If the Cliven Bundy affair tells us anything, it is that bigots usually reveal themselves as such sooner or later. As the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) prepares to vote on divestment from Israel, one of the major divestment proponents has decided to follow Bundy’s example. I speak of Reverend Larry Grimm, of the Capitol Heights Presbyterian Church in Denver, Colorado, and the former chair of the Justice Commission of the Colorado Council of Churches.
In a Facebook posting a few days ago, Grimm wrote this heartfelt invitation to Israeli Jews:
America is the Promised Land. We all know this. Come to the land of opportunity. Quit feeling guilt about what you are doing in Palestine, Jewish friends. Stop it. Come home to America!
https://www.facebook.com/...
I can think of no legitimate reason why Grimm thinks that Jewish Israelis would feel at home in America. There are more than 6 million Jews in Israel. Most of them were born in Israel, and have lived their entire lives there. Many Jewish families have been in Israel for decades, going back before the creation of the state. Indeed, there are Jews in Israel whose families have lived there continuously for centuries. Yet Grimm thinks they should all deport themselves to America. I note, also, that Grimm isn’t calling for Christians or Muslims to leave Israel for America; only Jews.
This is the ugly side of BDS, the side BDS proponents don’t want you to see. BDS proponents will argue until they are blue in the face that BDS is only about stopping the occupation, but that’s where they start to get coy. Try to get them to define what they mean by “occupation.” Do they mean the West Bank and Gaza, or are they also including land that is now the state of Israel? Grimm’s call for Jews to leave for America shows exactly where he stands: he believes that the entire region is “occupied Palestine,” not just the West Bank and Gaza. He denies any Jewish connection to the region, to the land, to the history and heritage. He is saying that Jews have no legitimate right to statehood or self-determination, while Palestinians do. And by denying Jews the right to statehood while claiming that the Palestinians have that right, he is demonstrating his anti-semitism for all to see, whether they want to or not.
This anti-semitism is coyly embedded in BDS, despite proponents’ protestations to the contrary. You see, BDS calls for creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, a notion which I have no problem with. But then BDS goes a step farther, and calls for all the Palestinian refugees, including millions who have never set foot in Israel as a child or adult, to have “the right” to return to Israel. This is where the coyness comes in, because they know that resettling millions of Palestinians in Israel will quickly change the demographics of Israel, turning it from a majority-Jewish homeland of the Jewish people into a state where Jews are in the minority. And of course, these coy BDS proponents are all about democracy, so if the new non-Jewish majority of Israel decides it should no longer be a Jewish homeland, if it should change its name to Palestine, that’s just the will of the majority, right? That’s democracy in action. That’s their endgame – Palestine and Palestine, side by side. But they will never openly admit to that, they aren’t courageous enough. Reverend Grimm is, though. He has the guts to say what he really wants, which is to deport all the Jews from Israel, six million of them, and turn Israel over to “its rightful inhabitants,” the Palestinians.
Grimm isn’t alone in his anti-semitism. The pamphlet being used by BDS proponents in the Presbyterian Church, “Zionism Unsettled,” has been endorsed by the notorious bigot, David Duke:
In a major breakthrough in the worldwide struggle against Zionist extremism, the largest Presbyterian church in the United States, the PC(USA), has issued a formal statement calling Zionism “Jewish Supremacism” — a term first coined and made popular by Dr. David Duke.
http://davidduke.com/...
When a white supremacist bigot like David Duke thinks you are on the right track, when he endorses your actions, you may be a bigot. And if you characterize Zionism, the expression of the idea that Jews, like other peoples (including Palestinians), are entitled to their own homeland and self-determination, as “supremacism,” you are putting yourself squarely in the camp of the bigots, of the anti-semites. So one must ask, does the Presbyterian Church, a church whose membership has declined by about 30 percent over the past 15 years, want to marginalize itself further by endorsing the views of bigots?