'Liberal' Christian Group Takes Money from Zionist Funders

Sister Ruth Lautt

By Richard Edmondson

Usually when we hear of American Christians voicing support for Israel it comes from the Christian Zionists, who tend overall to be pretty right wing, pro-war, and fairly steeped in millennial end-times expectations (Israel's favorite type of people). Now, however, comes a bit of a new twist—an ostensibly “liberal” Christian group, led by a Catholic nun, that has taken a position against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement, and which, lo and behold, if the report below is correct, has also received money from donor organizations heavily involved in funding Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in the West Bank.

The group in question is called Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East (CFWME), led by Sister Ruth Lautt, who is a member of the Order of Dominican Sisters of Amityville, New York. The CFWME not only denies that ethnic cleansing of Palestinians took place in 1948, it has even made critical assertions regarding the Kairos Palestine Document, issued by Palestinian Christians in December of 2009. That document calls upon the world to support divestment and boycott as a nonviolent means of ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, and further calls upon Christians to “stand alongside the oppressed and preserve the word of God as good news for all rather than to turn it into a weapon with which to slay the oppressed.”

The word of God is a word of love for all His creation. God is not the ally of one against the other, nor the opponent of one in the face of the other. God is the Lord of all and loves all, demanding justice from all and issuing to all of us the same commandments. We ask our sister Churches not to offer a theological cover-up for the injustice we suffer, for the sin of the occupation imposed upon us. Our question to our brothers and sisters in the Churches today is: Are you able to help us get our freedom back, for this is the only way you can help the two peoples attain justice, peace, security and love?

Apparently the answer from Sister Lautt isn't real strong in the affirmative. “No reasonable or honest person would find Israel blameless in this conflict,” says a document on the CFWME website that seeks to rebut the Kairos Palestine declaration—but then, having presumably established its credentials with presumably objective, fair-minded Christians, CFWME then goes on to echo what is essentially the standard Israeli hasbara line on virtually every aspect of the conflict. Here is but one example—pertaining to the so-called “generous peace offer” made by Israel in the year 2000 to the Palestinian Authority, led at the time by Yasser Arafat.

In December 2000, President Clinton made a proposal in Washington D.C. The Palestinians would get all of Gaza, about 97% of contiguous West Bank territory, East Jerusalem for their capital, three Quarters of the Old City, sovereignty over the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosques and $30 billion. This would have ended the occupation. PM Barak accepted. It was the Palestinian leadership that said no.

This is the way the mainstream media reported the deal as well. But how accurate is it, and does it tell the whole story? Well, one thing it leaves out is that under the proposal, the Palestinian state would have been denied what every other sovereign state in the world possesses: control over its own borders. The following comes from the website Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:

Although some people describe Israel's Camp David proposal as practically a return to the 1967 borders, it was far from that. Under the plan, Israel would have withdrawn completely from the small Gaza Strip. But it would annex strategically important and highly valuable sections of the West Bank—while retaining "security control" over other parts—that would have made it impossible for the Palestinians to travel or trade freely within their own state without the permission of the Israeli government…

The annexations and security arrangements would divide the West Bank into three disconnected cantons. In exchange for taking fertile West Bank lands that happen to contain most of the region's scarce water aquifers, Israel offered to give up a piece of its own territory in the Negev Desert—about one-tenth the size of the land it would annex—including a former toxic waste dump.

Because of the geographic placement of Israel’s proposed West Bank annexations, Palestinians living in their new "independent state" would be forced to cross Israeli territory every time they traveled or shipped goods from one section of the West Bank to another, and Israel could close those routes at will. Israel would also retain a network of so-called "bypass roads" that would crisscross the Palestinian state while remaining sovereign Israeli territory, further dividing the West Bank.

Israel was also to have kept "security control" for an indefinite period of time over the Jordan Valley, the strip of territory that forms the border between the West Bank and neighboring Jordan. Palestine would not have free access to its own international borders with Jordan and Egypt—putting Palestinian trade, and therefore its economy, at the mercy of the Israeli military.

Had Arafat agreed to these arrangements, the Palestinians would have permanently locked in place many of the worst aspects of the very occupation they were trying to bring to an end. For at Camp David, Israel also demanded that Arafat sign an "end-of-conflict" agreement stating that the decades-old war between Israel and the Palestinians was over and waiving all further claims against Israel.

Why does CFWME’s public paper rebutting the Kairos Palestine document neglect to mention this vital information, crucial for an understanding of the “generous proposal” made in 2000?

Here’s a little more from the Kairos Palestine document:

Israeli settlements ravage our land in the name of God and in the name of force, controlling our natural resources, including water and agricultural land, thus depriving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and constituting an obstacle to any political solution.

But CFWME seems to take no heed of these depradations, for another thing that goes unmentioned in its Kairos rebuttal is the Arab peace proposal — a proposal that has been on the table since 2002 and that calls for a region-wide peace agreement in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal to its 1967 borders. That offer, too, has been rejected—though not by the Palestinian leadership; it was rejected by Israel. Hardly any wonder, then, that Kairos Palestine would refer to a “dead end in the tragedy of the Palestinian people.” Again from the KP document:

The decision-makers content themselves with managing the crisis rather than committing themselves to the serious task of finding a way to resolve it. The hearts of the faithful are filled with pain and with questioning: What is the international community doing? What are the political leaders in Palestine, in Israel and in the Arab world doing? What is the Church doing? The problem is not just a political one. It is a policy in which human beings are destroyed, and this must be of concern to the Church.

You have to keep in mind when the KP document was released: December of 2009. In other words, just 11 months after Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, in which 1400 Palestinians died, approximately 300 of whom were children. Indeed, human beings were, and are, being destroyed. Continuing from the KP:

We address ourselves to our brothers and sisters, members of our Churches in this land. We call out as Christians and as Palestinians to our religious and political leaders, to our Palestinian society and to the Israeli society, to the international community, and to our Christian brothers and sisters in the Churches around the world.

It’s a call that anybody with even a smidge of a moral conscience would have to hear loud and clear. But what does CFWME say in its public rebuttal? That the organization…

…strongly encourages U.S. Churches to read the Kairos Palestine document with an open heart but not with an uncritical mind. We also encourage our churches to seize the current opportunity to act as peacemakers by encouraging resumption of direct talks—and not fostering the flames of conflict by punishing one side through acts of divestment and boycott.

These of course are the same things Israel is calling for. A statement like this in essence amounts to a stab in the back to the Christians of Palestine. But wait, there’s more.

In part II of its rebuttal, CFWME takes the authors of the KP to task for remaining “silent with regard to another dominant reality on the ground—Israeli suffering under terrorism and decades of wars waged against it by virtually all of its neighbors.” But of course the rebuttal document itself is silent on Israeli terrorism against Palestinians, and on the “decades of wars” waged against the native inhabitants of that land by a government which now stands in direct violation of more than 30 UN resolutions dating back to 1967.

I kind of wonder what Sister Lautt thinks about the depiction of Jesus in the Talmud? Perhaps it doesn’t matter greatly to her. At any rate here’s the article I mentioned regarding where CFWME has been getting some of its funding. The article comes from the blog Mondoweiss. It appeared there in January. I don’t know if Sister Lautt ended up making it to last month’s United Methodist General Conference in Tampa, or if so, what role she played there, but as I reported at the time, the Methodist divestment resolution was rejected when it came to a vote on May 2.

Christian group dedicated to derailing divestment bankrolled by settler-funding philanthropy

By Alex Kane

When United Methodists converge on Tampa, Florida this Spring, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) holds its general assembly in early July, the question of divestment from companies that profit off of the Israeli occupation will once again attract significant attention. Delegates at these church wide meetings will be confronted by an array of attacks on any resolution that promotes divestment as one route to pressure Israel and its control over the occupied Palestinian territories. And a familiar face to the delegates will be leading the fight against these resolutions: Sister Ruth Lautt, the national director of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East (CFWME).

