The Role of the U.S. Churches in the BDS Movement

 

Video and Edited Transcript 
Philip Farah and David Wildman
Transcript No. 423 (4 February 2015)



Samirah Alkassim: 
Spiritual groups have often been at the frontlines of human rights movements in the U.S. In recent years there have been dramatic positions taken by faith-based groups such as the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the United Church of Christ and the U.S. Mennonite Church to divest from corporations that aid the Israeli occupation and contribute to human rights abuses against Palestinians. This panel looks at the role and significance of the churches in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the origins of this role, their landmark achievements and challenges along the way. Our panelists include Philip Farah of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace and David Wildman of the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Global Ministries.

Philip Farah is a Palestinian Christian born and raised in East Jerusalem. He immigrated to the US in 1978 at the age of 27. He has lived, studied and worked in several countries in the Middle East. He now works as a natural resources economist and lives in the Washington DC Metro area with his wife and three children. He is a founding member of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace and co-founder of the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace. He has addressed audiences across the U.S. on Middle East peace and justice issues so he is a very informed expert on the panel at hand.

David Wildman is the executive secretary for Human Rights & Racial Justice with the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM). He also relates on behalf of GBGM with grassroots partners in the Middle East and Afghanistan, which he visits regularly. He serves on the board of the National Farm Worker Ministry and is active in corporate accountability work with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. From 1989 to 2001 he facilitated justice and peace seminars at the Church Center for the UN. David helped found United For Peace & Justice in October 2002 and the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation in 2001, and serves on its Steering Committee. He also serves on the World Council of Churches Palestine-Israel Ecumenical Forum Core Group. So please welcome our first speaker today, David Wildman.

David Wildman: Good afternoon everyone. It’s good to see friends and many people here for this discussion. I’m going to jump right in. Thank you for the invitation from The Palestine Center and also for the warm welcome.

We’re starting Black History Month, so what better time is it to talk about non-violent moral actions like boycott, divestment and sanctions? Not that we should stop talking about this in March, but this is really an appropriate time. About 50 years ago Malcolm X was assassinated and the movie on Selma is reminding us of many non-violent struggles. I think it’s good for us to take some time today and focus on boycott, divestment and sanctions and what the role of the churches is. Folks may remember that the white clergy in Birmingham when King came to town and was working with folks, wrote a letter to him and said, “You know, we have our own way of dealing with things here. You’re just bringing in these extremist radical kind of ideas”. So he wrote a letter saying, “Wasn’t Amos an extremist for justice? Wasn’t Jesus an extremist for justice?” So in fact, if we are called extremists, I think we should claim that. BDS is an extremely passionate actions for non-violent, moral, economic change and churches are struggling and moving in that movement.

I had the privilege of being here in this room ten years ago in 2005 as part of a panel here with The Palestine Center asking, “Why divestment?” So I thought it would be kind of nice to be back ten years later and reflect on what’s happened with the churches. That’s going to be the framework I’d like for us to reflect on. I’m going to do a little bit of background on the second intifada, but I’m not going to go back to all the history of the discrimination and dispossession that has taken place. I do want to say that for us as churches, one of the reasons that boycott, divestment and sanctions has taken off I think is, in part, the log in our eye as churches in the United States, which is the U.S. government. Since 1970, the U.S. at the United Nations has used the veto more than the other four permanent members combined. Now one-third of those vetoes were to block international action against apartheid practices in what’s now Zimbabwe, South Africa and in what’s now Namibia. That is not as well remembered as the fact that half of the vetoes have been to block international criticism of the Israeli government’s practices in the Occupied Territories and in its neighboring areas of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

It’s when you block international communities efforts that civil society – which includes churches – turn to nonviolent actions like boycott and divestment. So a significant part of the anti-apartheid movements strengthening its efforts in boycott and divestment in the seventies and eighties, was connected with the U.S. government, often joined by Britain, blocking international efforts to challenge the apartheid regimes. So I think it makes sense right now that there’s also civil society joining together, I just wanted to put that as a backdrop.

