Blog

PC(USA) wrongly divests of companies in Israel

At its latest General Assembly a few weeks ago, the Presbyterian Church (USA) passed a measure to divest of Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola holdings because those companies ” . . . . contribute to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Below is my letter to the denomination, sent today and which strongly opposes that measure.

The referenced measure passed during the most recent General Assembly (“GA”) is shocking in its asymmetric portrayal of Israel as the great and only transgressor in the Middle East. In passing this measure, the standard of behavior that the GA has set for Israel is one that no country, including the United States, can, or should, meet.

Israel, the only sovereign nation, past or present, to exist within the Holy Land, is the sole true liberal, Western-style democracy in the Middle East, and people are free to worship as they please. Not so in Muslim countries. The truly horrific life is not that of an Arab Muslim living in the West Bank, but that of a non-Muslim living in an Islamic country. Yet, I see no measures passed by the GA that condemn such countries or call for the divestment from corporations doing business with them due to religious persecution carried out in such lands (try taking a bible into Saudi Arabia or building a church there, for example). Indeed, the human rights abuses of many U.S. trade partners in the region only begin with denial of religious freedom; they go on to include gross denial of the rights of women, as well as the common practice of genital mutilation of young women. Where has the PC(USA) been in condemning these practices?

Instead, the PC(USA) has singled out Israel for alleged abuses of the Palestinians. The history of the conflict in the Middle East is too complex to retell here, but it is clear to me that Palestine is no more an occupied land than is Kentucky. Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey are the internationally sanctioned creations of the League of Nations following the military defeat of the Ottoman Empire.

At the same time, the area called Palestine was similarly carved out of the Ottoman Empire, but it was never an independent nation state. The British administered Palestine (along with Trans-Jordan, which is now modern day Jordan), first under a Mandate by the League of Nations and subsequently under the United Nations until May 1948, when Israel became an independent nation state. Indeed, given the history of the British Mandate, the true “Palestinian state” by any moral, political, or historical standard would be Jordan, where the Palestinian Arab majority is denied the most basic rights by an autocratic monarchy installed by British colonial authorities in the 1920s.

There never was, and to this day is not, any sovereign Palestinian nation to occupy. Just like the two non-democratic kingdoms of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, democratic Israel is occupying land taken from the defeated Ottoman Empire and held in trust by the United Nations. In November 1947, the UN partitioned the British Mandate called Palestine under Resolution 181 to create two states, one of which is Israel. The fact that the second Arab state failed to be formed is not the fault of Israel. That foundering must be laid at the feet of the five Arab countries, which having been themselves created by international agreement following World War I, chose to ignore the validity of another such agreement passed by the UN. Remarkably obdurate and intolerant, those countries chose not to welcome the new state of Israel, but rather to invade it with the aim being the total annihilation of Israel and its Jewish citizenry.

If the PC(USA) phrase “occupation of Palestine” in the measure refers to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, then I suggest the church review the causes that led Israel to seize the West Bank, the Golan Heights, Gaza, and the Sinai Peninsula in 1967. Facing alone for a second time the combined armies of five Arab nations, two of which had massed troops and armor on its border, Israel made a preemptive strike. What is more, one of the Arab combatants, Egypt, had blockaded the Strait of Tiran, a key waterway for Israel, and an act that Israel had warned in advance would constitute an act of war. (Imagine America’s response to a Russian blockade of our east coast!) At the same time, for two months prior to the outbreak of all out war, Syria had been shelling Israeli civilians from the Golan Heights. Finally, Israel had warned Jordan to stay out of any fighting between Israel and Egypt/Syria, but Jordan, without provocation, shelled Tel Aviv from the West Bank. Any country faced with the same overtly hostile circumstances would behave in the same manner. I certainly hope America would.

So, the historical record clearly indicates that Israel obtained the disputed – not “occupied” – territory in the West Bank in the course of a defensive war provoked by contiguous Arab nations. No country in history that has obtained territory within the context of a defensive war has ever been compelled unilaterally to return all of the territory in question.

Israel remains committed to negotiating a two-state solution provided, however, only that its neighbors first recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state. Palestinian leaders will not take even this basic step towards peace. Further, the avowed foreign policy of several of the countries surrounding Israel remains its total destruction. Israel’s position is not an example of intransigence, but of persistence in exercising its legitimate right to exist.

As to the corporations specified in the GA measure, the logic of their choice escapes me. First, I have seen no proof of systematic use of the products manufactured by these companies in “violent acts . . . against innocent civilians.” Second, these same products are used in many countries and in many ways that benefit humanity. The companies have been judged based only on the alleged harm they cause rather than also on the certain good they do. More asymmetry is at play here.

It may be that the performance of the funds managed by PC(USA) will be undiminished by the divestment. However, when The Assistance Program of the Board of Pensions looks to augment its funds through this year’s Christmas Joy Offering, I will have to ask myself how much of the need might have been met by having been invested in these stocks.

In many ways, I feel the supporters of the measure succumbed to a desire “to do something”. I wish that something had been much more balanced. The referenced divestment measure holds Israel to a unique and impossibly high standard of behavior that would not be upheld by any sovereign nation under remotely similar circumstances. That measure along with the recent “Zionism Unsettled” publication, once promoted by PC(USA), to me smacks of anti-Semitism in the guise of oh-so-politically correct Christian caring.