... Fourth, we were made aware immediately following the release of the Committee's report that a number of delegates were very unhappy with the recommended action. They approached staff and collegium members for advice as they began work on amendments. In response to this, Bennie Whiten and I were involved in the "late night discussions." We were accompanied by key staff resourcing this issue: Peter Makari and Lydia Veliko. Bennie and I are voting delegates to the Synod. The four of us have leadership responsibility on an issue of enormous sensitivity in terms of our global partnerships and our interfaith relationships. We participated for two reasons: First, we concurred with the delegates who believed the committee's recommendation was severely flawed and would be injurious to our relationships with Palestinian partners. In addition, we felt it would send the wrong signal to the Jewish com [sic - sentence is truncated in the original]...

To the Editor:

Peter Makari's recent letter about the language of the divestment resolution passed by the United Church of Christ in July asks readers to believe the resolution in question was not directed at Israel when in fact it was. The resolution was passed after a long campaign of misinformation about Israel's defense policies, orchestrated in large part by Makari himself. Moreover, it was passed alongside a patently racist "Tear Down the Wall” resolution that asked Israel to take down the separation barrier without asking Palestinians to stop suicide bombings.

The real issue however, is not the language of the resolution, but the dishonest and hostile narrative about the Arab/Israeli conflict offered by Makari and the Common Global Ministries Board which serves the Disciples of Christ and the United Church of Christ – two denominations that have passed patently anti-Israel resolutions.

If Makari and the churches he serves were truly interested in peace, they would be just as specific in pointing out problems with the Palestinian Authority as they are Israeli defense policies. They would condemn incitement on Palestinian television and bemoan the corruption of the Palestinian Authority. Instead, Makari shills for the cause of Palestinian nationalism while wrapping his message in the language of Christian witness.

If the UCC takes interfaith relations seriously, as Makari asserts, how does he explain the CGMB's affiliation with Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem? Sabeel's founder, Anglican canon Naim Ateek, has on repeated occasions, invoked imagery previously used to blame the Jews for the death of Christ. For example, Ateek has written "The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.”

Jews in Cleveland have every reason to be outraged at the United Church of Christ and should not be fooled by Makari's shucking and jiving. The resolution of which he writes was a divestment resolution and it was directed at Israel. End of story.

"THE CHIEF RABBI, Dr Jonathan Sacks, stated three years ago that: "Anti-Semitism exists . . . whenever two contradictory factors appear in combination: the belief that Jews are so powerful that they are responsible for the evils of the world, and the knowledge that they are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity" (lecture to the Inter-Parliamentary Committee against Anti-Semitism, 28 February 2002). How prophetic these words have become. The Jewish community in Britain is alarmed by the increasing anti-Semitism in the Anglican Church, much of it based on ignorance. For instance, many people outside the Jewish community really believe that Israel, a country the size of Wales, is, as Dr Sacks said, "responsible for the evils of the world", while Jewish people know only too well that, as 0.5 per cent of the population, "they are so powerless that they can be attacked with impunity".

To many British Jews, segments of the media, including the BBC, The Guardian and The Independent, constantly misrepresent Israel. These misrepresentations then affect other organisations.

First, there was the Association of University Teachers (AUT), which called for a boycott of two Israeli universities. Now the Anglican Consultative Council, in what the journalist Melanie Phillips has called "the Church’s AUT moment", said that it "welcomes" the Anglican Peace and Justice Network’s statement on Israel (News, 1 July; 5 August).

Jewish institutions and individuals have been discussing how they are affected by media reporting. Last week, the Community Security Trust, which advises and represents the Jewish community on security and anti-Semitism, asked me to tell the Church Times that:

"It frequently appears that there are no limits to the hatred and bias that can be expressed against Israel or Zionism. Anti-Semites take comfort from this hatred, and regard it as a cue to attack Jews at random here in Britain. Anti-Semitic incidents’ levels since the year 2000 have been the worst recorded in decades. The rise in incidents is appalling. This would have been unthinkable just a few years ago."

The Board of Deputies described its concern at the fact that "In 2004, there were 532 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK, which was a 42 per cent increase on the figures for 2003, which was a substantial increase on the figures for 2002."

THE BBC apologised when the Scottish hymn-writer, the Revd Dr John Bell of the Iona Community, "made two factual mistakes" about the Israeli army on the Radio 4’s Thought for the Day in February.

This was a wake-up call for the Jewish community, even though Christian aid agencies and "peace groups" have for a long time appeared to us to be attacking Israel, and ignoring attempts to hear other points of view. Individual Jews have reported experiencing violent verbal attacks during public pro-Palestinian meetings held in church buildings.

Joanne Green, a Jewish journalist, said: "Despite the BBC charter, I can’t think of any programmes that are critical of the Palestinians, despite their kangaroo courts, public hangings, threats to journalists, incitement to racial and religious hatred, corruption, and threats to destroy Israel.

"Also, as an active member of the Council of Christians and Jews, I feel betrayed by the Anglican Church. All those receptions at St James’s Palace and earnest tributes from church leaders regretting their millennia-long persecution of the Jews don’t mean anything any more. When Jews need real recognition of the danger they are in, where is the Church? Aligning themselves with those who want to wipe Israel from the face of the earth, after it was they who were responsible for the Holocaust. Forgive them, Lord, for they probably do know exactly what they do. How dare the Church lecture Jews on morality."

Many people mention the Church’s apparent silence in the face of the growing attacks on the British Jewish community. For one seasoned American journalist and Episcopalian cleric: "In Britain, there is a degree of open anti-Semitism that would be unthinkable in the USA. The C of E has been complicit in this, both by keeping silent, and by not cracking down on its members who cross the line in their advocacy of the Palestinian cause, and fall into Jew-baiting."

Canon Andrew White, CEO of the Foundation for Reconciliation in the Middle East, agrees. "Is there a new anti-Semitism?" he asks. "For Jews, disinvestment [in Israel] is not just anti-Zionism, but anti-Semitism. Christians defend their position by saying they are against Israel, not the Jews. Yet there is no call by the Christians to disinvest from countries where Christians are persecuted, or banned. Israel is viewed as the evil nation, that evil democratic nation — that just happens to be the only homeland for the Jewish people in the world.

"Now that there is an acute awareness of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism, the Christian world needs to wake up to the fact that more Jews have been killed by Christians than by Muslims. It is no longer sufficient for the Church to blame Israel for its own anti-Semitism. The replacement theology that laid the ground for nearly two millennia of anti-Judaic polemic is on its way back. This time, it is dressed up as
concern for the Palestinians."

Benjamin, a 32-year-old Jew, who stayed at my house last Shabbat, en route to an International Council of Christians and Jews convention, said: "Christians are encouraged to love their enemies. We are no longer the enemy, just irrelevant; no longer the enemy, just the object of hate and vilification."

For, as the Holocaust author Raoul Hillberg has said: "There is a straight line from ‘You have no right to live among us as Jews’ to ‘You have no right to live among us’ to ‘You have no right to live.’"

Dr Irene Lancaster is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester, the author of works on Jewish history and the Bible, and an Orthodox Jew engaged in interfaith work with the Anglican Church and others.