Lautt is a member of the Dominican sisters order of nuns (Roman Catholic) and a former lawyer. Her organization, which she runs on her own (though there is a board), says it “advocate[s]” for “fairness” in American church dealings related to Israel/Palestine. In practice, this has meant leading delegations to Israel, promoting “positive investment” in the region instead of divestment, and working “behind-the-scenes” at religious conventions, “helping opponents of divestment draft motions [and] applying persuasion at the subcommittee and committee levels,” as the New York Times has reported.

But an analysis of donations to the organization reveals a much more complicated picture that raises questions about CFWME’s professed mission and their role in church politics on Israel. My investigation of donation tax records to CFWME show that the organization's budget has more than doubled since its founding through the support of funders linked to illegal West Bank settlements and promoting Islamophobia in the U.S.

The settlement-funders who contribute to CFWME stand in stark contrast to the Dominican order's position on Israel/Palestine. An Israel/Palestine briefing on a Dominican order website, part of the order's "call to justice" which Lautt's New York-based branch signed onto, calls for prayer and support for the Palestinian United Nations bid for statehood. It also expressed firm support for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, which does BDS work.

Lautt did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

Her organization’s website is filled with appeals to fairness, the two-state solution, the peace process and negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians—nothing that on its face would seem to contradict the Dominican order's take on the conflict. CFWME also routinely issues press releases blasting any church action or rhetoric in support of boycotts or divestment from illegal Israeli settlements.

Their most recent press release quotes a religious leader saying that “Fair Witness supports both the Israelis and Palestinians in their quest for peace. We therefore encourage Israel to continue to accept the Quartet proposal and we strongly urge the Palestinians to also accept the Quartet's plan and sit down and negotiate directly with Israel. This is the only way peace can come to this region.”
It is a decidedly different Christian pro-Israel take than the usual fire and brimstone rhetoric from Christian Zionists.

“It gears itself, I think, towards otherwise liberal congregations,” said David Wildman, a longtime proponent of divestment who is the executive secretary for Human Rights & Racial Justice at the United Methodist Church's Board of Global Ministries. But Wildman, a critic of CFWME, also described the organization as an “attack group” that seeks to “block other efforts at achieving a just peace.”
A New York Times profile of Lautt published in 2008 says that she “disassociates herself from Christian Zionists of the theological and political right...openly criticizes [the] occupation of the West Bank and laments Palestinian suffering.” The profile also reported that Lautt has “little contact with Jewish advocacy groups, none with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobby.”

But that’s not true. According to the organization’s tax filings, donations to CFWME have steadily increased since the group was founded in December 2005, from $82,432 in 2006 to over $200,000 in 2008, although donations have decreased since then (in 2010, the group received $119,652 in donations). And right-wing Zionist, settler-funding philanthropic groups have contributed to the organization’s increase in funds.

Take, for example, the funding received from the Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker Foundation, a group that gives to anti-Muslim, right-wing Zionist and neoconservative causes. In 2006, the foundation gave Lautt’s group $16,342, as well as giving $25,000 to the Central Fund of Israel (CFI), which the New York Times described as a multimillion dollar “vehicle” used to “channel donations” to West Bank settlements. A 2009 column by Akiva Eldar in Ha’aretz reported that the CFI gave money to the extremist yeshiva in a West Bank settlement “whose rabbi said it's okay to kill gentile babies.” This foundation and its affiliated groups were identified by the Center for American Progress as one of the top donors to anti-Muslim causes in the U.S., giving $1.1 million to Islamophobic groups from 2001-2009.

