Israel divestment campaigns gain momentum in U.S.

By Mitchell Plitnick | Last updated: Jul 19, 2012 - 11:44:44 AM

WASHINGTON (IPS) - A resolution at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA to divest from three corporations which provide equipment used to maintain Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands failed by a mere two votes in early July.

Yet despite this apparent setback, the movement to divest from such corporations has gained tremendous momentum in recent weeks.

Palestinian and Jewish groups supporting the Palestinian cause stage a rally walking from Times Square to United Nations Building in New York Sept. 15, 2011. The marchers are calling to end all U.S. aid to Israel, end the occupation and support boycott, divestment, sanctions against Israel AP Photo/David Karp

On June 25, Morgan Stanley Capital Index (MSCI) announced that it had removed the Caterpillar corporation from its index of socially responsible companies, due in part to the use of its equipment to violate the human rights of Palestinians in the West Bank.

As a result, the leading retirement assets management firm for workers in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields, TIAA-CREF divested from Caterpillar. Activists in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Israeli occupation hailed this as a major victory, as TIAA-CREF had been the target of a divestment campaign for several years.

The TIAA-CREF decision raised hopes among pro-Palestinian activists that the Presbyterian Church USA would also choose to divest from three corporations—Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solution—which their Israel-Palestine Mission Network had identified as profiting from Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights.

If the Presbyterians passed a divestment resolution they would become the first mainstream Christian church body to do so.

But major Jewish institutions lobbied hard, as they have in previous years, to defeat the Presbyterian divestment initiative, and they succeeded, albeit by the narrowest of margins. The July 5 final vote was 333 against the resolution, 331 in favor and two abstentions.

The narrow margin of defeat, however, provided substantial encouragement to some activists.

Rabbi Alissa Wise, director of Campaigns for Jewish Voice for Peace, a major national Jewish peace group which has spearheaded the campaigns to divest from Caterpillar and to engage both the Presbyterians and TIAA-CREF in that effort, said, “It’s too early to know what is going to happen, but I have been moved to tears on multiple occasions as I saw authentic recognition of Palestinian experience and deep commitment to justice for all people by the Presbyterian Church.

“This is a historic moment in the struggle for dignity and justice, and I commend the PC (USA) for getting us this close to holding corporations accountable for profiting from the occupation.”

Rebecca Vilkomerson, Jewish Voice for Peace executive director, said, “The recent divestment wins, and the incredibly thin margin of this vote, show that the discourse is shifting. The conversation was only about how to end the occupation, not whether or not it should end. This in and of itself is incredible progress.”

That progress was further demonstrated when the Presbyterians voted July 6 to “boycott products made in Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.”

While Jewish Voice for Peace prominently agitated in favor of divestment, a possibly decisive blow was dealt to the initiative by two other Jewish pro-peace groups, J Street and Americans for Peace Now.

Both groups came out strongly against divestment and both cautioned the Presbyterians that they believed such initiatives could lead to increased anti-Semitism around the world and that passage of the initiative could jeopardize, or even destroy, Presbyterian-Jewish relations in the United States.

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