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July 3, 2012 Senator Nancy Ruth,
The Senate of Canada Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1A 0A4
Dear Senator Nancy Ruth,
Thank you for your letter concerning the Report of the Working Group on Israel Palestine Policy. I recognize your concern about the implications of the report and of course understand the significant challenges it presents to Jewish United Church relationships. The Report was prepared by an elected member group chosen from the members of the Executive of General Council in response to the direction of the 40th General Council. I assure you that it has been prepared with full understanding of its implications, and with careful attention to the voices of both Jewish and Palestinian colleagues.
I was pleased to be able to join the Working Group in parts of its processes of consultation, including a visit to Israel Palestine last year. However, as the Working Group moved into deliberation and writing of its report, I intentionally withdrew from the process recognizing the need to remain neutral and unattached to its recommendations given that I will be presiding during the Council. The recommendations of the Working Group will come to the full General Council for deliberation and vote.
It would, therefore, be inappropriate for me to comment on the report.
Commissioners to General Council will receive both the report and a selection of the many responses that have been received. Among them we will include your letter. I have also asked the Working Group to provide a more detailed response to the issues you raise.
Again, thank you and your Senate colleagues for the concern you hold for the United Church, your community of faith, and for the many ways you seek to live out God’s mission in your daily work in the Senate.
In the deep peace of Christ,
Moderator
Mardi Tindal
The United Church of Canada/L’Église Unie du Canada
cc: Senator Bert Brown Senator Jim Munson
Senator George Baker Senator James Cowan
Senator Elizabeth Hubley Senator Yonah Martin
Senator Dennis Patterson Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen
______________________________
July 3, 2012 Senator Nancy Ruth,
The Senate of Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A4
Dear Senator Nancy Ruth,
Your letter of June 27th has been forwarded to us for response. We appreciate the concerns raised in your letter and most of all appreciate your care for the church and its relationship with the Jewish community in Canada. We too are deeply concerned for the implications of our report both for relations with the Jewish community and as well for the situation of Palestinians. We understand the challenge of conflicting narratives and the assessment that "choosing sides" implies assigning guilt to one party.
We wish to assure you that the Working Group struggled with this question through the two full years of its work. We also want to assure you that we did not enter this process with a predetermined outcome in mind. Our deliberations were intense and open to listening deeply to the many sides of this undoubtedly complex situation. We also want to indicate that we came at this task with significant support and depth in relationship to the issues involved.
Staff that supported us in our work included overseas personnel who have worked in the region, most recently for several years with the Heads of Churches of Jerusalem. Our senior staff person served for a decade as the InterFaith Officer of the church and was involved in the development of the church’s groundbreaking document on United Church–Jewish relationships,
Bearing Faithful Witness. Other staff have been involved for numerous years in ongoing contact and relationship with Jewish and Palestinian partners in the region. One of our members spent three months in the region, during the time of the writing of the report, in addition to the Working Group’s own visit to the region. All of this is secondary to the depth of partnership that has framed our relationships in the region extending back into medical mission work in Gaza in the 1950s and forward until today. Most significantly we have strengthened our relationship with Palestinian Christians who have called out to us and to Christians throughout the world. Their voice is a critical part of our report.
The Report has made a deliberate choice to focus on the ending of the occupation as the necessary step in moving towards peace in the region. We did so recognizing the significant implications of Israel’s continued expansion of the illegal settlements and therefore the continued dispossession of Palestinians. We find it hard to justify a neutral stance to this reality which in the end means that it is in Israel’s interest to delay any resolution while continuing to create "facts on the ground." The Working Group has also experienced and witnessed the harsh reality of the occupation which remains invisible to most Jewish colleagues and to those who are not able to visit and talk directly with Palestinians.
Nevertheless, our report offers directions about which Palestinian partners have significant concerns. Our decision to continue to recognize Israel as a Jewish State is highly controversial among Christian Palestinian partners. Their concern is that if Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish State it will then provide support to those who wish to have Palestine become an Islamic state. Palestinian Christians strongly desire Palestine to be a secular democratic state, something they believe is only likely if Israel remains that as well.
The report also proposes an understanding of the Palestinian Right of Return that is contentious within the Palestinian community. While upholding the need for a negotiated settlement to the right of return, the report clearly indicates that a resolution of this must be undertaken in a way that does not undermine the demographic integrity of Israel. The recommendations also uphold a right of return for all refugees, including Jews displaced during the war of 1948. (Please note that this is found in the recommendations section as well as in the body of the report.)
These issues alone are highly significant and challenging to most Palestinians. It would be possible to add to them the report’s strong support for a two-state solution and the critique of a bi-national state (one state) solution; its advice against the language of Apartheid applied to Israel; and the critique raised of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Campaign. We offer these parts of the report as an indication that it is inaccurate to suggest that the report "does not mention a single expectation of the Palestinians."
Your letter also argues that economic action against settlement products is indistinguishable from Israeli products. We note the increased emphasis within the Jewish community itself on settlement products. (Please see Peter Beinart’s book
The Crisis of Zionism.) We also note that several countries, including the UK, Denmark and South Africa, have now required that settlement products be clearly marked as distinct from products produced in Israel itself. It is also critically important to the Working Group’s recommendation that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal according to international law and the policies of most countries in the world, including Canada. Buying products from these settlements is benefiting from and supporting illegal activity. Again, we appreciate the concern that you have for the implications of the report for United Church–Jewish relations. The Working Group believes that the report itself does reflect with great care the complexities of the issue. But it also makes a choice that remaining neutral in respect to the difficult realities of the region is not acceptable after 45 years of continued occupation.
Sincerely,
Bruce Gregersen
Staff of the Working Group on Israel Palestine Policy
cc: Senator Bert Brown
Senator Yonah Martin
Senator Dennis Patterson
Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen
Senator Jim Munson
Senator George Baker
Senator James Cowan
Senator Elizabeth Hubley
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