Editor’s Note: This article is based on the text of a roundtable presentation at a meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia on April 23, 2006. Used by permission.
“As a means of pursuing peace and the common good of Israelis and Palestinians, the 2004 General Assembly adopted a seven-part resolution that affirmed its longstanding opposition to the Israeli occupation and took action to demonstrate the depth of its conviction, instructing Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) to start a process of ‘phased selective divestment’ consistent with General Assembly policy on responsible investing.”
–PC(USA) Web site
Four basic issues arise when deciding the moral appropriateness of an action like divestment.
First, the behavior that is the target of the action – in this case, the Israeli occupation – must be sufficiently serious to warrant a response like divestment. Divestment is a serious business after all. Second, the harm inflicted by the action taken must be in the right proportion to the harm being addressed. You clearly don’t want to starve half a million children (as the U.S. did to Iraq during the sanctions years) to address a harm of much less magnitude. … Third, one needs good reason for thinking that the action has a point – that it will contribute positively to redressing the relevant wrong. Finally, there ought to be some reason why this particular harm is being addressed this way at this time. … It is legitimate to ask … that the cause in question stands as worthy of urgent action now, given how many other bad things are going on all over the world.
When I evaluate the PC(USA)’s resolution to institute phased selective divestment on these four criteria, I find that the resolution satisfies them to a very high degree. I contend that no reasonable moral argument will show this decision is wrong; quite the contrary, it is clear that the Church is morally required to uphold its original divestment decision. Let me address these criteria one by one.
Is the wrong Israel is committing by occupying and settling the territories – by which I mean the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem – sufficiently serious? By any imaginable criteria I would have to say so. The Palestinian people are under extreme duress as a direct result of the occupation, and there is a threat to their existence as a social entity. The poverty rate is escalating rapidly, malnourishment is rampant, they have no work, they are caged in by fences and checkpoints like prisoners, and they have no chance as things stand now to establish their own sovereign and independent political institutions. Israeli settlements aren’t the only problem for Palestinians — some problems stem from internal causes and some from the other Arab states — but the occupation and the settlements are the problems that must be solved first before any others can reasonably be addressed, and it is the problem that we, as Americans, can most directly affect by our actions.
If Israel could justify the occupation on moral grounds, that would make a difference. But patently it can’t be justified. I won’t bother with claims to the land based on ancient history or biblical authority. To move in that direction is to decisively abandon just those enlightenment liberal values that form the foundation of modern democratic institutions. Perhaps after the 1948 war that established the State of Israel and that saw the expulsion of 90% of the Palestinian population from 78% of mandatory Palestine, the Jewish immigrant population has acquired some significant right to the land. But does this right extend to the occupied territories? Where does that claim come from? From conquest? No one committed to democratic values recognizes conquest as a source of a right to land.
Perhaps then security is the basis of the argument. But Israel is so much less secure having close to half a million of its citizens living beyond the green line than it would be if they all just got up and returned to Israel. … What’s more, Israel could easily enforce a buffer between its border and the Jordan River that would provide it ample warning of any land attack. No, this occupation and settlement policy, as is obvious from the facts on the ground, is just a land grab pure and simple.
So Israel could easily make itself more secure by just totally abandoning the territories, but instead it chooses to continuously build Jewish-only settlements. The number of Jewish settlers doubled during the Oslo period. In order to secure this land for exclusive Jewish sovereignty the lives of Palestinian residents are made miserable in so many ways: by denying them work, freedom of movement, and access to schools, farmland, and medical care; by demolishing their homes; and by constantly harassing them, injuring them, and outright killing them. This is an egregious wrong and it certainly warrants a serious response from us.
Second, divestment from the companies targeted by the PC(USA) resolution is not going to cause widespread economic collateral damage. The Church’s action is nowhere near that harsh, and Israel is not going to have people starving over this. Third, will divestment do any good at all? I strongly believe it will. The Israeli Jewish middle class wants to be integrated into the Western world and public actions that express genuine moral indignation, backed up by some real actions, like divestment, will make a difference. If Israelis see that a good section of U.S. public opinion – religious institutions in particular – are appalled by their actions against Palestinians, that will have an effect.
Finally, why Israel, why now? A number of different considerations converge to make Israel’s occupation policy a particularly urgent problem for us. First, as Israel is a Western country, and one so heavily supported in economic, military, and diplomatic ways by our own country, we bear a special responsibility for Israel’s misdeeds. As Americans we really owe a debt to the Palestinians. Second, this has gone on for so long that though at any one moment the suffering may not be as great as that of other victims in the world, the accumulated harm is terrible and the danger to the Palestinians’ future is escalating all the time. Third, the Middle East is a region in which conflicts can have catastrophic consequences for the rest of the world. The principal irritant and obstacle to a reduction in tension is the Israeli occupation and the support given to it by the West, particularly the U.S.
Thus the PC(USA) resolution does indeed meet the four criteria for morally appropriate divestment.
As a final note I want to briefly address one question. Readers might wonder about the absence from my discussion of any mention of either anti-Semitism or terrorism. In fact, I consider both of these issues to be largely irrelevant to the principal question.
Of course Jews have suffered from anti-Semitism terribly, mostly from Christian Europeans. But unfortunately the charge of anti-Semitism is now employed as a guilt-tripping weapon to stifle any debate concerning Israel’s genuine crimes against the Palestinians. I plead with you not to be taken in by this tactic.
Terrorism is nothing new in the world and it is not unique by any means to the Middle East or to Islamic or Arab militants. “Terrorism,” like “anti-Semitism,” is a much-abused term employed more to obfuscate than clarify. The truth is almost every party to any violent conflict in the modern world employs tactics that qualify as terrorism, and in particular this is true of both Israelis and Palestinians. The difference is that Israel has one of the world’s strongest military machines, kept that way by the largesse of the U.S. taxpayer, while the Palestinians are incredibly weak by comparison. The only way to stop the terrorism on both sides is to resolve the conflict, and the only way to do that is to end the Israeli occupation. Your resolution is an important step in that direction. It is precisely the kind of anti-terrorist tactic we need.
Joseph Levine of Columbus, Ohio, is professor of philosophy at Ohio State University.
