The United Church of Christ (UCC) on Tuesday passed a resolution that calls for divestment from companies that do business with Israel at its General Synod in Cleveland.
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The liberal Protestant group is the latest to take such action.
According to a UCC news report, the resolution, which had initially been limited to five companies for their involvement in occupation activities (Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, G4S and Veolia), was expanded to include, “any direct or substantive indirect holdings in companies profiting from, or complicit in, human rights violations arising from the occupation”.
Two other American churches, the Episcopal Church and the Mennonite Church United States of America, were also debating Israeli boycott measures this week at their conventions.
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Peter Makari of Global Ministries, an agency that is part of the United Church of Christ, said the resolutions “reflect our urgent concern for the worsening effects of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian people and lives, including the disparity in rights and power”.
Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, who travelled to Cleveland for the synod, said the vote spoke volumes. “We similarly assert the right of Palestinians to have a sovereign, independent and viable state within secure and recognized borders”.
The U.S. State Department on Tuesday clarified that while the administration “strongly opposes” any boycott, divestment or sanctions against Israel, this doesn’t extend to “Israel-controlled territories”.
“There is a growing momentum now to Isolate Israel because of its policies towards Palestinians and because of the occupation of Palestine”, Van Wyk stated. BDS advocates say the movement, based on the campaign against South African apartheid, is aimed at Israeli policy, not Jews, in response to two decades of failed peace talks and expanded Israeli settlement of the West Bank and east Jerusalem. It has a pension board and an investment fund which together control close to $4 billion. However, these arms and individual churches can decide not to heed the divestment call. Still, the vote aims to bring moral pressure for change from within the USA, Israel’s closest and most important ally.
“The UCC has voted to support the anti-peace BDS movement that won’t improve a single Palestinian life but only succeeds in encouraging those seeking to demonize and weaken the Jewish state and her supporters around the world”, Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper said in a statement.
In yet another sign that the American government is reassessing the special relationship between the USA and Israel, and that BDS is gaining traction, the State Department yesterday said that it didn’t oppose BDS, boycott, divestment and sanctions actions, aimed at the occupied Palestinian territories, because Israeli settlements “make it harder to negotiate a sustainable and equitable peace deal in good faith”.
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AP writer Ian Deitch contributed from Jerusalem.
