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The 216th General Assembly (2004) adopted a resolution about divestment from Israel. It was followed by a lot of press. Here is the relevant information, and the history of the press coverage in the first month. This is your one-time stop to get up-to-date.
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(scroll down to the end of the adopted resolution to find point 7)
....the 216th General Assembly (2004) of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) does the following:
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.
Related link:
• 2004 General Assembly divestment list naming 21 companies, for involvement in military-related production (10), tobacco (10) or human rights violations (1). On the web site of Mission Responsibility Through Investment.
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July 2, 2004
Report by the Presbyterian News Service on divestment
The vote was 431 to 62
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"...Divestment is one of the strategies that U.S. churches used in the 1970s and '80s in a successful campaign to end apartheid in South Africa..."
[Note: the words "apartheid" or "South Africa" do not appear in the GA statement]
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This was all the attention the issue received in the press, Presbyterian or otherwise, until:
July 14, 2004
ADL denounces Presbyterians' actions on Jews and Israel
"Targeting Jews for conversion... is an insult to the Jewish people."
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In a letter to the leader of the Presbyterian Church USA, Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick, Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director, and Gary Bretton-Granatoor, ADL director of interfaith affairs, wrote:
"We were offended and distressed by the actions of the Presbyterian Church USA at your most recent General Assembly pertaining to Jews and Israel. Specifically, we cite the vote to continue funding the Avodat Yisrael Church, and other missionizing churches targeting Jews, and the "overture" or resolution calling for divestiture from Israel...
"The recent actions of the General Assembly calls into question the efforts of interfaith dialogue between Presbyterians and Jews..." |
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"...the Presbyterian Church, rather than turning the other cheek, chose to slap both Jewish cheeks – on one cheek saying Israel is South Africa, and on the other saying we will convert your people. Remember again that the liberal Jews believed (at least until yesterday) that the Presbyterians were their natural political allies with whom they shared common bonds, rather than the conservative Christians who support Israel in many cases more ardently than many Jews do...
"For years, the Israel-haters have tried to link Israel to South Africa, and even more outrageously, to the Nazis. The Presbyterian Church has now legitimized this slander. For this, they should be shamed and shunned." |
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Leaders of the Presbyterian Church in the US [sic] approved a divestment campaign against Israel in a series of annual resolutions that included a condemnation of Israel's security fence, a decision to continue funding churches aimed at converting Jews to Christianity and a disavowal of Christian Zionism as a legitimate theological stance. |
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It takes a particularly virulent strain of moral idiocy and meanness to single out Israel, not Arafat's Palestinian Authority, or terror-supporting, death-fatwa-issuing Iran, or women-subjugating Saudi Arabia, for condemnation and economic ruin. One of the most decent societies, one of the most liberal democracies in the world, is fighting for its life against Islamic fascists who praise the Holocaust and publicly call for the annihilation of Israel – and the Presbyterian Church calls for strangling Israel! |
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July 20, 2004
Presbyterian Jihad – By Richard Baehr, Frontpage Magazine
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The article appeared originally in The American Thinker last week Friday under the title The Presbyterian Church loses its grip, ( we linked to it on Saturday). It is about the GA decision to call for divestment from Israel and to continue funding for Presbyterian ministries focused on Jews, such as Avodat Yisrael, at least for now. However, the Frontpage Magazine version is sharper than the original. For example, one added sentence is:
"There should be a price to pay for selective morality, stupidity and anti-Semitism. And make no mistake, anti-Semitism is at play here. This is one of the cases in which the charge is appropriate..." |
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July 21, 2004
Statement concerning actions of the 216th General Assembly regarding Israel and Palestine
By Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly
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"One of the deep and abiding commitments of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is to reconciliation and good relationships with people of all faith communities. In light of this, some people have raised concern about certain actions taken by the 216th General Assembly, held June 26-July 3 in Richmond, Virginia, related to both outreach to Jewish people and Israeli and Palestinian relations. Therefore, I am sending this message to both Presbyterian leaders and to ecumenical partners and colleagues from other faith communities with the hope that it will clarify the actions of this assembly and the ongoing commitments of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)..."
On divestment from Israel he writes:
"The assembly authorized exploration of a selective divestment of church funds from those companies whose business in Israel is found to be directly or indirectly causing harm or suffering to innocent people, Palestinian or Israeli..."
