http://www.onenewsnow.com/Church/Default.aspx?id=1074414A Protestant renewal organization is hoping that the Presbyterian Church USA will reject the recommendation of pro-Palestinian activists for the denomination to endorse a resolution calling for divestment from the Jewish state.
During its General Assembly in 2004, the Presbyterian Church USA authorized divestment from companies doing business with Israel. The move created such a backlash that in 2006 the divestment mandate was rescinded. In 2008 the denomination took a more balanced approach.
But as the 2010 General Assembly convenes July 3-10 in Minneapolis, the divestment question is back. The Presbyterian Middle East Study Committee has written a new report that levies a long list of demands against Israel, and asks the U.S. government to withhold aid "as a means of bringing Israel to compliance."
Alan Wisdom (IRD)Alan Wisdom is vice president for research and programs and director of the Presbyterian Action committee at The Institute on Religion & Democracy. He says the report is very extreme.
"It criticizes Israel incessantly, and hardly has a word of criticism at all for the Palestinian Authority or Fatah or Hamas or Hezbollah or Iran or the other actors in the region that are committed to destroying Israel," he laments.
In addition, says Wisdom, it endorses a "Palestinian manifesto" that he says "basically rejects the identity of Israel as a Jewish state and calls for a single state that would soon have a Palestinian majority." That, he explains, is essentially a "recipe for submerging the Jews under a regime in which there can be no confidence that it would have respect for them."
Wisdom intends to voice support for an alternative proposal which calls for a more balanced approach to the Israel-Palestinian question.
Topic: Israeli divestiture back on PC-USA's front burner (Read 2144 times)