The October 20 letter, framed as a Change.org petition, makes no direct reference to Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the actual intended targets of Israeli strikes, instead issuing an umbrella denunciation "condemning all attacks on civilians, especially defenseless families and children" without mention of who is conducting such attacks. The more than 1,400 Israelis killed and 3,400 injured in Hamas' attack on southern Israel are unmentioned, as are the more than 200 hostages believed to be held in Gaza.

Western Christians need to read these statements with grace, understanding that Palestinian Christians (especially those in Gaza) lack the freedom to openly criticize their governing authorities and Islamist forces. These are vulnerable communities made vanishingly small by migration elsewhere. My understanding is that of the 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip, fewer than 1,000 are Christians.

That said, statements in the letter are deeply problematic and cannot be met with credulity. Signatories blame the Israeli military for "the heinous massacre at Al-Ahli Anglican-Baptist Hospital" that has been established by independent analysts to have been a rocket fired from Gaza at Israel that broke up mid-flight and fell into the hospital parking lot.

Even when Israel isn't alleged to be directly at fault, the letter's authors still lay blame at their feet:

"The brutal and hopeless living conditions in Gaza under Israel's iron fist have regrettably emboldened extreme voices of some Palestinian groups to resort to militancy and violence as a response to oppression and despair," the letter reads.

It goes on to claim "how some Christians have legitimized Israel's ongoing indiscriminate attacks on Gaza," and allege "The Israeli military has utilized tactics that target civilians."

Cognitive bias is on display: Israel is always wrong and incapable of virtue, western church leaders are guilty of "political complicity in the Israeli crimes against the Palestinians" and, as if that wasn't enough, if a militant Islamist group's own rocket falls on Gaza, well, Israel and the West made them do it.

The letter reads as if it was penned not by Palestinians, but employs terminology en vogue within a leftist faculty lounge, sometimes descending into hysterics.

Authors allege a double standard valuing Israeli lives over Palestinian ones that "reflects an entrenched colonial discourse that has weaponized the Bible to justify the ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples," the statement lectures. "We are aware of the western Christian legacy of Just War Theory that was used to justify dropping atomic bombs over innocent civilians in Japan during World War II, the destruction of Iraq and the decimation of its Christian population during the latest American war on Iraq, as well as the unwavering and uncritical support for Israel against the Palestinians in the name of moral-supremacy and 'self-defense.'"

"Many western Christians across wide denominational and theological spectra adopt Zionist theologies and interpretations that justify war, making them complicit in Israel's violence and oppression," letter writers insist.

I remain unconvinced that these appeals matter. Just who are these groups?

Sabeel, once ubiquitous at mainline Protestant governing conventions, has a tiny budget and is now kept at arm's length by some senior mainline Protestant officials who regard it as a fringe caucus group without much of a constituency in the pews.

Sabeel's anti-Israel message is "often intertwined with theological antisemitism," according to Analyst Sarah Chin of NGO Monitor: "The group intertwines Palestinian nationalist ideology with its narrow interpretation of Christian theology. Through Sabeel, [Anglican Priest Naim] Ateek pushes liberation theology to justify attacks on Israel. Whether it is stripping Jesus of his Jewish heritage and referring to him as a Palestinian or disparaging Judaism and its texts, calling it 'tribal,' 'exclusionary,' and 'primitive.'"

Christ at the Checkpoint represents a wider movement, but still mostly confined to Evangelical elites, to neutralize a key pro-Israel constituency in America. The conference is organized by Bethlehem Bible College in the West Bank, also a signatory of the open letter.

NGO Monitor said of the 2014 conference that CATC "seeks to advance the Palestinian nationalist agenda within Evangelical Christian churches, while simultaneously reviving theological anti-Semitic themes such as replacement theology."

Kairos Palestine sees Israel as an apartheid state much like South Africa condemned in the 1985 South African Kairos declaration. Kairos Palestine's statements are characterized by one-sided condemnation of Israel as an aggressor, legitimization of terrorism, and anti-Semitic biblical interpretations.

As the pro-Israeli group CAMERA concluded, Kairos Palestine reflects a longstanding Arab Christian "intellectual environment where anti-Zionism is an ever-present aspect of Christian peacemaking efforts in the Middle East."

Most American churchgoers won't directly encounter these above organizations, but should be savvy in understanding who is trying to reach their seminary officials and prominent pastors and with what narrative they are being presented.

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