Santa Rosa pastor, back from Israel, vows to fight divestment

The Rev. John Cushman has thought a lot about it, and he can't see how the notion of "just blame everything on the Israelis" is going to lead to Mideast peace.

Unfortunately, that's what the Presbyterian Church is doing by promoting the idea of divesting from the Jewish state, according to Cushman, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of the Roses in Santa Rosa.

Cushman brought 10 other Presbyterian pastors from around the United States with him to Israel and the Palestinian territories in late May, and now he's ready to head to truly hostile territory — Birmingham, Ala., home of the upcoming Presbyterian biennial, where he vows to fight what appears to be an uphill battle against the denomination's infatuation with Israeli divestment.

"Casting blame for all the problems on Israel isn't balanced. What we want to do is not pick a winner and a loser. We saw suffering on both sides. We saw Palestinians we wished life was better for and Israelis who were afraid to gather in public," said the Santa Rosa pastor, who will attend the upcoming Presbyterian General Assembly from June 15 to 22.

Divestment "is a bad idea for both the Jewish and Palestinian people. We discovered the economies are linked together so thoroughly that when you put pressure on one, you put pressure on the other."

At the upcoming general assembly, there are at least eight overtures — a fancy way of saying "bills" — calling for a rescinding of the divestment motion carried in 2004. However, five other overtures call for reaffirming the Israeli divestment plank, while around 10 overtures call for alternative investment proposals.

Cushman isn't sure what the right move is when it comes to investing in Israel, but he knows divestment is the wrong move. Unfortunately, he can't interest his San Francisco colleagues in his work, as the San Francisco Presbytery favors divestment and submitted an overture calling for reaffirmation.

The San Francisco action "is troubling and very problematic for Presbyterian-Jewish relations," said Yitzhak Santis, the director of Middle Eastern Affairs at the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council.

The pastor knows the fight against divestment will be a thorny one, but says he's "energized" to be taking what he considers to be the right stand.

Santis concurs with Cushman that it will be difficult to kill the divestment movement at the general assembly. Instead, he foresees the likely creation of a "task force" that will later monitor all divestment and anti-divestment overtures, very much leaving divestment on the table as a possible future measure.

The task force would "set church policy between now and the next general assembly in 2008. And the whole problem with the task force would be, as I understand, there are only seven people on it," Santis said.

"Who are they going to be? Are they pro-divestment? We have no answers. And if the task force is created, that leaves the church's moral condemnation of Israel standing."