wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] High-level Presbyterians and Jews discuss Israel

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8504 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04436
September 30, 2004

High-level Presbyterians and Jews discuss Israel divestment

Minds not changed but closer consultation promised

by Alexa Smith

NEW YORK CITY - Top-level Jewish and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) leaders
held strained but polite dialogue here Tuesday about the PC(USA) General
Assembly's decision earlier this summer to divest from companies who profit
from Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

	While the two parties agreed on a mutual commitment to peace in the
Middle East, there was little yielding on divestment issue.

	"The Christian community tends to focus on the suffering of the
Palestinian people. We in the Jewish community ten to focus on terrorism.
Both are legitimate concerns. The suffering among Palestinians is deplorable.
At the same time, there is a terrible terror against Jews in the Jewish
State," said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism,
who moderated a press conference after a formal three-hour meeting ended.

	"We need to focus our concerns to be more sensitive and aware of each
other."

	At the close of three-hour, closed-door meeting, Yoffie told
reporters that the conversation did yield five agreed-upon actions to further
Jewish/Presbyterian dialogue at both national and congregational levels:

	Encourage a study process in local congregations - called "Open
Doors, Open Minds  - that was already under way between Presbyterians and
Reform Jews when the divestment controversy emerged in July;

	Create seminary-based programs for Christian and Jewish theological
students to converse;

	Coordinate advocacy efforts on issues in the Middle East where there
is mutual agreement;

	Develop a joint trip to Israel/Palestine between top-level Jewish and
Presbyterian leaders to see the region "through each other's eyes"; and

	Continue dialogue, nationally as well as locally.

	Tension escalated between the Jewish Community and the PC(USA) in
early July when the General Assembly voted to "initiate the process of
selective, phased divestment" of stock in corporations within its $8 billion
portfolio who profit by supporting violence in Israel and Palestine.

	That process includes engagement of targeted companies in dialogue,
shareholder resolutions and public pressure to conform to more socially
responsible practices. If corporations comply, actual divestment is not
undertaken.

	Caterpillar, Inc., has repeatedly been identified as a potential
target for PC(USA) divestment. The church has nearly $3 million invested in
the heavy equipment company whose bulldozers are being used by the Israeli
Defense Forces to build a controversial separation barrier and to demolish
Palestinian homes and orchards.

	Other religious groups have pushed Caterpillar for years to stop
those sales.

	Specifics of the PC(USA)'s strategy will not be determined until a
Nov. 6-8 meeting, again in New York, of the Committee on Mission
Responsibility through Investment (MRTI). At that meeting MRTI is expected to
establish its criteria, tactics and timeline for the divestment process.

	Jewish leaders also protested the denomination's decision not to ban
funding of messianic congregations such as the controversial Avodat Yisrael
in Philadelphia. Rather than decrying the proselytization of Jews the
Assembly opted to study how interfaith relations impacts Christian
evangelism.

	But for most Jewish groups, divestment in Israel is the foremost
concern.

	PC(USA) policy has consistently opposed the ongoing expansion of
settlements, house demolitions, the uprooting of orchards and vineyards and,
as of its July meeting, the Israeli government's construction of the concrete
and razor-wire barrier between the Palestinian and Israeli populations.

	Israel contends the barrier is necessary for security and has
dramatically reduced suicide bombings.

	Palestinians argue that the wall, which in several places encroaches
far into Palestinian territory established after the 1967 war, is part of a
strategy for grabbing land that has not been negotiated by any political
settlement.

	"The conversations here put us on the road toward a more constructive
pattern of dialogue," Kirkpatrick told the Presbyterian News Service after
the meeting. "While nobody's mind was changed, there was important progress
in dealing with each other with respect ... while we continue to disagree
about divestment.

	"The core issue for us is the desperate situation of the Palestinian
people. And if that's not addressed, we believe there will be no security for
either Israel or Palestine."

