US Presbyterian c'tee approves Israel divestment

[dayag]

If Presbyterians don't think Jews have a right to Jerusalem or the West Bank, they might as well get rid of their Bibles; they are obviously not reading them.

If this passes, I hope Jewish religious leaders will end all interfaith contact with Presbyterians.

WASHINGTON - The largest Presbyterian church in the US has agreed to vote by week’s end on divesting its portfolio from three companies that it is says have resisted the request to stop providing services that aid Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly’s Middle East Committee voted 36 to 11 with one abstention in favor of divesting its portfolio from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. The committee said the company’s helped “Israel’s use of their products in violations of Palestinian human rights.”...

The Church’s full convention, being held in Pittsburgh, is expected to vote either Thursday or Friday on the proposal...

source: http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPol...aspx?id=276163

[Madeline]

Denominations are being taken over by the devil. Homosexuality is embraced, God's people are being rejected. What's next?

[Aliyah1995]

I have a dear friend from high-school who is Presbyterian. She is always concerned about my family and my safety when she hears about what is going on in the Middle East. A couple of months ago, a few hours before Shabbat came in, I saw an instant message on facebook from her. She heard about the escalation of missiles in the south and was IMing me asking if my family and I were safe. At least she seems to have not been brainwashed by this drivel.

[Madeline]

My hope and prayer is that God fearing Christians will be leaving the Presbyterian Church in droves. We must have Faith in our Heavenly Father, not in men.

[dayag]

I am surprised and grateful that Americans for Peace Now and J Street are opposing the Presbyterian plan to help destroy Israel by joining the BDS movement.

Left-leaning pro-Israel groups have called on the country’s largest Presbyterian Church to abandon plans to divest from three companies that it is says have resisted the request to stop providing services that aid Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

Americans for Peace Now and J Street have called on the Church's plenary to vote against a committee recommendation made earlier this week calling for divestment...

“We believe that divestment campaigns such as this are misguided and counterproductive," said APN President and CEO Debra DeLee. “By targeting Israel rather than the occupation, this divestment campaign creates the impression that PC (USA) is making common cause with historically virulently anti-Israel organizations and individuals, who are often not interested in Israeli security concerns or Palestinian behavior but in Israel’s destruction. Divestment campaigns such as this therefore raise very real and understandable worries about global anti-Semitism and the perception that the campaigns are not truly (or only) about Israeli policies but rather reflect a deep-seated hatred for and rejection of Israel."

J Street President Jeremy Ben Ami called the possible divestment an "unproductive path."

"I would say to the Church’s leaders as they again consider joining forces with the BDS Movement, that the Movement’s rhetoric and tactics are not only a distraction, but a genuine threat to conflict resolution. Even the limited divestment approach under consideration by PCUSA falls under the rubric of larger BDS efforts to place blame entirely on one side of the conflict. Such an approach encourages not reconciliation, but polarization. Further, too many in and around the BDS movement refuse to acknowledge either the legitimacy of Israel or the right of the Jewish people as well as the Palestinian people to a state," he said...

source: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomac...tment-1.448859

[dayag]

Wow, it failed by just two votes with two abstentions.

The Presbyterian Church USA narrowly rejected a proposal to divest its portfolio from companies that supply equipment to Israel, which, it alleges, enforce Israeli control in the “occupied territories.”

The vote, at the church's biennial meeting, followed weeks of lobbying and days of impassioned testimony by American Jews, Palestinian Christians and Presbyterians, reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

By a margin of 333-331 with two abstentions, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, being held in Pittsburgh, rejected a motion to divest from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions.

Presbyterians voted, however, to replace the divestment proposal with a separate one calling for positive investment in businesses in the “West Bank.”

source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Ne...8#.T_biRpB0gfw

[Aliyah1995]

Those two votes must have been my dear friend from high-school and my other dear friend from college

[Sylvia]

"If Presbyterians don't think Jews have a right to Jerusalem or the West Bank, they might as well get rid of their Bibles; they are obviously not reading them".
Some of them are thinking of by-passing the Bible and are flirting with the notion that today's Jews are Khazars - no relation to the Israelites of the Bible.

