The General Synod of the United Church of Christ has voted to boycott and divest its holdings in companies that do business in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The vote took place at their national meeting in Cleveland.

The UCC is also expected to vote to cast Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank as “apartheid” later today.

Both the Episcopal Church and the Mennonite Church will also be holding divestment votes later this week.

This is all part of the decade-long Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Among its objectives is to dismantle the security fence that has kept out Palestinian suicide bombers and to allow Palestinian refugees full right of return.

Of course, there are two separate UN agencies for refugees — one for the Palestinians and one for everyone else. According to the UNRWA, not only are those who were displaced during the Israeli War of Independence considered refugees but so are their descendants. In other words, if you were born and raised in the United States, got a college education and a full-time job, and your grandfather lived in “Palestine” between 1946 and 1948 then, congratulations, you are a Palestinian refugee.

But I digress. Let’s get back to the UCC.

If one examines its activities there is little to distinguish it from your standard, left-wing NGO. It deplores human rights abuses in Colombia, but has nothing to say about human rights abuses in Cuba or Venezuela. Although the UCC raises concerns about Syrian refugees, it condemns neither the Assad regime nor ISIS for this real humanitarian crisis. Of course, the UCC exercises no such restraint against Israel, calling Israel’s blockade of Gaza “cruel.” Curiously, the UCC does not mention that Egypt also has a naval blockade against Gaza. As the Church Lady would ask, “Isn’t that convenient?”

What is even more curious with regard to Israel and the Palestinians is that the UCC calls upon its members to pray for “the churches of these lands, especially as the Christian population diminishes.” It is curious because the UCC has nothing to say about the Christian churches being destroyed by Islamic extremists in Syria and Iraq, not to mention the beheading of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians by ISIS in Libya. Israel is practically the only place in the Middle East where Christians are safe and free to worship as they please.

But no, the UCC reserves its scorn for Israel. Sadly, this is what happens when a church worships at the altar of socialism. Its unity in Christ is in name only.