Israel boycott on United Church meeting agenda

The United Church of Canada is under fire from Jewish groups as it prepares to consider a series of resolutions advocating boycotts and sanctions against Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians.

Eric Vernon

The church, Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, will hold its 40th General Council – its foremost decision-making conference – from Aug. 9 to 16 in Kelowna, B.C. Among the proposals being brought forward to the national body by various regional branches are four resolutions that advocate a boycott, divestment and sanctions strategy by the church against Israel.

The resolutions  – drafted jointly by the church’s Toronto Conference’s Holy Land Awareness and Action Committee, a subcommittee of the Toronto branch’s World Action Committee, along with the church’s Montreal and Ottawa conferences – call for a “comprehensive boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions at the national and international levels.”

Accompanying support documents also refer to Israel’s assault on Gaza earlier this year as a “visible reminder of the ongoing Israeli regime of exclusion, violence and dehumanization directed against Palestinians.”

Israel, the proposal states, was “built mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners.”

The subcommittee’s website also features a link titled “Companies to boycott,” which leads to a downloadable list of firms that it calls “non-peaceful,” mostly for supplying the Israel Defence Forces. Examples include Boeing, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, Motorola and Volvo.

There is no mention on the site of anti-Israel terrorist groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah, or any material criticizing their activities.

Eric Vernon, Canadian Jewish Congress’ director of government relations, told The CJN that his organization is concerned the church’s stance on Israel is being distorted by a minority of its members.

He said last week that Congress crafted a detailed response to the proposals and sent it to the church’s executive members so that they can better understand the nuanced situation in the Middle East.

A church spokesperson confirmed that the Congress document was received and immediately distributed internally for all the council commissioners to view prior to the start of the General Council.

In response to concerns voiced by the Jewish community, the church posted a statement on its website last week saying that it “has consistently striven for peace with justice in Palestine and Israel” and that its Middle East policy “is shaped and informed by Israeli and Palestinian partners in the region.”

Vernon said the current boycott proposals threaten to sever the links between the church and the Canadian Jewish community. The relationship “will definitely be strained” if the resolutions pass at the conference, he added.

He called the proposals “particularly disturbing” because in 2003, at the church’s 38th General Council, a document called Bearing Faithful Witness was drafted as a “blueprint for rapprochement in the United Church of Canada and Jewish community. If these current resolutions are passed, they will be consigning Bearing Faithful Witness to the dustbin.”

Congress is concerned that church members are being misinformed.

“There doesn’t seem to be a full appreciation for the existential threat that Israel faces on a daily basis,” Vernon said. “They have a skewed vision of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And they seem to place all the blame for a lack of a [peaceful] resolution on Israel and don’t hold the Palestinians responsible for much of anything at all. The church seems to be persuaded by the views of people on the margins of their community.”

Karin Brothers, a Toronto Conference member who brought forward the motions on Israel, and who’s listed on the conference’s website as its Holy Land Awareness subcommittee’s primary contact, couldn’t be reached for comment.

However, she is on record with her views on Jews and Israel.

During her 2006 trip with a United Church delegation to Nablus and after her visit with An-Najah National University representatives, the university’s website posted the following paragraph: “The reasons for [the West’s biased Israel] coverage are hinted by Karin Brothers, a housewife actively engaged in documenting the conflict. ‘The Jewish lobby is indeed very powerful, not only in the U.S. but also in Canada,’ she says. ‘A significant amount of elections money comes from the Jewish community, to the extent that right after the massacre of Jenin, about 96 per cent of [the U.S.] Congress was in favour of Israel. They created something like an Israeli solidarity vote to support Israel. It’s at that moment that Israel’s lobby showed their muscle.’”

The website material goes on to state that Brothers “has no doubt about the influence of the Jewish community both in politics and within the media: ‘Any politician would be targeted if he turned his back to Israel and would lose his job. It’s amazing the amount of people, especially politicians, who are offered a free trip to Israel.’”

When presented with Brothers’ statements, Rev. Bruce Gregersen, the church’s General Council officer for programs, said it was the first he’d heard of her comments. He called them “unfortunate,” before adding quickly that the General Council “would never use language like that.”

He added that while Brothers is a church member, she’s also “an individual who is part of other organizations as well, who has freedom to speak as one, but does not speak for the church.”

Other support material for the resolutions being presented to the General Council include vague references to Canadian parliamentarians as “dual-citizens with Israel” who have “sensitive roles in Canada.” The material states that “some have accepted sponsored trips to Israel, which might be called bribes; some [MPs] are affiliated with the State of Israel.”

The material is also laced with anti-Israel invective, including the statement that “Israel’s entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Arab-Palestinian citizens remains intact.”

With respect to the resolutions, Rev. Gregersen said the church’s stance on a safe and secure Israel has remained steadfast since its 38th General Council in 2003 and that he would be “totally amazed” if that changed after next week’s general council.

“Council historically has taken seriously the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state within safe and secure borders. And we realize that even the language ‘right to exist’ is not helpful. Israel exists as a Jewish state. Security for Israel is an utmost necessity,” he said. “But that has not stopped the council from also stating that both the United Church of Canada and the world has the right to call Israel to action around the occupation, and on finding a pathway to peace that involves the creation of a Palestinian state and homeland as well. But when one speaks of the safety of Israel, one is also talking about the end of [Palestinian] attacks on Israel.”

Congress remained unmollified last week.

“My response is that these resolutions don’t move the yardsticks towards peace one millimetre,” Vernon said. “In fact, they accomplish the opposite, because they don’t create a framework for dialogue which is what’s necessary to achieve real peace.”

He added: “We hope that if we can convey to enough people in the church, who are going to Kelowna, what [the resolutions] really mean and what impact it will have, we’re hoping it will defeat these resolutions.”

With files from JTA