http://www.kansascity.com/2013/01/26/4031236/episcopalians-debate-us-aid-to.html

Episcopalians debate U.S. aid to Israel

Denomination’s leaders urged to request an accounting of money sent to Jewish nation.

By SOLANGE DESANTIS
Religion News Service A group of prominent Episcopalians is criticizing their church’s stand on Israel, urging it to join 15 other denominations who call for an accounting of U.S. aid to Israel.
The public letter released last week notes that leaders of 15 religious groups, including Lutherans, Presbyterians and Methodists, asked Congress to take that step in October, and that the “voice of the Episcopal Church is woefully missing.”
The group includes Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an Anglican, and former Episcopal Presiding Bishop Ed Browning. The group also called on church executives to ensure that financial resources are not being used to support Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
“Just as this church stood with South Africa and Namibia during the dark days of Apartheid,” the Episcopal leaders said, “so we recognize that we need to be standing with our sister and brother Palestinians who have endured an apartheid that Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has described as worse than it was in South Africa.”
Jewish leaders reacted strongly to the other churches’ October letter, seeing it as a momentous betrayal. A statement spoke of “the vicious anti-Zionism that has gone virtually unchecked in several of these denominations.”
“Something is deeply broken, badly broken,” said Ethan Felson, vice president and general counsel of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.