The Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches

T.D. Regehr is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan.
He is the author of Mennonites in Canada, 1939–1970: A People
Transformed, The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Canadian
Entrepreneurship and Politics, and Remembering Saskatchewan:

Canadian Protestant churches struggled to respond to the crisis of the
Holocaust, the creation of the state of Israel, and the subsequent
policies of the Israeli government in a balanced way. Haim Genizi
documents that struggle and the responses of Jewish leaders. His study
is based on a careful detailed examination of the official church
pronouncements, news journal reports, and editorials of international
church organizations and of the United, Anglican, Presbyterian, and
Baptist churches in Canada. Most space is devoted to the United Church
of Canada and the work of A.C. Forrest, the controversial editor of the
United Church Observer.

Genizi argues that Christian theology has an inherent anti-Jewish bias.
The Jews rejected Jesus and have therefore been regarded with suspicion
or hostility by Christians. Their long record of suffering, culminating
in the Holocaust, shapes and defines 20th-century Jewish perceptions.
Genizi cites evidence to show that the horrors of the Holocaust
generated a sense of Christian guilt and compassion that found
expression in generally balanced, albeit muted and inadequate, Christian
support for the creation of the state of Israel. That, however, changed
after the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Canadian
church leaders became increasingly concerned about the plight of
Palestinian refugees and critical of the repressive policies of the
Israeli government.

Genizi distinguishes between legitimate criticism of Israel and
anti-Semitic attacks, but in most of the book that distinction is lost.
The evidence is presented in a measured tone, and most Christian leaders
will not dispute the facts cited. But many will not be convinced by the
evidence presented here that their attitudes are rooted in inherent
anti-Jewish Christian theology, rather than in concern and compassion
for the suffering Palestinians. Nor will they be persuaded that there is
Jewish acceptance of a distinction between anti-Semitism and legitimate
criticism of Zionist and Israeli government policies, since such
criticism is repeatedly described in this book as unbalanced and
pro-Arab. The book, nevertheless, makes a valuable contribution in
documenting divergent Canadian Christian and Jewish perspectives of the
Israeli-Palestinian crisis.