CCJ challenge

Sir, The Rev Patrick Morrow is surely right (3 February 2013) to commend the Council for Christians and Jews for its 70-year ministry of promoting understanding between Christians and Jews. The CCJ has however been misfiring recently, with its ill-judged opposition to the Ecumenical Accompaniers debate in July’s general synod and with its ad hominem attack (subsequently shown by Surrey police to be utterly groundless) on the pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist vicar Dr Stephen Sizer. It is to be hoped that the CCJ will become a critical friend of the pro-Israel lobby in the UK rather than merely its mouthpiece.

But Mr Morrow himself goes off-piste when he invokes the straw man of Christians “glorifying in Jewish powerlessness” or wishing to push the “illegal Zionist entity” into the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, I know of no Christians in the UK who adopt such positions. The vast majority of us recognise the right of the Jewish people to self-determination, all the more so after the obscenity of the Holocaust, so long as this is not at the expense of another nation’s equivalent right, as has occurred in Palestine since 1948.

There is a growing body of Christians, in the UK and elsewhere, that believes that it is Israel which must be called to account, even if this runs the risk of our being accused (mischievously) of “delegitimizing the Jewish state”.

Israel is a nuclear power with overwhelming military resources and almost unqualified support from the United States, which has systematically denied the Palestinian people their most basic rights for over 60 years. The global community has been complicit in this. The obligation is on Israel, as the stronger party, to drive the agenda for peace. Sadly, successive annexationist Israeli governments have paid lip service to peace, and have continued the occupation and settlement building. To paraphrase Archbishop Desmond Tutu, it can only be the elephant which removes its foot from the mouse’s tail. Is it too much to expect the CCJ and other bodies engaged in Christian-Jewish dialogue to speak up for the Palestinians, and to strive for a peace which gives them dignity and justice? Jeremy Moodey, Chief Executive - Embrace the Middle East Amersham, Bucks