Mick Hartley

One reason why the Archbishop of York was sounding off about Israel committing genocidal acts in Gaza: when he visited the West Bank recently, he was with this Palestinian cleric. From Jewish News:

The Board of Deputies has criticised a decision by Lambeth Palace to host an event featuring a Palestinian cleric who describes Zionism as “an ideology of supremacy” and “having turned God into a racist tribal deity of their image”.

Munther Isaac, a Christian Pastor based in Bethlehem, is best known for his involvement in organisations which specifically try and identify the Palestinian experience with that of Jesus, such as ‘Christ at the Checkpoint’. In 2023, Isaac gave a Christmas sermon in which he claimed that if Jesus had been born today, it would have been under the rubble. He is believed to have joined the event at Lambeth Palace, the official London residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, via video link-up on Tuesday.

Last week, Isaac published a document which accused “many churches” of having “adopted the colonizer’s narrative or remain silent in the face of genocide” and accused Israel of “genocide”, “ethnic cleansing”, “settler colonialism”, “apartheid”, “Jewish supremacy…codified in the Nation-State Law”, “Environmental genocide”, “Christian Zionism as a theology of racism, colonialism and ethnic supremacy” and “the misuse of antisemitism to silence the Palestinian voice of truth”.

That would seen to cover everything – genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism. The full monty.

The document, named “Kairos Palestine II”, also states that “We reject the very concept of conflict. The reality on the ground is colonial, oppressive tyranny…to call this a conflict is to participate in erasure. This language is not neutral; it is complicity…equally dangerous is the refusal to name settler colonialism — replaced with slogans of reconciliation or ‘dialogue.’ Kairos II exposes such avoidance.”

The event at Lambeth Palace comes after Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York, returned from a trip to the West Bank, part of which was spent in the company of Isaac. In an interview with Church Times this week, Cottrell described what he termed as Israel’s “genocidal acts” in Gaza, and described the situation in the West Bank as amounting to “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing”.

The Church of England is swimming in very murky waters here. They should keep well away from this ridiculous man and his obsessive Israel-hatred.

Last year the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, initially declined to meet Isaac, having been advised that it would adversely affect the Church of England’s relationship with the UK Jewish community. However, after furious responses from Palestinian supporting Anglicans, Welby reversed his decision, publicly apologising for the “hurt, anger, and confusion” it has caused, and saying “I was wrong not to meet with my brother in Christ from the Holy Land, especially at this time of profound suffering for our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters. I look forward to speaking and praying with him next week.”

How pathetic. How typical of Welby.