ABSTRACT
Israelis and American Jews are understandably confused about the attitude of Christians toward Israel. On the one hand there is the official attitude of the World Council of Churches (WCC), echoed in the denominational journals and at conferences of all the major participating denominations, the so-called ‘mainline churches.’ Today the WCC is in the vanguard of the campaign at the United Nations to have Israel condemned for ‘systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing.’1 In recent years, the major Protestant denominations in the United States and elsewhere around the world have conducted a campaign against Israel based upon two ‘demands’: (a) that Israel ‘dismantle’ the security barrier by means of which it attempts to foil suicide-bombers and other direct assaults upon civilian life; and (b) that churches withdraw pension funds and other assets which are invested in corporations doing substantial business with Israel.2
