite evidently concerned that U.S. aid to Israel will now become a debatable topic on Capitol Hill.”
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  The Christian denominations who signed the letter also received a boost from the Carter Center, who “commended” the letter that “urged Congress to investigate human rights violations by Israelis against Palestinians that are obviously in violation of U.S. law.”
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  The letter that sparked the fracas is relatively mild. Sent to every member of Congress, it called for “an immediate investigation into possible violations by Israel of the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act and the U.S. Arms Export Control Act.” Church leaders noted that those laws “respectively prohibit assistance to any country which engages in a consistent pattern of human rights violations and limit the use of U.S. weapons to ‘internal security’ or ‘legitimate self-defense.’” The letter goes on to “urge Congress to hold hearings to examine Israel’s compliance, and we request regular reporting on compliance and the withholding of military aid for non-compliance.”
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