Hot-button Issue #2: Israel-Palestine

Ed. note: As we lead up to the General Assembly meeting in Detroit June 14-21, I will provide overviews and insights into some of the major issues coming before the Assembly. Rather than counting down the top ten as I have done in previous years, I have divided the issues into three categories: hot button issues, sleeper issues, and Trojan horses.  Each "hot button" issue will get its own post; the others will be presented in groups.

When the secular press reports on the 221^st Assembly, the lead story will not be the nuances of our definition of marriage or the future of synods.  It will be whatever the Assembly decides to do regarding Israel and Palestine. If history is any guide, what will be lacking in that coverage will be any appreciation for why this is an important issue to Presbyterians. It is not that Presbyterians feel compelled to weigh in on any controversial topic.  It is because American Presbyterians have been engaged in mission in Palestine for 195 years – almost 130 years longer than the modern nation of Israel has existed. Over that time, Presbyterians have helped build schools, hospitals, universities and seminaries, and developed many ties with the Palestinian people, especially the shrinking Palestinian Christian communities. This has led many in our denomination to look past the rhetoric of “terrorism” (critics would say naively) to view the Israeli domination of the Palestinian people as unjust and oppressive.

A strong PC(USA) mission network, the Israel-Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) – which does not speak for the denomination – has been vocal in its defense of the Palestinian people against Israeli economic and national security policies that they have compared to South African Apartheid. An IPMN study guide published earlier this year titled Zionism Unsettled has increased the level of stridency in the policy debate. The ever-vigilant pro-Israel lobby and its media supporters have been quick to condemn the study (example: “Presbyterians Declare War on the Jews”).

Throw into the mix the Evangelical commitment to the modern state of Israel as a test of biblical faithfulness, the deep interfaith connections with Jewish communities in many parts of our church, and the fact that the Assembly is meeting near one of the largest Arab-American communities in the nation, and you have an explosive combination.

All of this history will come to bear on Committee 4: Middle East Issues at this year’s Assembly. The main event in this bout will be the consideration of the report of the Mission Responsibility through Investment (MRTI) committee (item 04-08) which is recommending divestment of PC(USA) funds from three companies that have directly supported Israeli military occupation of Palestinian lands.  Acting under the direction of previous Assemblies, MRTI has tried to be in conversation with the three companies – Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions – over the better part of a decade to express concerns and seek changes in their business strategies. The recommendation for divestment is the end of a long, arduous, and carefully prescribed process. The symbolic force of such a declaration is far greater than the actual financial impact on the corporations.

The PC(USA) has been deeply divided on this issue in the past: the 2012 Assembly rejected divestment in favor of "positive investment in Palestine" by a vote of 333-331. Look for similarly close votes this year.

In addition to the MRTI report, there are several other related overtures before the Assembly.  San Francisco and New Covenant Presbyteries have submitted competing overtures about reconsideration (SF) or continued endorsement (NC) of the “two-state solution” in Palestine. Grace Presbytery (in whose bounds I live) has submitted an overture in support of Palestinian Human Rights that calls for the PC(USA) to lobby the UN to invoke the label of “Apartheid” on the Israeli policies. Item 04-05 from New Brunswick Presbytery calls for the church to go beyond divestment and urge a boycott of Hewlett-Packard products.

Of all the overtures and recommendations, only item 04-04 (from New Covenant) can by any stretch be deemed supportive of Israel. That will perhaps make the probability of a strongly pro-Palestinian action more likely. If so, it will provide more fodder for the pro-Israel conservative churches to use in pushing for dismissal from the denomination without having to rely on sexuality issues as their sole rationale.