Divestment question before Presbyterians: Firms connected to West Bank dispute would not get funds

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine] 

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/neighborhoods-city/divestment-question-before-presbyterians-643251/#ixzz1zgOsqgQw

By Benjamin Mueller / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 

In a closely watched vote that followed a day of intense deliberations, the Committee on Middle East and Peacemaking Issues of the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly approved a resolution Tuesday morning to divest from companies whose products are used by Israel to enforce occupation of the West Bank. The vote was 36 in favor, 11 opposed, and one abstention.
The resolution recommends that the church divest from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard after an eight-year corporate engagement process yielded no reforms.
The general church body will vote on the resolution this week.

According to Brian Ellison, chair of the Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee, Hewlett-Packard sells hardware used by Israel in its naval blockade of Gaza; Motorola Solutions supplies surveillance technology to Israeli settlements; and Caterpillar provides bulldozers that raze Palestinian homes.

Jim Dugan, a spokesman for Caterpillar, wrote in an email that Caterpillar does not sell machines directly to Israel, but rather through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales Program.

The vote came after a long day Monday during which committee members heard impassioned testimony from American Jews, Arab Christians and Presbyterians. Supporters of divestment said that Christian values compelled them not to invest in companies that profit from an unjust occupation....READ MORE

Waters performing "Comfortably Numb" during The Wall Live in Kansas City, 30 October 2010

Roger Waters,  founding member of the British rock band Pink Floyd: "The waters of this debate will inevitably be muddied, as they always are, by erroneous accusations of anti-Semitism leveled at those who favor selective divestment from companies complicit in Israel's long record of human rights violations. I urge the Presbyterians assembled in Pittsburgh not to be intimidated, but to stand confident with the support of people of conscience everywhere, including tens of thousands of Jewish Americans who support divestment as an ethical obligation to end complicity in the occupation. I urge Presbyterians to adopt their selective divestment motion to make the price of collusion in human rights violations higher, and to send a message of hope to the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation and apartheid."  Presbyterians should support Palestinian aspirations