On Sunday 4th February, the presenter of Not-the-Andrew-Marr show, Crispin Flintoff, interviewed Pastor Munther Isaac, the now famous Lutheran priest from Bethlehem. The Pastor had previously broadcast the impressive Christmas sermon callled "Christ under the Rubble", where he held Westerners, their governments and their churches responsible for the mass murder unfolding in Gaza, and for gross hypocrisy over human rights.
One might reasonably infer that the Church of England was one of the Western churches to which the Pastor was alluding. Crispin reinforced this impression by playing a Channel 4 clip where Archbishop Justin Welby hammered Hamas for "terrorism at its most extreme and most evil" for what happened on October 7th, but could not bring himself to condemn either Israel's history of oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, or its killing or maiming of about 100,000 Palestinians since October 7th. These are breath-taking double standards.
Crispin followed up by interviewing Jonathan Coulter and Nicola Grove about CAMPAIN's programme of protests about the Archbishop's position, the first of which took place last Tuesday (6th Feb). Watch carefully; particularly what Nicola had to say about the two religious groups to which she belongs: the Anglicans and the Quakers.
Nicola expresses her deep shame at the silence of Justin Welby and other Church leaders, about the International Court of Justice (ICJ) judgement. She notes the Archbishop's stuttering response to the C4 interviewer and challenges him for not calling out genocide.
The Quakers are a different case, a non-conformist group with a brilliant history of dogged campaigning for human rights and justice. However, their present-day exponents, notably Labour MPs Ruth Cadbury and Catherine West, are failing to match this tradition. At the same time, she urges the Quakers to adopt a more robust approach to campaigning, in solidarity with other faith groups.
The least we could all do, according to Nicola, is to write to one's MPs and bishops, and get out on the street and protest.
Please let us know your comments below.
Quakers are a very diverse bunch so my opinion may or may not be typical of others but I can say that I completely disagree with supporting Israel’s actions in Gaza. I think that a UN peace-keeping force should have been sent in and weapons supplies cut off to all sides. To me, a just future in that region can only be achieved through a negotiated two-state solution. I can only think that guilt over what happened to Jewish people during WW2 has stopped people from realising what the Israeli government is doing. and refusing to separate the concept of anti-semitism from opposition to the actions of the Israeli government is actually putting Jewish people at risk from an international…