Britain and the Church of England Synod

Recent events at the Church of England (CofE) Synod have exposed the true nature of the relationship between those that manage the Church and the Jewish Community.  It highlights irreconcilable differences between the CofE Synod and the Jewish community and I do think that if our community has any self-respect it should now sever all ties.  Those people that still believe in interfaith dialogue have to ask honestly what benefit remains in retaining a relationship that is so asymmetrical. For those people who are offended by the following article I apologise but I also feel that although this may seem outrageous it is also long overdue in airing what is clearly a serious failure in the relationship between the Jewish community and British governing society.

Britain became Great Britain because it championed economic exploitation and was one of the earliest nations to embrace slavery.  Slavery was after all, a logical extension of serfdom.  The UK purchased its slaves through a prolific trade with the predominantly Arab, overwhelmingly Muslim world.  Britain was the last Western nation to reject Jewish emancipation and only reluctantly gave in to near equality for its Jewish population in the late 1800’s.  The British Royal Family has remained the principle guardians of this exclusion from society to this day.  It is ironic that Germany was far more liberal in the rights it gave to its Jews than Britain.  We need not question what fate would have befallen the Jews of Britain if Hitler’s armies had conquered Britannia. My two great-aunts worked in military industries during World War 2.  They always carried arsenic pills, just in case.  UK plc, the nation that permitted the unrestricted immigration of Arabs to Palestine (those same Arabs we now label as “Palestinian” even though they may not have been born there) rejected at the same time, even a restricted right of entry for any Jews to Palestine, though it was clear that by doing so they condemned those Jews to certain death.

And today British newspapers and Britain’s principal Protestant organizations question Israel’s legitimacy and its people’s right to self-defence. They foster racial apartheid between Israelis born in the same land, an artificial separation that they then use to condemn the majority of those same inhabitants.

In the absence of any balance in the British press the reason for this narrative blindness has to be questioned.  Acquiescence to Islamic propaganda is never going to be difficult for British society because it is apparently already receptive to bigotry and historical revisionism. If that is correct it is hardly surprising that any story will be accepted without reference to the facts.  Conversely, it is true that any narrative that does not agree with the Palestinian or Arab or Muslim version of events will be as easily dismissed. This process is central to the marginalisation of Zionism and the delegitimization of Israel. Where there is no fear of consequences there is no honour.

Literary apartheid is created in the British press and is being spread across the globe. Arabs are excised from any positive debate about Israeli society.  They are excluded from what we define as “Israeli”, or “ethnically Arab Israeli” and are re-created as “Palestinian” even when they are born and raised in Israel.  This artificial but deliberate separation of the races is driven by Arab racial bigotry and is wholly embraced by the British press.  In international legal and historic terms it is wrong. It is historically inaccurate, without precedent; an act of ethical and moral sophism. It is re-writing the history books because the truth is inconvenient. It is time to question the relationship between the civilised west and anti-Semitic Britain, the nation that never forgave us for surviving the Shoah (Holocaust).  Britain appears to be more concerned with encouraging injustice and religious equality than it is with fostering peace on earth.

Material deprivation is the most common result of marginalisation but it can also be cultural and social deprivation.    In its extreme, as in Nazi Germany, exclusion was used as a weapon to relegate to the edges of the society all those groups deemed undesirable and was therefore a step that ran concurrent with other measures employed, to separate out the persecuted under-classes.

Judaism has fallen into the trap of perceiving that there is something morally redeeming in victimhood. There is not.  It empowers torturers and celebrates the victory of the ethically blind.  There is no virtue in what Bertrand Russell mocked as “the fallacy of the superior virtue of the oppressed” because it justifies everything and denies the so called “oppressed” nothing.

There is in Britain, an unhealthy and inexplicable obsession with Israel (and in this case Jews are synonymous with Israel unless they deliberately ‘join the other side’) but more about that later.  A separate set of standards for any debate that refers to Jews is automatically assumed.  The UK being wretched in its historical ambivalence to Jewish self-rule to this day remains the Jewish people’s greatest enemy and not because it openly threatens the State of Israel with destruction as Iran does but because it has never stopped working to undermine Israel, the people or Israel, the State.   It begins in the classroom.  At its purest, Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’ is anti-Semitic and its continued popularity offers only to reinforce prejudice in British society. It represents the acceptable face of British literary bigotry, no matter how it is taught.  One would search far to find a Christian or Muslim character equivalent to Fagin in Charles Dickens’ ‘Oliver Twist’ or the theme enunciated throughout Caryl Churchill’s ‘Seven Jewish Children.’

According to Jonah Goldberg in his book “Liberal Fascism” the means by which ‘undesirables’ are targeted is (if we take the logical approach) that if it is good, it cannot be bad; while if it is bad, it cannot be good.  The irreducible logic of modern day British (especially Lib-Left) fascism is that the chosen are flawless and therefore to argue for objective or principled reason falls on deaf ears.  In this way it is no different to fundamentalist Islam or the Church that gave us the Inquisition.

From what I can only call a disempowering derogation of personal responsibility towards all of humankind there are many within society that declare themselves, let us call it “racially guilty” in that they are “personally responsible” for the bigotry and racism of previous generations and with this “cowards clause” they remove themselves from any discussion of responsibility for atrocities committed in the name of black and or Muslim empowerment.

In a similar vein the recent decision by the CofE Synod to formally endorse the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) should be the final nail in the coffin of Anglo-Jewish / CofE co-operation at any level, until its latest anti-Semitic decision is reversed and full apology made in both word and deed.

But the failure of the Jewish community is that its Board of Deputies and activist committees continue to be subservient in their demeanour and more liable to displays of obsequious self-denial and acquiescence to the bigotry of those whose fearless criticism and foreign policy concerns appears to start and stop with Jews and Israel.

Unlike in the USA, in Britain there is no true separation of Church and State. In Britain the Anglican Church is state supported and many of its bishops sit, by ancient right, in the British upper house of parliament.  The head of the worldwide Anglican church Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams is a left-wing intellectual.  Sadly, in the UK that is likely to mean that he may empathise with Jewish suffering but not suffer Jewish self-assertion unless it is on terms dictated by the state (and hence the Church).  In Britain one is expected to join the long queue of house Jews who bash Israel before every meal, in their public and private pronouncement; who repetitively demonstrate (to their betters) their patriotism and their politically correct credentials. Jewish Israel-bashers are popular because the Jewish Uncle Tom supports a gentile anti-Semitic narrative and by doing so, he or she makes that narrative kosher.

But more important than this, the objective of keeping ‘us’ in our place is undermined when we respond. In the latest Jew-bashing debate in the godly Anglican synod what truly offended the bishops and their lay supporters were Jewish pro-Israel lobbying efforts. An anti-Semitic narrative is consistent with the synods view on Jewish minority status and therefore in their eyes at least, it is wholly appropriate. The stronger pro-Palestinian lobby offended no one because it represents the acceptable face of the Synods efforts at delegitimization.

And no doubt the Board of Deputies of British Jews will do nothing.