As amended, RIW-04 states that Israel’s war in Gaza constitutes genocide and condemns what it calls Israel’s violation of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

MILWAUKEE—The 227th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted last week 454-15 to adopt RIW-04, declaring that the government of Israel has violated the international law prohibiting genocide in its war in Gaza. The Reformed Identity Around the World (RIW) Committee approved the overture with amendments, 55-4, before it reached the floor of the assembly.

Fahed Abu-Akel, a teaching elder in the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta and moderator of the PC(USA)’s 214th General Assembly (2002-03), flew from Atlanta to Milwaukee the morning of the vote to urge commissioners to approve the overture. Speaking at the plenary microphone, he recalled being 4-years-old when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced following the founding of the modern State of Israel in 1948.

“I’m a Palestinian American,” he said to the assembly. “In 1981, I became a [U.S.] citizen.” He described fleeing his family’s home in Palestine as a child, watching his mother wave from a rooftop as the family left without her. “This is our home, this is our land, this is our church,” he recalled her telling his father. “They want to kill me? They need to kill me in my home.” Abu-Akel returned with his family several months later and was reunited with his mother.

Abu-Akel connected that memory directly to the vote before the assembly. “As I think about this motion, as I think about when I see the Palestinian children being killed in Gaza, I see myself all the time running around,” he said. “I see history repeating itself.”

What does the adopted overture do?

As amended, RIW-04 states that Israel’s war in Gaza constitutes genocide and condemns what it calls Israel’s violation of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It directs the denomination’s Office of Public Witness to advocate against U.S. military sales to and purchases from Israel, and encourages members to avoid products from Israeli companies linked to violations of international law, keeping broader language that the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy had recommended narrowing. The overture also condemns antisemitism and Islamophobia and affirms that criticism of the Israeli government is not inherently antisemitic.

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