In Austin, outrage over city-sponsored seminar on female leadership

Female-majority Austin City Council rejects expert's assertion that men are from Mars, women from Venus

By David Paulin

Originally published at The American Thinker

It was supposed to be a training seminar for city employees on how to deal with a new leadership dynamic: a female-dominated City Council.

Instead, the seminar in hip and left-leaning Austin, Texas, has triggered a political brouhaha resulting in one high-level resignation and an ongoing investigation – all after word leaked that management experts at the city-sponsored seminar dared to say that woman process information differently than men; view issues differently; and need to be treated differently.

One expert was widely quoted as suggesting that women tend to ask too many questions (or at least more than men do) in part because they dislike dealing with financial minutia provided in memos before meetings. Members of the female-dominated City Council were outraged. Defending themselves, two management experts said their remarks comprised just a fraction of their presentations – and were taken out of context and misconstrued.

But no matter.

Last Monday, Assistant City Manager Anthony Snipes resigned after having been placed on leave. Earlier, he had written an abject apology, saying he was unaware that sexist comments would be made at the seminar he organized. But it apparently was not enough to save his career.

Coincidentally, Snipes's resignation came on the heels of a skit on “Late Night with Conan O'Brien” that lampooned the seminar.

Austin's left-leaning and humorless female leaders must have seen red at being lampooned by O'Brien, given that they are so much like him: hip, well-educated, and left-leaning. Interestingly, the skit itself played upon amusing stereotypes of women; and it drew a strange moral equivalence – suggesting that politically incorrect humor about women is on par with crude stereotypes of Jews. For the skit's final punch line, a female actress observed: "They finally asked a woman to administer the sexism workshop. I would never trust a man to get this right, almost as if I'd never trust a Jew." O'Brien and his laughing audience members sure have a strange sense of humor.

The training session, to be sure, had started with the best of intentions. Not long ago, Austin voted in a new 10-member city council -- one composed of seven women.

Men had traditionally dominated the City Council; and so city managers thought it a good idea to arrange a training seminar focusing on how city employees should interact with female elected officials, some of them former activists. Its title gave no hint of controversy: "The Changing Dynamics in Governance; Women Leading in Local Government."

Jonathan Allen, the former city manager of Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, was one of the featured speakers and made the most widely cited comments. He left his position in Lauderdale Lakes last April under unexplained circumstances and, like Snipes and Ott, is part of National Forum for Black Public Administrators. Race, however, has not been an issue in the controversy (at least not in any public discussion).

"Do men and women speak the same language? And I'm going to tell you up front -- no," said Allen, who provided anecdotes about his talkative daughter, and how female elected officials whom he had advised were less interested in financial arguments and minutia than in impacts on the community.

“If you use or attempt to use the same communication techniques in management techniques that you use in a predominately male dominated environment, you will be making a serious error in your professional development,” Allen explained. 

Another speaker was business consultant Miya Burt-Stewart, a PhD who cited the philosophies described in the non-fiction self-help book "Men are from Mars; Women are from Venus.”
"We understand that we are different, we act differently. What's most important sometimes (all of it is important to us, let me say that) but just in terms of how we receive it or how we want to act on it differs," Burt-Stewart said.

To be sure, neither Allen nor Burt-Stewart ever stated that woman were unqualified to hold leadership positions or incapable of doing a fine job, even though they may not act, think or function (for better or worse) as men do.

Interestingly, the seminar was held two months ago -- in late March – yet it was only reported upon two weeks ago in an Austin American-Statesman blog and then on social media. Neither Ott nor Snipes or any council members attended the seminar. Rather, it was attended by some 70 city employees, mostly women. The attendees, in other words, were ordinary city employees; and interestingly, none of them were apparently offended by the handful of supposedly sexist remarks they heard. The uproar only started when male and female political elites and left-leaning female council members got wind of the remarks. Allen's tone, to be sure, may have come across to some as condescending, but his message that men and women are different in some ways was hardly an earth-shaking message to reasonable people.

One new council member, Ellen Troxclair, was nevertheless quoted as saying: “I'm not someone who is generally a ‘P.C. police’ and jumps on every little thing that could have been taken out of context. So I did go back and watch the full video, but I only became more and more frustrated, and more and more offended.”

The controversy is threatening the career of City Manager Marc Ott, who launched an investigation on how the seminar was allowed to go forward. He expects to issue his report in the coming week.
Ott also wrote an apologetic memo to Mayor Steve Adler and council members, stating he was unaware of what would be said at the seminar, and that the controversial comments were “not reflective in any way of our culture, philosophy, or approach toward managing this organization, nor our approach toward partnering with the City Council.”

