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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/25030/full/25030/jcrc-seminary-s-excuse-for-hezbollah-meeting-flimsy/ <br /><br /> <b>JCRC: Seminary’s excuse for Hezbollah meeting flimsy</b> <br /> Friday, February 4, 2005 | by <p>joe eskenazi </p> <br /><br /><p>Members of the Jewish community are accusing the San Francisco Theological Seminary of stretching the truth regarding the Presbyterian school’s excuse for meeting with Hezbollah.<br /><br /> The seminary says its students and faculty were hoodwinked into hobnobbing with and praising the Lebanese terrorist organization — a claim that is being met with some disbelief.<br /><br /> News of the June meeting at Khiam — the Southern Lebanese former Israeli-operated detention center, now a Hezbollah-run museum — recently leaked out following its mention in a Presbyterian online newsletter.<br /><br /> And in a June 2 article in the Lebanon Daily Star, Charles Marks, a tenured professor and the leader of the seminary trip, is quoted lavishly praising Hezbollah.<br /><br /> “I am certain that my positive image of Hezbollah is different from that pictured in the West,” Marks said in the article. “I am happy to meet Hezbollah officials and listen to what they have to say.”<br /><br /> Seminary officials claim Marks’ comments are fabricated. Marks, who has been out of state for several weeks due to a family medical emergency, was not available for comment.<br /><br /> In a written statement, the San Anselmo seminary claims Marks and the 13 students and family members in his charge had no idea they would be visiting a Hezbollah-run building, or even where they would be visiting that day. According to Ann Murphy, the seminary’s director of communications, students and faculty were terrified to find themselves face-to-face with a Hezbollah commander, played along for the cameras and left as soon as possible.<br /><br /> But Yitzhak Santis, the Jewish Community Relations Council’s director of Middle Eastern Affairs, said he has a hard time buying the seminary’s story.<br /><br /> He questioned how Marks or his Lebanese-born wife, Amal, the former national Presbyterian associate for Middle Eastern ministries, could have been so ignorant of the situation. What’s more, he questioned how Marks and the students could simply have hopped on a bus “willy-nilly,” and driven into southern Lebanon, or, as Santis referred to it, “Hezbollahstan.”<br /><br /> He also wondered why the seminary’s statement didn’t condemn Hezbollah, though a letter to the Marin Independent Journal penned by seminary President Philip Butin did read, “We repudiate all terrorism employed for any reason. We repudiate any and all terrorist activities pursued by the organization Hezbollah. ... Our group members were victims of a calculated propaganda event of which we had no prior knowledge.”<br /><br /> Butin received letters from both the JCRC and Anti-Defamation League and has agreed to meet with their representatives at later dates.<br /><br /> Santis sees the Hezbollah meeting as yet another slap in the face to the Jewish community following anti-Israel divestiture resolutions passed at the latest Presbyterian General Assembly, and a national Presbyterian delegation visiting the same Hezbollah leader, Nabil Qaouk, at Khiam in October. <br /><br /> The meeting also is dividing the Presbyterian community. The Rev. Doug Huneke, the pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tiburon, agrees with Santis. He referred to the seminary’s meeting with Hezbollah as “a complete betrayal.” <br /><br /> “It makes my life very hard. I try to carry out dialogue groups at [Marin congregations] Rodef Sholom and Kol Shofar and now I have to spend extra time to make sure they know this minister and the Presbyterians at Westminster aren’t part of this anti-Semitic fringe of the Presbyterian church that has gotten some power lately,” he said.<br /><br /> Huneke, a graduate of the seminary, said the news of the meeting was “particularly galling.” Until he hears Marks personally repudiate the quotes in the Daily Star, he has “no choice but to believe them. <br /><br /> “I’m going to ask the president of the board of the seminary to prohibit all contact with terror organizations,” he continued.<br /><br /> “And, if this was innocent, if they were really tricked by this visit, then they can never again claim ignorance and innocence. If you don’t have a policy to turn this behavior around, to end meetings and supportive statements of terrorists, then the seminary loses its credibility altogether and totally.”</p> <p> </p>

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