U.S. Methodist Church renews drive for divestment from Israel
By Nathan Guttman, The Forward
Tags: Divestment, U.S.
Tensions are re-emerging between Jewish organizations and some
mainline Protestant churches in the wake of a renewed drive for churches
to
divest from companies doing business with Israel.
The United Methodist Church opened discussions last Friday on a
resolution calling for divestment from Caterpillar, the tractor
manufacturer, because the company supplies Israel with bulldozers used in
building the separation barrier and in demoli****ng Palestinian homes. The
divestment resolution comes only months after the publication of a
church-sponsored re****t referring to the creation of the State of Israel
as
the "original sin."
Relations with the Presbyterian Church (USA) are also strained,
following remarks by church officials criticizing Israel because of the
Gaza
closure. A recent study by an affiliate of the Presbyterian Church called
on
American Jews to "get a life" instead of focusing on defending Israeli
policies.
"This reflects a very disturbing trend in these churches," said
Ethan
Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public
Affairs. "These developments are a result of work of several very wicked
forces that play in the church."
The divestment campaign, thought by many in the Jewish community to
be
dormant, is still active among mainline Protestant churches and is
re-emerging as a main issue on the agenda of Jewish groups. Attempts to
block the divestment drive, which began four years ago, have proved only
partially successful. Interreligious dialogue efforts and public pressure
managed to mute some churchwide calls for divestment, but other
initiatives
are still gaining sup****t.
The Methodist meeting, held on January 25 in Fort Worth, Texas, was
an
initial orientation meeting for delegation heads who will lead their
groups
at the church's quadrennial conference in April. Delegation leaders were
presented with speakers both sup****tive and opposed to the draft
divestment
resolution, which calls for removing all Methodist pension fund holdings
from Caterpillar.
"The United Methodist Church holds $141 million of pension funds in
companies that sustain the occupation," said Susan Hoder, a member of the
church's Interfaith Peace Initiative. "This has to stop. We have to cut
our
ties to the occupation."
Hoder, who strongly favors passage of divestment measures, went on
to
claim that American taxpayer dollars are used to fund Israeli military. "A
lot of this money goes into the pockets of Israeli military leaders and
politicians who get rich while the population of Israel suffers," she
said.
With 11 million members, The United Methodist Church is the largest
mainline Protestant denomination in the U.S. The upcoming April general
conference, the church's main forum for making policy decisions, will
first
discuss the divestment resolution in a subcommittee. Afterward, the
panel's
recommendations will be put to a general vote to make them official
policy.
A spokesman for the United Methodist Church did not return calls
from
the Forward seeking comments on the divestment drive.
Arrangers of the pre-conference meeting last Friday in Fort Worth
allowed a representative of the organized Jewish community to speak on the
issue. Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, the American Jewish Committee's director of
interreligious affairs, told the Methodist delegates that the Jewish
community was concerned about the resolution. "I told them that while they
may think it is not anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish, for us it feels
anti-Israel and feels anti-Jewish," Greenebaum told the Forward after the
meeting.
At the same time, Greenebaum warned the Jewish community against
overreacting to anti-Israel sentiments in the church. Protestant churches,
he said, "care very deeply about their relations with the Jewish
community."
What prompted Jewish activists to take action was not only the
renewed
divestment drive but also a re****t from the women's division of the
Methodist church, which addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The
225-page re****t, compiled by the Rev. Stephen Goldstein, attempts to
outline
the historical and current contours of the conflict, but according to
Felson, the re****t amounts to "the most egregious thing that has crossed
my
desk that was not put out by an overt hate group."
Among the statements in the re****t that irked Jewish community
activists are a reference to the founding of the State of Israel as "the
original sin," a passage calling Israeli founding father David Ben-Gurion
an
"extremist" and a passage defining Israeli actions as acts of "terror."
Discussing the impact of the Holocaust on Israeli society, the Methodist
re****t claims it has been the cause for "hysteria" and "paranoiac sense"
among Israelis.
"Are we not called to testify when oppressors use their identity as
the
oppressed with stories of sixty years ago but through some failure
of
perception cannot see what transpires now in the shadow of the Holocaust?"
the re****t goes on to ask.
After letting four months pass without a formal response, last week
four Jewish women's groups sent a letter to heads of the Methodist church,
calling the re****t "inflammatory, inaccurate, and polemical." Hadassah and
women's groups affiliated with Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism and
United Jewish Communities signed the letter.
Another expected step by Jewish organizations is the launching of a
new Web site that will call for a "return to civility" and condemn
anti-Israeli voices among Protestant churches.
The Presbyterian Church, the first to come up with resolutions
calling
for divestment, has so far avoided taking action on this issue, but it
still
sup****ts a line seen by Jewish activists as anti-Israel. In recent weeks,
a
heated exchange of letters took place between Jewish community leaders and
heads of the Presbyterian Church, following the church?s criticism of
Israel
over the situation in Gaza. In a letter to the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick,
head of the church's general assembly, 12 Jewish organizational leaders
complained that "the anti-Israel tone of your statement calls into serious
question whether the season of mutual understanding we welcomed in July
2006
has yet arrived."
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