Anglicans have betrayed the Jews
Irene Lancaster is alarmed by the anti-Semitism that she finds in the C of E

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).

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