$20 Billion Methodist Investment Fund Disinvests from Israeli Banks
I am very pleased to announce the decision of the $20 billion United Methodist Church’s Investment Fund in the USA to disinvest from 5 Israeli banks.
This is a very welcome decision. Just as with the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany in the 1930’s (which the Zionists destroyed) those with a conscience are disinvesting from an economy which has at its heart the racial oppression and subjugation of another people.
I have also included, for peoples’ amusement, the reaction of the Christian Zionist Breaking Israel News site!
Tony Greenstein
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| Alex Awad demonstrating outside Method Conference |
United Methodist Kairos Response Welcomes Pension Fund Exclusion and Divestment of Israeli Banks
download this press release
January 7, 2016 – UM Kairos Response is pleased to announce that the $20-billion Pension and Health Benefits Fund of the United Methodist Church has declared the five largest Israeli banks off limits for investment and has divested from the two that it held in its portfolios. This is the first time a major church pension fund has acted to preclude investment in Israeli banks that sustain Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
The information has been posted on the Pension Fund’s website under Evaluating companies in our investment funds that pose excessive human rights risks. The banks are Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank, and Mizrahi Tefahot Bank. These banks are deeply involved in financing illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
January 7, 2016 – UM Kairos Response is pleased to announce that the $20-billion Pension and Health Benefits Fund of the United Methodist Church has declared the five largest Israeli banks off limits for investment and has divested from the two that it held in its portfolios. This is the first time a major church pension fund has acted to preclude investment in Israeli banks that sustain Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
The information has been posted on the Pension Fund’s website under Evaluating companies in our investment funds that pose excessive human rights risks. The banks are Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank, and Mizrahi Tefahot Bank. These banks are deeply involved in financing illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
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| Methodist Conference in 2012 which passed first BDS resolutions |
Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi were removed from the portfolios. The fund manager, known as Wespath, also divested from Shikun & Binui, an Israeli company involved with construction in the illegal settlements beyond Israel’s recognized borders. In addition, Wespath has placed Israel/Palestine on a list of regions where human rights violations occur.
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| Archbishop Desmond Tutu - Fought Apartheid in South Africa supports Boycotting Apartheid Israel |
UMKR is pleased to learn of these actions, while noting that Wespath still holds stock in ten companies located inside the illegal settlements and in several others that lend important support to Israel’s occupation. A list of those companies is available on the UMKR website.
According to UMKR Co-chair Rev. Michael Yoshii, “We commend the pension fund for taking this significant step in disassociating from the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. But as United Methodist policy opposes the occupation, this is only a first step towards ending our financial complicity in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.”
According to UMKR Co-chair Rev. Michael Yoshii, “We commend the pension fund for taking this significant step in disassociating from the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. But as United Methodist policy opposes the occupation, this is only a first step towards ending our financial complicity in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.”
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Rev. John Wagner, a member of the UMKR Divestment Committee, added, “Since the church’s policy-making body, the General Conference, has called on all nations to boycott products produced in the illegal settlements, we urge our fund managers to maintain consistency and divest from all companies that profit from these same settlements.”
UMKR has submitted four proposals to the next General Conference, which will meet May 10-20 in Portland, Oregon. Three would require divesting from companies involved with the occupation and one would establish a screen to preclude investments in companies doing business in illegal settlements anywhere in the world.
United Methodist Kairos Response is a global grassroots group within the United Methodist Church seeking to respond to the urgent call of Palestinian Christians for actions that can end the Israeli occupation of their land. For more information, visit .
UMKR has submitted four proposals to the next General Conference, which will meet May 10-20 in Portland, Oregon. Three would require divesting from companies involved with the occupation and one would establish a screen to preclude investments in companies doing business in illegal settlements anywhere in the world.
United Methodist Kairos Response is a global grassroots group within the United Methodist Church seeking to respond to the urgent call of Palestinian Christians for actions that can end the Israeli occupation of their land. For more information, visit .
In Rejection of Genesis 12:3, Methodist ChurchDivests from Israel
“And I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” (Genesis 12:3)
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| The Fires of Hell (Photo: Breaking Israel News) |
“This people will rise up, and go astray after the foreign gods of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake Me, and break My covenant which I have made with them.” (Deuteronomy 31:16)
The pension fund for the United Methodist Church has blocked five Israeli banks from its investment portfolio, AP reported on Wednesday. The Church said the move is meant to remove companies from its portfolio which “profit from abuse of human rights”.
The Israeli banks now excluded from the fund were named on the pension board’s website as Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank, and Mizrachi Tefahot Bank.
The fund sold off the Israeli bank stock, which was worth a few million dollars in a portfolio which has about $20 billion in assets. It also sold off a smaller holding, worth about $5,000, in the Israeli real estate and construction company Shikun & Binui, and blocked the company from its investment portfolio along with the banks.
Israel and the Palestinian territories are among over a dozen “high risk” countries and areas which “demonstrate a prolonged and systematic pattern of human rights abuses”, said the pension board’s website. Other “high risk” areas include Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, North Korea, and Syria.
These countries are identified as places where “a specific economic sector is recognized as prolonging conflict or violence” and “significant breaches of international law occur.”
Within its portfolio, the fund found 39 companies which violated its criteria. Most of them have already been placed on the fund’s blacklist of enterprises which, according to the fund, profit from the abuse of human rights. Nine other companies were blocked over the fund’s concerns about their contributions to global warming and climate change.
The five Israeli banks blacklisted by the fund were among companies targeted by United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR), which is a coalition of Methodist church members whose purpose is “encouraging our church to divest its holdings in companies that support and profit from Israel’s occupation.”
Susanne Hoder, a leader of the UMKR, said on Tuesday in response to the fund’s decision, “This is the first step toward an effort that helps send a clear message that we as a church are listening and that we are concerned about human rights violations.”
The Methodist Church is the latest to join a growing number of churches divesting from Israel. Last year, the United Church of Christannounced that it was divesting in companies which conduct business in Judea and Samaria, and in 2014, the Presbyterian Church USAmade a similar move.