…In a highly controversial vote, they encouraged congregations to read and engage with “Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide,” a report by Palestinian Christians that accuses Israel of genocide and describes the country as a “colonial enterprise.” In other words, the report wasn’t adopted as church policy but accepted as a “heartfelt expression of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians.”
The country’s chief rabbi described the decision as “shameful” and a “sad day for Jewish-Christian relations” and numerous Anglicans have complained that the language used is unnecessarily provocative, one-sided, and taken directly out of a Marxist playbook.
That’s harsh because Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally and fellow bishops have repeatedly and passionately condemned antisemitism, and during the debate she spoke of “the pain and trauma of the appalling 7 October attacks” that remains, “a daily reality for Jewish people in Israel and around the world.”
While Palestinians certainly and understandably feel as if they’re constant victims of colonialism, Zionism itself was an ideology produced by desperation rather than a policy based on exploitation. The 1290 expulsion from England was one of many throughout Europe, accompanied by mass slaughter, terror, discrimination, and eventually the Holocaust. Jews in Arab countries were expelled from where they’d lived for centuries between 1948 and the 1970s. Where else could all of these people go apart from to a land where they have proven historic and genetic links?
As for genocide, we often hear that scholars of the subject believe that the Gaza campaign and the general Israeli approach to Palestine is indeed genocidal. Actually, there’s a profound division among experts. While Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is often unjust and the military campaign in Gaza appallingly costly, does Israel seriously want to murder every single Palestinian wherever they live?
The most infamous example of genocide was the Nazi attempt to eliminate the Jews as a people and expunge them from human consciousness. It was industrial mass slaughter and had nothing to do with national security or territorial expansion. Surely, we can criticize Israeli actions without employing such language.
Perhaps if the Israel-Palestine issue had been more thoroughly and openly discussed in the past, and if churches had had the courage to do so, the narrative would now be more considered, but some of those currently so outraged by the synod decision were in the past the fiercest opponents of any sort of dissent. Yes, it’s true that Israel is treated differently than other countries by its opponents, but also by its supporters. Double standards do have that tendency.
The fuss over all this will continue for a while but on the ground in Israel and Palestine it will change little. Those at the synod were good people rather than a performative street mob and genuinely do seek peace and progress. They also look to a Jewish Messiah who told his followers to shock the world with their ideas and guaranteed them that it wouldn’t be easy. He preached all this largely to a Jewish people living in a Jewish land, and the irony of it all should be obvious.
Something has to change but language matters very much indeed.
Source: Opinion | It can be healthy to debate Israel and Palestine but on the ground little will change
Multicultural Meanderings 
