Welcome News On Divestment

by the editors

There are many motives behind the drive by some mainline Protestant churches to punish Israel with economic divestment, but there is only one bottom line: singling out the Jewish state for sanctions can only complicate the quest for a fair and durable peace in the region.

Last week the United Methodist Church, the largest of the mainline denominations, did the responsible thing when it voted down five divestment proposals at its General Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. That decision could be a turning point in the ongoing fight over divestment.

Divestment as conceived by activists in the Protestant churches goes far beyond responsible, productive criticism. It unfairly tars Israel as among the worst human rights abusers in a world where outright genocide is still too

common. And it reflects only the narrative of Palestinians, who claim Israel alone is responsible for the region’s deadly stalemate. It ignores Israel’s legitimate security concerns and callously dismisses as irrelevant the Israelis killed by terrorist bombs and rockets, the kidnapped soldiers, the incendiary, anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Many divestment advocates go even further, framing their arguments in ways that deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

A recent “Synopsis of the Israel/Palestine Conflict” in the official publication of the Methodist Federation for Social Action, a group backing divestment, portrays the creation of Israel as illegitimate — a “colonization” by an “extremist minority of the world Jewish population.”

Fortunately, the Methodist leadership, in an impressively democratic exercise, saw such radicalism for what it was and rejected divestment. In doing so, the Church positioned itself to be a force for healing and reconciliation in the region, not a goad to more conflict and division.

Church officials say a big factor in last week’s positive outcome was a groundswell against divestment by local Methodist groups — a surge that was, in part, the result of intensive dialogue between Jewish and Methodist groups around the country. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) played a key role, church leaders say, in promoting and coordinating those important discussions, and the results were evident in Fort Worth last week.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization