UCC MPS October E-News:

The BDS Edition

Dear Members and Friends of UCC MPS,

You have spoken, and we have heard you! We've heard feedback from many of you wanting to know more about how you can participate in and engage with the BDS movement. This newsletter is devoted to ways that you, as individuals and as congregations and organizations, can engage in BDS work on every level. We hope that you will find the information helpful and the action ideas engaging and meaningful. Please be sure to check out all the links and documents included in this newsletter-- there is tons of of great information and a way for everyone to find their place in the movement.

Speaking of the movement, if you are not yet a member of UCC MPS, we invite you to become one. While there is no financial obligation to becoming a member, there are plenty of benefits to membership, not the least of which is being part of a community committed to Palestinian solidarity and collective liberation. Join us, and become part of the movement today!

Rev. Sara Ofner-Seals

UCC MPS Steering Committee Co-Chair

B is for Boycott

Boycotting is one of the most accessible tools we have in the resistance toolbox, but it can sometimes be difficult to know how effective any given boycott might be. As individuals, our boycotts may not mean much in the grand scheme of things, but if we build collective power and boycott as part of a larger movement, we can begin to move the needle.

We are excited to share that our friends in the Wisconsin Conference have put together an accessible yet powerful campaign to boycott Airbnb and Booking.com. According to research done by the Palestine Justice Working Group of the Wisconsin Conference, "both companies – Airbnb and Booking.com – are suitable candidates for boycott. Both advertise vacation rental properties on stolen land in illegal Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank. Both companies are knowingly complicit in Israel’s military occupation, and both are guilty of war crimes per the Fourth Geneva Convention. Both companies are on the United Nations list of companies whose practices support Israel’s military occupation."

You can participate in this boycott by avoiding Airbnb when looking for vacation rentals, and by not using Booking.com to make travel arrangements. You can also help spread the word among other UCC folks in your own congregations and conferences, and use the petition button below to collect signatures at your church, organization, or UCC conference. With thanks to our colleagues in Wisconsin, we encouarge all of our members to participate in this campaign at whatever level works for them.

D is for Divestment

Prominent in Jesus’ prophetic ministry are his challenges to unjust and harmful economic practices. He understood the violence and human cost of predatory economic systems and sought to upend them.

Jesus’ witness – preaching the currency of love and denouncing the commerce of greed -- invites us, as people of faith, as congregations, and as a denomination, to examine our economic priorities and investments. Are they consistent with our values of love, justice, and compassion? Whether shopping or investing, might we inadvertently be contributing to harms such as unjust labor practices, environmental degradation, the war machine, and genocide? Are we profiting at the expense of others?

UCC MPS’s Divestment Team has been addressing these questions. Human rights for Palestinians constitute our plumbline, and Palestinian civil society’s 2005 Call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel provides our mandate. We have been focusing, in particular, on the ‘D’ of BDS: divestment. We seek to engage and support our UCC conferences and congregations in thinking critically about their investments. Do our investment portfolios include companies that profit from Israel’s occupation and genocide? If so, we want to point congregations and conferences to socially informed and responsible investment opportunities which avoid harm and instead promote justice for Palestine...

Click the button below to learn more about how your congregation can engage in more responsible investment practices.

If your congregation is interested in divestment, but not sure where to start, you may reach out to our MPS Divestment Team by emailing steering committee member Stephen Gasteyer at gasteyer@msu.edu.

More on Divestment:

Purge Palantir Campaign

In the UCC, many of our churches have taken seriously the call towards more responsible investment practices. Plymouth Congregational Church in Fort Wayne, IN, for example, developed an investment policy that instructed their investment managers not to purchase any stocks of fossil fuel companies or companies that produce deadly weapons. Having done this, the church was confident that they had taken major strides towards socially responsible investment practices.

While this was a good start, what the church did not realize was that with fossil fuels and weapons manufactuing off the table, the other major industry open for investment was technology. And while not all technology companies are bad, there are some that are most definitely bad actors on the world stage. The company Palantir is one such company. While they don't manufacture weapons, Palantir provides all the AI tehcnology that power those weapons for use throughout the world, including in Gaza.

We strongly encourage congregations to look through their portfolios to see if they are invested in Palantir, and if they are, to divest immediately. To learn more about other companies that are targeted for divestment due to their complicity in ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide, click the button below.

Please note: if your congregation uses United Church Funds to manage their investments, they have already divested from Palantir, as well as from Israel bonds and banks. If your congregation is considering a change regarding the management of your investments, we encourage the exploration of UCF as a responsible option.

Regional Spotlight:

Lansing Coalition Targets Israel Bonds

For Palestine solidarity organizations, the call to work for divestment from Israel and Israeli institutions complicit in apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing involves working with broader coalitions and digging into the opaque bureaucratic processes through which decisions are made. Work by activists in Michigan provides insights.   



