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.”