Divestment defeated narrowly
By Alan F.H. Wisdom, The Layman, July 6, 2012
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — In a stunning turnabout from committee action earlier this week, the General Assembly on July 5 turned aside a proposal to divest Presbyterian Church (USA) agency holdings in three corporations that supply non-lethal equipment to the Israeli military. Instead the assembly adopted a substitute motion that called for “active investment” in Palestinian development projects.
The commissioners’ vote to substitute “active investment” in place of divestment was a narrow 333-331. The final vote for the “active investment” motion was 369-290.
The divestment proposal came from the denomination’s Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI). MRTI chairman Brian Ellison identified for assembly commissioners the products at issue: construction equipment, communications equipment and biometric scanners, and surveillance equipment manufactured by Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions, respectively. He narrated conversations over the course of eight years in which MRTI had tried to dissuade the three companies from supplying these products to the Israeli military. But “the dialogues have not produced results,” according to Ellison. MRTI recommended divestment because “divestment is the normal conclusion to our normal practice when engagement does not work.”
The Rev. Jack Baca from San Diego Presbytery, moderator of the assembly’s Middle East Peacemaking Committee, told commissioners that his committee recommended divestment “to maintain the conscience of the Presbyterian Church and the integrity of its social witness.” Baca took pains to clarify, “The recommended action is in no way meant to express condemnation of Israel nor contempt for Jewish brothers and sisters.” Divestment was not intended to “isolate or delegitimize the state of Israel,” he said, and there was no desire to sever “historically positive relationships with the broad Jewish community.”
Teaching Elder Commissioner Blake Brinegar from New Covenant Presbytery in Texas presented a minority report that opposed divestment. The minority favored instead “a plan of active investment in projects that will support collaboration among Christians, Jews, and Muslims and help in the development of a viable infrastructure for a future Palestinian state.” This kind of investment, Brinegar said, “is a pathway to peace. Divestment is not.” He warned that “it’s easy to burn bridges with actions such as divestment. It’s far more difficult but far more effective to build a bridge, a plant, a corner grocery store, a small tech business.”
Young Adult Advisory Delegate Samantha Heinen replied that the committee’s objection was “not against Israel or Jews, but against the non-peaceful products coming from these companies.” Heinen said, “Many of us were troubled and couldn’t even imagine sleeping at night knowing that our pension money was coming from such oppression.” She stressed that the committee majority wanted to combine divestment and positive investment.
Two commissioners gave eyewitness accounts of Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israelis. Ruling Elder Commissioner Moufid Khoury from Lehigh Presbytery in Pennsylvania exclaimed: “Occupation is the worst form of terrorism. My own home [in Palestine] was demolished in 1968 by the Caterpillar bulldozers.”
Teaching Elder Commissioner Edwin Gonzalez-Castillo from San Juan Presbytery in Puerto Rico spoke of a 2006 trip to the Middle East: “As we talk about divestment, all I can remember are the machines from Caterpillar advancing to destroy for the second time the homes of families and little children that go to school in the morning not knowing that they will return to a mountain of rubble.” Gonzalez-Castillo said, “I for myself cannot support the injustice that these companies are supporting.”
But two other commissioners defended the corporations. Teaching Elder Commissioner Marilyn Daniel of Transylvania Presbytery in Kentucky contended, “I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a company to control how its customers use those products.” She pointed out that Caterpillar sells its equipment to the U.S. government, which then transfers it to Israel. “Our argument is with the United States government and the current Israeli government,” Daniel asserted. “They’re the ones who can stop the building on the West Bank.” Divestment “misses the target,” she said, when it aims at the corporations.
Ruling Elder Commissioner Nick Nott from Great Rivers Presbytery in Illinois identified himself as “a lifelong Presbyterian and 37-year employee of Caterpillar.” Nott spoke with pride: “Cat is the first responder around the world when disaster hits. Cat’s responded to the Twin Towers in New York City on 9/11, the recent hurricane in Haiti, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.”
Teaching Elder Commissioner Cody Watson from Sheppards and Lapsley Presbytery in Alabama recalled visiting with Bishara Awad, head of Bethlehem Bible College, and hearing of the Palestinians’ plight. “I stand with Bishara Awad and the Palestinian believers to ask for divestment,” Watson said.
Earlier in the assembly session, PC(USA) World Mission staffer Amgad Beblawi had quoted the “Kairos Palestine” manifesto [link to http://www.pcusa.org/media/uploads/oga/pdf/kairos-palestinestudy-guide-final-6-14-11.pdf] in its demand that “individuals, companies and states [should] engage in divestment and in an economic and commercial boycott of everything produced by the [Israeli] occupation.” Beblawi described the manifesto as an expression of “the perspective of the vast majority of Palestinian Christians of all denominations.”
But Young Adult Delegate Benjamin Perry from Hudson River Presbytery noted that “both the Catholic patriarch and the Episcopal bishop of Jerusalem oppose divestment.” Perry maintained that “divestment is a negative tactic. Negative tactics do not achieve positive results.” He said divestment would “put the Presbyterian Church in the role of an admonishing parent instead of an active partner working towards peace.”
Teaching Elder Commissioner Matthew Miller of Prospect Hill Presbytery in Iowa predicted that “the divestment strategy pursued by MRTI will in fact, whether intended or not, alienate our interfaith Jewish partners in this country.” Miller charged that divestment would effectively “privilege Palestinian suffering over the suffering of Israelis who are randomly fired rockets at from Gaza and the West Bank and are terrorized daily by their Palestinian, Syrian, and other neighbors who seek to eliminate them from the face of the Earth.” Miller maintained that “no one cares about our symbolic action” in divesting. “It will achieve nothing other than alienation.”
Theological Student Advisory Delegate Madison Munoz from Louisville Seminary responded that she was “troubled by feeling like I’ve been threatened with the breaking of relations between Jews and Christians.” Munoz added that “seeking positive investment alone is an empty and futile gesture.”
Other divestment proponents leveled that same criticism against the minority’s plan for “positive investment.” Rafaat Zaki, executive of the Synod of the Covenant, maintained that “investment will never relieve our conscience from the illegal
occupation, the ethnic cleansing, and the apartheid against the Palestinians.” Teaching Elder Commissioner Tim Simpson from St. Augustine Presbytery argued: “The Palestinians aren’t asking us for a check. The Palestinians are asking us for justice.”
“Our Christian Palestinian brothers and sisters have made it clear that they encourage positive investment,” advised former General Assembly moderator Rick Ufford-Chase. “They have also made it clear that no investment will make any difference if we fail to dismantle the apparatus of the occupation.”
Teaching Elder Commissioner Arthur Shippee from Southern New England Presbytery spoke against divestment. “This motion will be perceived as picking on Israel, and how could it not?” Shippee asked. “Where are the loud condemnations of Iran’s treatment of the Bahai’s? Where of the Syrian treatment of the Sunnis? Where of the Saudi treatment of Shi’ites?”
Toward the end of the debate, former General Assembly moderator Susan Andrews framed the issue thus: “We as Presbyterians must honor two moral imperatives. We are called to the moral imperative to stand in solidarity against the pain and oppression of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, to work to end the occupation and support two nations living side by side in peace and security. We are also called to the moral imperative to stand in solidarity with our historic Jewish partners in both Israel and the U.S. and never to forget the thousands of years of hatred and destruction that has threatened the existence of the Jewish people.”
Would a strategy that emphasized divestment or a strategy that emphasized positive investment be the best way to honor both those imperatives? Andrews preferred positive investment, and a narrow majority of commissioners agreed with her.