Jewish leaders condemn WCC for backing Israeli-divestment plan
By Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online, February 25, 2005
World Jewish leaders are condemning the World Council of Churches for recommending that its members give “serious consideration” to a Presbyterian Church (USA) plan to divest from companies doing business with Israel.
The 216th General Assembly’s action calling for divestment has been widely criticized by Jewish groups, Presbyterians and other Christians for being politically partisan in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a threat to Jewish-Presbyterian relations.
But the National Council of Churches, which is bankrolled chiefly by the PCUSA and other mainline denominations, said it supports the divestment resolution.
The World Council of Churches on Monday urged the 347 Protestant and Orthodox denominations that make up its membership to consider such an economic measure to oppose Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
“Multinational corporations have been involved in the demolition of Palestinian homes,” the WCC’s central committee said in a statement adopted during its meeting in Geneva. They “are involved in the construction of settlements and settlement infrastructure on occupied territory, in building a dividing wall which is also largely inside occupied territory, and in other violations of international law.”
The statement praised the action of the PCUSA, calling it “commendable in both method and manner, uses criteria rooted in faith, and calls members to ‘do the things that make for peace.'” Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick is a member of both the central committee and the executive committee of the WCC.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the Anti-Defamation League called the recommendation “a biased, one-sided interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
“It is almost beyond belief,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Thursday, “that the WCC would promote such punitive, one-sided measures at a time when Israel prepares to unilaterally evacuate all settlements in Gaza and released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who aided and abetted terrorism.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “has declared that the war with Israel is all but over. But apparently,” Cooper said, “that doesn’t extend to these elites whose bias against the Jewish State has once again been resoundingly confirmed.”
“Israel is not and never was an apartheid South Africa and it’s about time the WCC ends its reckless policies that only hurt the innocent and encourage the extremists,” Cooper concluded.