The United Methodist Church is poised to become the next U.S. church to consider divesting from Israel, a topic so controversial that it prompted the Presbyterian Church (USA) to backpedal on its own divestment program two years ago.
At its quadrennial General Conference this April in Fort Worth, Texas, the Methodists, with more than 8 million U.S. members, will debate whether to pull church holdings in Caterpillar, which provides the Israel Defense Forces with bulldozers.
The proposal from the Methodists’ General Board of Church and Society comes as the church’s women’s division offers a 224-page study guide on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been slammed as “inflammatory, inaccurate and polemical” by Jewish groups
One of the reasons these guys always cite (and is cited in this article) is the Gaza wall which they uniformly and falsely compare to the Berlin Wall. The Berlin wall was designed to keep East Germans from escaping to freedom not to keep out terrorists with backpacks laden with plastic explosives and nails intended to be blownup at coffeeshops or discos. What church was trying to pull this stunt two years ago?…
[blockquote][url=http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c=JPArticle&cid=1202246357061&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull ]Two years ago this month the leadership of the Church of England, in a meeting of its General Synod, voted to divest from companies whose products are used by Israel in the territories.
A week later, the leader of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, wrote a personal letter to British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and apologized for the measure, expressing “deep regret” over the “deep distress” the measure had caused.
The only problem is that Williams had, in fact, supported the measure.[/url] [/blockquote]
Interesting these anti-semitics in church robes don’t ever mention the Egyptian wall in the Sinai whose breech has recently been repaired which is also there to keep out Hamas thugs.
There are a lot of very, very naive, very poorly informed folks out there. But it’s easier to feel good about standing up for the Other than to take the time to look at the facts. “How dare they not let those nice suicide bombers murder their children!”
Isn’t it sort of dumb to render ineffective the only real ally we have in the Middle East, and has on more than one occasion shown their willingness to fight at our side? I think that churches would be more effective, if they remembered whose side they should be on, and kept out of politics as much as possible; and that includes our own TEC PB and her current flirting around with the UN.