By Alan F.H. Wisdom Two years after the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly ordered denominational divestment from three corporations doing business with Israel, the 2016 assembly will receive proposals for further measures directed against the Jewish state. Two overtures from local presbyteries would protest Israel’s presence in the predominantly Palestinian West Bank by targeting corporations…
By Alan F.H. Wisdom A proposed resolution from the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) faults “Israel’s policy trajectory of continued settlements and brutal occupation” for difficulties in achieving a peace settlement with the Palestinians. By contrast, the resolution declines to attribute blame to the other side in the…
Why the Israel-Palestine conflict is spiraling into the worst violence in years By Zack Beauchamp On Monday night, between 5 and 12 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, from which Hamas has been firing rockets into Israel. Israeli’s cabinet authorized the military to call up 40,000 reservists, and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon…
By Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra A Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) vote to divest from some Israeli holdings may be a largely symbolic measure by a denomination rapidly losing its symbolic weight. The PC(USA) voted to divest from three companies—Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions—that provide equipment Israel uses to raze houses, operate checkpoints and communicate in the occupied…
By Christopher M. Leighton, The Christian Century In response to the injustices faced by Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, many Christians in the United States – including many within the Presbyterian Church (USA) – have become proponents of what is known as BDS: boycott/divest/sanctions. While the aim of the movement was initially to put economic and political pressure…