[Note: the words "whose business in Israel is found to be directly or indirectly causing harm or suffering to innocent people, Palestinian or Israeli" are not found in the GA statement, see above]. |
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Church headquarters in Louisville, Ky., has been "inundated" with hundreds of angry phone calls and e-mails from Jews who protested votes on Jewish evangelism and the Israeli-Jewish conflict during the church's recent General Assembly in Richmond, Va. Delegates narrowly voted – 260-233 – to maintain funding for churches, including one in suburban Philadelphia, that are geared toward Jewish converts to Christianity...
Recent articles in the Jewish press had reported that the church approved a blanket divestment. Rather, a decision will not be made until next March when a committee reports back with recommendations to church leaders. |
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July 22, 2004
Presbyterians divest themselves from Israel
By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz
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"...U.S. Jewish leaders were astonished to find that the Presbyterian Church has adopted the most censorious decisions ever embraced by any Christian denomination in the United States against Israel..." |
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In an unprecedented victory for pro-Palestinian activists, leaders of the largest Presbyterian denomination officially equated the Jewish state with apartheid South Africa and have voted to stop investing in Israel.
"The national policy is very, very troublesome," said Rabbi Gil Rosenthal, executive director of the National Council of Synagogues, in an interview with the Forward. Rosenthal, who said he was the first rabbi ever invited to a General Assembly, added: "I'm dismayed that there's such a one-sided attitude."
Rabbi Lennard Thal, senior vice president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which recently launched a national interreligious dialogue with Presbyterians as well as other Protestant representatives, said he was very disappointed, calling the resolutions "heavy-handed."
James Rudin, senior interreligious adviser to the American Jewish Committee, called the Presbyterian actions "a catastrophic disaster."
ADL leaders blasted the resolutions in a letter sent Tuesday to Presbyterian leader Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick.
"To assert that there is a moral equivalency between the racist policy of apartheid and the efforts to protect the citizenry of Israel is unconscionable," wrote Bretton-Granatoor and national director Abraham Foxman. "The recent actions... calls into question the efforts of interfaith dialogue between Presbyterians and Jews."
Related link: What the General Assembly actually decided about Israel
The text of the resolution as approved by the 216th GA (2004) |
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The Presbyterian action was the first by an American church and, interestingly, it followed an expected setback in the US House of Representatives when it deplored in a non-binding resolution the July 9 ruling by the International Court of Justice, ICJ, at The Hague on the legal consequences of the apartheid wall being constructed by Israel - the ruling in itself representing a major achievement for the Palestinians because of the various implications in the language of the decision. (The monstrous Israeli wall built on Palestinian land was declared illegal, and the ICJ also said that it must be dismantled and rejected, among other things, Israeli allegations that the West Bank was a "disputed" territory). |
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July 23, 2004
PC(USA) Office of Interfaith Relations:
Actions of General Assembly raise concerns |
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Here are some highlights of the actions that were taken, with links to the documents in question, and suggestions about other information that might be helpful for understanding the General Assembly’s actions, and for talking about them with neighbors. |
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July 24, 2004
Viva Presbyterians! – Church divests from Israel
By Ahmed Nassaf and Jawad Ali, Muslim Wake Up!
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This is significant news. A quick search of Google News and Yahoo News shows that this story has been picked up by almost none of the mainstream American news media so far.
I called the toll free number listed on the Church's web site, and spoke with a very polite and helpful man. The news did get attention in the American Jewish media and they have been getting a steady flow of complaints, mixed in with some encouraging comments. I encourage our readers to call or write to the church and tell them about the importance of the divestment move. |
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The Reverend Stephen Kendall, Principal Clerk of the Presbyterian Church of Canada has said that the Canadian Church, unlike the 216th General Assembly, has: "not adopted any resolution with respect to divestment in Israel."
This was in response to a request by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal for clarification of their position, in light of the General Assembly resolution. Leo Adler, Director of National Affairs for Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto said, "The Canadian Presbyterian Church, by refusing to go along with such a one-sided and inappropriate resolution, is helping both the cause of peace in the Middle East and the need for Canadians of all faiths to realize that Israel is the only democracy in that part of the world. To equate Israel with apartheid is not only completely false, but contrary to reality in Israel.
