By Timothy Conway, Alexandria
(File Photo)

To the editor:

The recent Presbyterian vote to divest from corporations “that do business in Israel,” has absolutely nothing to do with anti-Semitism (“It’s time to stand against anti-Semitism,” June 26).

They voted to divest from those corporations because the businesses have played active parts in Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and because the Israeli occupation has been ongoing for almost half a century. Alexandria Times Publisher Denise Dunbar asks why the Presbyterians haven’t singled out other countries with more egregious sins on their hands.

The difference is that their war machine doesn’t get funded by U.S. taxpayers — to the tune of $3 billion annually — and U.S. corporations haven’t been actively complicit in their human rights abuses for five decades.

I spent four years living in Israel. I saw firsthand the brutalization of which I speak. To reject the funding of the brutalization of innocents is hardly “moral cowardice.” It is the opposite.