Methodist Board Targets Israel with Latest Resolutions

Three resolutions taking critical positions towards Israel were adopted by the United Methodist Church’s public policy arm during its recent meeting. Members of the General Board on Church and Society (GBCS) voted in favor of resolutions seeking boycotts and divestment directed against companies regarded as complicit in the Israeli presence in the West Bank.

Meeting February 9-13 at a United Methodist retreat center outside Orlando, Florida, the 63-member board also voted to affiliate the church agency with the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

GBCS has a history of adopting anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian resolutions. While the church agency seeks to portray itself as a fair broker in Middle East matters, it has adopted no resolutions that are critical of Palestinian groups such as Hamas, or of neighboring Arab dictatorships like Syria. In 2009 GBCS hosted an event at its Capitol Hill headquarters in which speakers portrayed Israel’s founding as a disaster.

The three anti-Israel resolutions were among the most controversial ones introduced at the GBCS meeting. The first resolution called for a boycott of Israeli-produced West Bank products. One director expressed concern that such a boycott might unintentionally cause difficulty for Palestinian workers who benefit from employment provided by Israeli-owned companies. GBCS General Secretary Jim Winkler addressed the concern by saying that the situation was similar to apartheid South Africa, where local black groups had encouraged boycotts even though these might have caused some job losses among their own people.

Equating Israel with apartheid South Africa is a recurring theme among pro-Palestinian groups, who see Israel’s construction of a barrier separating Jewish communities from Arab parts of the West Bank as an act of racial segregation. Israelis argue that the barrier is intended to prevent suicide bombings, and point to a sharp drop in such attacks within Israel after construction began.

A second resolution called for bringing United Methodist investments into line with the denomination’s criticisms of Israel. The resolution sought to remove companies such as Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard from church portfolios due to their business dealings in Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank.

A third vote was taken on the GBCS joining the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Several directors raised questions about whether any of the coalition members “sent up red flags” that might indicate extreme positions with which the United Methodist Church would not want to identify itself. “Like the Communist Party?” asked one director, to laughter from the group.

The GBCS drew criticism last October for initially co-sponsoring the “One Nation Working Together” rally in Washington, D.C. Intended to counter Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” gathering in August, the rally attracted co-sponsors including Planned Parenthood, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Sierra Club, People for the American Way, and most notably the Communist Party USA. Facing intense criticism, the GBCS rescinded its endorsement, saying it was “disturbed by some of the overtly political and partisan statements issued by organizers of the march.”

The three resolutions come after the defeat of similar sweeping anti-Israel divestment proposals at the 2008 United Methodist General Conference in Fort Worth. The proposals, which exclusively faulted Israel for strife in the Middle East, would have moved the church to divest itself of stock in companies doing business with Israel.

A handful of liberal annual conferences have adopted similar divestment legislation, but their proposals have not met with success at the denomination’s quadrennial gathering.

Also in 2008, the Board of Church and Society at first submitted, but then withdrew, legislation to divest the United Methodist Church from Caterpillar, Inc. The board’s complaint against Caterpillar was that the company sold construction equipment that the Israeli military used to build the separation barrier and otherwise reinforce its presence in the West Bank.

The agency’s practice of lobbying the General Conference has proved controversial, both for the one-sided political content and for the overwhelming number of proposed resolutions. In 2008 GBCS submitted over 100 resolutions to the denomination’s rulemaking body.

Winkler acknowledged negative feedback from the 2008 General Conference delegates on the number of resolutions, and pledged that the agency would halve the number of proposals that it submitted to the legislative body in 2012.