The council will continue to support boycotting produce from the occupied territories despite a new law barring those who do so from the country

SOME 65 years have passed since President Dwight Eisenhower used the word “Judeo-Christian” to describe the religious and cultural heritage of the United States, implying a new degree of amity and interconnection between two monotheistic faiths. Since then huge strides have been made in improving the strategic relationship between Christianity and Judaism. One landmark was Nostra Aetate, a document issued in 1965 in which the Vatican formally broke with Christian anti-Semitism. Another was Dabru Emet, a statement by Jewish scholars in 2000 which addressed Christianity in warm and respectful terms.

For anyone who has studied that progress, it is rather depressing to note that this week, relations between the state of Israel and an important international Christian body dived to the lowest point anybody can recall. The body in question is the World Council of Churches. Based in Geneva, it brings together 348 Christian confessions, ranging from liberal Protestant to Orthodox, whose total membership exceeds 560m.

The catalyst for the plunge was a new Israeli law designed to deny entry to people who support the boycott of Israel or Israeli-controlled territory. After heated debate, the Knesset passed the law by 46 votes to 28. The entry ban applies to anyone who “knowingly issues a public call for the boycotting of Israel that, given the content of the call and the circumstances in which it was issued, had a reasonable possibility of leading to the imposition of a boycott….”

Supporters of the law called it a necessary and legitimate counter-measure against the international campaign to undermine Israel through a policy of "BDS"—boycott, divestment and sanctions. The justice ministry urged that the language be watered down slightly, so as to exempt Palestinians with temporary residence rights in Israeli territory, but the drafters ignored this advice. Consciously or otherwise, one legislative supporter argued for the bill in terms that seemed to turn familiar Christian terminology on its head: “A healthy person who loves those who love him and hates those who hate him doesn’t turn the other cheek,” said Knesset member Betzalel Smotrich.

What upset the WCC and other critics is that the law makes seems to make no distinction between those who favour a boycott of all things Israeli, and those who say they support Israel but don’t want to shore up the occupation of the West Bank. Olav Fykse Tveit, the Norwegian general secretary of the WCC, said that on the face of things, the law would make it impossible for him or senior people in his organisation to visit member churches or sacred sites in what Christianity regards as the Holy Land. As he argued:

The WCC affirms and supports Israel’s right to exist, categorically rejects violence as a means of resolving the conflict and has described anti-Semitism as a sin against God…But we, together with the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community, consider Israel’s 50-year-long occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories illegal. And on this basis the WCC has encouraged boycotting goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, divestment from companies that benefit from the occupation, investment in Palestinian enterprises that can stimulate the local economy, but not a general boycott of or sanctions against Israel.

Even before this week, relations between the WCC and Israel were scratchy. In December, the council’s assistant general secretary, an African theologian called Isabel Phiri, was singled out from a delegation and denied entry to Israel on grounds that she was an unqualified BDS supporter, something the council denied.

It is not just the church that has criticised the law. David Harris, the chief executive of the American Jewish Committee, a mainstream organisation which is deeply involved in countering BDS campaigns around the world, commented that his organisation

as a long-time staunch friend of Israel and opponent of the BDS movement, fully sympathizes with the underlying desire to defend the legitimacy of the state of Israel….[but] as history as amply shown throughout the democratic world, barring entry to otherwise qualified visitors on the basis of their political views will not by itself help to defeat BDS, nor will it help Israel’s image as the beacon of democracy in the Middle East it is.

Fundamental ethical principles are at stake in the conflict between the WCC and Israel, making it hard to resolve. Mr Tveit insists that the law will not deter his organization from favouring economic leverage as a way to signal opposition to Israel’s occupation policies: “It is precisely because of our Christian principles that we…find the purchase and consumption of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories immoral."