Alan Wisdom
September 16, 2011
A new confrontation looms in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) over proposals to divest from companies doing business with Israel. A PCUSA committee announced on September 12 its recommendation to the 2012 General Assembly that the denomination divest itself of any holdings in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions. The divestment would be a protest against the companies’ sales, respectively, of construction, computing, and communications equipment to the Israeli military. Israel was the only Middle Eastern nation targeted for potential divestment by the PCUSA Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI).
This latest MRTI recommendation presages another round in a long-running fight that has erupted at every PCUSA assembly since 2004. In that year, anti-Israel activists persuaded the assembly to mandate a process of “phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel.” That action triggered a volley of negative reactions from Jewish groups and pro-Israel Presbyterians. The 2006 assembly responded by replacing the anti-Israel mandate with a broader instruction that PCUSA funds should “be invested only in peaceful pursuits.” This instruction remains the authority under which MRTI is operating.
The 2008 General Assembly added a pledge that “we will not over-identify with the realities of the Israelis or the Palestinians.” It warned against “taking broad stands that simplify a very complex situation into a caricature of reality, where one side clearly is at fault and the other side is clearly the victim.” The 2010 assembly moved to moderate a harshly anti-Israel report that had been drafted by an activist committee. But it also “strongly denounce[d] Caterpillar’s continued profit-making from non-peaceful uses of a number of its products.”
MRTI had been badgering Caterpillar and the other two companies for years. It was asking them to cease sales of any equipment that might be used by Israel to maintain its military presence in the West Bank or its border controls to stop weapons smuggling into Gaza. Since equipment is fungible, this request amounted to a call for a total boycott against the Israeli military. MRTI did not ask the companies to cease sales to any other military in the region.
The three companies, when they deigned to respond, noted that their products—bulldozers, biometric identification systems, cell phones, and the like—were not weapons designed to kill. They said they had no control over how Israeli forces might use those products in military operations that might or might not be justified. Pro-Israel Presbyterians asserted that the Jewish state had the right to defend itself against terrorist attacks launched from Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.
MRTI was not satisfied with the answers it received in dialogue with the companies. “Today we are sadly reporting that these efforts have not produced any substantive change in company policies or practices, and that there is little reason for hope they will do so in the future,” declared MRTI chair Brian Ellison, a pastor from Kansas City, MO. “According to the Assembly’s prior directives and the church’s ordinary engagement process, we have little choice but to recommend divestment.”
Others disagreed. Jewish groups that follow PCUSA developments were quick to voice their displeasure. Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, objected, “This kind of proposed action promotes the delegitimization of Israel.” He called the MRTI divestment proposal “an invitation to more conflict and more division, without the prospect for fostering peace in a region that so desperately needs it.” The chair of the Jewish council, Dr. Conrad Giles, contended, “Divestment should be saved for the most intractable and odious regimes, when all other means have failed; not for liberal democracies [such as Israel] committed to an ongoing peace process.”
Presbyterians for Middle East Peace (PMEP), a more moderate group in the denomination, lamented that MRTI’s divestment recommendation “will surely offend and hurt our brothers and sisters in the Jewish community.” PMEP also regretted that “the recommendation will, no doubt, increase the divisions within the PCUSA.” It criticized “a small group of activists within the PCUSA that has relentlessly sought to punish Israel. Wanting to find one party at fault in a conflict where all parties have engaged in positive and negative actions, this small group believes that Israel is solely to blame for the current conflict.”
PMEP was confident, however, that “there is no reason to believe that the General Assembly of the PCUSA will respond positively to the MRTI recommendation. In the past, the GA has consistently rejected calls for divestment. Polling of Presbyterian lay people and clergy has consistently rejected suggestions for the PCUSA to be an advocate for any one side in this multi-sided situation.” The moderate group vowed, “Presbyterians for Middle East Peace will work long and hard to make sure the 2012 General Assembly continues to play a positive rather than inflammatory peacemaking role in the Middle East.”
Debates over how to approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have surfaced in several oldline Protestant denominations, but none has been so publicly torn as the PCUSA. This disagreement over Middle East issues is sure to add even more tension to the 2012 General Assembly in Pittsburgh—on top of all the rifts that are opening, inside the PCUSA and between the denomination and its overseas partner churches, as a result of this year’s decision to drop the “fidelity and chastity” standard for sexual conduct of ordained officers.
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