First, the claim that it does hate Palestinians in general, and Palestinian Christians in particular, is a fair one, based on this open letter in Mondoweiss that the Christian Century refused to publish in response to an editorial there.
For secularists, non-Christians, and Christian laypeople who don't know the Christian literary world, Christian Century is not a fundamentalist or conservative evangelical magazine. It's also not a liberal evangelical outlet; in other words, it's not Sojourners.
What it is, is the voice of ecumenical mainline Protestantism. United Methodist Church. Presbyterian Church-USA. United Church of Christ. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Protestant Episcopal Church. In other words, churches whose denomination leaders, colleges and seminaries, and most pastors in the pulpit do NOT believe in a Rapture, do NOT believe that, contra Paul in Romans, "all Israel will be saved" before the Apocalypse, and have no religious reason to suck up to Israel at the expense of either a separate Palestinian state, or full Palestinian rights within a one-state solution.
The quote I reference, for the non-evangelical types? Romans 11, specifically, quoting 11:23-26a:
23 And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree! 25 I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, 26 and in this way all Israel will be saved.
No, liberal Protestants don't believe that as a literal event, just as they know that Paul was wrong about a Second Coming in his lifetime or soon thereafter.
Many of these people also have an inkling that, between members of their denominations and sister churches, Eastern and Roman rite Catholics and various churches of the Orthodox tradition, that 6-7 percent of all Palestinians, whether inside the boundaries of Israel and/or Palestine or not, are Christian. (Yasir Arafat's wife was.) They're persecuted by both Jews and Muslims, and so, Christian Century claiming that, to run such a letter would be interfering in Israeli internal affairs is bullshit.
It also gives credence to the claims of conservative and fundamentalist Christians, whether in explicitly fundamentalist denominations, conservative evangelical ones, or conservative fractions and denominations within mainline Protestantism, that liberal Protestantism doesn't stand for anything when it comes to actual Christianity. (Neither do a fair chunk of these people; they'll sacrifice Palestinian Christians to the cause of a red heifer and a third temple, but that's another thing.) That said, parenthesis aside, that's part of why I didn't "stop" at liberal Christianity after bailing out of the conservative wing of Lutheranism. (See my story, starting here, and for more relevant detail, part 4.)
Back to the details of the rejection.
That's wrong in several ways.
Israel has the right to exist in the Holy Land as a Jewish state.
First, it's behind the curve of liberal Zionists like Peter Beinart who have rejected the two-state solution, as have more and more liberal and leftist non-Zionists.
Second, it rightfully ignores that focusing on this issue becomes a convenient excuse to ignore what Israel has already done.
Third, per that link above, it ignores the religious-based persecution of Palestinian Christians.
The letter was signed by activist groups within a couple of those mainline denominations, and several interfaith groups.
The authors do credit the Century's editorial for moving the magazine's position a skoosh forward.
That said? It's shameful, religiously and otherwise, for the Century to have not published the response to its editorial.
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