I want to go back and think about some of the first divestment efforts in the United States. Around 2001 and 2002, some of you may remember the second intifada erupted and was quite violent. There were the Caterpillar bulldozers levelling a whole area of Jenin refugee camp. In the midst of widespread nonviolent action, there was direct action of Christian peacemaker teams that have been there for many years: the newly formed International Solidarity Movement, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Israel/Palestine of the World Council Churches. They were saying, “We need to stop the injustices and we need to do it in nonviolent ways,” and, “How can we be involved?” People logically said, “Well, if companies are involved in doing harm, we need to take it to the companies as well.” Then in 2004, you may remember, was the first resolution of the Presbyterian Church called for phase-selective divestment. It was actually one month before the International Court of Justice ruling was issued that condemned the apartheid wall. In 2005, the Palestinian civil society called for justice, freedom and equality that was the spark of the BDS movement around the world as well as Sabeel Palestinian Christian organization doing a conference in Toronto on morally responsible investment. The attacks on Presbyterians, including arson threats, obscene phone calls and all sorts of other violent threats, made Sabeel wary of talking about divestment, so they talked about morally responsible investment:  if companies are doing bad things, there is a responsibility to do something about it. As you know, it’s been a ten-year struggle for Presbyterians to get to the point where last June of 2014 they did vote to divest from Caterpillar, Motorola and HP. I was part of the conversations with those companies and there was a number of us from several different denominations that joined together to file shareholder resolutions, to meet with the companies and to write letters. It was after prolonged refusal by these companies to actually change anything that they voted to divest.

Methodists also struggled. We divested the week before the Presbyterian meeting from G4S, a British company that’s involved in private prison work – particularly the prison contracts that with the Israeli government housing Palestinians under detention often without trial. That lead to that divestment. I just want to note that in 2012, an interesting thing happened. As the BDS movement was taking off from 2005, many of the college campuses had divestment movements in 2002 and 2003 here in the United States. Churches often focused on divestment, partly because we have pension funds, we have holdings so we actually have something to divest. Most students don’t have any investments so they’ve already done that, so it’s really easy. Churches realize, “We’ve done this before and it works. Why not use a tactic that is non-violent and something we have some practice with?” In 2012, the focus was on divestment and there were some quiet efforts to say “we should be doing all of the non-violent moral actions.” Ending military aid is a form of sanctions if you think about it, in terms of calling on the U.S. government. Sadly, the U.S. government has not listened very well and boycott in terms of settlement products. In fact, both the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church in 2012 adopted calls for boycotts focusing on settlement products or on companies; the Methodist boycott being a little broader than the Presbyterian one.

One of the struggles I want us to wrestle with here is how attack groups – I call them attack groups because their main agenda is to silence moral non-violent actions and voices within the churches – are not seeking peace, they are not seeking other actions, they are seeking to silence. I think you know many of them. They have framed the debate that boycotting is too connected to the horrendous boycott of Jews in Nazi Germany in the thirties. The boycott, however, is actually against any form of discrimination. It’s the discriminatory, racist apartheid practices of the Israeli government that are being boycotted. To be charged with discrimination is really an attempt to reverse the framing. For a long time I think we accepted that and the challenge now for us as churches and our allies is to understand how important boycott is along with divestment in challenging racist practices. Look what happened in Montgomery. It was not a boycott of buses, that this was a terrible technology that needed to be eliminated from the city, it was not even against that company: it was against the racist practices of that company and of the state that allowed the continuation of segregation. The protesters wanted to use the buses, but only if the buses practiced just policies. The challenge today is to use these attacks by saying we are against all forms of discrimination. We are against anti-Semitism and we are against the identity based discrimination of Israeli checkpoints, of Israeli laws – and there are dozens and dozens of laws – that treat people differently strictly on the basis of identity. That is the challenge for us. To understand that boycotts are actually one of the most strong and moral actions that we can take in nonviolent loving concern for everyone to end the discrimination that Palestinians have faced for so long. That you have a law of return, if one’s Jewish, and you have a right of return that’s denied if you’re Palestinian. So a boycott is saying, “That’s wrong, we should have the same practices for everyone.” I want to put that out there for us as a challenge.

Now fast forwarding through history: in 2009 after 18 months of discernment, Palestinian Christians launched the Kairos Palestine Document that drew insights from the Kairos document from 1985 in South Africa saying apartheid is a sin and any church theology that tries to justify apartheid is wrong and anyone that tries to reform it is wrong, like state theology, church theology and prophetic theology (the three categories in South Africa that had to be challenged). In the same way, Kairos Palestine was saying for Palestinian Christians and for the world, “We need to challenge the sin of occupation, taking someone else’s land, taking resources and building settlements,”: all not only gross violations of international law as its been framed over the last century, but also deeply immoral, unjust actions that divide people from one another, discriminate and violate all sorts of moral laws as well. That’s why we, as churches, have to be a part of boycott, divestment and sanctions efforts.

