The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the USA (PCUSA) voted overwhelmingly to abandon their two year old stated goal of divestment from Israel - a move that had been calculated to help label Israel as the new apartheid South Africa.
The new resolution - emailed to a number of interested bloggers and media by Larry Rued - now reads:
1. We acknowledge that the actions of the 216th General Assembly (2004) caused hurt and misunderstanding among many members of the Jewish community and within our Presbyterian communion. We are grieved by the pain that this has caused, accept responsibility for the flaws in our process, and ask for a new season of mutual understanding and dialogue. [That is, of course, an understatement. The original resolution caused many mainstream Presbyterians to seriously question the politics of the General Assembly, and whether it should affect their own committment to the church.]
To these ends, we replace the instructions expressed in Item 12-01 (Minutes, 2004 Part I, pp. 64–66) Recommendation 7, which reads
“7. Refers to Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) with instructions to initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel, in accordance to General Assembly policy on social investing, and to make appropriate recommendations to the General Assembly Council for action.”
with the following:
“7. To urge that financial investments of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), as they pertain to Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, be invested in only peaceful pursuits, and affirm that the customary corporate engagement process of the Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investments of our denomination is the proper vehicle for achieving this goal.” [ This is the key change - and it's a reasonable one for a mainstream church. I don't expect the PCUSA to pump money into, say, this company, although it'd sure be cool]
2. Direct Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) to ensure that its strategies for engaging corporations with regard to Israeli and Palestinian territories
a. Reflect the application of fundamental principles of justice and peace common to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism that are appropriate to the practical realities of Israeli and Palestinian societies.
b. Reflect commitment to positive outcomes. [I have to wonder - especially given recent experience that is the subject of another posting - what some of the GA members would consider a "positive outcome" of, say, the war on terror - but I digress.]
c. Reflect awareness of potential impact upon the stability, future viability, and prosperity of both the Israeli and Palestinian economies.
d. Identify affirmative investment opportunities as they pertain to Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.
3. We call upon the church:
a. To work through peaceful means with American and Israeli Jewish, American and Palestinian Muslim, and Palestinian Christian communities and their affiliated organizations for an end to all violence and terror against Palestinian and Israeli civilians.
b. To work through peaceful means with American and Israeli Jewish, American and Palestinian Muslim, and Palestinian Christian communities and their affiliated organizations to end the occupation.
c. To work through peaceful means with American and Israeli Jewish, American and Palestinian Muslim, and Palestinian Christian communities and their affiliated organizations towards the creation of a socially, economically, geographically, and politically viable and secure Palestinian state, alongside an equally viable and secure Israeli state, both of which have a right to exist. [That last clause is a good one. As a Presbyterian, I'd be a lot happier if the GA would call upon the Palestinian Authority to renounce the commitment to terrorism that is both the PA's main problem and, as it happens, something that the GA seems to refuse to acknowledge exists.]
d. To encourage and celebrate efforts by individual Presbyterians, congregations, and judicatories of our church to communicate directly and regularly with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities, sponsor programs likely to improve relations among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, and engage in peacemaking in the Middle East. ["Peacemaking" - sanctimonious processions of white, liberal, upper-middle-class drones who prance about war zones while studiously avoiding the core causes of the war (in this case, a commitment to the destruction of Israel) - is a fairly harmless diversion for people who might otherwise spend their efforts on something both more productive and effective.]
4. The 217th General Assembly (2006) does not believe that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should tell a sovereign nation whether it can protect its borders or handle matters of national defense. The problem with the security wall, in 2004 and presently, is its location. The 217th General Assembly (2006) supports fair criticism of the security wall insofar as it illegally encroaches into the Palestinian territory and fails to follow the legally recognized borders of Israel since 1967 demarcated by the Green Line. To the extent that the security barrier violates Palestinian land that was not part of Israel prior to the 1967 war, the barrier should be dismantled and relocated. [Misguided as it is, this statement is a huge improvement over the original, which called for the entire wall to be razed.]
5. Recognizing that the situation on the ground in the Israel-Palestine area is rapidly changing, the General Assembly Council (GAC) is directed to carefully monitor ongoing developments of the situation in the Middle East and to examine the polices of the PC(USA) related to the Middle East, in order to make a comprehensive report to the 218th General Assembly (2008).
6. Instructs the Stated Clerk to communicate Recommendations 1. through 5. above to the United States’ president, vice president, secretary of state, and members of Congress; to Israeli and Palestinian leaders in the Middle East; to the membership of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); to leadership of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith bodies and denominations in the United States and the Middle East with whom we are in communication.
Comment: The Assembly received twenty-six overtures pertaining to the Middle East. The recommendation is the result of the General Assembly’s honest and sincere effort to address the issues and concerns that appeared in the overtures in a comprehensive and concise document.
Unstated - 3/4 of those 26 overtures were extremely harshly critical of the PCUSA's original 2004 resolution.
There is a long way to go - but this is encouraging.
The ELCA in it's last convention adopted a "Peace Without Walls" resolution essentially condemming Isreal for it's secutity fence/wall/no-man's-land. I thought it pretty gutsy coming from the church of Luther, whose anti-Jewish writings late in life would have made Goebbles blush and Eichmann proud.
Posted by: Kermit at June 26, 2006 09:39 AMTo put it mildly in the upper echelons of most mainline Protertant is a deep antisemitism...they love the sad little Jew with a stuffed suitcase fleeing Pogroms but if they stand up in the form of Israel or Zionism, they are a monster to humanity.
Not a dime to a church...
Posted by: Greg at June 27, 2006 02:30 PM