RUTHFULLY YOURS

The pension board of the United Methodist Church — one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States, with more than seven million members — has placed five Israeli banks on a list of companies that it will not invest in for human rights reasons, the board said in a statement on Tuesday.

It appeared to be the first time that a pension fund of a large American church had taken such a step regarding the Israeli banks, which help finance settlement construction in what most of the world considers illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

There are no illegally occupied Palestinian territories, because the area in question was once part of Jordan, never part of an independent nation.  Jews have lived there since biblical times, though there were fewer before 1948 because the “Palestinians” kept massacring them in pogroms.

It is curious that the Methodists have unilaterally decided that these lands belong to the “Palestinians.”  I don’t see them calling for divestment from China over Tibet, or from Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.  Or, as human rights are concerned, divestment from Iran and a whole host of other Islamic countries who execute women and homosexuals.

Arabs in the Middle East have the most human rights in Israel, not in other Arab countries.  Jews are not to be found in other Arab countries, or else they would be killed.  But the United Methodist Church doesn’t seem to care about these facts.

No, it’s only the Jews they care about.  This mirrors a similar move by the United Church of Christ to divest from Israel.  By singling Israel out and holding it to a higher standard than any other nation on the Earth, the United Methodist Church leadership shows itself to be anti-Semitic.

There is an ugly strain of anti-Semitism among some mainline protestant denominations like the United Methodists and the United Church of Christ.  They should be held up to shame and ridicule.  Their unjustified discrimination stains the virtue of their entire organizations.  They claim to be religious people.  What will God think of Christians who hate their Jewish brothers?