Where did all this come from? Well partly it comes from the Bible. I don’t know if you realize, but really all of this comes from the Bible. I want you to think about the concept of repentance. That in Biblical language in many of the stories, sin was when people turned away from God and turned away from their neighbors that were in need. Repentance was a call to turn back. Turn away from the sinful activities that you were partaking in. The unjust activities. The violent activities that you were participating in. Repentance was like a boycott – give up those awful practices! Stop robbing your neighbors! Stop discriminating! It really is a call to boycott, a call to divest.

In Ezekiel, in the eighteenth chapter, Ezekiel is asking, “Should we have collective punishment or not?” If one person does something wrong, there are Biblical stories where the whole family, the whole community suffers for the wrong of one person. And Ezekiel is saying, “No, wrong actions are punished. Repentance, turning from those actions and doing good, is welcomed. And it’s based on your actions that you are judged, not your identity.” So here again, it’s anti-discrimination, anti-collective punishment sense. “‘Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?’ declares the Lord, “Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?’” Boycotts are a call for us to turn and for our neighbors, companies, Israeli government, to also turn. “Repent!” Or we’d like to say, “Boycott! Divest!” “‘Turn away from your offenses, then sin will not be your downfall. Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, O House of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone,’ declares the Lord, ‘Repent, and live!’” Ezekiel was challenging the government of his day and the people of his day, out of deep love, to stop discriminating, to stop taking others land, to stop going the ways of the empire and the ways of “might makes right.” And I think that same challenge is what Palestinian Christians, the Palestinian civil society and churches are taking up today when we call for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

The same thing is in the book of Revelation, when John is writing about Babylon. Now, when he was writing, Babylon was already an ancient empire, but if he wrote about the Roman Empire he would be executed – so it’s a kind of code language. He says, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the great!” He goes on to condemn Babylon, “Then I heard another voice from heaven say, ‘Come out of her!’” – that’s divest – – “‘My people, so that you will not share in her sins.’” So what happens? When this boycott and divestment takes place – I’m reading from verse 18:11, “‘The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys her goods anymore.’” See? There it is! Boycott and divest. “‘The music of harpists, musicians, flute players and trumpeters will not be heard in you again.’” So a music boycott, a cultural boycott. So I think that we have some challenges for us in the Bible.

Why are we putting out this kind of boycott and pressing churches to say, “Let’s examine and claim these [boycotts] instead of being fearful about it.” How do we, in the international community, take on a country – Israel is a democracy, its people vote – that repeatedly elects a government that supports, subsidizes, protects and expands settlements, illegal settlements? How do we challenge a democratic government? That’s different than challenging dictatorship, challenging a monarchy, there are many unjust governments. But when it comes to challenging democracies, boycott was a tactic used by colonized peoples. India, if you think of Gandhi and non-cooperation with wrongdoing, these efforts of colonized people were saying, “We will not participate in your ongoing harm and wrongful procedures.” Therefore, boycott right now is also an act of love to challenge the Israeli public to wake up in a loving, nonviolent way. It may not feel that way, but I want to suggest that it is, and if you think about the different boycott movements – and if you haven’t done this, look at the history of the anti-colonial movements in South Africa, in India and a number of other places – it also enables us to broaden our involvements. I was talking with a friend from Africa today – there’s not a lot of churches in Africa that have investments the way that churches here have – in that case, divestment is something that doesn’t necessarily make sense. But boycott is something that they can participate in; to boycott settlement products and companies as part of this broader movement.

In Ezekiel again – one of my favorite prophets in various ways, there’s some wild stuff in there – he talks about the false prophets that are whitewashing and providing lies to distort things. And in fact that describes the efforts to say that United Methodists and Presbyterians are engaged in violent threats against Israel, or engaged in anti-Semitic activities. We are against taking people’s land, we are against discrimination that has checkpoints on identity, and I keep going over this because I think it’s important to stay on message on the suffering of people at the hands of a discriminatory system that has been seizing land. And last year, there were more home demolitions and more settlements than in years in the West Bank. So apart from the horrors of Gaza over this last summer, there is a need to challenge this; boycott and divestment are a way of also challenging the whitewashing that happens in our churches, in various attack groups, in U.S. media and certainly in the halls of Congress. “‘Because they lead my people astray, saying ‘Peace’ (or peace process) when there is no peace, and because when a flimsy wall was built, they cover it with whitewash. Therefore, tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall.’” That was Ezekiel a long time ago. So the Wall today also can’t be covered in whitewash, it cannot stand, and through nonviolent actions of boycott, divestment and sanctions, it too will fall. Thank you.

