Church Head: Divestment is not Anti-Semitic
The head of the World Council of Churches on Sunday warned Jews and Christians against likening recent church-led divestment policies to the anti-semitic boycott of Jewish goods during World War II.
The head of the World Council of Churches on Sunday warned Jews and Christians against likening recent church-led divestment policies to the anti-semitic boycott of Jewish goods during World War II.
“There may be those who fear that the minute on divestment is an act of antisemitism directed against all Jews,” said Samuel Kobia, General Secretary of the WCC, at the annual conference of the International Council of Christians and Jews (ICCJ), in Chicago.
“We can only re-state what we always have stated, ‘antisemitism is a sin against God and man’ and that our member churches are to repudiate antisemitism and all forms of teaching of contempt.”
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Kobia was responding to critics of WCC’s recent call to member churches with investment funds to consider divesting from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Many Jewish groups criticized the policy as an anti-semitic and unfair move that targets only one side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The General Secretary acknowledged that the issue “has been received as something utterly disturbing by many Jews” but pointed out that "there is a risk and perhaps a temptation to fall into readily available metaphors".
“One must be wary of simplistic metaphors, dividing the world into good or evil in too facile a way,” he said, adding that comparing divestment “with a call for boycott of Jewish goods and Jewish persons as in Germany in the 1930s" is a dangerous path to take.
“There is a risk with excessive retention of memory, where the past conditions the present,” he said. “One must realize that there may come a time when one allows oneself to consciously discontinue remembering.”
He noted that the WCC “was among the first, if not the first, major international non-state organization to recognize the State of Israel.” He also reaffirmed the WCC’s support of the State of Israel and condemnation of anti-semitism “no matter what its origin.”
Ultimately, Kobia said, there is a need for a "safe space for listening to each other, and for discussing how and where we need to go". "Our concern is peace and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians," he emphasized.
"We need to form new alliances for life that defy the division and conflicts that are a product of globalized injustice in all its many forms," he declared.
The International Council of Christians and Jews, based out of Germany, is an umbrella organization representing 38 Jewish-Christian dialogue groups worldwide. The organization was established in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust to promote better understanding between Christians and Jews.
