Two years ago, the national body of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) passed a policy statement approving a process of “phased selective divestment” of the church’s holdings corporations operating in Israel. The denomination accused Israel of human rights abuses and believed this one-sided economic pressure was needed to affect a change in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
It was a jolting wake-up call to the Jewish community. Previously, anti-Israel boycotts were limited to the Arab world and ineffective fringe groups. This was different. This was the mainstream.
Our concerns that the Presbyterian Church’s actions might trigger other religious or community groups to similarly scapegoat Israel were borne out when other mainstream denominations took up divestment at their annual gatherings. Only urgent engagement by the Jewish community with these denominations deflected those divestment efforts.
The Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Community Relations Council, American Jewish Committee, the Board of Rabbis, and individual rabbis quickly arranged meetings with Bay Area Presbyterian leaders to hear from them about how and why this new policy was being pursued, and to share with them our community’s hurt and anger.
Two things were immediately obvious. First, there was a significant divide between the Presbyterian leadership and the grassroots membership. A Presbyterian poll taken shortly after the 2004 vote showed only 28 percent of Presbyterians supported the divestment policy adopted by their national denomination.
The other clear point was that we had not done nearly enough in past decades to share with our Presbyterian friends the significance of Israel to the Jewish community. Their information on Israel was coming predominantly from Palestinian Christians.
For the past two years, our community’s engagement with Bay Area Presbyterians has included dialogue and discussions about Israel, the Middle East, and the importance of Israel to Jews. The experience, though sometimes frustrating, was necessary.
Persons on both sides opened their hearts to one another and shared what hurts and what is important. We debated with them on public panels and through editorials in the newspapers, co-hosted programs, and dialogued continuously. We encouraged other Jews to reach out to the Presbyterians to talk about this issue.
National Jewish and Presbyterian leaders took several trips to Israel, and before last week’s PCUSA convention, a dozen prominent Jewish organizations wrote to the PCUSA leadership reiterating our position and asking them to reconsider their 2004 policy. In the end, a large majority (483-28) voted to treat Israel no differently from any other country.
It is impossible to view the divestment effort in the mainline denominations in a vacuum. In 2001, at the UN’s World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, the Non-Governmental Organizations’ concurrent forum issued a statement that called upon the international community “to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as in the case of South Africa which means the imposition of mandatory and comprehensive sanctions and embargos.” This document became the manifesto of the international anti-Israel divestment and boycott movement, motivating divestment campaigns at universities, city councils, labor unions and corporations in the Bay Area, nationally and internationally.
Protestant denominations were not immune to this divestment campaign, pushed as they were from within by a small group of activists. Once the Presbyterians supported divestment, the anti-Israel international divestment campaign launched at Durban used the Presbyterians as a moral stamp of approval. Now, with the removal of the word “divestment” from the Presbyterian policy, an important blow to Israel’s adversaries has been dealt.
While we can feel good about our efforts, we should hold back on celebrating. Divestment is a dead letter in the PCUSA, yet the pro-divestment activists fully intend to continue their efforts in this and other denominations. Now is the time to re-double our engagement with local Presbyterians.
There are a number of things we learned from this experience. First, Jews need to become more vocal in interfaith relationships about their historical and religious connection to Israel. Second, many Christians are genuinely interested in hearing what we have to say about Israel, and we should reach out to them with our message at every opportunity.
Third, when the broad Jewish community comes together on an issue we can have a big impact. Fourth, we have genuine friends in the Presbyterian community — a number of Bay Area Presbyterian ministers displayed tremendous leadership and courage in their outspoken opposition to divestment. They stuck by us from the beginning, and we owe them a large debt of gratitude.
Finally, we must continue the outreach, make new friends in all denominations and not wait for another crisis to motivate us into action.
Yitzhak Santis is director of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council’s Middle East Project.
Jonathan Bernstein is regional director for the Anti-Defamation League’s Central Pacific Region.