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B’nai B’rith International condemns the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for voting in favor of divestment in Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett Packard at its 221st biennial General Assembly.
 
By voting for divestment the PC (U.S.A.) become an active participant in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a change in stance from the previous General Assembly where a set of divestment proposals were narrowly defeated.

Some activists within and outside the church have now successfully pushed the denomination to adopt a partisan stance in the vanguard of the anti-Israel BDS movement since 2004. Earlier this year, PC (U.S.A.) earned widespread rebuke for its distribution of “Zionism Unsettled,” a particularly offensive anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish publication created by the foremost activists in the church’s Israel/Palestine Mission Network (IPMN), a political advocacy group.

Contrary to the messaging of partisan campaigners, it is not possible to single out companies doing business with Israel for divestment and not be complicit in the BDS orbit. Defined by the rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish democratic state in the ancestral Jewish homeland, the BDS movement directs discrimination and double standards at the Jewish state alone, and further denies the right of Israelis to live safely while already facing relentless violent fanaticism.

As a humanitarian organization that has invested tremendous hope and extensive efforts worldwide in building Christian-Jewish friendship for 170 years, we remain confident that such an approach does not reflect the values and perspectives of the vast majority of American Christians.