Salt Lake City, USA - The LDS Church, working through an American charity, donated hygiene kits and blankets worth $21,000 to Palestinians suffering the effects of the 22-day war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.
The donation by Latter-day Saint Charities was clearly a sensitive one, acknowledged in a single- sentence statement by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Thursday.
"In response to the America Near East Refugee organization (ANERA), the Church made a modest donation of hygiene kits and blankets that will be distributed in Gaza," the statement said. Spokesman Scott Trotter declined to elaborate.
The LDS Church strives for political neutrality in the Middle East, but has its primary Middle East presence -- the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center -- in Israel. Generations of Mormons have thought of Israel as the fulfillment of early Mormon prophecies on the gathering of Zion.
In the recent fighting, triggered by years of Hamas rocket attacks in southern Israel, Israel inflicted the greater damage, bombing homes, schools and prominent buildings in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Israel killed 1,300 Palestinians, while Hamas killed 13 Israelis.
Palestinians affected by the conflict are those who received the church's aid this week.
On its Web site, ANERA said Latter-day Saint Charities on Jan. 15 donated 4,480 hygiene kits (soap, shampoo, toothpaste) and 840 blankets, which were being distributed in Gaza this week, now that the fighting between Israel and Hamas has ended.
Latter-day Saints Charities has apparently donated medical and relief supplies for ANERA to take to Palestinian communities and poor in the Middle East every year since 2002, according to the Washington-based charity's annual reports.
An ANERA vice president did not respond to an interview request.
BYU-Jerusalem Center director Jim Kearl declined to comment on the donations.
Daniel Peterson, professor of Islamic studies and Arabic in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at BYU, said he suspects the church is not making a political statement but simply trying to alleviate human suffering.
"We just know there are people getting hurt there badly," Peterson said.
But the LDS Church's aid to Palestinians also reflects, in part, a shift in thinking about Israel among Mormons in recent decades, he said.
"Years ago, we hardly knew anybody in the Middle East," he said. That has changed, now, after generations of students have studied in Jerusalem and become friends with Palestinians as well as Israelis.
"When you actually see the human cost of it [the fighting] and see that there are other people being hurt by this, it becomes more blurry," Peterson said. "It's so much harder to demonize people when you have friends on both sides."
Almost from the beginning of the church, Mormons have understood themselves as constituting latter-day Israel, relying on both biblical and Mormon scriptures, according to a 1999 article in the 1ournal of Mormon History by BYU historian Arnold Green.
There have been two strains to Mormon thought, both expressed by church founder Joseph Smith, who dispatched Orson Hyde to the Mount of Olives, where in 1841 he offered a prophetic prayer of dedication for the return of the children of Abraham.
One strain held that Mormons were the literal descendants of Israelites, but the other, which is now more widely held -- and closer to mainstream Christian thought -- is that all who accept the gospel constitute Israel.
When Israel was created in 1948, Mormon apostles saw it as a significant religious event, Green wrote.
Peterson said he still believes that Israel is, in some way, the beginning of the gathering of Jews to Palestine. "But that doesn't mean I have to approve every action of the Israeli government," he said.
"It may be divinely planted, but it's still human and flawed."