The Presbyterian Church (USA) voted June 30 to declare Israel’s actions in Palestine genocide, to boycott all products from Israel and to call for an arms embargo against the nation.
Meeting in Milwaukee June 27 to July 3, the denomination’s 227th General Assembly also called for divestment from Palantir Technologies and GE Aerospace “due to their contribution to human rights violations in the United States, Palestine, India, Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.”
Marietta May
“Our Palestinian partners, in both the Christian and Muslim communities, have been asking us since 2005 to employ boycotts, divestment and sanctions to help them gain their full slate of human rights,” said Marietta Macy, an ordained minister and co-moderator of the Palestine Justice Network of the PCUSA. “We are pleased that the denomination has taken meaningful steps to address the genocide and other gross human rights abuses against Palestinians and others around the world.”
The action puts the denomination amid a growing number of religious and faith-based organizations that have declared Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide, including the United Nations Commission of Inquiry, an international association of genocide experts, Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders and at least two Israeli human rights organizations.
The UN estimates more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip since the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, including at least 21,000 children. More than 171, 230 people have been wounded, including about 44,500 children.
Eight international Quaker organizations last year condemned Israeli’s actions in occupied Palestine: “We believe with moral clarity, and in line with the definition of the crime of genocide, that the current actions in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli government, constitute genocide.”
“We believe with moral clarity, and in line with the definition of the crime of genocide, that the current actions in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli government, constitute genocide.”
In June, the American Academy of Religion adopted a “Resolution in Solidarity with Gaza” that said Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians.
PCUSA has protested Israeli actions in Palestine since at least 2004 with a divestment from companies doing business in the country, followed by multiple votes for boycotts of Israeli products made in the occupied territories and calls that denominational agencies support Palestinian businesses.
The Presbyterian Board of Pensions and Presbyterian Foundation will sell off holdings in Palantir and GE Aerospace after two years of consideration, the denomination announced.
GE Aerospace makes the engines for the fighter jets and Apache helicopters the Israeli military uses to drop bombs on residential buildings in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The company also makes the engines used by the Saudi Royal Air Force in their war on Yemen while “Palantir has partnered with ICE to help detain and deport people in the U.S. and with the Israeli military to help determine whom to kill in the Gaza genocide.”
The American Friends Service Committee also condemned the tech giant Palintir for “openly supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”