Christian groups which have been vocal in their opposition to U.S. involvement in the Persian Gulf have now strongly condemned Iraq’s attacks on Israel.
The Most Rev. John Roach, chairman of the international policy committee of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter last Friday to Zalman Shoval, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, expressing the group’s “deep sorrow and profound moral outrage at the unprovoked missile attack.”
American Catholics “join with peoples throughout the world in condemning this indiscriminate attack on the civilian population of a nation not even engaged in the current hostilities in the region,” the letter reads.
“There can be no justification for attacks on innocent people which clearly violate the moral norms for combat.”
The National Conference of Catholic Bishops represents 350 bishops and approximately 57 million American Catholics.
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The National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, an umbrella group representing 32 Protestant and Orthodox denominations claiming a combined membership of nearly 42 million people, said that it “deplores” Iraq’s missile attacks on Israel.
The Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovshy, the National Council’s president, and James Hamilton, the group’s general secretary, said in a statement that “we are deeply thankful at the news that apparently very few lives have been lost and that no chemical weapons were used.”
An organization of prominent Catholics and Protestants, the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, has also condemned the attacks, and affirmed its “solidarity with the State and people of Israel.”
The Leadership Conference published its statement Monday in a quarter-page advertisement on the op-ed page of The New York Times.
The statement commended the policy of the American and allied forces coalition, and criticized efforts “by outside powers” to “link the Israeli-Palestinian Arab peace process to the Gulf crisis,” asserting that it “will seriously impede the chances for any substantive progress.”
QUAKERS EXPRESS SORROW
Officers of the organization’s executive committee signed the advertisement, including Sister Rose Thering, the group’s executive director. In the past, she has often been an outspoken supporter of Israel.
The American Friends Service Committee, an independent pacifist Quaker organization, expressed a “profound sense of sorrow and dismay” over the attacks, in a letter to Ambassador Shoval from the organization’s executive secretary, Asia Bennett.
But in a separate letter to Iraqi Ambassador to the United States Mohamed al-Mashat, Bennett said:
“We oppose the U.S. attack on Iraq and grieve for the Iraqis who have been killed or injured. We urge an immediate cease-fire.”
There are approximately 120,000 Quakers in the United States.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
