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Presbyterian Church Continues Targeting Israel
(JNS) Sean Savage - The Presbyterian Church USA passed a number of resolutions condemning Israel at its biennial General Assembly last week in St. Louis. Rabbi Noam Marans, the American Jewish Committee's director of interreligious affairs, noted the Presbyterians' "obsessive and relentless anti-Israel demonization." "The church remains obsessively critical of Israel in its national utterances," he said. "For many years and in myriad ways, the PCUSA has gone beyond legitimate criticism of Israel and embraced demonization of the Jewish state." He did note other groups within the Presbyterian Church - namely, the Presbyterians for Peace in the Middle East - that succeeded in amending some of the strongest anti-Israel overtures. Dexter Van Zile, a Christian media analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in American (CAMERA), explained, "The mainline churches embraced the notion that if somebody appears to be weak, they must be innocent, and that if someone has power, they must be evil. They use that lens to interpret the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians."