BIRMINGHAM – After hours of listening, discussing, praying and parsing individual words, the Peacemaking and International Issues Committee affirmed Sunday night their recommendation to the 217th General Assembly to replace the wording to the 216th General Assembly related to a phased process that might lead to divesting from certain corporations doing business in Israel.
After discussing the 41 overtures the committee received on this topic and ideas of merging parts of overtures together, the committee appointed an 11-person subcommittee to draft its own statement, which is being forwarded to the General Assembly.
The committee’s report will be considered at the business meeting session, Wednesday afternoon, June 21. The 41 overtures are referred for plenary action.
Commissioners identified their concerns with the original document, which has been praised and pilloried by various persons and groups since 2004. Objections were that the statement seemed one-sided and worded negatively. The statement drafted by the subcommittee was approved by a vote of 53 in favor, six in opposition with three abstentions, addressed these concerns.
Their recommendation recognizes the reactions generated by the 2004 action: “We acknowledge that the actions of the 216th General Assembly caused hurt and misunderstanding among many members of the Jewish community and within our Presbyterian communion. We are grieved by the pain that this has caused, accept responsibility for the flaws in our process, and ask for a new season of mutual understanding and dialogue.”
While the action of two years ago cannot be re-written, the committee recommendation replaces the instructions in Item 12-01 (Minutes, 2004 Part I, pp 64-66) item 7. It restates the geographic focus and rewords the action to be taken, as follows:
“To urge that financial investments of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), as they pertain to Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank, be invested in only peaceful pursuits, and affirm that the customary corporate engagement process of the Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investments of our denomination is the proper vehicle for achieving this goal.”
MRTI was given the implementation responsibility in 2004 and is directed in this recommendation to follow certain principles in “engaging corporations” doing business in both Israel and Palestinian territories.
Those principles include:
· Applying the fundamental principles of justice and peace common to Christianity, Islam and Judaism that are “appropriate to the practical realities” in Israeli and Palestinian societies;
· Reflecting commitment to positive outcomes;
· Reflecting awareness of potential impacts on the economies of both societies;
· Identifying affirmative investment opportunities in Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank.
Several commissioners in their closing session affirmed their process as reasonable, positive and in the spirit of other denominational initiatives including the Task Force Report.
Their deliberations began with a time of listening to interested parties express their deeply held convictions about the Middle East. Commissioners heard dozens of speakers eloquently describing, often with equal vividness and intensity, the good or bad effects of opposite positions on the 216 GA action.
James Woolsey, who also gave a dinner speech denouncing the 2004 proposal, spoke during the open discussion time before commissioners. “A vote for divestment is a vote for Hamas,”he said.
Judah Pearl, father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was executed by terrorists, spoke against divestment as “not an instrument of peace, (but) an instrument of division.” Upholding divestment would please Hamas and Hezbollah–“people who killed my son and threaten the life of your children.”
Norman Finkelstein, whose relatives experienced the Warsaw ghetto, said the 2004 action was “not a referendum on Hamas, or loss of any innocent life, It is a referendum on one issue alone–truth and justice. The truth is Israel has accumulated a horrendous human rights record. “Voting for divestment, ” he told the commissioners, “is voting for peace.”
