Presbyterian Church (USA) votes to divest from Israel bonds

The church stereotypically composed of bankers is passing up on good investments....

Seriously, even beyond the liberal theology tendencies of the CPUSA ("oops", PCUSA, I confess I confuse the two), I dare say that God is going to hold them accountable per Genesis 12:3 and other verses for looking past the barbarities of the PLO/Hamas/etc.. and concentrating on the unavoidable casualties that occur when you fight a force that embeds itself in residential areas, hospitals, schools, and the like.

More or less, the PCUSA has theological blindness in their rejection of Biblical authority, and that leads, IMO, to moral blindness in equating the very real atrocities of Hamas/PLO/Hezbollah with self-defense by the IDF.

The bright side, I guess, is that it weakens the portfolio of the CPUSA ("oops"), leaving greater opportunities for theologically orthodox churches to move in.

I am not sure we can equate Genesis 12:3 with a denominations pension fund seeking to divest its small interest in Israeli bonds.

Not that I agree with their underlying thought process, but we need to be careful in stretching Genesis 12:3 beyond its limits.

Good for them. Neither Israel nor Hamas should be supported in their current actions.

To be sure, divesting bonds itself does not violate Genesis 12:3, but if you look at the arguments presented for doing so, they have a veracity that rivals that of politicians, and in that, I would argue that a plain anti-semitism shows pretty clearly. That does violate Genesis 12:3, along with a number of other passages which prohibit slander of any group.

Bert,

Not agreeing with the choice of the denomination, but we need to be careful on how myopic we view things. We could view it as anti-semitism, or we could also view it as plain old sin. Depending on what results you want to look at, it is estimated that Israeli incursion has resulted in somewhere between 13,000 and 14,000 children being killed. There are plenty of verses around that action as well. More than 31,000 people have been killed. Again, what the denomination is doing is more aligned with just a stunt, than of any real meat, and it is being pushed based on an agenda.

David, we need to take into account the reason WHY civilian casualties are so high for Gaza. The reason is that Hamas is siting their rocket launch sites and other military installations in civilian neighborhoods. Is Israel supposed to leave Hamas terrorists breathing because they hide behind women and children?

Plus, let's not forget that the Gaza "Health MInistry" is a (propaganda) wing of Hamas, and has repeatedly been caught fudging the numbers and producing Potemkin videos of supposedly grieving parents...with bone dry faces, and no corpse in sight.

That, along with calling Israel (a nation that has over a million Arab citizens and Arab members of the Knesset) an "apartheid state", places the PCUSA firmly on the wrong side of Genesis 12:3.

(yes, Israel does not allow Gazans to live in Israel....after 76 years of Hamas and its predecessors trying to kill Israeli civilians, what sensible person would blame them? Egypt, Jordan, and Syria don't allow Palestinians in, either, for the same reasons.)