Methodists to Weigh Divestment as Tool to Shift Israel

The United Methodist Church is poised to become the next U.S. church to consider divestment from a company or companies operating in Israel, a strategy that has embroiled the Presbyterian Church (USA) and other denominations in controversy.

At the church's quadrennial General Conference in April in Fort Worth, 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 Jewish groups have slammed as "inflammatory, inaccurate and polemical."

Citing references that compare Israelis to Nazis and characterizing the creation of Israel as "original sin," four U.S. Jewish women's groups told Methodist leaders the guide "would simply take anyone who turns to it . . . on the wrong path."

The guide is "anti-Israel and anti-Jewish from cover to cover," said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

The author of the report, the Rev. Stephen Goldstein, who works for the church's General Board of Global Ministries, was unable to be reached for comment.

James Winkler, general secretary of the General Board of Church and Society, said he had just received the study report and had not read the "troubling quotes." However, he explained the rationale for divestment.

"The board felt that after 40 years of statements and resolutions from our denomination, as well as from many other churches and other organizations, urging Israel's withdrawal from occupied lands in the West Bank, that something more needed to be done," he said.

"The feeling was that economic pressure was needed." Winkler said.

Caterpillar was chosen because Israel uses its products to "destroy Palestinian homes, build bypass roads and build the wall of separation."

About $5 million of the United Methodist Church's $17 billion portfolio is invested in Caterpillar.

In a statement, Caterpillar said it complies with foreign and domestic laws, stating that "for the past four years, activists have wrongly included Caterpillar in a publicity campaign aimed at advancing their much larger political agenda" and that protests "neither change the facts nor our position."