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Presbyterians Attack Israel over Human Rights Violation Yet Seem Perfectly Fine with Terrorists

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The 2018 Presbyterian General Assembly closed out the month of June by passing several resolutions criticizing Israel for violence and alleged human rights violations while rejecting language critical of Palestinians and Hamas.

The 223rd PGA, which met in St. Louis, Missouri, from June 16 to 23, passed 11 resolutions concerning Israel before adjourning, many of which criticized  the Jewish state for alleged human rights violations and conflict with Palestinians, according to the Israeli news outlet Haaretz.

One of the resolutions concerning Israel condemned the killing of Palestinians in violent protests along the Gaza-Israel border but refrained from mentioning the role of the terrorist group Hamas in those deaths.

“The church should speak against all discourse that inspires violence in Gaza. Such incitement is not restricted to one side,” Jeff DeYoe of Peace River Presbytery, who proposed the amendment to remove references to Hamas, said according to PCUSA.

“Providing language without mentioning a specific group, is more than sufficient that the PC(USA) does not condone any language that incites violence on either side.”

The resolution condemning the border violence, once stripped of the words “by Hamas,” passed by a vote of 438 to 34.

Other resolutions asked RE/MAX, LLC to end the sale and rental of Jewish settlement properties in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and encouraged Presbyterians to engage with Jewish colleagues “on the issue of Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

The resolution could have ramifications for entities in the United States, PCUSA reported:

“The overture also urges members of the company’s networks in the US not to refer clients to agents and brokers who are involved in the sale or rental of settlement properties.”

Do you think PCUSA criticizes the Jewish state too harshly?

The General Assembly also passed a resolution demanding that Israel fully comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserting that Israeli laws currently favor Jewish citizens over Muslim and Christian citizens.

The assembly struck down a proposed resolution “For the Protection of the Children of Israel and Palestine” on the grounds that it criticized the treatment of children under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and did not criticize Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children enough.

It also struck down a resolution to end the Presbyterian denomination’s label of Israel as a “colonial project.”

The assembly’s actions concerning Israel drew the ire of The American Jewish Committee.

“The Church remains obsessively critical of Israel in its national utterances,” AJC’s director of Interreligious and Intergroup Relations, Rabbi Noam Marans, said in a statement according to Haaretz.

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“For many years and in myriad ways, the PCUSA has gone beyond legitimate criticism of Israel and embraced demonization of the Jewish state.”

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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