If you’re going to read just one book on antisemitism then I suggest this one. In Off-White, Rachel Shabi offers a thoughtful and perceptive exploration of contemporary antisemitism and the ways in which it is often misunderstood within modern political discourse. The book’s central concept: Jews as ‘off-white’, captures the ambiguous position Jews frequently occupy in Western racial frameworks: sometimes recognised as a minority with a history of persecution, yet at other times treated as part of a privileged white majority. Shabi argues that this ambiguity leads to antisemitism being misunderstood, particularly in progressive environments that view racism through the simplistic lens of dominance, oppressed and oppressing.
Rachel Shabi’s prose is clear, direct and accessible, avoiding jargon while remaining analytically precise. She describes antisemitism in historically informed terms, showing how it operates differently from other forms of racism. Rather than portraying Jews as inferior, antisemitic narratives frequently depict them as secretly powerful or manipulative. By highlighting these patterns, Shabi avoids glib explanations and instead offers a careful account of how antisemitic ideas evolve and persist in different political contexts.
Shabi’s own background plays a significant role in shaping her perspective. As the daughter of Iraqi Jewish (Mizrahi) immigrants to Israel, she writes from the position of what might be called a ‘minority within a minority.’ She describes the historical marginalisation of Mizrahi Jews within Israel’s early Ashkenazi-dominated institutions and the cultural pressures that encouraged Middle Eastern Jewish communities to adopt European norms.
This personal and historical perspective informs her broader argument that Jewish identity cannot be neatly classified within conventional racial categories that emphasise skin colour.
Her discussion of Mizrahi history also highlights common mistaken political narratives about Israel. The majority of Israel’s Jewish population comes from Middle Eastern and North African backgrounds, often refugees expelled from Arab countries. This challenges the depictions of Israel as a European colonial project, while her critique of Ashkenazi dominance and social inequalities within Israel prevents the discussion from becoming defensive or one-sided.
Crucially, Shabi writes explicitly from the political left and identifies strongly with progressive values. This allows her to address antisemitism within progressive movements without resorting to conservative or nationalist agendas. Antisemitism must be recognised wherever it appears, including in spaces that see themselves as committed to anti-racism. Her discussion of the portrayal of George Soros and his Open Society Foundations illustrates this point: criticism of wealthy political actors may be legitimate, she notes, but conspiracy narratives surrounding Soros often use longstanding antisemitic tropes about hidden Jewish control.
Because Shabi criticises both Israeli social hierarchies and antisemitic tendencies within progressive activism, Off-White examines antisemitism without aligning itself with any single ideological camp. This is the book’s central achievement.
The book broadens the conversation rather than narrows it. By combining personal experience, historical analysis, and political reflection, Shabi encourages readers to recognise antisemitism wherever it appears, including in spaces that see themselves as committed to anti-racism. Off-White is a timely and thoughtful contribution to current debates about racism, identity, and political responsibility.
On Sunday some 400 Friends listened in person at Quaker Yearly Meeting to the 2026 Salter Lecture, while 385 watched the lecture on the livestream. The lecture received overwhelming praise for its extraordinary breadth of knowledge and depth of humanity. A member of staff at Friends House commented today: “It was a really fantastic lecture. It’s not easy to be left with a feeling of hope on this topic, and many people have shared with us how insightful and thought-provoking the lecture was.” We are deeply grateful to Rachel for her outstanding Salter Lecture. The full video, with captions, can be seen here It is also available on the Quaker Yearly Meeting 2026 playlist and the Quaker playlist of Salter Lectures. And below is the full text of the lecture.
[Rachel Shabi speaking at Friends House]
Rachel Shabi: 2026 Salter Lecture: The Middle East, A Moral Catastrophe?
When Sheila told me about Alfred and Ada Salter, I looked into these Quakers and social reformers. And I found a quietly powerful example of what universal principles look like when they’re lived consistently. Their lives were anchored in what continue to be inspiring ideals today: those of non-violence and moral consistency, the idea that you cannot build a just society through unjust means, and that dignity belongs to everyone.
Theirs was a slow, patient sort of success. They lost elections. They faced resistance and ridicule. They carried on. Their achievements are testimony to the idea that transformation doesn’t rely on extraordinary moments, but rather on many ordinary ones, repeated steadily, and often.
When I look at the work of the Salters, I see a direct line that runs through to many social justice and antiracist campaigners and thinkers of today. I hear the political activist Angela Davis: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world.” Or Ruha Benjamin, the author of Viral Justice, who argues that we can “infect” society with small acts of justice and care and joy. She writes: “What I am calling ‘viral justice’ orients us differently towards small-scale, often localized actions. It invites us to witness how an idea or action that sprouts in one place may be adopted, adapted or diffused elsewhere.”
And we can follow that line, carved out in an insistence on universal values, etched in the insistence that dignity belongs to everyone, to my starting point today.
Which is January 2024, when the Irish lawyer, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, addressing the International Court of Justice, said something that has stayed with me ever since. She was a member of the legal team representing South Africa’s case at the Hague, that Israel was violating the genocide convention in its assault on Gaza. That assault began immediately after the Hamas atrocities of October 7th 2023, in which 1,200 people, the majority Israeli civilians, were killed and over 200 more taken hostage, including women and children.
While setting out the case, which the court ruled in favour of, Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh spoke of: “The horror of the genocide against the Palestinian people being live-streamed from Gaza, to our mobile phones, computers and television screens. The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain, hope that the world might do something.”
It haunts me, that sentence. It haunts me because of all that has happened since, the horrors that we have seen inflicted upon Palestinians in Gaza, with at least 71,000 killed, 170,000 injured according to the United Nations, and many still missing under the millions of tonnes of rubble that will take years to clear.
It haunts me because it speaks to journalism’s responsibility to expose harm and injustice—a responsibility that across so many western media organisations was not fulfilled, a profound moral failure.
In June that same year at the international journalism festival in Perugia, Italy, I heard Youmna el Sayed, Gaza correspondent for Al Jazeera English, describe how she and others braved impossibly violent conditions to document Israel’s war, thinking that international news networks outside Gaza would amplify footage, boost it, follow up.
“One thing that I took away when I survived this war,” she said, “was the abandonment of the international community towards the Palestinian people in Gaza.” She spoke of the failure to, as she put it: “Fight for the freedom of speech that you have been for many years lecturing third world countries about, that you failed to practice when it came to covering this genocide in the Gaza stip.”
But mostly, I keep returning to Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh’s words at the Hague because, despite the livestreaming of terrible news and horrific images, the killing did not stop. It went on and on, death and trauma, famine and suffering. A hell on earth so bad, that by mid-August last year, children in Gaza were wishing for death, according to Save the Children, which noted: “They’re wishing for food, water and to be in heaven. They’re wishing for things no child should EVER wish for.”
When we talk about a moral catastrophe in the Middle East, this is it. This is how so many of us feel. A total collapse of shared universal values. An enormous violation that shook us to the core. A shattering so seismic that it ripped through all our institutions as they supported or funded, obfuscated or misreported the intolerable violence that rained down upon the people of Gaza, without mercy and without end.
In truth, the moral collapse goes deeper. The seeds were sown earlier. We need to wind back the clock to reveal this larger implosion. We need to pan back, to bring a complete picture into view, not to fudge, or to excuse, but to help us cohere around a shared vision and purpose, premised on our shared humanity.
Because the total moral collapse in Gaza was prefaced by a slow unravelling, one that we have been inside for years. If we zoom out far enough, we can see a pattern that has been taking shape for some time, in which western governments tear up moral codes and international laws.
But we will get to that. Because the collapse we are looking at right now is in Gaza. From where we heard of surgery without sedation or pain relief as Israel blocked medical supplies; of toddlers with sniper wounds to the head and chest, of maggot-infested wounds, of tens and thousands of child amputees – more in Gaza now than anywhere else on earth.
We saw these fragments of a living nightmare for Gaza’s entire population, running from horror to horror, scrabbling to survive while grieving for loved ones, bombed and shot and blown to pieces by the Israeli army, day after day, night after night.
Everyone has their own list of the horrors we witnessed, live-streamed from Gaza. For me, these include the six-year-old Hind Rajab, who in January 2024 died pleading for rescue workers to come and save her from the car where she sat, surrounded by her dead uncle, aunt and three cousins. They had been trying to escape Gaza city, but were killed by the Israeli army, which also killed the two paramedics that came to her help.
Or the video of 19-year-old Shaban al-Dalou, burned alive while attached to an IVF drip, his leg trapped, in a tent, in a humanitarian zone next to Al Aqsa hospital. Injured in an Israeli bombing a week earlier, he and his family had been displaced six times. His mother was also burned alive in that tent and weeks later, his 11-year-old brother Abdul Ruhman died from injuries sustained that same day.
Or Mohammed Bahr, a 24-year-old with autism and Down’s syndrome, who in July 2024 was left by Israeli soldiers to die from his wounds after he was mauled by a military dog.
We could go on, but its already too much. The relentless scale of it made us all lose our minds. In what world was any of this justifiable? Why did Western nations, including the US, Britain and Germany, provide Israel with military aid and the necessary diplomatic cover? We will get to the reasons why. Because among many factors, an often overlooked component is the one that so often causes violence and suffering: capitalism.
But before we go there, I want to tell you about the author, doctor and holocaust survivor Gabor Mate who, speaking at the Palestina Forum in Vienna last year, articulated what so many of us feel. “There’s something called moral injury,” he said. “And moral injury happens when you are watching something terrible happen and you can’t stop it and you are helpless in the face of it.”
He added: “It is impossible to have your eyes open and not be heartbroken.”
And so here we all are. Heartbroken. And our eyes are also open to moral catastrophes, devastating countries across the Middle East. It’s a severe, multi-front humanitarian catastrophe marked by intense conflict, widespread displacement, and collapsing infrastructure.
In Lebanon, amid thousands dead, one million people have been displaced, with the health sector near collapse. Iran is being bombarded by a US-Israel war, with thousands dead, over three million displaced, toxic air pollution due to the bombing of oil facilities causing long-term damage to the health of people and the planet.
In Sudan, described as the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe, 30 million people, TWO THIRDS of the population, are in need of aid. 14 million have been forced from their homes. Three years of brutal civil war has caused an impossible 150,000 deaths, with famine raging in parts of the country and countless atrocities and war crimes on both sides.
When we talk of the human toll in countries of the Middle East, I worry about growing numb, desensitised by the incomprehensible numbers. But grief is grief, pain is pain. It looks the same, everywhere, every life is a universe; every death mourned.
Earlier this year the International Rescue Committee (IRC) described the situation in Sudan as “the New World disorder” – a stark, but fitting label. Several countries, including the UAE and Russia are indirectly involved in this war, prolonging it. Western countries – with few direct security interests, with relatively small impact to the global economy and unwilling to antagonise regional allies – mostly watch on and issue periodic condemnations.
And so universal rights have become conditional on a sort of, what’s in it for us, cost-benefit selectivity. And with little international consequence, the actors in the Sudan war continue to expand it. In a recent report, IRC has highlighted how state collapse through fighting in Sudan has created a thriving war economy, stating: “Large quantities of gold flow out of the country, while increasingly advanced weapons move in the opposite direction.”
Taken together, these crises point to a deep erosion of shared ethical norms and it is devastating lives across the Middle East.
Earlier, I spoke about winding back the clock, panning back to trace the gradual unravelling of universal values. So where do we begin? Well, as I have been alluding to, so much of this begins with racial capitalism. That’s the global system where wealth was extracted by exploiting people who had been racialised and placed into racial hierarchies precisely to make that exploitation possible. Today’s western imperialism looks different – in the Middle East it runs through global finance, energy politics, arms deals and strategic alliances. But it still revolves around securing resources and power in ways that keep long-standing, historically rooted inequalities in place.
But I also want to explore how a moral collapse as complete and as devastating as the one we witnessed in Gaza is the culmination of a series of collapses. And I want to turn to a few key junctures when universal norms were torn up and thrown aside.
There’s the war in Yemen, which lasted over a decade from 2014, with the UN estimating over 370,00 deaths linked to the war. At least 85,000 children under five in Yemen died from extreme hunger or disease. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia intervened militarily, prolonging and escalating the war. This Saudi-led coalition bombed Yemeni fishermen, in a country heavily reliant on fish as a food source. As an ally, Saudi’s bombing campaign in Yemen was deeply dependent on British support, in weapons sales, intelligence, military advice and training.
In over ten years of civil war in Syria, amid a brutal regime crackdown, up to 650,000 were killed, tens of thousands of them children. Again, the impossible numbers, containing unbearable loss. Amid a population of some 22 million, 13 million Syrians were displaced. Three out of every five people were forced to leave their homes. For a series of reasons, western governments failed to meaningfully defend international law in Syria. And so it broke, again.
Wind back another decade to the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Back then, too, we marched in vain as Britain joined the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, one that even then was clear would make things worse. It produced a long chain of suffering, unfolding over many years. Hundreds and thousands of innocent Iraqis were killed, millions were displaced, state services collapsed and the destabilisation caused by the war helped fuel the rise of Islamic State.
I still vividly remember my Iraqi parents, lamenting over radio reports after that US-led invasion, about British and American forces occupying Iraqi cities like Mosul, or Basra where my father lived. They would bemoan the mispronunciations of those familiar places, observing that, if you were going to occupy a city, you should at least be able to pronounce it. But it wasn’t about mangling of words, so much as the mangling of a country, a people, a culture so often maligned, condescended and diminished, something my parents were by then all too familiar with.
And far away from those countries being bombed, those War on Terror years had a terrible domestic impact, too. In the UK alone, counter-terror strategies placed the entire Muslim community under suspicion, facing discrimination and surveillance and false imprisonments. That, too, was a pronounced departure from universal values, the idea of equal citizenship and equal treatment in practice. It dehumanised an entire community.
All of these wars, and many more besides, were norm-breaking, a series of giant tears in international law. Every single one scaffolded a kind of permission architecture for others to flout more laws, ignore more conventions They gave license to authoritarians. They all, in some way, paved the way to the decimation in Gaza.
A friend I spoke with recently, told me: “How many times have I seen a women in a headscarf weeping over a dead child and how many times has the weapon that killed that child been supplied by western governments, whether the deaths are happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, or Yemen.” At some point, he says, he understood that people who look or pray like him are not viewed as equal, or equally worthy of life.
But going back to Israel and Palestine, how many times has Israel flouted international laws? How many UN resolutions has Israel ignored, over building settlements and occupying and annexing land, all illegal under international law. Or over violations of the laws of war, or the illegal separation wall’s route through the Palestinian West Bank, or the rights of Palestinian refugees, or the status of Jerusalem, or humanitarian access?
You don’t get to the world-changing catastrophe perpetuated in Gaza without first passing through a series of human rights violations, a trail of violence claimed as ‘self-defence’, a continuous breaching of red lines, all within a decades-old fortress of immunity from western allies. It happens over years and in a thousand cuts.
And that constant permission given by its western allies to avoid international law, all adds up to a culture of impunity in Israel, because any country will just keep doing what it is allowed to get away with. That is, after all, why we have international law and conventions over war. That is why we are supposed to uphold those laws, apply them everywhere.
But let’s take another step back and examine this western support for Israel. Why is it happening? One key way to think about it is this: Western nations see their own interests and the interests of the Israel state as being one and the same. The German chancellor, Fredrich Merz, said this quiet part out loud in June 2025, describing Israel’s illegal airstrikes on Iran back then. “This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us,” he said.
In the US, the Republican Ted Cruz, a politician I find appalling on so many levels, recently spoke about the national security benefits of the Israel alliance in terms of the intelligence that country shares with America: “The people who hate Israel, they all hate us, it’s almost a perfect overlap. And so if we tried to recreate the national security benefits of our alliance with Israel, it would cost I don’t know, $30bn $300bn,” In words that echo the German chancellor, Merz, he says : “A tiny nation the size of New Jersey is fighting our enemy for us.”
Recently explaining the dynamics of the current US-Israel war with Iran, the Dutch-Palestinian Middle East analyst, Mouin Rabbani, said that yes, Israel has wanted this war with Iran for decades. But it is still the client state of America and not the other way around.
“We know all it takes is a phone call from Washington to bring Israel to heel because, just as in the real world, tails do not wag dogs, it is dogs that wag their tails. And here we are dealing with the most powerful state in human history, the United States, in control of the regional proxy, Israel.”
He continued: “Does Israel have influence in the United States? Of course it does. Is it at times able to exert extraordinary, defining influence in the United States? Yes. But when push comes to shove it is always the Americans that are capable of taking decisions and imposing them on the Israelis.”
Now we can and should argue that any perceived benefits far outweigh the moral damage. We definitely should point out that such strategic calculations are only possible if undergirded by the assumption that Palestinian, or indeed Arab, or Muslim lives are worth less, that these lives do not embody the same dignity and sanctity as every human life.
But for the sake of building an ever wider coalition of people to oppose the terrible, and destructive violence across the Middle East, we must be able to comprehensively analyse and deconstruct these geopolitical drivers.
Last year, the UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese issued a report documenting how global companies were deeply involved in supporting Israel in its Gaza onslaught. The report claims to “show why Israel’s genocide continues: because it is lucrative for many.” Albanese’s report, presented to the UN Human Rights council in June 2025, noted that the profiteering went beyond the companies supplying weaponry, extending to tech, investment firms, car companies, banks.
Shortly after the report came out, the US government imposed sanctions on Albanese. Speaking about this, she has said: “What the United States couldn’t process was me pointing a finger to the profits. It’s OK to accuse Israel of committing crimes, no one cares… But the moment that I pointed to the fact that there are businesses profiting from it? Yes, I got sanctioned.”
Now go back even further, to look at the multiple tragedies that created this nightmare of violence and destruction in Israel-Palestine, catastrophe upon catastrophe. Because here, too, we can see the outlines of western involvement, colonial calculations and different forms of racism, all colliding in a painful and bloody conflict that has been raging for decades.
The Jewish national project that produced Israel was, from the perspective of Palestinians, unequivocally and unambiguously colonial – in the violence, death and displacement of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, from the start into the present day. In today’s censorious climate, the right of Palestinians to speak about and define their own experiences of Israel must be protected.
At the same time, this Jewish national project would not exist and could not have succeeded in its stated intent to establish a Jewish homeland, were it not for the rampant and deadly antisemitism across Europe at the time of its conception and in the centuries before. It was envisaged as one way out of the cycles of violence in Europe which, by the late nineteenth century, had forced European – or Ashkenazi – Jews to form an escape plan. This movement, born in Europe, imbued with European colonial ideas – was also born of antiracism and desperation.
The Palestinian philosopher Raef Zreik has elaborated on this duality, writing: “The Europeans see the back of the Jewish refugee fleeing for his life. The Palestinians see the face of the settler colonialist, taking over his land.”
During the early 20th century, many European Jews had no interest in starting from scratch in a distant land. One Jewish movement, the Bundists, advocated a stay-and-fight approach to antisemitism: they saw safety through a shared struggle with the working classes and in establishing Jewish cultural autonomy. They did not, in short, believe Jewish people required a separate nation state.
Among Jewish people living across Arab and Muslim countries, like my Iraqi parents, there was little interest in Zionism, since there was little of the virulent antisemitism that had propelled the ideology into being. Jewish people had been an integral part of the Middle East for centuries and, for the most part, had no cause to worry about their status in those lands. Indeed, Iraqi Jews were more drawn to Iraqi nationalism, communism and socialism than to the Zionist movement that struggled to gain traction among Jewish communities of the Middle East.
The thing that eventually made the Israel project appealing to European Jews wasn’t that they woke up one day and fancied doing a bit of settler colonialism. It was that European antisemitism kept on escalating, while other escape routes were closing.
The same Arthur Balfour who promised the Jews a national home in 1917, with the Balfour Declaration, had been an enthusiastic campaigner for the 1905 Aliens Act, designed to keep Jewish immigrants out of Britain.
By the 1930s, European Jews were escaping the Third Reich. Palestine was hardly the destination of choice for most Jews in dire straits. They looked to America or to Britain, but both countries had by then closed their doors to Jewish arrivals.
On the eve of the Second World War against Fascist Germany, in July 1938 in the French resort town of Evian, delegates from thirty-two countries met to talk about helping Jewish refugees who were trying to flee the Third Reich. Everyone expressed sympathy, but Britain and America, alongside every other country aside from the Dominican Republic, rolled out the reasons it was impossible for them to take in more refugees.
