The central organization of American Presbyterians has officially partnered with a group called Sabeel, dedicated to defaming Israel and promoting BDS. Sabeel’s ideology is rooted in a 20th-century school of Catholic thought that finds messages in the Bible purportedly aiding the cause of the poor and oppressed. Shiri Moshe explains:

Sabeel was founded in the early 1990s by Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian priest of the Anglican Church who introduced a Palestinian variation of radical “liberation theology.” The organization was the culmination of Ateek’s efforts to advance an alternative interpretation of the Christian Bible that is “nourished by the hopes, dreams, and struggles of the Palestinian people.”

Ateek’s theology, which supposedly challenges a literal understanding of the Old Testament as a “Zionist text,” features violent imagery that depicts Jewish acts of deicide as well as forceful repudiations of Jewish national self-determination. During Christmas celebrations in 2000, Ateek spoke of destructive “modern-day Herods . . . in the Israeli government,” and in his 2001 Easter address declared that “Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily.” . . .

Today, Sabeel is an official partner of the Presbyterian Church USA, the principal Presbyterian body in North America. In 2012, the church voted to boycott goods manufactured in Israeli settlements. Two years later, it narrowly voted to divest an estimated $21 million of the Church’s holdings from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions, all of which manufacture products used by Israel in the West Bank.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”