Former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and Iran’s Press TV Praise Presbytarian Church USA’s Anti-Israel Report
by Joshua Levitt
David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and Louisiana State Representative, joined with Press TV, a semi-official Iranian government news agency, in praising a report condemning Israel that was published by Presbytarian Church USA.
The church made headlines in 2012 for a proposal, ultimately voted down by its members, to divest from Caterpillar Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Motorola because of their activities in Israel. Duke has also recently been in the news after being expelled from Italy “for his racist and anti-Semitic views” by an Italian judge, and from Germany, as “undesirable foreigner” on the eve of a planned lecture for a group of a hundred neo-Nazis.
On his blog, the former KKK leader said, “In a major breakthrough in the worldwide struggle against Zionist extremism, the largest Presbyterian church in the United States, the PC(USA), has issued a formal statement calling Zionism ‘Jewish Supremacism’ — a term first coined and made popular by Dr. David Duke.”
In Duke’s blog post, he wrote that the guide, titled ‘Zionism Unsettled,’ was released ahead of the church’s biennial General Assembly, scheduled for June, in Detroit, where a similar recommendation to divest from companies that work with Israel will be presented. Duke noted the 2012 attempt was only narrowly defeated, with a tally of 333-331, with two abstentions.
Duke wrote,”‘Zionism Unsettled’ is not only an attack on Israel and its Jewish supporters. It criticizes the Catholic Church’s landmark 1965 Nostra Aetate, which opened the door for a new relationship between Jews and Catholics, saying that the declaration ‘raises as many questions as it answers.” It also “features an entire chapter panning Evangelical Christian support for Israel,” he said.
Iran’s Press TV wrote, “A Presbyterian Church group has described Zionism as the single reason behind the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying it is destroying the lives of both Palestinians and Jewish communities across the world.”
“The study guide, dubbed Zionism Unsettled, also argues that most Jews reject Zionism and choose to live outside the Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands, depicting Jewish life inside the Islamic Republic of Iran as ‘alive and well,'” Iran’s Press TV said.
The pamphlet was produced by “The Israel Palestine Network of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),” with the Reverend Walt Davis, its education co-chair, listed as the point of contact, but he provided no response to an emailed query from The Algemeiner on Thursday.