Philip Farah: Salaam alaikum. And thank you very much to The Palestine Center for tolerating me yet for a second time in three months. Thank you to Samirah and everybody else. Thank you all for coming.

What’s our group: the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP)? The role of faith communities and faith leaders in the emancipation struggles worldwide and in the US. The Palestine call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, Western churches’ involvement in Palestine, church activists: resolutions are not enough. Many of the church activists are saying, “You know, we’ve passed millions of resolutions, it’s now time to act.” Support for boycott, divestment and some sanctions in the churches. The other side – Christians for Israel. And then, which voice carries? Is it the so-called silent majority or is it us, the activists, who seem to be so small? And very importantly, where is the Palestinian-American voice? This presentation, in many ways, is directed at us, the Palestinian activists: where do we belong in the movement in general, and in particular, in regards to the churches?

So a number of us in Washington were approached sometime back in 2012 by friends in the United Methodist Church, who were like David. David – by the way, I call him the father of BDS, or Mr. BDS – started talking about boycott and divestment long before any of us did. We were approached and asked, “Where is the Palestinian voice?” We are agitating for divestment by our church. We are hearing from all sides. We are hearing from the Zionists, the pro-Israel folks, we are hearing from Christian Zionists. And we’re hearing also from Jewish Voice for Peace, who is congratulating us on our proposed resolution, but you know, the Palestinian voice is simply not there. It is a fact that we are activists here and there, but there is no real voice, there is no address. And this is why we started our group, the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace, really to address the need for a Palestinian voice which should have credibility with the churches. We are a very small group and Christian Zionists number in the millions and are extremely well funded. Then, there are networks of people, like the United Methodist Kairos Response, several other United Methodists groups like the Methodists for Social Action, the Israel/Palestine Mission Network for the Presbyterian Church. There is the United Church of Christ, Palestine-Israel network and many other groups, far bigger than the Palestinian activists in this country. But, much smaller than the Christian Zionists. Is that a reason to give up? That is one of the questions that I’ll be addressing.

We are asking you to really go beyond new resolutions and actually put your money where your mouth is and be actively involved in the struggle, because there is a lot of resistance. In the churches, the idea of divestment and boycott is a negative thing and churches don’t want to do negative things, they want to do positive things and want to invest.  It is a struggle. They don’t want to rock the boat, and they don’t want to seem anti-Semitic, and they don’t want to be provocative. So, we talk about many leaders, who were faith leaders, who played extremely important roles in the emancipations of their people, like Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce and Muhammad Abduh of Egypt, Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Germany, Dorothy Day (the founder of Catholic Workers – a tremendous fighter for peace and justice and for rights of the working class), and of course Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu, Mons. Oscar Romero, Bishop Abel Muzorewa – who actually happened to be the Methodist bishop in Zimbabwe and who was actually even more important than Mugabe in the struggle. All these leaders played great roles in emancipation struggles of their people. They were very provocative, they very much rocked the boat. These were not passive leaders: they did not at all avoid controversy. So the churches played an extreme role historically in the emancipation struggles in the United States: the abolition of slavery, civil rights movement, ending the war in Vietnam, BDS movement against apartheid in South Africa, Kairos South Africa which inspired the Palestine Kairos document that David referred to, the Sanctuary Movement to end the U.S. support for Central American dictatorships and death squads (very strongly based in the churches), and many more struggles. Please remember the words “Sanctuary Movement,” that to me are very key words for a reason I will make clear later.

Many of the people involved in the Israel/Palestine conflict have recognized the importance of the [role] churches play in the struggle. Congress is occupied territory probably more than my country, the media is not much better and so are a large part of the churches. The only real fora in this country for progressive voices are the universities (I’m too old to be an activist for the universities) and the churches. Chomsky recognized this, Edward Said recognized it and many other activists, even environmental activists. When you get the churches, you get the mainstream – much more than the students, even though many things start with student movements, when you really are able to reach the church communities you are in the mainstream.