Leftists and feminists tend to be a humorless bunch; so more heads may roll as things play out. Political re-eduction courses are not yet an option for men who cause offense in a female-led government.
Austin's female leaders, incidentally, seem blind to a double standard at play. Imagine, for instance, if the seminar had focused on the positive and negative attributes of male management. Would female council members demand that heads roll over that?

Probably not. In their left-leaning worldview, men are oppressors in the battle of the sexes, and so no jokes or negative generalizations about their management styles are over the top. The same probably goes for nasty remarks about Jews of both genders -- at least if the skit on Conan O'Brien's show is anything to go by.

In Texas, black race hustlers throw white liberal under the bus

A former Michelle Obama intern decries a newspaper op-ed calling her a racial profiler. But who profiled whom?

Originally published at The American Thinker

By David Paulin

She voted twice for Obama.

Inspired by “hope and change” in a post-racial and more egalitarian America, she worked three months as an unpaid college intern in Michele Obama's office -- though she never actually got to meet the First Lady. She says she now supports the Clinton Global Initiative, a non-profit seeking to strengthen global interdependence.                        

A pretty and athletic woman with strawberry blond hair and blue eyes, she for the moment works as a nanny, though she has a self-designed bachelor's degree from the University of Texas in Austin focusing on conflict resolution and the human rights of children. Her course work included a large dollop of African-American studies; so not surprisingly she firmly believes America needs a national discussion about race -- and the unjust profiling of black men.

Yes, her progressive credentials are impressive.

And so, she fumed, it was all the more outrageous that a fellow progressive -- a black law student no less! -- would write a newspaper column that “defamed” her as a “blue-eyed” and “blond” racist.

It was exactly the opposite of what happened, she said: She never profiled him. He profiled her!

And so when a curious writer contacted her from The American Thinker, she said she had to speak out -- tell the world how she was “defamed” by fellow liberals: a black Texas state senator and his intern, a black law student, both of whom threw her under the bus with the help of the news media.

Racial Politics    

It was supposed to be post-racial America. But the Obama years have instead been filled with racially charged mayhem: inner-city riots; myriad black-on-white attacks like the “knock-out” game; and racially charged police shootings and arrests. And no doubt there also have been untold numbers of testy non-violent encounters with racial overtones: nasty spats and hurt feelings between ordinary blacks and whites who increasingly walk on eggshells around each other while navigating the lower-frequencies of American life.

One of these stories occurred not long ago in the left-leaning city of Austin, Texas, and revolved around a nasty encounter between 24-year-old “Agatha” (not her real name) and her black tormentor: a 28-year-old law student named Robert McKnight. Their story reveals the amusing tensions existing between black male race hustlers and progressive white females from upper-middle-class backgrounds. And it underscores yet again how some media outlets will unhesitatingly take the word of race hustlers and social warriors over their white victims and the police.

“You can't use my name,” Agatha said, explaining she wanted her name withheld because she feared a “backlash” for defending herself.

Seated in the dark corner of trendy Austin cafe, the daughter of a prominent Houston radiologist spoke calmly during an interview; yet her carefully chosen words barely concealed her outrage at what McKnight had written about her in a column in the Austin American-Statesman, "Racially profiled in Austin a life-changing experience."


"I am an African-American male,” McKnight declared. “That alone is a loaded and difficult calling,n irreversible one.” He added: “My black skin can label me as menacing.”

Then he described how a bigoted and unnamed white woman -- a “blue-eyed blond” at University Village, an apartment complex in Austin for college students -- had “profiled” him. Claiming she had sicced the cops on him for no good reason, McKnight called the harrowing incident a life-changing event. “Believe it or not, I thank the Caucasian woman who was the impetus for this life-changing event,” he wrote, and went onto observe: “I have a newly ignited fire now, to fight for criminal justice reform, to fight for social equality and to fight for a fair, transparent and reliable judicial system.”

Agatha read those words and cringed: McKnight was talking about her!

Yes, according to her, it was a twisted jived-up version of what in fact happened that awful evening when McKnight, then a total stranger, had knocked on her apartment door. And despite what McKnight claimed, she and her black roommate Elizabeth insisted McKnight's race had nothing to do with why the police were called. Yet McKnight was nevertheless now vilifying her -- a righteous white liberal with a black roommate -- as being a racist!

McKnight was loud and belligerent, she recalled -- though in subsequent emails she repeatedly stressed that she wanted to avoid any judgmental language that might contribute to negative stereotypes about young black men.

True, McKnight hadn't mentioned her name in his “defamatory” column. Yet she knew full well that the black law student was talking about her. So did all her friends and many acquaintances. It stung to be called a racist in a newspaper column. And to her disgust, McKnight's column was quickly republished by two other newspapers and a social justice group, among others. Even more outrageous, a black Texas state senator, a Democrat, praised the Op-Ed in a tweet!

Nobody, however, had ever asked her or the police or her black roommate Elizabeth what really happened that evening.

