Guest commentary by Jeanne Bishop
On Monday, I had the opportunity to speak in opposition to divestment during the open session of the Middle East Issues Committee of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly.
Here’s what I told the committee:
I am a Presbyterian, an elder at the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, widely regarded as one of the more liberal churches within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
My politics are liberal, too; I am a capital “D” Democrat.
I am a human rights lawyer. I have spoken all over the world against the death penalty, including in my state of Illinois, which abolished executions in 2011. I’m now working to reform juvenile life without parole sentences in the U.S.
I am a supporter of divestment, where appropriate: I co-wrote divestment laws in two U.S. states incorporating the MacBride Principles for Northern Ireland and fair employment principles based on the Sullivan Principles for South Africa.
My day job, though, is public defender, in Chicago. I defend people accused of crimes in the largest unified court system in the world: Cook County, Illinois.
I thought about my public defender job when I learned that the PC(USA), is about to vote on a proposal to divest funds from three U.S. companies doing business in Israel: Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola. The reason given by divestment advocates is the products of those companies have been used by the Israeli government in the Palestinian territories.
Even though divestment has historically been used to topple the governments of its targets, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa, pro-divestment advocates contend they are not trying to threaten the existence of the State of Israel; rather, they argue, they are trying to leverage reform of Israeli policies with respect to Palestinians.
I represent armed robbery defendants, people accused of pointing a weapon at their intended victim and demanding a wallet. When I talk to my clients, they often say: “I wasn’t going to use my weapon; I didn’t intend to hurt the guy. I just wanted him to hand over the wallet.”
The problem, I tell my clients, is this: the target of your actions doesn’t know or care about your good intentions. He only knows that a weapon is being pointed at him.
Divestment is a weapon. If we point that weapon at Israel, all the good intentions we claim to have are irrelevant to our intended target.
We Presbyterians should put the weapon down. Instead of divesting, we should be investing to promote peace.
Jeanne Bishop is assistant public Defender in the Office of the Cook County Public Defender and a ruling elder at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, Illinois.