Similarly, CFWME received $5,000 from the William Rosenwald Family Fund in 2006, a philanthropic group that has also contributed to neoconservative groups like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and Commentary magazine. The foundation was also identified by the Center for American Progress as a main funder of anti-Muslim groups.

Other philanthropic groups that fund the organization tend to give to a wide array of causes, including liberal causes domestically, but also to groups tied to West Bank settlements. For example, in 2008 the Rosenfeld Foundation gave CFWME $1,500, as well as money to the American Jewish Committee, the Innocence Project, Middlebury college and more. The foundation also donated $1,000 to AISH New York, linked to the pro-settler Aish HaTorah network. A representative for Aish once publicly wished for the death of “a hundred Arabs or a thousand Arabs for every one Jew they kill.”

Another philanthropic group that gives to CFWME is the Jewish Communal Fund, which gave CFWME $2,000 in 2006 and $2,500 in 2007. The Jewish Communal Fund gave $18,000 to the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, a Christian Zionist group that promotes settlements in the West Bank and has given money for settlement infrastructure. The fund has also doled out tens of thousands of dollars to the Aish network. And Jared Malsin recently reported in Salon that the fund also gives to the Hebron Fund, a group Malsin linked to incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in Hebron.

Further linking CFWME to right-wing Zionist causes is the fact that Dexter Van Zile, who has worked for the David Project and currently works for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), has served on CFWME’s board. Many of the philanthropic organizations funding CFWME also fund CAMERA and the David Project. Van Zile declined a request for an interview, and said on Twitter that he has not been “involved with the organization for several years.”

According to Wildman, Van Zile is a constant presence at divestment battles in churches, lobbying against divestment efforts. The David Project helped lobby to reverse a pro-divestment Presbyterian church resolution in 2006. and CAMERA frequently issues statements against BDS and blasts church divestment initiatives.

The funding revelations complicate the image CFWME projects as a liberal group working for a just peace in Israel/Palestine. Instead, CFWME is being funded by groups that are linked to anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and that are partners in Israel’s West Bank colonization project. And Lautt’s advocacy is being bankrolled by people strongly opposed to the Dominican order’s view of the conflict, which calls for solidarity with Palestinian Christians.

Given the source of some of her funding, perhaps it comes as no surprise that Lautt and her organization also defend the Israeli apartheid wall. “I need to question how people feel they have the right in the name of peace and justice, to tell other people not to try to preserve their own lives,” she is quoted as saying in the New York Times article referenced above. “You’re not obligated to lay down and die,” she adds.

No perhaps not. But here’s a slightly different perspective on the wall.




Perhaps it’s important to reiterate, as stated in the Modoweiss article, that the views of some of those funding CFWME are at variance with the official position of the Dominican Order. And needless to say they are sharply at variance with members of the Methodist Church who fought valiantly this year to try and get a divestment resolution passed through the Church’s General Conference this year.
One other thing—the United Methodist General Conference meets every four years. The above mentioned New York Times article was published on June 14, 2008—almost exactly four years ago…and a month after the previous conference had ended—and coincidentally that conference, too—the one in 2008—saw a divestment resolution on Israel go down to defeat. Who was there at the time, present as a “nonvoting member”? Why none other than Sister Lautt, according to the Times story. The story also supplies us with a quote from a Conference delegate, Sandra Hoder, a member of the divestment task force which had tried to get the resolution pushed through, and who offered an opinion on Lautt’s meddling.

“It’s inappropriate for an outside group like this one to come in to our conference and seek to influence internal decisions that reflect our values and our previously adopted positions on the occupation,” said Hoder. “It’s an odd pursuit for a nun to spend so much of her time seeking to discredit Christians who are trying to protect other Christians who are being persecuted by the occupation.”

But now, thanks to the Mondoweiss article, we see that perhaps it wasn’t such an “odd pursuit” after all. 2008 was the year CFWME took in over $200,000, including donations from the Rosenfeld Foundation and the American Jewish Committee.