And so, as a consequence both of Zionist mobilising and of borders closing around the world, the Jewish population in Palestine swelled.
Even after two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population was killed in the Holocaust, few countries were willing to welcome survivors in the numbers needed. As late as 1947, 250,000 Jews in Western Europe languished in Displaced Persons camps, with no home to return to. With almost every other alternative closed during that immediate postwar period, Palestine became the last safe haven.
We should be able to recognise this and still condemn the injustices perpetrated by the state of Israel, from the start. But all too often, as the British-Jewish philosopher Brian Klug writes, progressives put forward: “a discourse that folds Zionism completely – without remainder – into the history of European imperialism and colonialism, as if Zionism does not have its roots in the Jewish experience of centuries of exclusion and persecution in Europe”.
The deadly violence perpetrated in Europe against Jews does not exonerate Israel for its violent treatment of Palestinians. It is no justification. It does not in any way erase the colonial experience of Israel for Palestinians. But it does bring us into a wider understanding of the forces of racism and imperialism impacting this particular part of the world. It allows us to see the Western considerations and influences at play.
Writing about the hostilities in this region, professor of Middle East studies, Gil Hochberg, argues we should direct our attention to what she describes as “the third party” By that, she means “the always absent-present Christian West, which intrudes, navigates, manipulates and manoeuvres the interactions between Jews and Muslims, but itself remains a largely invisible force.” All too often, we are not panning wide enough to take in the impact of this third party which, as Hochberg writes, is often too big to be seen.
Britain’s most fateful intrusion, the Balfour Declaration, was just the beginning in helping to create a ‘side’ of Jewish people with claims to a particular land. The Declaration was premised on the idea that Jews, regardless of where they lived, really belonged ‘over there’.
British political figures at the time viewed Jewish communities as oriental, but superior to the indigenous oriental population in Palestine; European in outlook, if not actually European. This was Britain putting Jewish people through its racial sorting and categorising system, which directly informed its approach to the region (and variations of which were applied in other parts of its empire). By panning out to take in that third party too big to be seen, the Christian West, we can see that the ‘sides’ in this conflict did not always exist. They were manufactured by the broader dynamics of racism and colonialism.
And such dynamics were not limited to appraisals of European Jews and their claims to Palestine. During the 1940s, parts of the Middle East and North Africa were trying to shake off the yoke of British and French colonialism, including the puppet regimes thoroughly managed by European states. In countries like Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, all boasting thriving historical Jewish communities, Jewish people ended up caught in the middle. Colonial powers, struggling to keep hold of their influence, tried to extend patronage to Jews, as they were seen as European allies. Jewish communities in these countries became a useful foil, elevated by the European colonisers and placed in a different category, precisely because they were seen as in-between – because this is how divide-and-rule is done. But at a time of nascent nationalisms, this put Jewish communities in a tricky spot.
We can see how this unfolded in Iraq, where right-wing forces tried to foment tensions by suggesting Jews were loyal to colonial powers. A fragile Iraqi government, threatened by the constant calls for democracy, drew up a law that allowed Jewish people to leave for Israel. A subsequent law meant those Jews left as refugees, stripped of possessions and their Iraqi citizenship. This last revocation pained my Basra-born father for as long as he lived.
What happens when we put all these different strands of history together? We start to see a tangle of communities in Israel–Palestine, all caught in some way by European colonialism and its attendant prejudices. The historian Hakem Al-Rustom has written about the displacements of different peoples – Palestinians, European Jews and Arab-Jews – as products of: “European interests in the region and race politics in the colonies during the nineteenth century.” He urges us to consider: “the Holocaust, the Nakba and the question of the Arab-Jew as part of a single catastrophic European history” and that we “narrate against identity-based insular histories that promote hierarchical segregations of populations”.
This is exactly the sort of approach that gets us to the joined-up, morally coherent antiracism that I want to believe in. Narrating these oppressions and displacements in tandem means we can see these histories as strands of the same rope, tightly braided together.
