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The news last week that
the Presbyterian Church, with three million American members, not
only condemned Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territory but
also acting, by halting investments in Israel as well as with
companies that do business in Israel has been heartening to
Palestinians, especially the Christians among them, who have strong
feelings of abandonment by their co-religionists in the US when it
comes to exerting political or economic pressure on Israel.
Despite the moral significance of this move, it's not likely that
this divestment decision will hold Israel in check unless other
churches and other organisations worldwide follow suit.
The divestment campaign against apartheid South Africa, for example,
pinched to the tune of $7 billion between 1986-1990 before it had
some effect. The Presbyterian divestment decision means that the
church will withdraw its funds from any company which earns more
than $1 million annually in Israeli investments, or which invests
more than $1 million a year in Israel.
Nevertheless, for Palestinian Christians, this brave decision on the
part of the Presbyterian Church is a much needed moral boost. There
are many programmes in Palestine run by Lutheran and Calvinist
churches, which provide aid to Palestinians, both Muslim and
Christian, but they work strictly within a religious framework and
don't have much political clout in the US.
Palestinian Christians have had to contend with the fact that, for
some time now, 70 million Evangelists in the United States, counting
among them Congressional House Majority leader, Tom DeLay, have huge
political and economic clout and are allied with the pro-Israeli
lobby and the neoconservatives. Christian Zionists, as they are
called, base their support for Israel's occupation of Palestinian
territory and Israel's aggressive expansion on the religious belief
that the Jews must rule over all of Palestine before the proper
conditions for the second coming of the Messiah are met, at which
point the Jews will believe in Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and
the redeemer of the world.
Orthodox Jews and others may not exactly like the ending of this
story, but Israel welcomes the substantial donations lavished on it
by the Christian Zionists and their strong political championship in
the United States.
That the Evangelists' fellow Christians in Palestine, the first
Christians whose ancestors had listened to St. Peter's sermons at
the first Pentecost in Jerusalem, are in the meantime suffering
under Israeli occupation and the Judaisation of Palestine, or in
refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria, and are leaving Palestine in
droves seems to make no difference to Evangelists whose literature
demonises the Palestinian side of the conflict, echoing Israeli
propaganda. To them, the Palestinians are made up of crazy Islamist
terrorists.
In 1948, when the state of Israel was created, about 20 per cent of
the total population in Palestine was Christian, 35 per cent of whom
were driven out and became refugees. Now, entirely due to the
Israeli occupation and the hardships that occupation have inflicted
on the Palestinians, the Christian population is down to 1.8 per
cent. At this rate, it is almost certain that the Holy Land will
soon be devoid of living, breathing Christians. At least, that's the
spectre that father Labib Kobti, a Catholic priest in San Francisco,
sees as he ministers to the hoards of Palestinian Christian
immigrants from Ramallah, Birzeit, Gifna, Bethlehem, Jerusalem and
Taybeh.
At the Presbyterian Church's 216th General Assembly, when the
divestment decision was made, Rev. Mitri Raheb of Bethlehem spoke in
strong favour of the resolution. Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, the
Jewish Anti-Defamation League's interfaith director, is now feeling
hurt because he says the Presbyterian Church made its decision
“without trying to balance or consult with the other side”.
As it happens, that's exactly how Palestinians, Christian and
Muslim, feel about American policy towards Israel's occupation of
the Palestinian territory — no balance except the balance of power,
which the US and Israel use to force agreements on the Palestinians.
The courageous Presbyterian decision has come to give a much needed
moral balance to this unbalanced equation.
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