United Methodist Church / Wespath Benefits and Investments: Where They Stand on Israel

This page records specific public conduct. It does not claim knowledge of private beliefs or motives.

Documented record

• August 6, 2025: On August 6, 2025, Wespath Benefits and Investments — the United Methodist Church's pension/investment agency managing over $26 billion — announced a new human-rights investment framework divesting its fixed-income funds from government bonds of Israel, Turkey, and Morocco as nations it identifies with prolonged military occupations, fulfilling a 2024 UMC General Conference resolution; Wespath's pension fund had earlier, on January 7, 2016, declared the five largest Israeli banks off-limits for investment and divested from the two it then held (Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi), along with settlement-linked firm Shikun & Binui. This new investing framework reflects our church's Social Principles quite well. We are proud and pleased that UMKR's resolution has inspired even broader action for human rights by Wespath. Source 1 Source 2

Context and response

Wespath frames the 2025 policy as a general human-rights/occupation criterion applied evenhandedly across multiple countries (not an Israel-specific boycott), and the replaced sovereign-debt holdings are swapped for instruments "with similar risk and return characteristics" rather than being framed as punitive divestment against Israel alone.

Where Galil stands

Our opinion: We don't stand with institutional investors that put Israeli government bonds on an exclusion list — even when, as Wespath frames it, that list also happens to include a handful of other countries.

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Sources manually reviewed 2026-07-27. Corrections and later context will be appended to this page.