Methodists Reject Divestment Resolutions

By Nathan Guttman - Jewish Daily Forward
Tuesday, May 06, 2008 - Web Link
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May 6, 2008

Washington — After nine days of meetings, The United Methodist Church rejected five proposed resolutions urging divestment from companies doing business with Israel.

The church’s National Conference, which convened in Fort Worth, Texas, last week, overwhelmingly turned down anti-Israel measures, though it included a statement declaring that “Israel continues to violate the international law” by building the separation fence. The conference added a call for both sides to uphold the United Nations’ resolution.

Rejection of the divestment resolutions is seen as a significant achievement for the mainstream organized Jewish community, which launched a massive effort both on the grass-roots level and within the leadership to fight against the divestment trend within mainline Protestant churches.

“This is another piece of evidence that many people in the church do not support a one-sided approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict,” said the Jewish Council for Public Affairs’ associate executive director, Ethan Felson, who was among the activists who went to Fort Worth to fight the divestment initiative.

While Jewish groups were working on the ground in Fort Worth to convince delegates not to support divestment, other Jewish activists were aggressively pushing forward the divestment resolution. Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that has been supportive of divestment, found itself in a spin battle with pro-Israel Jewish groups after the conference ended. While the mainstream organizations focused on the rejection of a variety of divestment measures during the conference, Jewish Voice for Peace tried to put the focus on the fact that the church did not rule out divestment as a future option. The group also stressed in its press release that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is a member of The United Methodist Church.