“I laughed,” she said, referring to McKnight's column, and so did the two roommates she had at the time. And that included Elizabeth, who also came to have a low opinion of Robert McKnight.                                            

Stranger at the Door

It was around 8:00 p.m. when Agatha got home. She started boiling some water to make pasta, then slipped into her pajamas. Suddenly, somebody was knocking loudly on the door -- so loud and unexpected it frightened her. “The only people who knock that loud are the police,” she said. Neither she nor her roommates had been expecting anybody.

Nervously, she opened the door. A stranger stood there -- a young black man in a gray trench coat, about 6'2'' and 165 pounds.

There was no greeting from the stranger; not even, “Good evening, my name is Robert McKnight.” What you'd expect, in other words, of a gentleman trying to enter a 4-bedroom dormitory-style apartment for female college students, she said.

“Who lives here?” she recalls the stranger demanding, his voice abrupt, his attitude “belligerent.”

He declined to identify himself, other than to say at various points that, “I'm a lawyer.” He wasn't a lawyer, of course; not yet anyway -- a fact Agatha and Elizabeth subsequently seized upon to underscore that McKnight may have issues of some sort.

McKnight displayed a key to the unit -- a fact that rattled her since only tenants are supposed to have keys. He said he was helping a legislative intern from South Africa move in -- he was her “caretaker,” he explained -- though for some reason the young woman had remained in McKnight's car. And despite what his column claimed, McKnight never showed her a lease, she insisted. She let McKnight in anyway.

"You'd better be OK with this because she's moving in for six months," she recalled McKnight saying. Inspecting the bathroom, McKnight noticed the toilet was running, and she recalled him blurting out: "Why the f--k would they move somebody in with a running toilet?"

Quickly growing uneasy with the rude and taciturn stranger who refused to identify himself, Agatha texted her roommate Elizabeth who promptly phoned the police. Elizabeth headed back to the apartment.

“I never told Elizabeth he was black,” Agatha stressed. “When a stranger shows up at your door at night and does not identify himself yet he is holding keys to your apartment, that is terrifying.”

Four police officers showed up, and one of them detained McKnight as he headed down the stairs. McKnight, who presumed the “blue-eyed blond” had called the cops, was overheard by Agatha to say: “Who the f--k does that?”

The Statesman's opinion-page editors would have gotten a far different story had they talked with Agatha and Elizabeth. But for them, McKnight's “I'm-a-victim” version was far more appealing. They published it with McKnight's photo: a smiling and clean-cut black law student -- a credit to his race and liberal cause -- posing in front of a bookshelf of law books.

“It's not the Robert McKnight that I know,” said Agatha.

The official police report, recently obtained from the Austin Police Department in response to a media request, echoed the stories told by Agatha and her black roommate Elizabeth. Yes, Elizabeth had indeed called the police. She told the 911 operator that a strange man “keeps saying he needs to get into the apartment.”

“Unknown description of the subject,” the report stated.

Agatha, for her part, had totally put that awful night out of her mind -- until McKnight's ridiculous Op-Ed column ran in the Statesman. And to her outrage, the column was quickly republished by the Waco Tribune; Corpus Christi Caller-Times; and the Texas Civil Rights Project, amo

ng others. But most insulting of all, Texas state Senator Rodney Ellis -- a black Democrat under whom McKnight works as a legislative intern -- tweeted that he was “proud of Robert McKnight for speaking out!” McKnight attends Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana -- a historically black college.

Interestingly, Senator Ellis praised McKnight's article even though he had phoned the manager at University Village right after McKnight told him what happened. The manger, however, assured Senator Ellis that nobody had discriminated against McKnight. “It was made clear to the senator that the police were not called because of race but because a stranger had keys to our apartment and was acting belligerently and trying to enter after dark without identifying himself,” Agatha explained in an e-mail.

So who was profiling whom? Agatha observed that McKnight had in fact “victimized” her by falsely stating she had called the police “because I am Caucasian and have blond hair and blue eyes.”

“He is most certainly a bully,” she wrote.

“Mr. McKnight is not telling the truth about this incident,” wrote Elizabeth, Agatha's black roommate, in the comments section of McKnight's Statesman column under the moniker “ElizabethHartsAustin.” “He was belligerent, exceedingly rude, aggressive, and extremely disrespectful on the evening in question, and has continued to be so during his subsequent visits to our home. He was even aggressive with the responding police officers, who to my understanding were far more patient and forgiving than Mr. McKnight's behavior deserved.”

She added, “It annoys me to see another member of my community not only cause a stressful situation, but then attempt to exploit it under the guise of furthering race relations.”

Elizabeth, a college student, was advised by her academic adviser not to speak to reporters about the McKnight incident.