"We thank the Church for their integrity," he added. |
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Many Jewish leaders regard the two measures as a double-barreled assault on their faith and the Jewish state. Says interfaith veteran Rabbi James Rudin: "They turn back much of the achievement of the last 40 years." But the resolutions actually reflect two different – and mutually hostile — constituencies. The divestment was backed by the liberal Presbyterian majority, which traditionally tempers its affirmation of Israel's right to exist with concern for Palestinian welfare. The margin for continuing Messianic funding was provided by an increasingly powerful evangelical minority. Some church activists seem honestly taken aback by the two measures being linked in controversy. It is, says conservative leader the Rev. Parker Williamson, "a disjunction, almost like frying ice." But apparently even fried ice can exert a chill. |
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July 26, 2004
Presbyterians lead the irreligious left
Adam Sparks, SFGate.com |
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"...The Presbyterian Church's leaders, upset with Israel, which dares to defend itself from incessant suicide bombers, voted to lock arms with Palestinian terrorist martyrs in conducting their ceaseless jihad, which slaughters innocent Jews. The church's opening salvo is to divest itself of all things Israeli while simultaneously equating actions of the only multicultural, multireligious democracy in the Middle East with the vicious policy of apartheid formerly practiced in South Africa...
. "Which society is the moral one? A group that celebrated the massacre of 9/11 and trains its children to become suicide bombers and terrorists, or a civil, educated, multicultural, democratic society trying to live in peace? It's a no-brainer – except to the Irreligious Left..." |
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Jewish leaders' anger grew after the Presbyterian General Assembly voted 431 to 62 this month to sell stock in companies that may have a role in Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
It marked the harshest action yet by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) toward Israel, which the church has criticized for years for its treatment of Palestinians. The church calls the occupation the "root of evil acts committed against innocent people on both sides of the conflict."
The Presbyterian Church participated in the widespread divestment from apartheid-era South Africa in the 1980s, and it also recently divested from an oil company linked to turmoil in Sudan. It has long refused to invest in companies tied to alcohol, tobacco or gambling. |
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Looking at these pronouncements from our would-be dialogue partner, Jews should be forgiven for wondering, "If these are our friends, who exactly are our enemies?"
One cannot say, as the Presbyterians do in other contexts, that they support Israel's right to exist and condemn terrorism, while at the same time seek to delegitimize Israel and libel it with the tag of "apartheid state."
Israel is, as they well know, the only democracy in the region. Unlike South Africa, Israel is not a minority-run state. In Israel, Arabs are the minority, but they have full rights as citizens. Moreover, the dispute over the West Bank and Gaza is one in which the Jewish state has made numerous dangerous concessions in the name of peace, only to have the offers answered with a Palestinian terrorist war. |
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For many years now, mainline Protestant churches have taken an increasingly hostile stance toward Israel, while evangelical churches have tilted strongly toward Israel. If there is a consolation for Israel, it is that the mainline denominations are in decline while the latter are flourishing. The reasons for these patterns probably have little to do with their views vis-a-vis Israel.
But it ought to be of some concern to American Jewry that the very people with whom they might otherwise make common cause on domestic issues have taken such a hostile position on Israel.
More broadly, it is of great concern to Jews everywhere that this slide toward outright anti-Semitism is taking place in the very quarters from which one might expect sympathy or at least nuance in judgment. With its vote last week, the American Presbyterian Church showed neither. |
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"Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the largest grassroots Jewish peace group of its kind in the United States, applauds the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) for its recent vote to explore divesting from companies who profit from the harming of “innocent people, Palestinian or Israeli.” Far from being an attack on Jews, the PCUSA decision to investigate selective divestment as a way to end Israel’s 37-year occupation is in the best Judeo-Christian tradition of supporting universal human rights and justice..." |
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...As a former Presbyterian, I know...
The problem with these people is not that they don't understand the Middle East. It is simply that they are no longer able to tell right from wrong. They are no longer able to distinguish between good and evil. They are no longer able to see the difference between freedom and tyranny. They are no longer able to judge between criminal and victim.
They have, in short, completely lost their moral bearings.
This is no longer a church, it is an organization of misguided political activism. This is no longer a house of God, it is a mad house. This is no longer part of the bride of Christ, it is a whore to the world. |
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Resolutions by the Presbyterian Church (USA) on Israel and Christian-Jewish relations – including one that calls for "selective" divestment from firms that do business in Israel – have triggered a stinging rebuke from US Jewish groups.