Mentioning Congress, many of us believe it’s a lost cause. We encourage people to lobby this issue, but frankly, when Netanyahu was here he got far more standing ovations than I think any other American President. So we focus on the grassroots. Martin Luther King and other have recognized that historically everything that’s good in this country really starts in the streets.

In all emancipation struggles, non-violence is never the only movement. Like Gandhi said, “Cowardice is not an option.” For the Palestinians, the status quo is not an option. There will either be violence or nonviolence – and which side are you on? And nonviolence does not mean being passive, it means being extremely provocative as Gandhi was. Gandhi was in-your-face provocative and extremely stubborn in his confrontation of injustice in his country.

Many of you will recognize this person on the right, but do you know who this was [refers to slide]? Subhas Chandra Bose is considered by many Indians as important of a leader of the Indian emancipation struggle as Gandhi. He and Gandhi had huge differences, Chandra Bose strongly criticized Gandhi for nonviolence; he advocated a violent struggle against the British. It was an extremely violent struggle, and people like Gandhi and Nelson Mandela were the sane alternative to what would have otherwise been total chaos. That’s another message in the narrative to our churches.

I want to go back to the issue of sanctuary. The Jewish Voice for Peace is far greater in number than we, the Palestinian community in this country, can ever hope to muster. We are also terrorized by Islamophobia in this country. It is extremely important that there should be a sanctuary for us, such as the churches. We are not alone. To many Palestinians who are very reluctant to be engaged in the struggle, we tell them, “You are absolutely not alone.” BDS is making tremendous gains worldwide. I think maybe David could tell you about some of them among church communities worldwide, and the churches are a very big part of that. It offers hope to the nonviolent strugglers in Palestine as well, because without success it will be chaos.

Kairos Palestine, the document that I mentioned, was published in 2009 and is an inspiration for our group. The churches have been very much involved in Palestine: missions, schools, hospitals serving not only Palestinian Christians but also Muslims, the majority of the population. They see for themselves the horrible conditions that Palestinians live through. Out of these [experiences] emerged groups that are in solidarity with the Palestinians. These are the Palestinian groups: Sabeel Palestinian Liberation Theology Center, a Palestinian Christian group, and Kairos Palestine which is advocating for BDS. Also the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program which is an international program run by many church advocates all over the world to act in solidarity on the ground and practice nonviolent resistance and the Christian Peacemakers Team.

I want to quote from the CPT, the Christian Peacemakers Team, as a lot of what they do is protecting Palestinian children in Hebron, for example, who are going to school and facing insults and violence from Israeli settlers who are protected by Israeli soldiers. They also help farmers trying to get to their land. This is a quotation from their website, “CPT… supports Palestinian-led, nonviolent grassroots resistance to the Israeli occupation and the unjust structures that uphold it.”

These are some of the groups that are activist groups on all kinds of issues: immigration, the rights of immigrants, LGBT rights and issues, all kinds of issues in the United States. These are our natural allies. But these groups are very specifically focused on Palestine: United Methodist Kairos Response, Presbyterian Israel-Palestine Mission Network, United Church of Christ Palestine-Israel Network. These are growing very fast. At the beginning I said we are very tiny and we are overwhelmed by the much larger Christian Zionist movement. But the fact is that, the Presbyterian movement for divestment last year immediately hit the first page of the New York Times. CUFI, the Christians United for Israel, Congressmen and Senators come and attend their meeting and they don’t get first page coverage in the New York Times. There are millions of [CUFI members] and they are extremely well-funded. Our friends, who are relatively small in number, moved their church to divest and it hits the first page news in the New York Times. This has huge moral significance. A few days after that, Netanyahu addresses the Presbyterian Church’s resolution by directly criticizing it because he knows how big a threat that is.

Since Gaza, the numbers of church regional groups who have signed onto BDS has increased very significantly. Our friends from Jewish Voice for Peace know the impact after the massacre of Gaza last year. The numbers of Jewish Voice for Peace have tripled.  And I think 30 new chapters have grown around the country.

This is the question: who will prevail? We are relatively small in numbers and resources compared to AIPAC and all of its friends in Congress, but which voices carries? Is it the silent majority? Do not be fooled by our small numbers. I think we can have a huge impact, but we really need to network. We lack this. We in the Palestinian community, in particular, have to really start being more out there and support the churches who are doing this work. Thank you very much.

Philip Farah
is a Palestinian Christian born and raised in East Jerusalem. He
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