911 Call

McKnight's encounter with police officers also is interesting because of its similarities to untold numbers of other racially charged encounters between police and young black men -- encounters that often produce wildly different stories from each side.

In his column, for instance, McKnight claimed he was “accosted by four police officers” and had his “liberty deprived momentarily for being a black male, knocking on a door in the evening.” Police, however, were obviously duty-bound to check out a complaint -- and so officers were dispatched to University Village. Some spoke with McKnight, others with Agatha.

“I asked Robert to take a seat and told him he was detained while we figured out what was going on. Robert was not frisked and was never touched physically,” one officer wrote. “Robert got upset when I told him he could not call anyone.”

Noting the 911 call was due to a “misunderstanding,” an officer said of McKnight: “Robert was professional but had an underlying attitude and alluded to the fact that he was stopped because he was a black male and knocking on the door.” The officer added that McKnight had mentioned he was an intern for Senator Ellis -- and that “he may complain.” The officer -- obviously concerned at the trouble a well-connected black man might cause him -- pointed out that his verbal back-and-forth with McKnight may have been captured on police audio recorders. (Audio and dash-cam clips were obtained last week for this article; but the sound was inaudible and dash-cam video showed only a dark parking lot.)

It was nevertheless an interesting revelation: officers were walking on eggshells in the presence of a well-connected and angry black man who claimed he was being racially profiled.

McKnight, for his part, claimed in his Op-Ed that he behaved like a perfect gentleman, in line with “The Talk” his mother had given him as a youngster; that's the heart-to-heart parental chat black kids are said to get on how to deal with white police officers. It was perhaps a telling remark: that McKnight's mother -- not his father -- gave him “The Talk.”

Austin's police never commented publicly on McKnight's Statesman column, which ran nine weeks after the January 13 incident.

There's no doubt that Agatha was a victim; she's definitely not a racist. Yet something else may have animated the "misunderstanding" between her and Robert McKnight. Conceivably, she may have given McKnight some of her feminist upper-middle-class "white girl" attitude; and McKnight may have responded with some attitude of his own -- all of which resulted in a 911 call.

McKnight, a self-important idealist like Agatha, subsequently brooded for weeks about the incident, before finally deciding how to settle his score with Agatha -- turn their misunderstanding into a racial issue. (You'd have to deal with Agatha to understand how she may have inadvertently touched off this dynamic.) She once shaved her head and wore a T-shirt saying “F--k Cancer" -- photos of which she published on her Facebook page that, incidentally, was recently closed to the public to keep the trolls at bay. She also angrily declined to answer follow-up questions, saying she was wary over where all the questions were going. She was particularly upset over a "condescending" question about why she was working as a nanny. All in all, it's safe to say that she and Robert McKnight come from different worlds.

Armchair psychology aside, one thing is inescapable. The news media during the Obama years has relentlessly played up incidents of white cops allegedly brutalizing black men; and Obama has used the most high profile of these incidents to lecture America about its racial sins. The story of Robert McKnight's encounter with an upper-middle-class white girl and Austin's police may in fact offer a closer reflection of what's happening most of the time in the streets. It's not as much about race, in other words, as it is about a collision of culture and class.

Even so, liberals and many media outlets can be counted on to view such incidents through a racial prism  -- as was underscored by how some quickly embraced Robert McKnight's racially charged fairy tale.

Author's Note: "Agatha's" name can be be revealed: It is Amanda Vining. I had promised to keep her name out of this story during my initial meeting with her; but I am happy to say I can honorably break that promise. This is after learning, just hours before this article was loaded up for publication, that Vining had published an Op-Ed in the Waco Tribune about her run-in with Robert McKnight. It was published some three weeks after she had declined to answer follow-up interview questions, having declared in a huff that she disliked both my questions and the tone the article seemed to be taking. Her Op-Ed ran under her byline. Many of her points are echoed in my article, although to be sure there are some minor additions and insights, including that she had locked herself in her bedroom. Vining did not mention the police report that I obtained last week through a media request. To read her Op-Ed, click here.

Beaten to Death at McDonald's

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Why Presbyterians took up the 'Palestinian Cause'

The church of the old WASP establishment and many U.S. presidents now embraces an odd mix of Christianity, Marxism, and the work of Edward Said

Originally published at FrontPage Magazine

By David Paulin

What has happened to America's Presbyterians? Leaders of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have joined ranks with the radical left in recent years. They vilify Israel, apologize for Islamic terrorists, and cheer on the Palestinian cause.

Now, these leftist elites are savoring an important victory, having pushed through a resolution to divest from U.S. companies operating in Israel: Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett Packard. The contentious vote in the church's general assembly passed by a narrow 310-to-303, and was a long-time goal of leftist Presbyterians, who since 2006 had submitted four divestiture resolutions that failed to muster sufficient votes.

