Dear Ms. Francis,

I read your comments on CNN regarding the recent unfortunate divestment vote by the Presbyterian Church. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read that the divestment vote was, in your words, “about morality and not politics”.

Morality? Really? HP computer technology helps prevent Gaza’s Hamas army from getting more missiles and explosives via sea and air routes; Motorola Solutions surveillance equipment prevents Palestinian terrorists from infiltrating Jewish communities to brutally murder Jewish families; and Caterpillar D9 bulldozers clear land mines as well as abandoned buildings used to snipe from at Jewish drivers.

If the decision were about morality, the vote would have been to double down, not to divest.

And as for the claim that no politics were involved, this is merely self-delusion. When you take the position that Jews do not have the right to live in all their ancestral land, and that military occupation is not justified despite all the wars and terrorist operations launched from the disputed territories, then at least have the intellectual honesty to admit that you’ve taken a particular political position – however justified you may feel it is. These kinds of decisions are all about politics, make no mistake about it.

And lest any reader consider unwarranted my accusation that politics dominated the recent Presbyterian Church’s vote, permit me to draw everyone’s attention to a webpage currently on the Church’s official website, PCUSA.org. This is a boycott page that accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing” (put this term in the website’s search engine to find the page). This alone makes the point just how much the pro-Palestinian lobby within the Church has hijacked its policy-making.

The same page also spits out pro-Palestinian political positions, such as the supposed illegality of Israeli settlements (despite the split opinion of international law experts), the labeling of settlements as “impediments to peace” (as pure a political stance as there is), and the call to work towards a two-state solution, which may sound semi-apolitical until one realizes that this means empowering two organizations whose official charters both call for the elimination of Israel: Fatah and Hamas.

But the Presbyterian Church Israel Boycott page goes even beyond the above accusations, claiming that “those [Palestinians] living inside Israel are second-class citizens.” Not even the ardently pro-Palestinian Jimmy Carter agrees to such a description.

Perhaps most odious and poignant of the canards included on this page is the claim that Israel abducts Palestinian children! To have that particular blood libel on one if its webpages at this particular point in time when Israel is desperately searching for three Jewish children who were kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists who enjoy widespread support for their actions, and even from Palestinian members of Israel’s Knesset, is simply horrific. I have no doubt that there are many Presbyterians only learning of this now who are equally horrified.

And yet, there’s more. The kicker comes at the bottom of this page, where it unequivocally states:

There is now a global effort to boycott and divest from Israel in order to pressure the Israeli government to end its illegal occupation and apartheid and to respect international law. Like the effort which helped end apartheid in South Africa, this movement is working. (See www.bdsmovement.net)

Need I even comment? This statement belies everything that the current leadership has said in denying any connection to the international BDS movement. Period.

More examples of the politicization of the Presbyterian Church by certain pro-Palestinian members can be found by searching for the term “Palestine” and following the links. But I believe what I have presented above suffices to make the point.

I urge all sincere Presbyterians who understand the immorality of what is happening to their church to make a stand and effect the appropriate changes. Or, if in fact the majority of Presbyterians wish to adopt a pro-Palestinian political stand, let the Church state so clearly, and then those with a pro-Israeli political view will respond in kind. For now, I am withholding judgment of what the Presbyterian Church stands for, and await the actions of its constituents.

Sincerely,

Robert Klein
Be’er Sheva, Israel

JSSNews reports that 2 men on a scooter, armed with Kalashnikov rifles and handguns approached a Paris shul on Shabbat afternoon, in Paris’s 20 district.

The fled upon seeing the police. No shots were fired.

(JTA) — Armed, masked men threatened to burn down the house of one of Ukraine’s chief rabbis, a spokeswoman from his office said.

The incident outside the Kiev-area residence of Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich occurred on May 23 at 1:30 a.m., Inna Yoffe, the executive director of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, told Ukrainian media last week.

Bleich, the confederation’s president, was not in the country at the time of the attack, which ended without serious injury, Yoffe told the television channel 112 Ukraine two days after the reported attack.

“There was an attack on a paramilitary guard outside the fence in front of the house,” she said. “The attackers were wearing masks and camouflage uniforms with machine guns; they arrived by an SUV.”

Yoffe said the attackers forced the guard to lie face down on the ground and told him they would kill him and burn down the house. She did not say how many men threatened the guard.

