COMMENTARY: Push for Israeli Divestment Is Always Wrong

c. 2004 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted last July to “initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations doing business in Israel.” Criticism of divestment came quickly from many Presbyterians including clergy and laypeople, progressives and conservatives. At a recent New York City interreligious conference […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted last July to “initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations doing business in Israel.” Criticism of divestment came quickly from many Presbyterians including clergy and laypeople, progressives and conservatives.

At a recent New York City interreligious conference at Auburn Seminary, the Rev. Susan Andrews, a former PCUSA moderator and pastor of the Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Md., said the divestment initiative has sparked more negative reaction than any other action in recent memory.


She noted the church’s national headquarters in Louisville, Ky., has received a huge number of e-mails, telephone calls and “snail mail” protesting divestment. Some Presbyterian critics of the plan labeled it “anti-Semitic,” a charge church leaders have denied.

Three months after the General Assembly’s divestment vote, a 24-person church delegation visiting Lebanon met with Sheikh Nabil Qaouk, a prominent Hezbollah leader. Hezbollah, a group publicly committed to the destruction of Israel and supported by Iran, has been officially designated a terrorist organization by the United States and other nations.

Following that meeting, Dr. Ronald Stone, a retired Pittsburgh Presbyterian Seminary ethics professor, appeared on the terrorist organization’s Al-Manar satellite television network and declared: “We treasure the precious words of Hezbollah and your expression of goodwill towards the American people. … Relations and conversations with Islamic leaders are a lot easier than dealings and dialogue with Jewish leaders.”

Stone’s statement ignited a firestorm of criticism, and national church leaders issued a damage control statement making clear Stone’s views “do not reflect the official position of the Presbyterian Church.”

In addition, the Rev. Dr. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the top PCUSA executive, fired Kathy Lueckert and the Rev. Peter Sulyok, two high-level staffers involved with the Hezbollah visit.

In early December “Presbyterians Concerned for Christian-Jewish Relations” issued a public statement calling upon their church “to work toward the reversal of the recent divestment decision … at the … (next) 2006 General Assembly.”

Presbyterians Concerned, a group that includes Dr. Donald Shriver, the president emeritus of Manhattan’s Union Theological Seminary, called “upon the General Assembly Council at its March 2005 meeting to postpone further action on divestment.”


The group said, “It is wrong to single out Israel as the object of a `divestment’ policy when other states and parties in the (Middle East) region … carry out … serious human rights violations that can and must be addressed.”

Leaders of Chicago’s Fourth Presbyterian Church announced their congregation’s Investment Committee, which is independent of the national church’s divestment policy, would seek “appropriate corporations whose business in Israel is positive … and make appropriate investment … in such businesses.”

The Presbyterian divestment controversy continues at a time when major universities in America have rejected similar calls to empty their investment portfolios of corporations doing business with Israel.

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Harvard University’s president, Lawrence Summers, a former U.S. secretary of the treasury, recently said: “While these tensions are by no means absent, they seem to have receded somewhat over the past two years. The clear and firm refusal of major universities in the United States to contemplate divestiture has led to the drying up of the divestiture movement.”

Harvard’s president sharply criticized organizations and individuals who practice the “response of appeasement.” They believe if there is so much hatred directed toward the United States and Israel, then it must be the “fault” of those two nations.

For Summers this is “dangerous because it emboldens those who engage in (demonizing) rhetoric; dangerous because it is not recognizing and telling the truth.”


On Dec. 9, the aldermen of Somerville, Mass., unanimously rejected a proposal to divest the town’s holdings in Israel bonds and stocks of companies that do business in Israel. The vote repudiated an anti-Israel campaign whose leaders saw divestment victory in Somerville as a model for other U.S. cities to follow. Mayor Joe Curtatone said, “It’s important that it was voted down.”

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Bashing Israel through divestment is unfair and ineffective. Since Israel achieved independence in 1948, some political and religious leaders and nations have falsely believed Middle East peace could be achieved by applying one-sided pressure on Israel through boycotts, embargoes, diplomatic isolation or divestment. All such efforts are doomed to failure.

The Presbyterian divestment effort comes at a time when Israel has recently signed significant trade agreements with Egypt, Jordan and the United States and when Palestinians will soon elect new leadership following Yasser Arafat’s death.

This hopeful moment in the Middle East does not need an ill-advised divestment campaign from a church that prides itself on peace-making and reconciliation.

MO/PH END RNS

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

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