[Pleepleus]

"If Presbyterians don't think Jews have a right to Jerusalem or the West Bank, they might as well get rid of their Bibles; they are obviously not reading them".
Some of them are thinking of by-passing the Bible and are flirting with the notion that today's Jews are Khazars - no relation to the Israelites of the Bible.

Hi Sylvia,
Do you have a quote of any Presbyterians making that libel? DNA studies have totally debunked that theory.

[Sylvia]

Hi Sylvia,
Do you have a quote of any Presbyterians making that libel? DNA studies have totally debunked that theory.

It comes mainly from a booklet that was distributed by the PC to its members some years ago. The passage referring to the Khazars has been widely quoted:

Here is ffrom Viola Larson's site, at http://naminghisgrace.blogspot.co.il...that-most.html

"Under the subtitle, “The Genealogical Claim to Israel,” the authors write:

“The founding narrative of the State of Israel links the modern-day Jews’ claim to the land of Israel/Palestine to their direct genealogical descent from the ancient Israelites. Recent anthropological scholarship shows that this widespread belief is very likely a myth, not historical fact. Shlomo Sand, an expert on European history at the university of Tel Aviv, and author of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? posits that the Jews were never exiled en masse from the Holy Land and that many European Jewish populations converted to the faith centuries later. Thus, he argues, many of today’s Israelis who emigrated from Europe after World War II have little or no genealogical connection to the ancient land of Israel.”

[Aliyah1995]

If they can have the Khazars, then we can have Joan Peters "From Time Immemorial". BOTH have been debunked, but unlike the "Khazar Theory" at least there is some truth to Joan Peters book/theory, albeit on a smaller scale than her book.

[dayag]

The same Presbyterrorists went on to support a boycott of products from Judea and Samaria:

And I want to make clear that by "Presbyterrorists" I am referring to those activist delegates supporting BDS against Israel and/or Yesha, and not all Presbyterians indiscriminately.

...By a 457-180 margin, delegates voted to support boycotts of Ahava beauty products and dates from the Hadiklaim Israel Date Growers because they come from Israeli settlements on Palestinian land, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported...

source: http://forward.com/articles/159001/p...srael-boycott/

[Sylvia]

The same Presbyterrorists went on to support a boycott of products from Judea and Samaria:

And I want to make clear that by "Presbyterrorists" I am referring to those activist delegates supporting BDS against Israel and/or Yesha, and not all Presbyterians indiscriminately.



source: http://forward.com/articles/159001/p...srael-boycott/

This week's Parasha is about Bil'am, who came to curse and ended up blessing. It is appropriate here in more ways than one.

First, Ahava has been boycotted before but now it has an address where to sue. The Presbyterians might have their pension problems resolved in an unexpected way.
As to the dates, most of the sales occur during Ramadan. Muslims are told to buy the best dates for the occasion. So they will buy Israeli dates, boycott or no boycott.

But most importantly, we should remember that the BDS campaign was launched as an anti-apartheid measure, "like for South Africa". And some smart Presbyterians have removed the apartheid label from Israel, proposing that "apartheid" is racially-based, and because the conflict is politically-based, it may not therefore apply to Israel . It follows that if there is no apartheid, why BDS?. We'll give this question some time to sink.

All in all, not a bad week.

[magnanimous]

how is this anti semitic?

[curlyg]

People who cite the Khazar theory are genuine 100% racists. It's not because the theory is debunked - we all know that. It's because they seem to think that if the theory were true, that would somehow weaken Jews' claim to Israel, i.e. that genetics is what determines the validity of one's claim to land. What's that if not racist?

The Jews' claim was never about race - this is a claim only the anti-Jewish racists make. As a people, we are the descendants (in a cultural-spiritual sense) of the Jews - regardless of whether we're converts or not. Ethiopian Jews are originally converts from a local Ethiopian population, as are many Indian Jews. They're as Jewish as anyone else, and equally part of the Jewish people. These race purists would presumably deny that...