Jewish and Christian groups at impasse over U.S. aid to Israel

An established interfaith group is in danger of disintegrating as major American Jewish groups and prominent mainline Protestant churches differ over U.S. aid for Israel—a long-standing argument that the group was established, in part, to diffuse.

Leaders of Reform and Conservative Judaism, the American Jewish Committee and other Jewish groups sent a letter October 17 to their Christian counterparts on the Christian-Jewish Roundtable saying they would not be attending a long-planned October 22–23 meeting.

At issue is an October 8 letter that many Christian leaders—from the National Council of Churches as well as the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and several other denominations and organizations—sent to Congress, asking that U.S. aid to Israel be reevaluated in light of the Jewish state’s alleged human rights violations. Israel has long been the recipient of the largest amount of U.S. foreign assistance, almost all of which is military aid and contracts, according to the Congressional Research Service.