Caterpillar Inc is a US manufacturer of the bulldozers with which the Israeli authorities knock down houses and other buildings in the occupied territories that they judge need demolition in the interests of Israel's national security.
The Church of England has investments in Caterpillar Inc, and, of late, many Anglicans have expressed qualms that their church might be profiting from these, given what they consider to be the violations of their human rights suffered by those who lose their their homes as a result of the use to which the bulldozers are put by the Israelis that the corporation in which it invests manufactures.
Last Monday, the C of E’s governing body, the Synod, passed a resolution, with the personal support of the Archbishop of Canterbury, calling on its investment managers to disinvest from Caterpillar Inc..
Presumably, the Anglicans who so voted can all sleep easier in their beds safe in the knowledge that no part of their church’s income will shortly be likely to derive from so nefarious a source.
In fact, of course there is a large amount of disingenuousness on the part of those who voted for the Church of England to disinvest in Caterpillar. Their call for the church to disinvest in that company was born less out of concern that their church might otherwise profit from forms of activity of which they so strongly disapprove, than it was by a desire thereby to use the moral authority of their church to send out a signal that it abhors the Israeli government’s policy towards the Palestinians with whom it stands shoulder to shoulder in their struggle with this modern-day Goliath.
Assuming this to be the prime motive of all those Anglicans who, like Rowan Williams, voted in favour of their church disinvesting in Caterpillar Inc., what a glow of moral self-satisfaction there can be anticipated as forming on their faces when they read of the some of the most recent forms of Israeli governmental activity involving these bulldozers that their gesture of protest might be pressuring the Israeli government to cease to engage in.
According to a report coming from Jerusalem today, ‘Israeli Defence Force officials have been ordered to demolish …a small section … outside … a biblical city … in the West Bank … consisting of … several homes…. The IDF sources [said] they have been cleared to use “all necessary force” to remove [the] …residents.’
The report goes on to state that, last month, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ‘sparked fury when he ordered the IDF to use force against protesters during the demolition of nine homes in the West Bank settlement… More than 1,500 soldiers and police officers were called up to destroy the homes after the court system ruled they were constructed without a permit…’
‘During the[se] demolitions ’ it further reports ‘horse-mounted police, water cannons and specially trained riot officers faced off against hundreds of protesters who massed … in the hope of halting the efforts… Israeli television broadcast live footage of demonstrators, including women and children, being dragged and beaten by soldiers. Teenagers with bloody noses and head wounds were seen being removed from the scene. Police were videotaped using batons and gas canisters to clear the area of demonstrators. More than 300 protesters were treated in makeshift first aid tents,. At least 70 were evacuated to hospital…. Over 100, 000 …protested …earlier this month to demand a commission of inquiry into the violence.’
Bless our parsons and bishops who voted for the disinvestments from corporations which supply the Israeli authorities with the equipment with which to carry out such gross and barbaric violations of human rights!
How much easier must it have become for them to get to heaven now they made their church shortly to be not quite as rich as it was when it was profiting from investing in those corporations which enable the Israelis to perpetrate such dastardly deeds!
But wait! The action against whom the Israeli authorities have been recently taking such draconian action were Jewish settlers who had illegally built houses in a settlement just outside Hebron where, before expelled during the 1948 War of Independence, there had been a continuous Jewish presence for over two thousand years.
It seems to have escaped the attention of our beloved brethren and sisters of the Anglican church who voted in favour of the motion calling for disinvestments in Caterpillar Inc, that the bulldozers the Israeli government has purchased from them are just as able to knock over the homes of Jews as Palestinians in the interests of Israel’s national security, and that, at present and for some time past now, it has been a prime aim of the Israeli government to high tail out of the occupied territories just as fast as they safely could, taking illegally occupied Jewish settlers with them.
Another thing seems to have escaped the attention of the Anglican dis-investors too. This is that the Palestinians have just voted into office over them a party committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and that a third intifada seems about to commence.
According to a report posted just one day after the synod’s made its decision, Abu Khalil, leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank, has very recently warned that his terror group is planning a fresh onslaught against Israelis. He is quoted as having said:
‘We will never give calm and security to the enemy…. We will not give up the right to launch all; kinds of attacks against Israel everywhere there is an Israeli soldier … in the West Bank and 1948 occupied Palestine.’
In case any of our Anglican brothers an sisters have been too busy examining their consciences to have had time to study recent Middle Eastern history, the last clause of the last quoted sentence is code for the entire territory of the State of Israel.
In light of the current fraught and dramatically changed situation in Israel since as recently as twelve months ago, no wonder that the normally mild British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was moved to criticise the synod’s decision as deeply unhelpful and ill-judged. I wholly concur and recommend that the Anglican church should in future
stick to debating only theological issues with which it has shown itself so uniquely well-equipped at grappling, such as how to reconcile scripture with homosexual practice, or, to put the same point in the terms which it is so fond of counselling Israel, with why we must always be willing to turn the other cheek!
Comments (2)
Umm, Wolfie, we are not talking about the Catholics here.
Which sort of makes your opinions on someone being "sorely tainted", ardent Zionism, (Zionism? ah, whatever), and the morality of tools being used, a little, jejeune perhaps?
Posted by EH | February 18, 2006 5:43 PM
Posted on February 18, 2006 17:43
Having watched the newsnight debate on this issue last night I was interested to find any opinion on the subject and came across your post, however I am at a loss to find any cohesive argument in your incendiary, incoherent rant. I'm no fan of the Catholic church but I think it healthy that all religious organisations distance themselves with all violent, immoral or irreligious activity; financial or otherwise as much as they feasibly can. What I thought was interesting about the debate was that the spokesman for the Jewish community made himself very clear, that he was most sorely tainted by political bias and was in fact an ardent political Zionist. Which I find odd for a man of his position because anyone who is well versed in scripture would know that true Judaism is philosophically diametrically opposed to Zionism. I find that most revealing and a concern for British Jewry. I don't think that the Catholic representative was taking sides, as per it was who was being bulldozed, I think he was concerned that the machines were being used as tools of oppression - regardless of who was the victim.
Posted by Wolfie | February 17, 2006 4:02 PM
Posted on February 17, 2006 16:02