by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

May 01, 2008

New Jersey Jewish activists have courted local Methodist clergy with the hope of derailing anti-Israel resolutions considered this week by church leaders.

And while delegates to a United Methodist Church conference in Texas showed signs of defeating the resolutions, local leaders said they were disappointed by their encounters with their Methodist counterparts.

At press time, delegates to the UMC’s General Conference had not completed parliamentary action on a number of resolutions dealing with Israel.

One resolution opposed “any vision of a ‘Greater Israel’ that includes the occupied territories and the whole of Jerusalem and its surroundings.”

Another called for “phased selective divestment” in companies “that cause harm to Palestinians and Israelis.” Among them are such well-known corporations as Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, Boeing, and Motorola.

By Tuesday afternoon, Jewish observers were not ready to celebrate.

“Several resolutions that were very anti-Israel died in committee, and there are now efforts to revive those,” said Ethan Felson, associate executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, who was reached from the floor of the convention. “They would be bad from an investment perspective and from an Israel-Palestine peace perspective.

“Nothing is over until it’s over,” he added. “There are things that have been positive and things that have been negative. That will continue until the gavel closes.”

In the weeks preceding the conference, 16 NJ pulpit rabbis were asked to contact 24 of their local Methodist colleagues and ask them to persuade conference delegates to have a “balanced” stand on Israel-related issues.

Partnering with the Community Relations Committee of MetroWest was Allyson Gall, executive director of the American Jewish Committee’s Metro New Jersey Area.

“We are saying divestment is not a way to bring about peace,” said Gall. “Investment is. Divestment just doesn’t work. To promote peace you need to invest in the Palestinians. The better the Palestinians are, the less likely they are to go the route of terrorism.”

Despite the outreach, local leaders and clergy said they were disappointed with the responses from their Methodist counterparts.

Rabbi Joshua Goldstein of Temple Sha’arey Shalom in Springfield said that his calls to a local Methodist minister were not returned.

“When I get a phone call and someone leaves a message, I would return the phone call,” he said. “It is disappointing to know the issue is not being given a fair shake. These are resolutions that would border on anti-Zionism.”

West Orange resident Phil Horn called the effort to reach Methodists “very sad and very frustrating.”

“These are our former allies,” said Horn, who chairs the Israel and World Affairs Committee of the Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ. “We fought side-by-side on all sorts of social issues, and all of a sudden, when they hear the word ‘Israel’ it is a red flag to them.

“I don’t care if they disagree with Israel’s policy on this, that, or the other thing. I do care when they take specific actions and single out us the way they would never single out anyone else,” he said.

“There are some elements within the national organizations of these churches that have a grossly one-sided depiction of the issues,” said Lori Price Abrams, director of the MetroWest CRC.

“People are certainly entitled to have their own views on the issues. But on a local level we are asking people to be aware of what is coming out on a national level and we are seeking greater balance at the conference. We are not telling them how to vote but to ask for reasoned discussion. We would hope they present a fair, balanced understanding of these very difficult issues in the Middle East.”

Local Jewish leaders also made written appeals to Methodist convention delegates.

They included a letter signed by leaders of 12 national organizations, emphasizing their “broad representation across the Jewish spectrum, holding a wide range of religious and political perspectives.”

The groups were “united by our support for a two-state solution, our deep concern for the suffering of both Palestinians and Israelis, Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and by our opposition to the use of divestment as a vehicle to further peace,” according to the letter.

The letter writers took pains to acknowledge the cost of the conflict on both sides.

“We share the need for balance: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has caused deep scars, and leaves both parties sensitive to unbalanced criticism or support,” stated “A Message to Our Methodist Friends” signed by eight national Jewish groups. “Any action or critique which ignores either the humanitarian and national needs of Palestinians or ongoing terror and Israeli security concerns will fall on deaf ears with one of the two parties. The ultimate result will be to push peace farther away.”

In Texas, representatives of B’nai B’rith, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and the American Jewish Committee attended committee meetings and met with Methodist leaders at the Fort Worth convention.

Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, the United States director of inter-religious affairs at AJC, said he spent most of a week as a “very nicely welcomed visitor” at the conference, where he lobbied against the resolutions, urging the Methodists “to speak in a truly balanced way.

“When I see people from the heartland, like the Methodists, only seeing one side of it, I say, ‘Hey, look. We all have to see both sides of it.’”

Greenebaum called his effort “a tremendously productive conversation. Many of the Methodists admitted they didn’t have as much information as they should. I think that reveals Israel is not an issue that is central to them in a way that it is central to us.”

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