A committee of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has announced six criteria it says the church should use in deciding whether to divest in certain multinational companies doing business in Israel.
The PC(USA)’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee, meeting Nov. 4-6 in New York, drafted six criteria to guide the denomination in its divestment decisions, while emphasizing that any decisions will be made in a careful, deliberate way. The PC(USA) holds more than $7.5 billion in investments through the Presbyterian Foundation and the Board of Pensions, and the earliest any stock could be sold as a deliberate divestment action would be after the next General Assembly meets in 2006.
The question of whether the PC(USA) should divest in companies active in Israel, in protest over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people — or whether such a proposal is anti-Semitic or a bad idea, as some have contended — has been white-hot since the General Assembly authorized a process of phased, selective divestment by a 431-62 vote last June.
The PC(USA) has long supported the right of both an Israeli and a Palestinian state to exist in the Middle East, and has condemned the killing of innocent civilians by both sides. The PC(USA) also has spoken out for peace in the region and in support of human rights for the Palestinian people.
But its call for a plan of selective, phased divestment — a plan that seems to be generating some early support among other Christian denominations — has infuriated many Jewish leaders, some of whom have described it as unfair and misguided.
The criteria that MRTI has drafted take into account the realization that many multinational companies are involved in Israel — and many do not have involvement with the political troubles. So the criteria for considering which businesses to approach try to take into account the proximity such firms might have to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Four of the six criteria involve multinational firms whose business might be connected with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. They would try to identify companies that:
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Provide services to or for the use of the Israeli police to support or maintain the occupation;
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Provide products, services or technology of particular strategic importance to the support and maintenance of the occupation;
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Have established facilities or operations on occupied land; or
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Provide products and services, including financial services, for the establishment, expansion or maintenance of Israeli settlements on occupied land.
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Finance or assist in the construction of the West Bank security barrier, the 425-mile-long structure Israel is constructing in the West Bank — a barrier of concrete and electrified fence that the Israeli government argues is necessary to prevent attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers against Israeli citizens, but which Palestinians say restricts their mobility and is unfairly claiming land that should be theirs.
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Provide products, services or financial support to either Israeli or Palestinian groups that commit violence against innocent civilians, especially multi-national companies.
Once a company has been selected as meeting one or more of the six criteria, PC(USA) representatives would try to arrange conversations with company officials to see if the Presbyterians could persuade the firm to consider changing its involvements in the Middle East — an approach MRTI characterizes as “constructive dialogue,” and a process it says can take months or years.
Another tactic would involve filing shareholder resolutions, to try to force the companies to discuss the issue at their annual meetings — an action the General Assembly Council could approve.
If all that was tried, and still nothing changed, then the General Assembly might be asked to consider divesting.
