Mainline U.S. Protestant movements’ recent efforts to consider divesting from some companies doing business in Israel took the Jewish community relations business by surprise, said one of its top professionals Tuesday.
Said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, “We thought everything was just fine,” based on the success Jews and these Christians have had in working together on domestic issues.
Yet as Felson explained in his talk on “Israel and the Mainline Protestant Churches: Making the Case Against Divestment” to a group of about 40 gathered at
Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, the struggle against these efforts taught valuable lessons to the Jewish community about how to speak to these movements on Israel-related matters.
For one, Felson said, Jewish community relations professionals learned that the Jewish and mainstream Protestant movements have been “talking past one another” for a long time.
“We think they reject Israel’s right to exist,” Felson said. “They think we don’t care about Palestinian Arabs’ suffering and don’t want a Palestinian state. We’re both wrong.”
Moreover, the Jewish community tends to believe “that others will be convinced by the same arguments that convince us,” including appeals to Jewish history, he said.
But “for somebody who supports the Palestinian cause,” or who thinks that Israel is so powerful and the Palestinians are so weak that Israel must make the first and greater concessions, “nothing in the past justifies why a Palestinian child has to suffer today,” he said.
Therefore, to get these movements to listen to its message, Felson said, the Jewish community has to “chuck the history lessons, calm down” and “do counterintuitive things,” including to “lead with shared goals” of seeking peace in the region and “acknowledge Palestinian suffering.”
Then, Felson continued, we can point out that divestment efforts will not lead to or even help further peace because they will have no effect on Israeli government policies and will not affect the policies or prosperity of the corporations involved; but they will “poison the well” of interfaith relations and thereby undermine the potential for constructive collaboration.
Felson also pointed out that even within the various Protestant movements, the people calling for divestment campaigns are in the minority; and that members and officials of many local or regional branches may not even be aware of the efforts.
Therefore, local discussions, such as have been taking place in Wisconsin, are important in mobilizing opposition within the movements to the national organizations’ efforts — and perhaps more effective, Felson suggested.
The national bodies “signed up for a fight with the American Jewish community,” Felson said. “They did not sign up for a fight within the church.”
The JCPA is the national umbrella organization of local and national Jewish community relations organizations and agencies. Its members include the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations, which sponsored Felson’s talk.
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