Divestiture is largely symbolic: The companies in the portfolio of America's largest Presbyterian denomination represented a pittance of its investments, about $21 million. But leftist Presbyterians saw divestiture as a way to shame the companies and ostracize Israel over what they believe is its humiliation of Palestinian Arabs and illegal occupation of their lands – a situation they claim begets terrorism. They conveniently forget that Israel has been ready to trade land for peace since its birth in 1948. As for the companies they vilify: Caterpillar's bulldozers are used in anti-terror operations; and Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard provide electronic security systems.

More than a few rank-and-file Presbyterians were outraged over the June 20th divestiture vote; tens of thousands have left the church in recent years as it drifted left. “We stand in full support of Israel's right to protect its citizens and of all American companies to engage in honest free enterprise,” said Rev. Paul deJong, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Fort Myers, the oldest Presbyterian church in Lee County, Florida.

“The church has been infected,” a Presbyterian seminary student in Texas once told me, a women in her 30s who became a minister. She was referring to a pro-Palestinian conference hosted several years ago by Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, an affiliate of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). At the time, leftist Presbyterians were calling for a divestiture resolution.

Israel is not perfect, of course; no country is. But the venom of Israel-bashing Presbyterians has been troubling because of how it negates anything positive about the Middle East’s only democracy. Israel is singled out as a rights abuser.

What accounts for this moral confusion?

Israel-bashing didn't used to be fashionable, including among Presbyterians. Indeed, Israel was widely admired in the years after its birth and miraculous growth. Upbeat news articles spoke of those “plucky Jews.” But no more. Now Israeli Jews are denied credit for their nation’s economic and democratic miracle, growing out of a region that American writer Mark Twain – passing through as a travel writer in 1867 – had described as an unpopulated and “desolate country.”

Now, Israel’s story has a new twist, one put forth by left-leaning Presbyterians and fellow-travelers in other Christian denominations. Jews achieved what they did because they exploited somebody else: Palestinian Arabs. In this view Palestinian Arabs, not Jews, are now the chosen people.

This Israel-bashing narrative also bristles with anti-Americanism, and over the years it has become popular in America's universities. That's an old story. But what's less well known is that this same narrative has gained currency at many Christian seminaries. Many seminary professors have adopted a world view similar to the post-modern left; what for them is a strange hybrid of Christianity, Marxism, and the word of Edward Said. (Said, of course, was the high-profile Columbia University professor who popularized the idea of Palestinian victim hood within an anti-Western context.) At some Presbyterian seminaries, students in their early 20s –  future ministers and church leaders – have been indoctrinated for years with the ideological poison of the post-modern left, albeit within a Christian context.

Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary

One Presbyterian seminary that I'm familiar with is in Texas: a 112-year-old institution whose idyllic grounds are near the University of Texas campus in Austin, the state capital. I'm not a Presbyterian, incidentally. I’m not even a regular church-goer, although I regularly attended a mainline Protestant church as a youngster. Eight years ago, however, I took a greater than usual interest in religion, after noticing  Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary was hosting a thought-provoking conference: “American Churches and the Palestinians.” The theme of the two-day event was inspired by a line from Isaiah 58:6: “To Loose the Chains of Injustice…”

I briefly visited the conference, and that passage’s subordination to a political view quickly became clear: Israeli Jews were colonial oppressors; and Palestinian Arabs were their victims. The event’s main sponsors were hardly friendly toward Israel: The Interfaith Community for Palestinian Rights; Friends of Sabeel-North America; and Pax Christi USA. Hundreds of religious leaders from around the country, representing various denominations, attended along with seminary faculty.

Consider three high-profile guest speakers:

Robert Jensen, a radical left-wing University of Texas journalism professor, discussed what he claimed was biased media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – biased, that is, against Palestinian Arabs. Jensen was hardly unbiased himself, however. Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, he gained national notoriety for his inflammatory Op-Ed in the Houston Chronicle, “U.S. Just as Guilty of Committing Own Violent Acts.” The attacks, Jensen argued, were “no more despicable than the massive acts of terrorism…that the U.S. government has committed during my lifetime.”

Two years earlier, Jensen published an Op-Ed in the Houston Chronicle and Palestine Chronicle. Its title and first sentence were the same: “I Helped Kill a Palestinian Today.”

“If you pay taxes to the U.S. government, so did you,” Jensen explained. He went onto to say that “the current Israeli attack on West Bank towns is not a war on terrorism, but part of a long and brutal war against the Palestinian people for land and resources.” He said nothing about billions of U.S. dollars of international aid flowing over the years into the Palestinian territories – only to be squandered, pocketed by corrupt officials, or used to fund terrorism.

