Methodist Madness

Divesting from Israel

by Mark Tooley
http://www.weeklystandard.com
02/22/2008 12:00:00 AM



ONE OF THE OLDEST Religious Left groups in America is targeting Israel for divestment. The Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) was founded in 1907 after its leaders met with President Teddy Roosevelt. It was one of the Social Gospel's chief proponents in the early 20th century, when much of Mainline Protestantism was exchanging theological orthodoxy for progressive political action. Functioning as an influential caucus within America's once largest Protestant denomination, MFSA for decades has commanded the allegiance of bishops, church bureaucrats, and seminary professors.

Famously derided in the 1950's by Reader's Digest as Methodism's "pink fringe," the increasingly far-left church caucus was briefly marginalized after its infatuations with Stalinist Russia. But MFSA roared back with the counter-culture of the 1960's, vigorously promoting the welfare state, disarmament, and racial, and gender justice. In the 1970s and 1980s it enthusiastically embraced Liberation Theology, touting the Sandinistas and countless other revolutionaries. Of late, MFSA has focused on homosexual causes and "marriage equality."

But now MFSA is demanding that the 7.9 million member United Methodist Church divest from firms consorting with Israel. The church's official lobby arm, the Capitol Hill-based General Board of Church and Society, is more cautiously recommending divestment only against Caterpillar, Inc. for its bulldozer sales to Israel. In late April, the denomination's governing General Conference will decide whether to accede to the anti-Israel initiatives.

MFSA wants a "phased, selective divestment from companies supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and other violations of human rights in Israel/Palestine," according to MFSA's chief Kathryn Johnson. "Those who support selective divestment will be accused of being anti-Semitic," she admitted. "Pleas will be made to consider inter-faith relations." But Johnson countered that divestment to pressure the U.S. and Israeli governments is not anti-Semitic. Instead, it can be a "powerful nonviolent tool to change unjust policies that lead to massive suffering and human rights violations in Palestine." She confessed that ties to Jewish groups will be "strained" by divestment, requiring more "compassionate" dialogue. And she urged that "interfaith relationships" also should include Muslims.

The rationale for MFSA's divestment legislation declares: "The destruction of Palestinian homes and confiscation for Palestinian land is made possible by the use of armored bulldozers, helicopter gunships, tanks and other equipment that may have been purchased from the U.S. corporations in which the United Methodist Church may hold investments." If the MFSA proposal were approved, the United Methodist Church would give the targeted companies 60 days to "change" their ties to the "Israeli occupation." Absent this "change," all church entities would divest from that company.



Anti-Israel divestment would primarily involve the United Methodist Church's $17 billion pension portfolio. But it also would affect another nearly $1 billion in assets by the church's 13 national church agencies. And it presumably would affect the even more considerable assets of United Methodism's over 100 affiliated universities and colleges and about 60 hospitals and clinics. Especially wealthy United Methodist universities include Duke, Emory, Southern Methodist, Boston, and Drew. United Methodism has never before targeted governments for corporate divestment, not even South Africa under Apartheid.

But MFSA, along with many United Methodist elites, apparently believes that Israel is uniquely guilty among the world's numerous oppressor regimes. MFSA's January-February 2008 newsletter offers a rather sinister history of Israel. Muslims, Christians, and Jews had lived in "harmony" in Palestine for centuries until disrupted by "extremist" Zionists, whose zeal for a Jewish state provoked violence. "High-placed American Zionists" pressured the United Nations to "give away" most of Palestine to Jews, who avariciously went on to "conquer" three quarters of Palestine. The Jewish conquest advanced in 1967, when Israel launched a "Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack" on Egypt. Israel's continued "confiscation" of Palestinian land perpetuates injustice until this day, inevitably igniting Palestinian uprisings.

The MFSA newsletter includes a commentary by a Sara Roy, a research scholar at Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Herself the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Roy likens Israel's stance towards Palestinians to Nazi attitudes towards Jews, while declining to call it morally equivalent. "Within the Jewish community it has always been considered a form of heresy to compare Israeli actions or policies with those of the Nazis, and certainly one must be very careful in doing so," she recounted. "But what does it mean when Israeli soldiers paint identification numbers on Palestinian arms; when young Palestinian men and boys of a certain age are told through Israeli loudspeakers to gather in the town square; when Israeli soldiers openly admit to shooting Palestinian children for sport; when some of the Palestinian dead must be buried in mass graves while the bodies of others are left in city streets and camp alleyways because the army will not allow proper burial; when certain Israeli officials and Jewish intellectuals publicly call for the destruction of Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings or for the transfer of the Palestinian population out of the West Bank and Gaza; when 46 percent of the Israeli public favors such transfers and when transfer or expulsion becomes a legitimate part of popular discourse; when government officials speak of the 'cleansing of the refugee camps'; and when a leading Israeli intellectual calls for hermetic separation between Israelis and Palestinians in the form of a Berlin Wall, caring not whether the Palestinians on the other side of the wall may starve to death as a result."

MFSA's condemnation of Israel is harsh and contrasts starkly with its romances over the decades with Marxist regimes, whose absolutist oppression was far more akin to Nazi tactics. Such lack of proportion may lead to failure when the vote comes in April, but with support from many church officials, MFSA will continue to identify Israel as a pariah nation. Such hostility towards Israel may not be so much anti-Semitic as an anachronistic relic of the old left, which dreamt that world revolution would sweep away all religious and national identities. Israel is a stubborn rebuttal to the old left's historicist claims. For the fading remnants of old-time liberal Protestantism, that might be infuriating.

Mark Tooley directs the Institute on Religion and Democracy's program for United Methodists.