The issue of Israeli divestment is not unlike Jason Voorhies, the hockey mask-sporting, undead killer of the “Friday the 13th” movie franchise. Every time the protagonists thought they’d knocked Jason out of commission for good — wrong! There he was, terrorizing another pair of amorous camp counselors in their cabin.
Meanwhile, members of the Jewish community thought they had knocked the divestment issue out of commission when Presbyterians in June seemingly nixed a 2004 divestment resolution with a resounding vote in favor of Israeli and Palestinian “corporate engagement.”
Wrong! While the Presbyterian General Assembly vote certainly tossed cold water on divestment supporters, the resolution’s ambiguous language leaves Israeli divestment on the table as a possible move down the road.
“Down the road,” incidentally, is a fitting term both logistically and chronologically, as the next Presbyterian General Assembly will be in San Jose in 2008. And partisans on both sides of the divestment issue are gearing up for a floor fight.
“Church bureaucracies at the national level are still persistently supportive of the divestment resolution and are pushing that agenda still,” said Yitzhak Santis, the Middle Eastern Affairs director for the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council. “And that is why we need to be on guard for 2008.”
And Santis’ opponents feel exactly the same way.
Mitchell Plitnick, the policy director for A Jewish Voice for Peace, argues that calls for divestment were “reaffirmed” by this year’s vote — threats of Israeli divestment were “put off — they didn’t cancel them.
“The Presbyterians did not back off their policy … I’m pretty sure we can continue in 2008, especially if we communicate with large numbers of parishioners.”
The question is, who will meet with more parishioners? And whom will the Presbyterians trust?
In the 18 months leading up to the 2008 General Assembly, Santis is hoping to kick-start more dialogue sessions like the one held between South Bay Jewish and Presbyterian clergy and leaders in 2005 and 2006, which was moderated by the Silicon Valley Council for Christians and Jews.
“What we discovered is each group had some misunderstandings of the other. [Presbyterians] didn’t understand the relationship between U.S. Jews and Israel — how often we go there and how we have friends there. At times, it was fairly emotional for people,” said Rabbi Melanie Aron, a dialogue participant and the spiritual leader of Reform Congregation Shir Hadash in Los Gatos.
“This year there was a national Christian meeting in San Jose and we did have some people from our dialogue group presenting at the meeting. There was a fair amount of interest … in having similar dialogues in other communities.”
The Rev. Rebecca Kuiken is the moderator (director) of the San Jose Presbytery and a vocal opponent of the movement’s 2004 vote to consider Israeli divestment. Yet the dialogue sessions were still an eye-opener for her and her colleagues, who had no idea about the variety of progressive social movements working within Israel.
“I do not like that we tend to polarize issues in the Mideast so the only two options are to be pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. So, for instance, to me it was really important to know that there are people like Rabbis for Human Rights who are critical of certain actions taking place in Israel with regards to the Palestinians” yet adamantly opposed to divestment.
Kuiken claimed A Jewish Voice for Peace and other Jewish groups making the rounds at the behest of divestment proponents are overstating the prevalence of their views within the Jewish community.
“What I found difficult is some voices we were hearing in Presbyterian-organized events [convened] to support the 2004 policy were representative of really marginal voices within American Judaism. There were a lot of forces trying to prevent the full spectrum of the Jewish community” from offering input, she said.
Santis and Kuiken noted that anti-divestment Jews face an uphill battle, as Palestinian Christians are within the movement and actively pushing divestment, while Jews are only outsiders and guests (and not all Jewish guests are sympathetic to Santis’ views).
Parties inside and outside the Presbyterian movement “will try to bring back the divestment resolution,” warned Santis.
“That puts a particular onus on our little Jewish community to be active.”