Plus ça change, the more the same people keep coming back with the same idée fixe. This time it’s the General Assembly Mission Council of the PCUSA, approving a recommendation from its Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRIT) Committee to divest from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola “until they have ceased profiting from non-peaceful activities in Israel-Palestine,” i.e., helping Israel defend itself. According to the Presbyterian News Service:
At issue are their participation in the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the construction of the “security barrier” between Israel and Palestinian territory, and the destruction of Palestinian homes, roads and fields to make way for the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have been declared illegal under international law.
“We have run out of hope that these companies are willing to change their corporate practices [in Israel-Palestine],” said the Rev. Brian Ellison, a Kansas City pastor and chair of the denomination’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI). “We have made diligent effort to engage in conversation. We’d like to do more, to make progress, but substantial change does not seem possible.”
“This is not a boycott,” Ellison insisted, “nor is it a call for general divestment. “We hold stock in many companies that do business in Israel and the West Bank. What we are asking is divestment from particular companies where engagement has not been productive.”
Noting that the PC(USA) has consistently condemned violence by both sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict and since 1948 has called for a “two-state solution” with secure borders for both Israel and Palestine, Ellison said, “We are trying to engage both sides. Our sole goal is a just peace.”
He’s right that the “engagement” has not been “constructive,” if by that he means that the three companies have refused to listen to an insignificant shareholder spew venom about Israel and change how they do business with the Jewish state.
This is of a piece with the general drift of PCUSA with regard to Israel. The denomination continues to support an anti-Semitic cancer in its midst in the Israel Palestine Mission Network. This summer’s General Assembly with see yet more efforts to label Israel an “apartheid state.” Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons recently offered a preview of the GA, and said that the forty overtures so far received could be grouped into eight categories: ordination standards, marriage, Israel/Palestine, Board of Pensions, immigration, non-geographic presbyteries, union presbyteries, church property. Funny, isn’t it, that the only issue beyond American shores that gets mainline Presbyterians all lathered up is Israel?
For all the protestations of even-handedness, the net effect of PCUSA protests is to suggest that the denomination’s leaders consider Israeli self-defense of no consequence–for instance, the repeated condemnations of the security barrier, which has cut suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism within Israel by over 90%, an unwelcome result, since the PCUSA’s leaders apparently value Palestinian olive trees over Israeli lives).
Despite the fact that the PCUSA profits from companies doing business in some of the world’s most despotic regimes (China, for just one example, which has never, to my knowledge, ever been confronted by PCUSA over its occupation of Tibet, which has been occupied by Beijing since 1961, even longer and at least as brutally as the West Bank and Gaza), Israel is the only one that is ever singled out for this kind of treatment.
UPDATE: Jonathan Tobin of Commentary has more.
The Reformed Pastor 
February 18, 2012 at 11:29 am
Thanks for this, David. I linked to it on my own blog, where I expressed my lack of enthusiasm for the work of the General Assembly Mission Council:
http://presbyman.blogspot.com/2012/02/i-am-not-inspired-by-general-assembly.html
February 18, 2012 at 11:42 am
Thanks, John. By the way, I’ve corrected an egregious oversight, and put you on my blogroll.
February 18, 2012 at 12:19 pm
I’m honored!
February 19, 2012 at 7:36 am
REMEMBER Rev. Ellison…G-d will bless those who bless Israel and curse those who curse Israel. Now in which group do you think G-d is going to place you after this despicable display of yours…and your Presbyterian Church…huh? Eternity is a “hell” of a LONG time! Think about your decision before it’s too late. Just some friendly advice.
February 19, 2012 at 9:03 am
I realize I am in a minority here but evangelicalism has made a huge exegetical error of equating Gen 12 with the modern political state of Israel. Scofield/Ryrie/Walvoord, etc… have really poisoned the minds of many well believing evangelicals (and “Reformed” folks especially should know better since we ostensibly are not dispensational pre-millennialists and since it is against what the Confession teaches) in regards to the State of Israel.
There are plenty of good political reasons why we should seek the well-being of the Modern State of Israel, but there are no good biblical reasons why we should popularly support Israel when it denies Christ and hates God just as much as its neighbors Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, etc…
February 19, 2012 at 3:28 pm
Actually, Ben, since I’m the author, I’m the majority here. 🙂 And I agree with you completely. My support for Israel is based on moral and geo-political considerations, combined with an affinity with the Jewish people that comes from, you know, being Jewish. There is no doubt in my mind that we have no call to equate modern Israel as a nation-state with biblical Israel.
March 12, 2012 at 11:17 am
If divestment were an issue for a company supplying construction equipment to Iran to further its nuclear program, conservatives would jump on this like a kid on jellybeans. But woe to those who dare to question the ethics of the State of Israel today and it’s brutal treatment of Palestinians and Arab Christians, and even its own people who raise ethical questions and seek peace with Palestinian neighbors. These kinds of questions are NOT hatred, or anti-Semitic, or anything else even close to such attitudes. Such easy assumptions only add to the confusion and obscure the real issues. The PCUSA has long been committed to investment programs that contribution to the Kingdom of God on earth; with regard to Caterpillar, we have an opportunity to bear witness for peace, and to remind the world that profits alone are never justification for investment.
March 12, 2012 at 11:43 am
Tom, you may be right about how conservatives would react to proposals for divestment to Iran, but that’s because you miss the point: divestment is a tactic, not a strategy, and the objection here is not to divestment as a tactic, but to the target, and especially to the selectivity involved.
Let’s grant that the campaign within the PCUSA has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, and is all about human rights and peace. Where, then, is the divestment campaign aimed at companies that do business in China over its occupation of Tibet, which has been going on even longer than Israel’s? How about in Syria, where thousands have been killed by a tyrannical regime in the last year? What about in Venezuela, which has seen violations of human rights and freedoms on a scale that would have Americans in the streets in the millions to protest and fight against? What about Sudan, where genocide has been a way of life for years?
Divestment may or may not be a good way of supporting action that you’d like to see happen. But the point here is that in the PCUSA, treating Israel as if it is the only nation on Earth that is violating human rights, oppressing others, and generally acting like a villain ignores reality to such an astonishing degree that it sends the message that PCUSA gets really exercised about such matters when it can throw its ire and weight against Jews. Israel is not above criticism–how about just throwing a bit of that righteous indignation in the direction of others who deserve it?