Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: non solo Logi, per fortuna

Ruth Lautt è una donna, bella, coraggiosa e determinata, è una
avvocata americana che è diventata suora domenicana per seguire una
vocazione davvero importante: fermare il boicottaggio antisemita dello
Stato di Israele e contrastare l'antisemitismo diffuso nelle Chiese
cristiane. La sua ammirevole determinazione la porta anche a
dissentire dalle posizione ufficiali del suo ordine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/us/14religion.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin
Lawyer-Turned-Nun Rises to Israel’s Defense
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN
Sister Ruth Lautt works from a single room on the 19th floor of the
God Box. Such is the nickname for the Interchurch Center, the office
building on Riverside Drive in Manhattan that is the closest thing to
a Vatican for America’s mainline Protestant denominations. Indeed,
Sister Ruth’s fellow tenants include agencies of the United Methodist
Church, the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.).
Wearing the tapered suits left over from an earlier career in law and
the crucifix of her more recent life as a Roman Catholic nun, Sister
Ruth cuts an inconspicuous figure at the elevator bank. And on many of
the issues that animate the mainline churches — ecumenical outreach,
social justice — she makes a perfectly companionable neighbor. On the
subject of Israel, however, she qualifies as something more like the
enemy within.
Through the organization she founded three years ago, Christians for
Fair Witness on the Middle East, Sister Ruth has frequently and
sharply clashed with the very denominations housed under the God Box’s
roof. When they have proposed divestment from Israel or more generally
condemned its actions against Palestinians, she has fought against
those positions, vociferously speaking out for Israel’s right to self-
defense and security.
In the rancorous and relentless debate on the Middle East conflict,
Sister Ruth stands as a sui generis player. She has little contact
with Jewish advocacy groups, none with the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee lobby. She disassociates herself from Christian
Zionists of the theological and political right. Even while defending
Israel’s defensive measures, including the separation barrier, she
openly criticizes its occupation of the West Bank and laments
Palestinian suffering.
As for her methods, Fair Witness has specialized in behind-the-scenes
infighting at denominational meetings. A former litigator with the
famously aggressive Manhattan law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom, Sister Ruth has become both effective and
controversial by working the floor at religious conventions, helping
opponents of divestment draft motions, applying persuasion at the
subcommittee and committee levels.
“We are informed by the Christian mandate to stand for justice and to
raise our voices when we see someone being falsely accused,” Sister
Ruth, 44, said in an interview at the God Box. “The issue isn’t
divestment. Divestment is a symptom, a symptom of bias against the
state of Israel and an attempt to lay the blame on the shoulders of
Israel.”
Such a viewpoint collides with the political and theological direction
of the mainline Protestant churches. Influenced by a version of
liberation theology espoused by the Palestinian Christian activist
Naim Ateek and his organization Sabeel, which likens Palestinians to
the persecuted Jesus, all five of the mainline denominations in the
United States (Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Evangelical
Lutheran and United Church of Christ) have debated and in some cases
adopted policies intended to bring direct or indirect economic
pressure on Israel to compromise.
Just last month, with Sister Ruth present as a nonvoting observer, the
United Methodist Church defeated three divestment motions. At the same
time, however, the church’s general conference approved several
motions reiterating opposition to Israel’s settlements and military
presence in the West Bank.
To divestment proponents, Sister Ruth is an intrusive irritant.
“It’s inappropriate for an outside group like this one to come in to
our conference and seek to influence internal decisions that reflect
our values and our previously adopted positions on the occupation,”
said Susanne Hoder, a member of the divestment task force of the New
England Conference of the United Methodist Church. “It’s an odd
pursuit for a nun to spend so much of her time seeking to discredit
Christians who are trying to protect other Christians who are being
persecuted by the occupation.”
Sister Ruth parts ways even with her own order of nuns, the Dominican
sisters, in her stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On a Web
site devoted to “justice and peace,” the Dominican order formally
opposes the separation barrier and calls for “solidarity” with
Palestinian Christians.
Acknowledging the friction, Sister Ruth said: “The overwhelming
majority of these folks are extremely good people trying to be
faithful to the Gospel call to justice. But they are mis- and under-
informed when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and typically
have only seen this conflict from one side.”
Little in Sister Ruth’s professional background anticipated her
current cause. Before she joined the Dominican order in 1996, she had
earned a law degree from New York University and worked at Skadden,
Arps. Even after becoming a sister, she continued to litigate cases
for a smaller firm on Long Island, close to the Dominican residence
where she lived.
Sister Ruth did, however, earn a master’s degree in Jewish-Christian
Studies from Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and participated in
several ecumenical groups on Long Island.
While she said that she received a divine call to advocate for Israel,
that call coincided with a rising tide of protests against Israel for
sending its army back into the West Bank’s major cities after a rash
of suicide bombings in early 2002. The criticism of Israel from
liberal churches grew even greater with construction of the separation
barrier, which for portions of its route crosses into Palestinian
territory.
Sister Ruth made her first trip to Israel in 2003. (Since then she has
returned five times, generally visiting the West Bank as well.) In
December 2005, she incorporated Fair Witness and sent out its first
news release.
Although the group has a board with Roman Catholic and Protestant
members, the operation is essentially all Sister Ruth, all the time.
She raises the money for its $120,000 annual budget. She assembled its
database on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the positions of
mainline Protestant groups. She leads Protestant delegations on study
tours to the region — African-American clergy members will be going in
August, Lutherans in November — and gives her historical analysis of
Zionism and Israel to Christian audiences.
In a typical speech last November at Boston College, she commended the
liberal churches for “a wholesome, Gospel-centered concern for
Palestinian suffering, which is real,” and endorsed a two-state
solution. But she also made the case for Israeli self-defense, even in
the form of the separation barrier.
“I need to question how people feel they have the right in the name of
peace and justice, to tell other people not to try to preserve their
own lives,” she said at one point. “You’re not obligated to lay down
and die.”

 Ruth Lautt è una donna, bella, coraggiosa e determinata
lo diresti anche di madre Teresa di Calcutta se fosse stata
sionista....il delirio nazionalista accoppiato all'astinenza fa
miracoli...