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Haaretz
24 September 2007
After 37 years of
boasting of "inalienable solidarity" with the people of Israel, the
Netherlands’ second largest church plans to reexamine its stance this
fall. A group of notables from the Protestant Church in the Netherlands
(PCN) warned last week that the organization, which has over two million
members, is in danger of being "hijacked" by pro-Palestinian activists.
The warning - coauthored
by Dr. Jan van der Graaf, who served for 35 years as general secretary
within one of the three churches that make up the PCN, and three other
prominent church figures - was an open letter against changing the
reference to Israel. It was addressed to Minister Henri Veldhuis, a
General Synod member who said the clause made the church adopt a biased
view that ignored Israeli actions against Palestinians.
At a speech last month in
Utrecht for Friends of Sabeel (a Jerusalem-based Palestinian
organization), Veldhuis said the church should commit to a bond with
Israel "as people of the Torah" instead of the "Jewish people as an
ethnic group." Veldhuis also complained that currently, "the church has
a stronger bond with a non-believing Alaskan Jewish person than a
Palestinian Christian."
The open letter accused
Veldhuis of a slanted and hypocritical approach. "We were astonished by
your address before a Palestinian liberation organization that pretends
to be promoting reconciliation," it read. "You accused Israel but
ignored Hamas’s Jew-hating ideology. You overlooked the alarming
anti-Semitic upsurge in Arab countries."
Veldhuis responded that
the signatories "were regrettably and falsely" trying to portray Sabeel
and himself as radical left-wing activists. In a conversation with
Haaretz, Veldhuis said: "It is important to preserve the lessons of the
Holocaust and never forget the Jewish roots of church and bible and to
fight anti-Semitism, but we have to take a more realistic position on
the Jewish people as an ethnic group and on the State of Israel. The
PCN’s theology is now idealizing both."
He added that he believes
the coauthors - Van der Graaf, Dr. Theo van Campen, Dr. Wulfert de Greef
and Dr. Henk van der Meulen - are circling the wagons because of
"mounting criticism of Israel’s policies."
Van der Graaf said that
those who advocate changing the church’s charter are "only a highly
motivated minority" within PCN, and he believes the clause will
ultimately remain unchanged.
The PCN, which was formed
in 2004 as a merger of the country’s three largest protestant churches,
is scheduled to discuss revising its stance on Israel in November.
By Cnaan Liphshiz
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