The Palestine Interfaith Network (PIN), a coalition that formed in response to genocide in Gaza and includes members from multiple Christian denominations including members East Lansing Edgewood UCC and Quaker Friends, Muslim, Buddhists and individual Jewish participants, has been actively working with a broader coalition of activists in Michigan to force the state of Michigan to divest from its investments in Israel. The coalition includes Michigan Divest, a statewide activist organization committed to divestment, among others.

The divestment campaign began with the discovery that the Michigan State Employee Pension System held a $10 million Israel bond as part of the employee pension portfolio. The campaign organizers noted that the Pension Board sold a Russia Bond at the request of the Governor when Russia invaded Ukraine. More than a year of activism that involved significant mobilizing of volunteers including teachers and other state employees to communicate concern about the moral implications of holding and support for divestment from the Israel bond in public meetings and other communication including emails to the State Pension Board. The campaign successfully led to a decision not to renew the bond in November 2025, a significant victory. 

S is for Sanctions:

Block the Bombs Campaign

There are many ways to sanction governments that are engaged in illegal activities under international law. One very specific method of placing sanctions on a country that is committing war crimes is to place an arms embargo on that country, ending the flow of deadly weapons. There is a growing movement in congress to make this happen via the Block the Bombs campaign.

On May 21, 2025, Representatives Delia Ramirez, Sara Jacobs, Pramila Jayapal, and Mark Pocan, along with 18 of their colleagues, introduced H.R.3565 to block U.S. weapons from reaching Israel. Slowly, the bill has been gaining traction in congress, and now has 75 co-sponsors, including one Republican!

If enacted, H.R.3565 would stop the Trump administration from shipping the exact munitions Israel has used in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

These include: BLU-109 bunker busting bombs, MK80 series bombs, GBU-39 small diameter bomb variants, Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), SPICE gliding bomb assemblies, 120mm tank ammunition, and 155mm artillery ammunition, including white phosphorus munitions.

Learn more and take action today!

Palestinian families across the occupied West Bank are being driven from their homes and land by Israeli settler violence and expanding settlements. Armed Israeli settlers attack residents, burn homes and crops, steal livestock, and destroy water systems, stripping families of both safety and the means to sustain themselves. Israeli soldiers protect settlers, stand by during attacks, and, in documented cases, participate in violence and displacement. Together with home demolitions and restrictions on movement, these actions are uprooting Palestinian communities, enabling the takeover of their land, and undermining the possibility of a just and lasting peace.

The planned E1 settlement expansion east of Jerusalem poses a particularly grave threat. Israel has approved 3,401 housing units between East Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement. If completed, the project would sever Palestinian territorial contiguity and gravely threaten the viability of a future Palestinian state. Approximately 4,000 Palestinians in 18 nearby Bedouin and herding communities face the risk of forced displacement.

Urge your senators and representative to support two bills that would impose meaningful consequences on those who carry out and support settlement expansion:

• S. 5476 — Sanctions on E1 settlement construction: Introduced by Senator Chris Coons and Senate colleagues, this bill would require sanctions on foreign individuals and entities involved in E1 settlement construction, financing, supporting infrastructure, and the transfer of Israeli civilians into E1 settlements.

• H.R. 10642 — Stop the Settlements Act: Introduced by Representative Joaquin Castro, this bill would impose sanctions for specified activities supporting Israeli settlement construction and expansion in the West Bank or Gaza. It would also prohibit U.S. imports of goods produced in Israeli settlements and outposts.

Coming Soon:

Resources for Advent

Artwork by Heba Zagout, 2022

UCC MPS is excited to be offering multiple resources for Advent this year. We will, as usual, be offering prayers for each Sunday of Advent that can be used in a variety of ways in worship.

Additionally, we will be hosting a Zoom Advent study based on the recent Kairos document and other contributions from Palestinian poets, theologians, and artists. This study will be held on Thursday evenings on December 3, 10 and 17 at 6:30pm EST. Led by Rev. Sara Ofner-Seals and Rev. Loren McGrail, the study will ask participants to consider how we, as people of faith, are called to respond to the plight of Palestinians in the land where Jesus was born. There is no cost to participate, however registration is required (see link below to register).

Finally, due to a generous gift from the First Congregational Church in Lowell, MA, UCC MPS is excited to be able to announce a matching gift campaign for Advent this year. We have curated a list of organiztions doing important work in the West Bank and Gaza, and will match every gift up to $500 during the season of Advent. See the link below for more details.

More information on all of these opportunities will be forthcoming in the November newsletter, but for now, we hope you will plan to engage with Palestine in some way this coming Advent season. It's so important to remember our Palestinian siblings as we sing, pray, and talk about the miracle of the incarnation-- in Palestine 2000 years ago, and throughout the world today.

Breaking the Stories:

Recommended Reading and Listening

Palestinian farmers harvesting their olives in the northern occupied West Bank town of Beita. (Photo: Akram al-Waara)