United Church: No National Boycott Against Israel

Some 400 delegates from the United Church of Canada met this week to choose a new moderator and to discuss matters such as finances and declining membership. One of the proposals being considered over the week long meeting by the United Church of Canada about encouraging peace in the Middle East is an expression of "anti-Semitic behaviour" and is an "obscene gesture from a religious group," major Jewish organizations say. In a report late last month the National Post reported that the resolution called for a "comprehensive boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions at the national and international levels" and refer to the recent assault on Gaza as a "visible reminder of the ongoing Israeli regime of exclusion, violence and dehumanization directed against Palestinians." The resolution also says that Israel was "built mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners." Eric Vernon, director of government affairs for the Canadian Jewish Congress says,

This puts the United Church in some very questionable company. The use of boycott, divestment and sanction has been a weapon used by Israel's enemies to destroy it. Those are elements of anti-Semitic behaviour in the contemporary world.

In a press release dated August 13 regarding the proposal, the United Church has resolved that there would be no national boycott, but churches are encouraged to act. Bruce Gregersen, General Council Officer for Programs, in summing up the actions of the Council said

The United Church has not begun or approved a boycott at the national level. However, it has stated its encouragement and recommendation to its member bodies, that they are free to study, discern, and pray, and to undertake their own initiatives, which may include economic boycotts as a means to ending the occupation of Palestine.

The general meeting of the United Church wraps up today, August 15, in Kelowna, British Columbia.