more recent thread in this forum.
I'm not Jewish, so I was caught off guard by the degree of anti-Semitism on the left. I wish that there were something that I could say to "talk you down," but here is what I have seen in my community.
I've been actively involved with two churches in my area which are "socially progressive." Their ordained clergy include women, LGBTQ+ people, African Americans, and people of Asian descent. Both have been active in civil rights for various groups.
So I looked up statement positions from their national denominations on the Israel-Hamas war. One of them said that Israel had brought the Oct 7 attacks on itself and called for a total, permanent ceasefire and accused Israel of genocide.
The other church stunned me with a Palm Sunday sermon out of the Middle Ages. I watched it online. If I had been there in person, I would have walked out conspicuously down the center aisle. The sermon used the trial of Jesus by Pontius Pilate to invoke the Medieval Christ killer accusation against Jews. It drew an analogy between the Israel-Hamas war and the Christian story of Pilate condemning Jesus only because "the Jews" demanded it. The sermon continued the analogy by saying that Pilate could have prevented the execution if he'd had the courage to take a stand against "the Jews" so people today must take a stand against Israel on behalf of Palestinians to end the "genocide."
I know the history of Palestine and Israel. I feel gut-punched by those churches, so I can't even imagine how Jews feel about the current wave of anti-Semitism. I am not a fundamentalist or literalist on religion. I chose involvement in those churches because I believed that they offered social activism that I could agree with.
They are mainstream denominations. One is Presbyterian. The other is Episcopalian. But both of them have churches in Palestine, so they have sided against Israel and use religion and sympathy for perceived underdogs in war to back themselves up.
A bright point is that we have an experienced, knowledgeable president in charge.
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