The men fled the scene after another guard from inside the residence called the police, Yoffe added. The Jewish Confederation of Ukraine filed a complaint with police over the assault.

Contacted by JTA, Bleich said the men who showed up outside his home did not target him specifically. According to his understanding, the rabbi said, the attack was not anti-Semitic.

(JTA) — Police arrested two men in the severe beating of a Jewish man in Creteil, a Paris suburb.

It was the second anti-Semitic attack there in the last week, a local Jewish watchdog group said.

In the later attack, on May 30, three men in their 20s hit the Jewish man in his face inside his apartment building, SPCJ, the watchdog and security unit of France’s Jewish communities, wrote in a report of the incident that it released to the media on Sunday. During the attack, the report said, the assailants accused the victim of calling the police on them the previous night.

The victim broke his elbow after the assailants caused him to fall down, the SPCJ report said. The hit to the face injured his nose. The Jewish man, who was not named in the report, said the perpetrators hurled anti-Semitic insults at him during the attack, including “you Jews are all the same” and “dirty Jew.” They also told him that they knew where he and his wife and children lived.

Five days earlier, unidentified men assaulted two Jewish brothers, aged 18 and 21, in Creteil. The attackers used brass knuckles and caused serious but not life-threatening injuries. SPCJ reported that the two Jews were wearing kippahs and are believed to have been targeted because they are Jewish.

The following day, three men were spotted filming the entrance to a Jewish school, Ozar-Hatorah, which is located in the Echat a Creteil district of the southern Parisian suburb, the online edition of the Le Parisien daily reported.

The incidents occurred days after the slaying on May 24 of four people at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in central Brussels.

On Friday, police in Marseille, France, arrested 29-year-old Mehdi Mennouche, a native of France, on suspicion that he shot the four victims. French police sources said Mennouche had become a radicalized Muslim in prison and then left Europe to fight with jihadists in Syria.

Dozens of Arabs marched through the Old City of Jerusalem on Sunday night waving Hamas flags and chanting, “We don’t want Jews here” as well as their more common curse, “Allah hu Akhbar”.

Eventually, the border police dispersed the marchers.

(JTA) — Nearly 75 percent of thousands of French Jews who participated in a recent survey said they are considering emigrating.

The survey, whose results were released Monday by the Paris-based Siona organization of Sephardic French Jews, encompassed 3,833 respondents from the Jewish community of France, Siona said.

Of the 74.2 percent of respondents who said they are considering leaving, 29.9 percent cited anti-Semitism. Another 24.4 cited their desire to “preserve their Judaism,” while 12.4 percent said they were attracted by other countries. “Economic considerations” was cited by 7.5 percent of the respondents.

In total, 95.2 percent of all respondents to the online survey conducted by Siona from April 17 to May 16 said they viewed anti-Semitism as “very worrisome” or “worrisome.”

Slightly more than half, or 57.5 percent, of respondents, said “Jews have no future in France,” while 30.6 percent said there is a future for Jews there.

Asked whether they had personally experienced anti-Semitic incidents in the past two years, 14.5 percent replied in the affirmative but of those, only 21.2 filed a complaint with police. Of the complainants, 27.6 percent indicated that their deposition had led to concrete results.

A similar survey from 2012 showed a quarter of Jews who experienced anti-Semitic incidents filed a complaint, Siona noted in a statement, adding, “The results give cause for concern.”

Ninety-three percent said the French state had no efficient means for countering “Islamic exclusionist and pro-Palestinian propaganda,” whereas 93.4 percent said French mass media are partially responsible for France’s anti-Semitism problem. Roughly three-quarters said French Jewish institutions were helpless to stop anti-Semitism.

A similar number of respondents, 76.3 percent, said they were concerned by “the attack on ritual slaughter and circumcision,” compared to 16.9 who said they were not concerned.

A Bedouin IDF soldier was arrested after posting comments on Facebook calling for “Death to Jews” and praising Hitler.

The story was first exposed on Rotter, when someone noticed the Bedouin IDF soldier’s comments on Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day). The story made its way to the base where the soldiers began talking about it, and when the unit’s commanders found out they began an investigation.

The commanders confirmed the posting was real, and the soldier received a military trial and was then sent to a civilian prison.

He has apparently been expelled from the IDF.

Bedouins, Druse and other minorities proudly volunteer and serve in the IDF and the Jewish State, and this was obviously an unusual case.