Check out Richard Silverstein’s in-depth analysis of CAMERA’s High Tech Lynching of Palestinian Christian Group Sabeel.

Sabeel is a Palestinian liberation theology organization that supports a two-state solution and nonviolent resistance to the occupation. They’ve had conferences across the United States, sponsored and supported by various Christian denominations, which have usually gone off without a hitch.

But their most recent conference in Boston, which featured Nobel prize winner Archbishop Tutu and an open discussion of the concept of apartheid, caused particular ire among many in the pro-occupation and institutional Jewish community. Sabeel and Tutu confronted an intense campaign to vilify Sabeel as an anti-Semitic, hate organization.
Liberation theology, which emerged as a powerful voice of conscience in Latin America in the 60’s, by definition, uses Christian imagery and stories about Jesus to understand and fight contemporary injustices. Some of the images used by Sabeel, although entirely consistent with the liberation theology approach, understandably make some of us Jews uncomfortable, precisely because of the Church’s history of virulent anti-Semitism. But to take Jewish discomfort and turn that into vilification of Sabeel as an anti-Semitic group is simply beyond reason. It’s downright immoral. (Silverstein’s piece carefully dissects the arguments made in Boston by pro-occupation groups.)
See also our post on Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s experience with pressure from some Boston-based pro-occupation organizations.

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