The Boston Globe reports on the Sabeel Conference on Palestinian rights held at Old South Church in Boston. Both Israeli and Palestinian supporters pledge to work together locally but protestors denounced the comparison of apartheid with the treatment of Palestinians.
Hundreds of advocates for Palestinian rights gathered inside a Back Bay church yesterday as pro-Israel demonstrators denounced them from across Boylston Street in Copley Square, in an illustration of how the Mideast conflict has roiled relations between leaders of the Jewish and mainline Protestant communities in Boston.
Inside Old South Church, about 700 advocates of Palestinian rights launched a two-day conference, provocatively titled, “The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel.” The meeting will feature a keynote speech today by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
The pro-Israel demonstrators, who numbered about 200, furiously denounced the use of the word apartheid to describe Israel, as well as what the Jewish community said were anti-Israel views espoused by Sabeel, the Palestinian Christian organization that put together the conference.
But both sides also said they are determined to work together locally.
The president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ and the senior minister of Old South Church both issued statements expressing support for Israel and opposition to terrorism, even as they defended the decision to rent the Old South building to Sabeel. And the executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council defended the free speech rights of Sabeel and concern for Palestinian rights, even as she denounced the conference as “an effort to demonize the state of Israel.”
The three officials gathered on a sidewalk in front of the church to talk between the protest and the conference and said they have planned a meeting of Jewish and United Church of Christ leaders next week..
Old South has, over its three-plus centuries in existence, repeatedly hosted gatherings by groups championing controversial points of view, including abolition and women’s suffrage and gay rights. Its senior minister, the Rev. Nancy S. Taylor, said the decision to rent the sanctuary to Sabeel represents an idea that is “at the heart of a free and vital democratic nation.”
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