September 2025
Mary A. Francis
Corporate Secretary and Chief Governance Officer
Chevron Corporation
corpgov@chevron.com
Dear Ms. Francis:
We appreciate receiving your letter of July 22, 2025. However we have deep concerns about the denial of globally reported human rights violations that we contacted you about, which are the reason for the global Chevron Boycott.
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
It is outrageous and unfathomable to dismiss Israel's egregious and daily human rights violations being committed throughout the West Bank and Gaza as merely "alleged." They have been overwhelmingly documented for many years by United Nations commissions and human rights experts, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the world’s top genocide scholars’ association, and the world's leading human rights organizations.
CHEVRON'S COMPLICITY
Denials notwithstanding, Chevron most certainly contributes to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, its illegal settlement activity in the West Bank and the violence that accompanies that, and other violations of international human rights and humanitarian law being committed by Israel. Chevron's connections to these crimes against the Palestinian people are just as clear as the crimes themselves.
As United Nations Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has reported, while naming Chevron Corporation specifically: "International energy companies have fueled Israel’s energy-intensive genocide....By supplying Israel with coal, gas, oil and fuel, companies are contributing to civilian infrastructures that Israel uses to entrench permanent annexation and weaponises in the destruction of Palestinian life. The same infrastructure services the Israeli military while it obliterates Gaza, including the network supplying the resources that these companies have provided. The ostensibly civilian nature of such infrastructure does not exonerate a company of responsibility"
Providing key resources for an oppressive apartheid regime, when ample information of its practices has been widely published by the world's leading human rights organizations, makes the provider complicit in that oppression.
Chevron's "general provision of energy to Israel and its neighbors" is not distributed "for the benefit of the diverse civilian populations" in an egalitarian and fair manner. Rather, Israel's racist administration of energy access is a key feature of its apartheid practices.
Chevron’s gas fields provide energy for the Israel Electric Corporation, which in turn supplies electricity to all branches of the Israeli government and most households. Israeli military bases, prisons, and police stations, as well as Israel’s illegal settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank including East Jerusalem, rely on Chevron.
Israel uses electricity as a tool of subjugation, frequently shutting off access to Palestinians as a form of collective punishment, illegal under international law. Additionally, the Tamar rig and pipelines are secured by Israel’s illegal naval blockade on Gaza.
PALESTINIANS' CALL FOR BOYCOTT
UMKR and the global coalition that is boycotting Chevron did not decide for ourselves to make these demands of Chevron. The Palestinian people have called for this boycott. They are fully aware of their own living situations and their need for access to an energy source. They understand well the ramifications of losing energy access, which is in fact being withheld from millions in Gaza and which many Palestinians struggle to obtain dependably both within Israel and in the West Bank.
In the struggles of oppressed communities, when they have called for nonviolent measures such as boycotts, as was the case with the struggle that ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa, it is a common deflection to claim those campaigns will harm the people they are meant to help, those who are suffering under oppression.
As in so many liberation struggles over the last century, including the apartheid era in South Africa and the Civil Rights movement in the U.S., Palestinians have made clear that the boycotts and divestment campaigns they have called for, even if and when they produce temporary hardship, are vital for the achievement of their freedom and a secure and peaceful future.
The largest Palestinian civil society coalition has written: "Arguing against BDS because it may hurt Palestinian workers is patronizing - it claims to know what is in the best interests of Palestinians better than Palestinians themselves do....Those with a genuine concern for Palestinians should work to end Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians, including its deliberate destruction of Palestinian economic activity."
BOYCOTT GROWTH IN THE UMC
The impact of UMKR's call to boycott Chevron is growing in the United Methodist Church.
The United Methodist General Board of Church and Society, our denomination’s primary agency to address social and political issues, has officially joined the Chevron Boycott, at its spring 2025 board meeting, in support of its commitment to human rights, peace, and international law. In so doing, the board has stated:
“We stand in solidarity with United Methodists for Kairos Response and other United Methodists in this boycott campaign, until the company terminates all contracts with Israel that allow it to profit from the military occupation of Palestine and ceases operations in the gas fields off the coast of Palestine/Israel.”
Also in 2025, at legislative sessions that are held annually throughout the denomination, three resolutions in support of the Chevron Boycott were adopted, in the California-Nevada Conference, the Michigan Conference, and the Northern Illinois Conference. We expect that support to continue to grow in the months and years ahead, until such time as Chevron drops its contracts with Israel and ceases its operations in the gas fields off the coast of occupied Palestine.
As we wrote in our first correspondence with Chevron in July 2024, we say again:
It is well past time for Chevron to stop conducting business that gravely violates Palestinian human rights and benefits Israel’s genocidal apartheid regime.
Sincerely,
Lisa Bender and Carol Garwood
Co-chairs of the Steering Committee
United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR)
info@kairosreseponse.org
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Actions/Campaigns
United Methodists are responding to Kairos Palestine: A Moment of Truth ,a statement of faith and urgent call to action from Christians in Palestine. UMKR seeks, through nonviolent means and in partnership with Palestinian Christians, freedom, justice and equality for all Palestinians and Israelis.
🔸= Something New or Updated
Chevron Boycott:
UMKR Letter to Chevron, Sept. 2025
SEE ALSO
UMKR's first letter to Chevron, July 2024
UMKR's letter to Chevron with Petition Signatures, Feb. 2025
Chevron's response to UMKR, July 2025
On this page: UMKR's reply to Chevron Letter, September 2025
See the UMKR statement to Chevron:
https://umkr.salsalabs.org/chevron-stopfuelinggenocide/index.html
You can still add your name! When we have a good showing of more signatures, we will send those to Chevron.