Jewish Voice for Peace Lobbying Hard for Church Divestment

Update: The Presbyterian Church voted against divestment late Thursday evening, July 5. While ADL welcomed the decision, we are troubled that the issue was decided on such a narrow vote (333-331 with 2 abstentions) and that the debate was biased from start to finish with vehement anti-Israel sentiment.  

Jewish Voice for Peace has been a highly visible and vocal advocate in the General Assembly in favor of the Presbyterian Church’s consideration of a virulently anti-Israel divestment resolution. The resolution, which calls for the church to divest from three companies that allegedly profit from Israel’s occupation (Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard), will be voted on later today by the full plenary after it was passed in committee earlier this week.

There is much to criticize about the problematic nature of the resolution itself, but one of the more disturbing elements of this campaign has been Jewish Voice for Peace’s aggressive lobbying for it.

The group invested significant time and resources to send a delegation of activists to the General Assembly who reportedly testified on the committee floor in favor of divestment and are live-tweeting the conference. A large portion of Twitter chatter about the resolution has been generated by JVP using the hashtag “#churchdivest” to provide updates on the resolution. Of tweets using that hashtag in the last 36 hours, approximately 25% have been generated by JVP and two of its staff people.

JVP activists have also created and distributed a flier called “Divest from Violence. Invest in Peace” which contains several statements from Christians who support divestment, and is circulating a petition that calls on Presbyterians to support divestment. The petition claims that the international community has failed in its efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it is clear that BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is now the only option left. The petition ends with, “Can you tell Presbyterians we’ve got their back?”

It is clear that JVP believes it has a very critical role to play in the domestic anti-Israel agenda: JVP promotes itself as representing the views of American Jews and can be seen as trying to provide cover against claims that the Presbyterian divestment initiatives are anti-Semitic. Nobody should be fooled. JVP is a fringe organization with its own anti-Israel agenda.

Sabeel Attacks Israel From All Angles In Its "Cornerstone" Publication

The Spring 2012 edition of Cornerstone, a publication of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, is a full scale assault on Israel’s legitimacy from all angles. The Sabeel Center is a driving force behind the campaign by mainline Protestant churches to divest from Israel, including a number of proposed resolutions being considered at next week’s Presbyterian General Assembly.

The publication depicts Israel as systematically racist, employs offensive Holocaust imagery and uses theological arguments to demonize the Jewish State.

An article titled The Role of the Prophet, written by Sabeel Center co-founder and executive committee member Jonathan Kuttab, notes that “Judaism brought [together] the two correctives of the Law and the Prophets.” It then describes Israel as an unjust and racist country that approves “laws that violate the interests and freedoms of the individual or the minorities living among them.”

Kuttab blames most Jews in Israel for what he perceives as unfair treatment of the Arab population, saying, “the majority of Israeli Jews, acting through their duly elected representatives are the architects of these laws.”

An article submitted by Mossawa, the advocacy center for Arab citizens of Israel, is titled Anti-Democratic, Anti-Arab Legislation in Israel. The synopsis states “there are at least 35 laws which discriminate directly or indirectly against Arab citizens of Israel.” The article lists “four key legislative measures” as evidence, citing as one example the Citizenship law, which Mossawa claims “disproportionately affects Arab citizens,” although it applies to all Israelis.

An Open Letter to Foreign Missions by Taiseer Khatib, an Arab citizen of Israel, tells a story of his wife and children having problems obtaining permanent residency inside of Israel. This problem, Khatib contends, is a result of the Citizenship Law, which he claims shows Israel’s racism since its goal is allegedly to “diminish the number of the Arab population.” He adds that this “should remind Jews in Israel of dark times in their own history, when they were themselves separated from their families, never to see them again.”

A poem titled Hear O Israel by Jewish Voice for Peace activist David Glick also makes claims that Israel is inherently racist and compares the country to Nazi Germany, saying, “But what O Israel/Have you become?/The Nazis made me fearful to be a Jew/but you [Israel] have made me ashamed.” He then writes “Time to confront the darkness we have become./With the Holocaust it is Never Forget/but with Deir Yassin it is Never Mind.”

BDS Movement Gains Support of Activist Chicano Student Group

Leaders of the National Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), a Chicano student organization, recently voted to endorse the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). The endorsement was approved at the group’s 18th annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 30. A press release issued after the conference noted that BDS is necessary in light of Israel’s “military occupation and settlement of Palestine.”

The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona helped MeChA arrive at its endorsement and, according to the statement, led several workshops on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the conference.

One of the sessions was called “Concrete Connections,” which compared the U.S.-Mexico border fence to the Israeli security fence in the West Bank, and explored the potential for “cross-movement building” for Palestinians and Latin-Americans. The statement about the conference concluded with, “Together, these civil societies – from Arizona to Palestine – are working towards one goal of fighting oppression and resisting everyday injustice.”