	Yoffie told reporters that Jewish leaders see the PC(USA)'s actions
as unbalanced and that a "boycott" only ends up undermining Israel's
legitimacy. "Israel will not be more open. It will be less conciliatory.

	"There's a fundamental unfairness in that there are no sanctions
against Palestinian ... terror or anything else. That fundamental disparity
has brought a visceral response from the Jewish community, " he said.

	Kirkpatrick reiterated the denomination's action as targeted
divestment B> not a blanket boycott or sanctions. He said Presbyterians have
a long tradition of using investments for social change, mostly recently in
Sudan. "We're seeking, first, change. Divestment is a last resort."

	He also said the PC(USA) would target corporate interests that
support Palestinian terror, if it is possible to do.

	Kirkpatrick and Rick Ufford-Chase, the moderator of the 216th General
Assembly, where the divestment decision was made, told reporters they
continue to back the Assembly's decision. But both agreed that more
consultation with the Jewish community is wise, and probably should have
occurred earlier in the Presbyterian process.

	Ufford-Chase said that one of the underpinnings of Presbyterian
polity is that the Spirit of God moves among the Assembly as it works and
that the openness of the process allows church-goers to bring to the Assembly
what is "on their hearts and minds.'" (The divestment overture originated in
a church in St. Augustine Presbytery in Florida.)

	"I certainly believe that God is at work in this moment, in this
process, at this time," he said.

	Jewish leaders said they are concerned that the Presbyterians'
actions will prompt other churches to take similar action. A delegation from
the Angelical Communion's Peace and Justice Network announced last week that
it will recommend that the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) do so.

Yoffie said he doesn't believe divestment's an effective strategy because the
church doesn't have enough money invested to significantly impact corporate
policy. Nevertheless, he continued, Jewish leaders are working in pre-emptive
ways to stop any more divestment decisions.

	"This is not an incidental matter," he said, adding that he hopes
Presbyterian reconsider this action down the road. "Its an absolute top
priority."

	In a post-meeting interview, Kirkpatrick told the PNS that he hopes
divestment will be unnecessary. "But the way for it to not happen is for the
injustice to end."

	Presbyterians' integrity is at stake, he said. "I don't want the
money that pays my pension and medical benefits to be invested in companies
that profit from bulldozers that demolish Palestinian homes or are building
parts of this wall."

	Kirkpatrick said the Presbyterian delegation told Jewish leaders that
the Assembly did not intend to the Jewish community pain. "The pain of our
Jewish brothers and sisters is painful to us. That is not our goal. Our goal
is peace with justice."

	The Rev. Jay Rock, the denomination's director of interfaith
relations, said the divestment action is reopening Jewish-Christian dialogue
both nationally and locally by putting the hardest issues on the table. 
There had been, he said, "a kind of lull" in the relationships.

	Both sides said the national-level dialogues will continue, but no
specific dates have been set.

	Besides Yoffie, the Jewish community was represented at the meeting
by Mark Pelavin, director of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs of
Reform Judaism; Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of Interfaith Affairs
of the Anti-Defamation League; Rabbi Jerry Epstein, executive vice president
of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; Mark Waldman, director of
Public Policy, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; Rabbi Gilbert
Rosenthal, executive director of the National Council of Synagogues; Rabbi
Paul Menitoff, executive vice president of the Central Conference of American
Rabbis; Judith Hertz, co-chair of the  Commission on Interreligous Affairs of
Reform Judaism; Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive vice president of the Rabbical
Assembly; Rabbi David Elcott, U.S. director of the Interreligious Affairs of
the American Jewish Committee; and Ethan Felson, assistant executive director
of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

	Presbyterians were Kirkpatrick, Ufford-Chase, Rock and the Rev.
Robina Winbush, associate stated clerk; Sara Lisherness, director of the
Presbyterian Peacemaking Program; Catherine Gordon of the Washington Office
staff; Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, MRTI staff; the Rev. Joe Small, director of
the PC(USA)'s Office for Theology and Worship; and the Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel,
former moderator of the PC(USA).

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