At the conference's dinner, the main speakers were Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie. At age 23, Rachel Corrie died when she stood in front of an Israeli Defense Forces bulldozer conducting anti-terror operations – clearing tunnels utilized by Palestinian terrorists. The driver failed to see her, and she was run over. Corrie is now a martyr to her supporters – their very own Joan of Arc. But the more accurate description of her would be “terror advocate.” A memorable photo shows her clad in Muslim garb – her face contorted with rage as she holds a burning American flag drawn on a piece of paper.

Corrie's parents head the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, a non-profit “that conducts and supports programs that foster connections between people, that build understanding, respect, and appreciation for differences, and that promote cooperation within and between local and global communities.”

The conference's star speaker was the Rev. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Episcopal priest who founded and directs the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. He has questioned Israel's right to exist, and like his Presbyterian counterparts apologizes for Islamic terrorists. He distributed a thought-provoking scholarly paper he'd written: “What is theologically and morally wrong with suicide bombings? A Palestinian Christian Perspective.” The subject was timely. Suicide bombings were more common at the time: Israel’s “separation barrier” – which has saved lives by thwarting suicide bombers, but that leftist Presbyterians widely criticized – was not finished at the time.

Ateek’s paper navigated a thicket of theological issues, but its conclusion was fairly simple: Suicide bombers do indeed violate Christian doctrine – but the desperation fueling their misguided actions is understandable: It's Israel’s fault. Neither Ateek nor his Presbyterian supporters, incidentally, have ever given credence to three other “root causes” of Palestinian Arab terrorism: Islamist ideology; the culture of hate permeating Palestinian culture; or an “honor-shame” mentality that undermines efforts for peace which the overwhelmingly majority of Israelis desire.

Visiting the conference, I walked down hallways lined with exhibits outside classrooms where "workshops" were held. The exhibits bristled with pro-Palestinian political literature and books. One focused on Palestinian culture, displaying clothing and other items. (Not included were suicide vests or a replica of the Sbarro pizzeria suicide bombing; such an exhibit was displayed by clever Hamas student activists at al-Najah University in Nablus).

Rev. Ateek, of Sabeel, must have felt right at home. He was clearly a favorite speaker -- a veritable celebrity. Conference-goers eagerly repeated his stories of alleged Israeli terrorism against Palestinians, including when, he says, his family was forcibly removed by Israeli troops on May 12, 1948. This, of course, was days before Arab armies tried to wipe Israel off the map. Perhaps Ateek’s personal stories are true; perhaps not. However, what’s clearly false about these stories, revolving around Israel's creation, is that Ateek presents them as normal and everyday occurrences, the result of Israel’s aggression; the defining narrative of what Israel was and became.

The conference was a sold-out event; and no doubt it and similar events in recent years have persuaded increasing numbers of Presbyterians to support divestiture. The conference's main organizer, Whitney S. Bodman, must have been pleased. A high-profile professor at Austin Seminary, he is an expert on Islam. He's an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and holds a doctorate in comparative religion from Harvard University. His research interests, he says, includes “Christian theology in an Islamic context.” Politically active, Bodman has praised terror group Hezbollah as a nation-building organization that fends off Israel's aggression. He has worked closely with the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the problematic Muslim group. Above all, he has been a prominent figure on the “inter-faith dialogue” circuit that attempts to bridge differences with Muslims. That effort kicked into high gear after the 9/11 attacks.

Speaking at a “religious diversity” symposium not long after Europe's infamous “cartoon riots,” Bodman belittled the idea that Muslims alone were responsible for Islamic-inspired terrorism and mayhem, and endeavored to smooth over the hurt feelings of Muslims. He explained: "First,remember that no incident happens in a vacuum and the violence and hatred exploding throughout the world today is not really about one event or something as seemingly trivial as a cartoon. It is an accumulation of hurt over months and years. It is Iraq and Palestine, suicide bombings and Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and 9/11 and this whole sense that there really is a clash of civilizations, an insidious danger to our way of life.”

What must the learned professor have thought about an Islamic terror plot in Canada that made headlines around this time – one involving 17 young Muslim men and youths? Their roots were not in the Middle East but Canada – home to anti-Americanism, multiculturalism, and unlimited tolerance. Yet they wanted to blow up Canada’s landmarks and behead the prime minister.

In their eagerness to appease Muslims, some Presbyterians have put themselves in even more compromising positions. In October, 2004, Ronald Stone, a retired professor of Christian and social ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (affiliated with Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), met in southern Lebanon with Hezbollah commander Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, while on an official “fact-finding mission” to the Middle East.

Stone caused a furor when he told an Arab television channel that “relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders.”

“We treasure the precious words of Hezbollah and your expression of goodwill towards the American people,” he added. It was an odd way to describe Hezbollah, which Washington has designated a terror group for killing hundreds of Israeli and Americans. This included 200 U.S. Marines in the 1983 suicide bombing of their Beirut barracks and deadly attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina in 1992 and Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires in 1994.