Earlier this week, the Pacific Northwest chapter of MeChA held a regional conference at The Evergreen State College (TESC) in which it endorsed BDS as well. During the conference, MeChA-Evergreen invited other activists involved in the divestment campaign (known as TESC Divest!) to participate in a teach-in connecting the BDS movement to the “indigenous struggles in the Americas.”

A statement issued by the group read, “We recognize that our peoples’ historical and present struggles - against deportation, occupation, exploitation, and dehumanization - in Arizona, in the border, and in the United States - not only coincide, but are also connected to Palestinians’ struggle against Israeli military occupation and settlement of Palestine.”

TESC Divest! has been spearheaded by SJP at Evergreen, as well as the newly formed Olympia, Washington, chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

In recent years, there has been growing collaboration between MeChA, which has approximately 400 chapters around the United States, and Palestinian solidarity groups. Campus chapters of MeChA and SJP (largely on West Coast campuses and especially at University of California schools) have co-sponsored a variety of events seeking to highlight connections between Palestinians and the Latino-American community.

MeChA chapters have even co-sponsored anti-Israel events on campus that have featured extreme speakers and anti-Semites, including an appearance by Amir Abdul Malik Ali at the University of California, Riverside in May 2009. At the appearance, Malik Ali claimed that U.S. politicians are controlled by Israel, warned that although “many are afraid of Zionists…Muslims are not afraid” and described Israelis as “the new Nazis.”

Divestment Effort at the Methodist General Conference in Tampa

Should the United Methodist Church divest from its investments in “companies that sustain the Israeli occupation?”

The answer to that question will be decided in Tampa, Florida, at this year’s General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC). The conference began on Tuesday and is scheduled to take place through May 5, 2012.

The UMC includes on its agenda a list of “major issues” that will be addressed at the conference, including the church’s stance and efforts regarding abortion, gay rights, bullying and immigration. Also included in the agenda is a resolution on divestment from three American companies – Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard – until they “end their involvement in the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.” The resolution further calls on “the United Methodist Church boards and agencies, annual conferences, local churches and individuals to prayerfully consider corporate involvement in Israel’s occupation when making investment decisions.”

The resolution is being presented to the General Conference by the United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR), an anti-Israel contingent that was formed in 2010 following the release of the “Kairos Palestine Document.” That document, which calls for a global BDS campaign, denies Jewish connection to the Holy Land and justifies terrorism.

If the resolution is passed, UMC general boards will be required to present reports on their respective progress at the church’s 2016 conference.

UMKR has a document on its website listing individuals and groups that support the resolution and it takes care to specifically highlight the Jewish anti-Zionists who support BDS. This is likely an attempt to obviate allegations of anti-Semitism. The resolution has received support from Jewish Voice for Peace, a variety of Israeli anti-occupation activists and two anti-Zionist Holocaust survivors, Hedy Epstein and Hajo Meyer. In his statement, Meyer claims that, as a survivor of Auschwitz, he “[refuses] to belong to a group which is a perpetrator, and therefore I do not agree to allow the state of Israel to commit its crimes in the name of Judaism.”

In addition to the divestment resolution, participants at the conference may be asked to vote on other virulently anti-Israel resolutions, including one regarding endorsing the Kairos Palestine Document.

Efforts by Methodist anti-Israel activists to divest from Israel began in 2008. Then, the UMC voted to continue to allow its agency staff to make comparisons of Israel to the apartheid regime that existed in South Africa and participate in the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. The General Council did not, however, vote in favor of divesting from Israeli companies.

Jewish Voice for Peace Promotes Anti-Israel Hagaddah

As Jews around the world prepare to celebrate Passover this Friday night, one Jewish organization has opted to use the holiday as an opportunity to promote an anti-Israel agenda.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish anti-Zionist organization, recently published an alternative Hagaddah that compares the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, replete with asserting that the third of the four cups of wine represents the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, the Ten Plagues represent the “Ten Plagues of Israeli Occupation” and that the maror (bitter herbs) represents the “bitterness of life under occupation.”

While some elements of the alternative text focus on social justice and progressive causes (and includes texts and poems from some of the moral leaders of our time), much of the Hagaddah tries to exploit the text to advance anti-Israel initiatives. The introduction, for example, compares Moses’s famous declaration to Pharoah, “Let My People Go!” to the efforts of the Gaza Flotilla to “free” the Palestinian people by breaking Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

According to JVP, the third cup of wine, which is traditionally consumed after the meal portion of the Seder, represents BDS and Seder participants are encouraged to “make a L’Chayim” to BDS.

The constant supremacy of the Palestinian cause is also startling. When the text, for example, reaches Yachatz, the breaking of the middle matzah, the text reminds participants to acknowledge the “break that occurred in Palestinian life and culture with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”

JVP had trouble inserting two additional core parts of its agenda into the Hagaddah text and instead included them as “Addendums” at the end. The first is a letter about “pinkwashing,” which details a recent success by anti-Israel activists in Seattle to cancel an event with Israeli LGBT people. The second is a letter signed by JVP’s Rabbinical Council opposing a war against Iran.