The criticism has been so heated – and phone calls and emails to the church's national headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky, so intense – the denomination has been forced to issue a public clarification on actions taken during the Presbyterians' 26 June-3 July general assembly in Richmond, Virginia. |
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...While Israel's diplomatic status in the world does count, countries don't only live in that milieu. There are also the social and economic spheres, and in these, there is a price to pay beyond gestures. One of the first is the decision of the General Assembly Council of the Presbyterian Church USA to begin gathering data to support a "selective divestment of holdings in multinational corporations doing business in Israel/Palestine."
The campaign in the U.S. may be derailed by the fact that more than 65 percent of Americans polled believe Israel has a right to build the fence to protect itself and grassroots members of the Presbyterian Church itself are beginning to rally against the measure. In Europe, the issue may be more difficult because the wellspring of public opinion does not favor Israel, and the European countries are, in fact, Israel's largest trading partners... |
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| July 30, 2004 |
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John A. Huffman Jr., pastor of St. Andrews, Newport Beach, CA:
"I must speak up clearly to support the stand of our denomination in regard to the Middle East."
Last Sunday, before Huffman began the sermon, he addressed the issue, in response to questions and concerns from parishioners. |
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Pastor of Bel Air Presbyterian Church criticizes GA decision
By Gaby Wenig, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
The Rev. Mark Allan Brewer told his Bel Air Presbyterian Church congregation last Sunday:
"I don't want to impugn [GA]'s] motives, but it seems that they fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch going down...." |
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PCUSA is divesting itself – by Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI
"... The Vatican, though clearly no admirer of Ariel Sharon's wall, nonetheless exercised theological sanity last week by officially equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The PCUSA's divestment vote, on the other hand, was none other than a fashionable anti-Zionist move...
"What makes activist church people look so pathetic is that, for all their good intentions, they have an infinite ability to make fools of themselves..." |
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Online Petition condemns church for 'hatred' of Israel
Mainline Presbyterians largest group to divest from Jewish state
An online petition signed by more than 2,000 people protests the Presbyterian Church USA general assembly's decision to side with Palestinian Arabs and against Israel, choosing to divest from the Jewish state as it did only with apartheid South Africa. |
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Presbyterians divest themselves from Israel
By Nathan Guttman, Axis of Logic
"This is a new phase of aggressive behavior in the expression of their feelings toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." |
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July 31, 2004
A prayer for Presbyterians to reach out to Jewish people
How, our brothers and sisters in faith, did you come to hate Israel?
The God Squad |
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Sometimes it's hard to hold your head up when the very worst of your profession violates everything you hold dear and true. That's the way we both felt recently when the Presbyterian Church (USA), at its annual General Assembly, approved a proposal to study whether the church should divest its multibillion-dollar portfolio of all companies that do business with Israel because Israel, in their opinion, is just like the apartheid state of South Africa.
The PCUSA also voted not to end its work to convert Jews.
We are stunned, shocked and outraged by both votes.
We pray: Do you not see that your vote to convert Jews is a vote to cut yourselves off from Jews and also from all Christians who have renounced active proselytizing among the Jewish people? |
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July 31, 2004
Scholars for Peace criticizes Presbyterians
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Ed Beck, co-founder and head of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, said Kirkpatrick's statement "rationalizes what is basically discriminatory and racist behavior."
On its Web site, www.spme.net, Scholars for Peace endorses a statement by columnist Thomas Friedman: "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic." |
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| Letters from readers on this issue |
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July 21: Rebecca Cambier-Hewlett "Thank you for printing the truth found in the recent articles by Richard Baehr and Dennis Prager [re. GA actions on Israel]. Both men must be praised for stepping up and speaking the truth. I was in attendance at the General Assembly and was flabbergasted..."
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July 28: David Dawson "...I want to express a word of encouragement and thanks to Cliff Kirkpatrick and others for their measured response to much dishonest portrayal of PC(USA) positions [on Israel/Palestine]..."
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July 30: Ned H. Benson writes what his reply was to a question from a rabbi asking whether his congregation "supported the "anti-semitic actions of the PCUSA."
"..."Sometimes constitutional legislative policy bodies take positions and make statements which, quite frankly, I consider idiotic. Congress does that. The 216th General Assembly certainly has done so..."
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