The United Church of Canada (UCC) voted in favor of divestment from Israel Tuesday during its 42nd General Council meeting “to address the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories by the State of Israel.”
The resolution, according to a statement on the Council’s website, calls for the development of programs “of education and advocacy in cooperation with our partners, related to divestment from and economic sanctions against all corporations and institutions complicit in and benefiting from the illegal occupations.”
UCC also urged its members to refrain from “tourism [in Israel] which bolsters the oppression of Palestinians.”
The UCC commission which passed the divestment resolution encouraged “all courts, bodies and members of The United Church of Canada to apply such divestment strategies and sanctions, until such time as the occupation of the Palestinian territories ends.”
With more than two million members, the UCC is Canada’s largest Protestant church. Tuesday’s resolution against Israel follows a 2012 UCC boycott of all goods made in Judea and Samaria.
Not all UCC members support the Council’s decision to divest from Israel. Rev. Andrew Love, a UCC pastor in Arnprior, Ontario, said in a statement that the proposal reflects “a growing cancer of a anti-Semitism taking hold in the body of the UCC.”
In further conversation with news outlet CJN, Love explained that “there is an activist community within the UCC that will not be satisfied until the very existence of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people ends.” He warned that the recent divestment was just one step toward the UCC’s final goal of “replacing Israel with a different state.”
“I believe we’re seeing…a lot of old prejudices being re-formulated against Israel…That old denial of historical and religious aspirations of the Jewish people in relation to Israel,” he said.
The UCC’s resolution follows a string of anti-Israel support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by Christian churches.
Source: Breaking Israel News