Stone was part of the lead group of the church’s Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy. The church repudiated his remarks. But the controversy didn't stop the head of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in the Chicago area, Rev. Robert Reynolds, from meeting nearly one year later with a Hezbollah commander, much to the outrage of Chicago-area Jewish leaders.

Subtle Indoctrination

It's hardly coincidental that these Presbyterian leaders and activist echo the political and theological line that's promoted at more than a few Presbyterian seminaries. Sometimes, the political indoctrination of young seminary students can be insidious.

A few weeks before its pro-Palestinian conference, Austin Seminary hosted a photography exhibition related to the conference’s theme: Palestinians as victims; Jews as their exploiters. Dozens of heart-rending photos adorned hallway walls outside classrooms. For future ministers and religious leaders, the photos were there to see, ponder, and absorb. The exhibit was from left-leaning documentary photographer Alan Pogue, a Vietnam War-veteran specializing in political and social issues from a “social justice” angle.

The exhibition’s theme was unmistakable: European Jews displaced by World War 2 had created Israel – and ejected Palestinians from their ancestral homes. In fact, this was the caption of one photo. There were no positive photos of Israel or Israeli-Jews.

Two photos arranged side by side impressed me for the subtle anti-Americanism and moral equivalence suggested by their juxtaposition. One was a photo from New York City after the September 11 attacks – a poignant scene of a make-shift sidewalk memorial. It was a still life of sorts: flowers, photos, and mementos left by friends and family members.

Beside it was a strikingly similar photo – one of a Baghdad sidewalk memorial. It remembered the approximately 300 mostly women and children killed by a U.S. precision-guided bomb during the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq. They died in an underground shelter that U.S. military planners presumed was one of Saddam Hussein's command-and-control centers. Just before the war, however, it was converted into an air-raid shelter – one Saddam’s military men avoided. This of course is a common tactic among Middle Eastern terrorists and “insurgents” – putting civilians in harms way, and then when they are killed blaming and shaming the enemy.

Pogue saw things differently. His caption referred to the photos “similarities.” The subtle impression was that Americans now knew the same horrors their government had visited upon foreign lands.

Curiously, the photo exhibit was removed the day before a rare event at the seminary: a colloquium of Presbyterian ministers and rabbis held two weeks after the pro-Palestinian conference. The event’s title: “A Difficult Friendship: Divestment, Dialogue, and Hope.”

It was a revealing title. Seminary professors have gone out of their way in recent years to bridge “differences” with Palestinian Arabs and Muslims – even to the extent of excusing Islamic terrorism or apologizing for Judeo-Christian culture and history. Yet their “difficult relationship” is with Jews – not Muslims.

No wonder that a generation of seminary students has been infected with the poison of the postmodern left: a poison that vilifies Israel, America, and even the West. In casual conversations I had with young and idealistic seminary students, I noticed a common thread: They couldn't bring themselves to condemn other cultures -- especially those they considered underdogs. You've heard of self-hating Jews. They were self-hating Christians.

One Austin Seminary student in her early 20s, an honor student, told me about participating in an “interfaith” function with Muslim men at Austin Seminary; and after the Muslims broke their fast she offered to shake hands with one man in a flowing robe. Yet he only reluctantly grasped her hand, she recalled.

She wasn't shocked or put off. 

She made excuses for him, explaining it was important to “understand” his culture. Yet this was in a Christian seminary -- and a Muslim holy day was being celebrated there.

In explaining Arab rage against the West, this same student mentioned the “crusades” – no matter that quite a few Jews had their heads lopped off by crusaders; or that the crusades were a delayed response to Muslim aggression. Now, Islamic aggression is on the march again – and some of its religious underpinnings are making inroads into the Christian faith, judging by what's being taught at more than a few Christian seminaries.

One seminary student even spoke of terror master Yasar Arafat as a freedom fighter. “You know, he won a Nobel Peace Prize,” he reminded me.

Recently, Austin Seminary got a new dean, a long-time theology professor at the seminary named David H. Jensen. One of his more interesting scholarly articles pondered the cultural imperialism fostered by America’s most famous hamburger: the Big Mac. In "The Big Mac and the Lord's Prayer,” Jensen argued that McDonald's and its all-American mean were emblematic of the dark underbelly of globalization -- and even at odds with Christian values. “The McMeal is…a parody of the Eucharist, extending an invitation to all, but embodying only one culture,” he wrote. Interestingly, McDonald's strongest sales at the time were in none other than anti-American France and former Cold War enemies China and Russia. All of which underscores the perception gap that exists between leftist elites and ordinary people – a gap now reflected in the battle between rank-and-file Presbyterians and leftist elites in Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Years ago, the Presbyterian church was part of the venerable WASP establishment. It had produced many presidents over the years. Its parishioners were well-heeled, well-educated, and very successful. They believed in America. Those days are gone.

