Terrorism, threats to Israel haven’t waylaid PCUSA’s movement toward divestment
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, October 27, 2005
There may be some safety for the Presbyterian Church (USA) in its one-sided divestment policy that favors the Palestinians over Israel.
“Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury,” said Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to an Associated Press article published by USA Today on Oct. 26.
Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Middle East’s only democracy and long-time ally of the United States.
About the same time Ahmadinejad was calling for Israel’s destruction, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up and murdered five bystanders in the central Israeli town of Hadera. Twenty-one people were wounded by the blast, which “further eroded hopes that Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip would revive peace talks,” the AP said in another story.
But other terrorist strikes by Palestinians have not deterred the Presbyterian Church (USA) from proceeding to implement a resolution adopted by the 216th General Assembly, which called on the denomination to begin a “phased, selective divestment” of its holdings in corporations doing business with Israel.
Even widespread criticism of the General Assembly’s divestment resolution – including Presbyterians, the leaders of the major investment groups in the denomination, Jewish interest groups, and political writers – has not curbed the denomination’s efforts toward divestment.
One of the leading promoters of that cause has been Fahed Abu-Akel, moderator of the 214th General Assembly, who was born in the region called Palestine. Abu-Akel has defended the General Assembly’s action in appearances before a number of presbyteries and other gatherings of Presbyterians.
The denomination’s leaders – Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, General Assembly Council executive director John Detterick and Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase – did write a letter in September to Israel’s leaders, saying they were “encouraged” by Israel’s decision not to expand the Maale Adumim settlement between the Biblical cities of Bethany and Jerusalem.”
But in that letter, while criticizing “terrorist attacks,” they also restated their opposition to the security wall Israel is building as a defense against those attacks.
Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Foundation has taken steps to ensure its fiduciary responsibility to make proper investment decisions. In the past, the denomination’s Mission Responsibility through Investment committee would pass on to the foundation and the Board of Pensions its recommendations for companies that should be targeted for divestment. The boards of those two bodies would vote up or down on MRTI’s recommendations.
Now, the Presbyterian Foundation, through The New Covenant Trust Co., a wholly owned subsidiary, has formed a committee that, like MRTI, that will consider whether investments are socially responsible.
Dennis Murphy, the executive vice president and chief executive officer of the foundation, said the bottom line of the foundation’s purpose in having its own committee is, “The assets are owned by the trust company and the foundation” – a polite way of saying General Assembly resolutions cannot exert control over foundation assets.
In August, the MRTI approved a list of four companies – Caterpillar, ITT Industries, Motorola and United Technologies – for possible divestment because they do business with Israel.
The list also included Citigroup, an “international bank that, according to a Wall Street Journal story of April 20, 2005, had “moved substantial sums for the same suspected terrorists who used Arab Bank.” Citigroup officials denied that allegation.
In adding Citigroup to the list, MRTI was not precisely following mandate of the General Assembly resolution. The divestment section of the resolution did not mention Palestine. It said the General Assembly, “Refers to Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) with instructions to initiate a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations operating in Israel, in accordance to General Assembly policy on social investing, and to make appropriate recommendations to the General Assembly Council for action.”
There has been some support for the resolution, including the World Council of Churches and liberation-theology groups, such as the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem.
In a paper published in April 2005, the Sabeel center called for a divestment strategy to bring to “an end Israel’s illegal and immoral behavior.” Both the denomination’s Worldwide Ministries Division and its Peacemaking Program have close ties with the Sabeel Institute.
The next step in the process toward divestment of Presbyterian holdings in corporations that do business with Israel will be when MRTI makes its report to the 217th General Assembly in Birmingham June 15-22, 2006. But the General Assembly will also hear arguments that the resolution adopted in 2004 should be declared null and void.