 Beheaded reporter's father urges anti-divestment vote By John H. Adams The Layman Online Friday, June 16, 2006
Dr. Judea Pearl, a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, made his appeal during an impromptu press conference at the booth of End Divestment Now in the exhibition hall of the Birmingham Civic Center. His son, Daniel Pearl, was murdered in 2002. "I implore you to rectify this wrong," Pearl told a group of about 40 people who stopped to listen to him and three other speakers condemn the divestment resolution that was approved by the 216th General Assembly in 2004. The resolution called on the denomination to begin "phased, selective divestment" of corporations that do business with Israel. It did not suggest similar economic action against Palestinian radicals who are responsible for repeated terrorist strikes that have killed hundreds of Israeli non-combatants. Pearl, who has established a foundation in his son's name to pursue peace efforts and dialogue on Mideast issues, said the resolution has abetted Hamas, a terrorist group that recently won election to power in Palestine, and that it will discourage Israeli peace efforts in the Mideast. He urged the Presbyterian Church to adopt a policy of neutrality. He said he could forgive God for allowing his son to become the victim of terrorists, but that he could not forgive the church if it continues to show favoritism toward radical Muslims who call for the destruction of Israel. Pearl said his son was a humanitarian who gave voice to the very people who beheaded him. Now, he added, he feels betrayed by the PCUSA. "Take a stand against the hate of terrorism that took over our planet," he urged. The root cause of violence in the Middle East, he said, is not Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory. "The root cause is the total rejection" of Israel's right to exist. "The idea that Jews will have a state in the Mideast is unacceptable" to terrorists. "This is a reality." Pearl was introduced by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is named after the recently deceased Jew who lost 89 members of his family during the Holocaust. Cooper said the PCUSA is part of an anti-Israel movement that includes academics, labor leaders, the World Council of Churches and others. The Simon Wiesenthal Center recently published a full-page advertisement in Canadian newspapers countering a Canadian union's call for a boycott of Israeli products. Pearl's press conference was one of several efforts under way to convince the General Assembly that the divestment resolution was bad policy. Also on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published a column titled "Turn Left at the Presbyterian Church" by Jim Roberts, chairman of End Divestment Now. "My denomination, once revered as an icon of socially progressive thinking, is now tainted by perceptions of anti-Semitism and naïve support of Islamic terrorists," he said. Roberts accused Presbyterian leaders of "working overtime to come up with parliamentary and other maneuvers to stop the anti-divestment movement." That was an apparent reference to General Assembly Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase's proposal to appoint a task force to study the issues in the Mideast - without delaying or ending the move toward divestment. |
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