PRESBYTERIAN DIVESTMENT FROM ISRAEL
CAUSING CHARGES AND COUNTER-CHARGES

"Is divestment anti-Semitism?
No, the charge is rubbish."

MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 4 December: A few months ago the establishment American Presbyterian Church took the official decision to "divest from Israel". The Israelis and some of the American Jewish organizations they rely on in the U.S. won't admit it, but they are feeling a little heat.

Taking their cues from some of the academic discussions and university divestment campaigns that have been largely silenced, the Presbyterian Church after so many years finally stepped forward and took a formal decision to divest its funds from Israel and major Israeli-connected companies.

Now what's going on with the Presbyterians is not at all "anti-semitism" as that term has been known over the years. It is anti-Israel, and many of the American Jewish Zionist organizations will insist it is anti-Jewish -- which in a sense is true if the positions these Jewish organizations take are fair game for protest, which indeed they are.

But politically and financially exploiting the memory of the Holocaust, and charging any and all who speak up against Israel with anti-semitism, have always been the trump cards the Israelis and their largely controlled American Jewish organizations have tried to play. And they have done so for years and years now wrongly and unfairly against so many in public life, especially politicians, academics, and writers.

The Presbyterians deserve not only a great deal of credit for taking the courageous positions they have this year with regard to divestment from Israel, but for standing up strongly against the false charges of anti-semitism and beginning to focus on the accusers -- their affiliations, their motives, and their extraordinarily compromised relationships. And Mortimer B. Zuckerman is certainly near the top of that list.

This "guest column" published Wednesday in an Indiana daily misses so many things that could and should be said. But even so it is an illustration from the American heartland that there are new winds blowing now with regard to Israel, U.S. funding of Israel, "embedded" journalists (many American Jews) working for and with the Israelis, and the whole canard of charging "anti-semitism" to intimidate people of good will and real moral values from facing the realities both of today's Middle East and today's Washington.