Church may black firms over Israeli 'occupation'

[newyorican]

The Anglican Church is expected to back a report tomorrow urging it to disinvest in companies that "support the occupation" of Palestinian lands. The report has been heavily criticised by senior clerics and Jewish leaders and its adoption would place the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, in a difficult position.

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The report calls on the Church to put moral pressure on firms deemed to be supporting controversial Israeli policies such as the security fence or the clearing of Palestinian homes. Its authors believe that, as a last resort, the Church should disinvest its holdings in companies that prove unresponsive.

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The Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, the Rt Rev Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, said that the adoption of the report would send a strong signal to Israel and raise awareness.

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Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said earlier this month that approval of the report would be "disastrous" for peace efforts in the region. He said that the Israelis already felt traumatised by attacks on them and this would be "another knife in the back".

read more...

[Jim Sagle]

1. Wonder what's behind their Israeli fixation?

:shrug:

[Oversea Visitor]

2. Occupation of another country land is wrong

A knife in the back???
Since when the church is involve with backstabbing
If doing what right is backstabbing
Then what do you call backstabbing you own principle

[Coastie for Truth]

3. Fairness and legality

One good definition of anti-Semitism is taking a trait that is universal and singling out only the Jews for criticism in relation to that trait. For example, in the 1920's, then Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell decided that the number of Jews admitted to Harvard should be substantially reduced because "Jews cheat." When a distinguished alumnus of Harvard, Judge Learned Hand, pointed out to President Lowell that Protestants also cheat, Lowell responded, "You're changing the subject, we're talking about Jews." The same thing occurs in the debate over divestiture. When opponents of the divestment effort point out that other countries in the Middle East have far worse human rights records, proponents of divestiture respond, "You're changing the subject; we're talking about the Jewish state." That is international anti-Semitism writ large.-

In this regard, the "churches' have been noticeably silent in their response to the illegal Jim Crow boycott (perpetual hiring freeze on Jewish Job Applicants - except in response to court orders). This Jim Crow boycott is blatantly illegal - as the linked legal opinion, most clearly shows.

[Englander]

4. *snigger*

June 23, 2005 (July 11, 2005 issue)

Giving Chutzpah New Meaning

Jon Wiener

What do you do when somebody wants to publish a book that says you're completely wrong? If you're Alan Dershowitz, the prominent Harvard law professor, and the book is Norman Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, you write the governor of California and suggest that he intervene with the publisher--because the publisher is the University of California Press, which conceivably might be subject to the power of the governor.

Schwarzenegger, showing unusual wisdom, declined to act. The governor's legal affairs secretary wrote Dershowitz, "You have asked for the Governor's assistance in preventing the publication of this book," but "he is not inclined to otherwise exert influence in this case because of the clear, academic freedom issue it presents." In a phone interview Dershowitz denied writing to the Governor, declaring, "My letter to the Governor doesn't exist." But when pressed on the issue, he said, "It was not a letter. It was a polite note."

Old-timers in publishing said they'd never heard of another case where somebody tried to get a governor to intervene in the publication of a book. "I think it's a first," said Andre Schiffrin, managing director at Pantheon Books for twenty-eight years and then founder and director of the New Press. Lynne Withey, director of the University of California Press, where she has been for nineteen years, said, "I've never heard of such a case in California."

But if you're Alan Dershowitz, you don't stop when the governor declines. You try to get the president of the University of California to intervene with the press. You get a prominent law firm to send threatening letters to the counsel to the university regents, to the university provost, to seventeen directors of the press and to nineteen members of the press's faculty editorial committee. A typical letter, from Dershowitz's attorney Rory Millson of Cravath, Swaine & Moore, describes "the press's decision to publish this book" as "wholly illegitimate" and "part of a conspiracy to defame" Dershowitz. It concludes, "The only way to extricate yourself is immediately to terminate all professional contact with this full-time malicious defamer." Dershowitz's own letter to members of the faculty editorial committee calls on them to "reconsider your decision" to recommend publication of the book.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050711&c=1&s=wiener

[Coastie for Truth]

5. Non responsive and evasive

to the Arab League Boycott Office's Jim Crow boycott based on race-religion-ethnicity - not citizenship. Something out of Hitler's Nazi Nuremberg Racial Purity Laws. And the Good Church People are silent.

Attacking the messenger does not change the underlying facts of Jim Crow.

Please tie this into the Arab League Boycott Office Jim Crow Racial policy imposed on the hiring practices (for domestic - in the US) operations of domestic corporations (chartered in the US). I am missing the nexus.