AMP Applauds Presbyterian Assembly Votes for Palestine
(WASHINGTON, D.C. 6/26/2018)— In what can only be described as a resounding success, the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly last weekend voted in support of all 12 resolutions submitted in support of Palestinians and Palestinian rights!
At the 223rd biennial General Assembly—in which priorities are set for the church and relationships are established with other churches or ecumenical bodies—the Presbyterian Church’s Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) invited American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and other Palestine solidarity organizations to attend the General Assembly and serve as a resource for the voting commissioners.
At the General Assembly AMP and partners:
- Composed and presented testimonies at the hearings for the Palestine-related resolutions. (WATCH AMP-Missouri member Neveen Ayesh’s testimony challenging Re/MAX and their profiting from illegal settlements and the displacement of Palestinians)
- Lobbied commissioners to vote in favor of Palestinian rights. Organizers further set up a booth, designed to look like a living room, and invited attendees of the General Assembly to have a seat, drink some coffee, and discuss justice for Palestinians.
The General Assembly voted in favor of:
- Condemning Israel’s attacks on protesters participating in the Great March for Return and calling for an end to Israel’s illegal siege of the Gaza Strip;
- Opposing Israel’s illegal annexation of Jerusalem, and its discriminatory practices targeting Palestinian access to employment, representation, infrastructure, services, and education;
- Voting down legislation that scapegoated Palestinians for the deaths of Palestinian children killed by Israel, and presented false symmetry between the violence inflicted on Palestinian and Israeli children;
- Affirming the right to boycott by condemning anti-BDS legislation being pushed at the state and federal level, including opposing the Israel Anti-Boycott Act;
- Standing firmly in solidarity with Palestinian churches and receiving their call to recognize Israel as an apartheid state and intensify BDS campaigns;
- Challenging the US president and State Department regarding Israel’s discrimination against Palestinians and other citizens of Israel, and calling for US diplomatic action toward equality;
- Challenging boycott target RE/MAX’s profiting from sales in Israeli settlements;
- Ensuring that interfaith relationships in the US are oriented toward justice rather than used as a fig leaf for Israel’s violence against Palestinians;
- Rejecting normalization efforts that ignore the power imbalance between Palestinians and Israelis;
- Voting down a resolution seeking to end the classification of Israel as a “colonial project.”
"I could not be more proud of the work we did in collaboration with IPMN and all of our partner organizations in bringing the issue of Palestine to the top of Presbyterian Church’s priority list. It was important for us to make sure that the church commissioners heard from Palestinian voices,” said AMP-Missouri member Muath Salameh, who attended the General Assembly.
Read press statements by the Presbyterian Church
PC(USA) Deepens its support for Palestine - Report from 223rd General Assembly, June 21, 2018