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TechnoratiSpeaking to the Palestine Center of the Jerusalem Fund in late 2004 in Washington, D.C., Wildman outlined how a “Christian Zionist worldview” supposedly legitimizes colonial exploitation as part of God’s plan. "It is no accident that the divestment movement is making connections with apartheid South Africa because much of Zionism makes the connection, in terms of taking the land of others," Wildman opined. "It's a theology that is deeply exclusivist and racist,"
Earlier this year, the Palestinian Information Center gratefully reported that Wildman had been in Gaza to examine Palestinian suffering under the Israeli “siege” there and would explain to Americans “what is really going on” regarding Israel’s oppressions in Gaza. It’s vital to enlighten Americans, especially its church members, about Israel’s crimes because the United States facilitates Israel’s misdeeds, according to Wildman.
“Each year the US government directs billions of our taxpayer dollars to military and economic aid to Israel - which already has the largest military force in the entire region,” he told Friends of Sabeel in 2005. “U.S. aid enables and perpetuates Israel's longstanding occupation and violence against Palestinian communities, which in turn makes justice and peace for all impossible."
At that 2005 Toronto event for Sabeel, Wildman further enthused about anti-Israel divestment campaigns, which “take decisions out of the halls of Congress, out of the corridors of power, and empower people in the pews, in classrooms and in union halls to act.” Boycott and divestment initiatives enlist a “much wider range of groups - churches, students, trade unions, academics,” which “now seek nonviolent means to end Israel's military occupation and systematic denial of Palestinian human rights.”
Wildman was mostly just basking in the now faded glory of his anti-Apartheid divestment crusade of two decades past. The anti-Israel divestment attempts have now failed just about everywhere they have been attempted throughout the West, from churches to universities, to trade unions. But advocates of divestment like Wildman still retain their positions of influence within some Western church bureaucracies. And their obsessive animosity towards Israel will only search for new outlets.
Mark D. Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.
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