Now that divestiture is finally a reality, the soul of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) may have been lost forever to the left. Decent Presbyterians, like those at First Presbyterian Church of Fort Myers, will face an uphill battle to reclaim it.

The left is in charge, for now. 

George Bush’s Prediction of the Iraq Meltdown

Originally published at Frontpage Magazine and The American Thinker blog


By David Paulin

Former President George W. Bush is remaining mum on the tragedy unfolding in Iraq. But as an army of bloodthirsty Islamists rampages across Iraq with the goal of establishing a 7th century religious tyranny — a caliphate — it’s worth recalling who years ago had predicted this would happen if the Democrats got their way.

It was President George W. Bush and his top officials.

They warned early on that Iraq was ripe for the rise of an Islamic caliphate — either in a failed state created by Saddam Hussein or, they later contended, if the U.S.-led coalition bugged out without leaving behind a stable Iraq. For instance, two years into the U.S.-led occupation, in 2005, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld warned that a premature withdrawal would be disastrous — and he foresaw what has in fact happened. He explained, “Iraq would serve as the base of a new Islamic caliphate to extend throughout the Middle East, and which would threaten legitimate governments in Europe, Africa and Asia.”

Vice President Dick Cheney also warned of the rise of a caliphate if the U.S. withdrew before Iraq was capable of governing and defending itself. “They talk about wanting to re-establish what you could refer to as the seventh-century caliphate” to be “governed by Sharia law, the most rigid interpretation of the Koran,” he said.

Gen. John P. Abizaid, then America’s top commander in the Middle East, also offered prescient testimony in 2005 to the House Armed Services Committee, forseeing what the terror masters would do in a weak Iraqi state. “They will try to re-establish a caliphate throughout the entire Muslim world. Just as we had the opportunity to learn what the Nazis were going to do, from Hitler’s world in ‘Mein Kampf,’ we need to learn what these people intend to do from their own words.”

Liberals jeered such dire predictions — and especially at the repeated use of the word “caliphate.”

The New York Times, for instance, ran a piece on December 12, 2005, that mocked the forgoing Bush-administration officials for their warnings of a “caliphate” — portraying them as foreign-policy amateurs peddling an alarmist view of the Middle East. Wrote reporter Elisabeth Bumiller: "A number of scholars and former government officials take strong issue with the administration’s warning about a new caliphate, and compare it to the fear of communism spread during the Cold War. They say that although Al Qaeda’s statements do indeed describe a caliphate as a goal, the administration is exaggerating the magnitude of the threat as it seeks to gain support for its policies in Iraq."

Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, obviously don’t believe what’s printed in The New York Times. ISIS, incidentally, has reportedly been preparing to make its move for several years — right under the radar of the Obama administration. Were they emboldened by President Obama’s endless apologies to the Muslim world? Or the deadlines he’d set for leaving Iraq and Afghanistan? Probably all of the above. But what no doubt really energized them was President Obama’s failure to negotiate a deal with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki that would have left sufficient U.S. troops in Iraq.

President Bush, for his part, issued a prophetic warning in 2007 when vetoing a Democratic bill that would have withdrawn U.S. troops. “To begin withdrawing before our commanders tell us we are ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States,” he said. "It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda. It would mean that we’d be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we’d allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan. It would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous."

A little history is worth recalling. Saddam’s failure to account for his weapons of mass destruction, including remnants of his toxic arsenal (some of which was in fact found), gave the Bush administration legal cover for going into Iraq. But only a fool would believe weapons of mass destruction were the only reason for the war. The U.S.-led invasion, or liberation, was in fact part of a vision to remake the Middle East: a long-term project to liberate millions in Iraq; nudge the region toward modernity; and above all make America safer in a post-9/11 world — all by correctly defining who the enemy was and taking the war on terror to them.

The Bush administration certainly encountered setbacks in Iraq and made mistakes; the fog of war invariably upsets the best-laid plans of politicians and generals. But Iraq only plunged into utter chaos after President Obama brought home U.S. troops, despite warnings that Iraq was not ready to govern or defend itself. The blood and treasure that America spent in Iraq has been squandered.

The terror masters were energized in Syria, thanks to the Obama administration’s tepid support of moderate rebels there. Now they are on the march, just as President Bush and his top officials had predicted. After they establish their regional caliphate in Iraq and Syria, expect them to next turn their attention toward their real enemies: America, Israel, and the West. Oil prices are bound to go through the roof, sending the global economy into a tailspin.

President Obama and his foreign-policy advisers have blood on their hands. But if Obama remains in character, he’ll do what he usually does — blame it all on George Bush.