As usual from Church of Scotland blog July 2015; "Palestinians are the victims. Jews are the perpetrators".

http://cos.churchofscotland.org.uk/blogs/witness-in-jerusalem/2015/07/06/sitting-in-the-judgment-gate/

 

“Palestinians who have their homes and olive groves demolished to make way for Jewish settlements are dispossessed and deprived of all dignity in the land of their birth. Palestinian children who have to cross military checkpoints every day to get to school and back, because the Separation Wall has been built through their communities, are being brought up in a climate of fear, deprivation and intimidation. The violent response of Hamas and other Islamist groups is both wrong and ineffective: it only provides Israel with a justification to deploy overwhelming force. Every missile fired out of Gaza only brings collective punishment on the Palestinians and strengthens the resolve of the Israeli government and military. Many Palestinians adhere to nonviolence. If this could be embraced more widely, it would be a far more powerful weapon that would pull the rug from under Hamas and deprive the Israeli government of any excuse for using force”.

John McCulloch, July 6, 2015

 

http://cos.churchofscotland.org.uk/blogs/witness-in-jerusalem/2015/07/10/tempted-by-violence/ 

 

“If the church is to have any place in our 21st-century world, it will be by rediscovering the core message of Christ, which calls us to live out our worship and adoration of God in service to others. If we love our neighbours, then justice follows as a direct result”.

John McCulloch, July 10, 2015

 

John McCulloch, is currently doing a six-week summer placement in St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem. John is about to enter his third year of training for the ministry with the Church of Scotland. His training is going well and seems in accordance with Church of Scotland doctrine.

 

Palestinians are the victims. Jews are the perpetrators of violence and dispossession. The violence of Islamic terrorists is always and only in response to aggression from an Israel ever looking for an excuse to “deploy overwhelming force”.

Yet, he does, grudgingly, concede that the Church of Scotland has still to find a place in the 21st century. But only if it can change its ways (Perhaps he is referring to its recent embrace of revisionist teachings – Kairos)

 

While a previous Moderator (Lorna Hood) and her successors can continue to ignore the institutional anti-Semitism within their organisation, I think that place in the 21st century is still far off.

Renaud Sarda 

SFI