If we see the settlers of Israel as victims of the European racial hierarchies that subjugated and killed millions across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, we can see that the modern conflict between ‘Jews and Arabs’ is in no small part constructed by the same forces that perpetuated those catastrophes. In other words, we start to see not just the ‘sides’, but the overarching system that produced the sides.
I think this is what Columbia professor Gil Hochberg was getting at in urging us to pan back and see the invisible third party in the Israel–Palestine conflict. In authoring this “tragic drama” she wrote, western intervention has helped create the impression of a historic enmity between two peoples, Muslims and Jews, rather than see the conflict as a product of “the long European legacy of colonialism, racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism.”
Now, none of that is to remove the agency or motivations of the actual parties involved, historically or in the present day. I am certainly not here to suggest there is a “context” for Israeli violations and war crimes. There is no justification for flouting international law and committing war crimes, ever – anywhere, not for Hamas, not for Israel, not for the UK, Russia or the US.
But as Hochberg puts it, the conflict was: “Europe’s way to cleanse itself from its two modern historical crimes – antisemitism on the one hand and colonialism on the other – by transferring their weight onto its primary historical victims.”
She continues: “With this onus duly transferred onto Jewish people, a new role is activated for Europe, which gets simultaneously to turn Muslims into the new antisemites and to offer Jews protection from it.”
It is a deeply Islamophobic projection. We see it in the conveniently ahistorical assumption that today allows Western nations – even Germany, irony of ironies – to suggest that antisemitism in their societies has been “imported” by mostly Muslim migrants. And we see this same dynamic across the European far right, which uses a proclaimed defence of Jews as a means to stoke Islamophobia.
Now to get back to our sub-question: do these multiple moral catastrophes in the Middle East reflect a lack of universal values? And I want to say: no! Our political leaders have absolutely failed to uphold universal values, failed to protect them and failed to ensure that they are applied consistently.
But those universal values exist. We know what they are. Millions around the world have been marching for them. Genocide scholars and human rights organisations in Israel itself have been urging that we uphold them. University students set up encampments demanding we protect those rights and apply them universally. So many risked jobs, lost platforms or faced threats and harassments, in some cases were even detained and threatened with deportation, because they spoke out, begged our political leaders to remember that universal values apply to everyone, including Palestinians. Countries in the global south, often carrying their own histories of the violence of colonialism and recognising the parallels in Gaza, have been trying to lead us back to the values that western nations keep ignoring. It is no wonder that South Africa, with its bitter history of apartheid, was the country that took Israel to the International Court of Justice in December 2023.
And Palestinians themselves have compelled us not to turn a blind eye to Gaza, not just for the sake of Palestinians, but for the preservation of our shared values, our own humanity.
Many of us cannot forget what we saw in Gaza. Something changed in us and there is no going back. We will not stop drawing attention to it. At the same time, we should keep making these essential connections, panning back wider, keeping sight of the interconnected histories of European racism and colonial thinking that has shaped current catastrophes. And like the Salters, like Angela Davis, like Ruha Benjamin, like so many others, we must hold onto the power of the individual, the small daily work, the changes that push towards a just and equal and safe future, where every life is precious and dignity belongs to everyone.
Let me leave you with the author, Gabor Mate, who at the Palestina Forum in Vienna urged against despondence. He said:
“Even if you feel broken-hearted and helpless and hopeless and in despair, don’t let that get to you because you have a larger goal here, which is to contribute to the light and the truth in the world… and that is a long-term struggle, it’s a long-term calling and all of us can contribute to it.” ENDS
Many journalists and other experts, even highly respected ones, are promoting the arms race. Friends might want to write to encourage them to have more sense, and here are some socialist ideas for promoting peace that they could use.
If children were fighting and throwing stones in the playground, would adults tell them to stop, or would they say, ‘I can help you to get bigger sharper stones’? And if the first choice is so obvious, why is there a double standard, with prime ministers and presidents being encouraged to arm and fight? Especially when they can do infinitely more harm than school children can. Where is the sense or morality in inciting war? Children quickly learn peace-making skills (see https://quakers.wales/the-mid-wales-peaceful-schools-project/).
One history professor recently stated, ‘The hard reality is that the defence of Europe today depends on the US-led Nato’. However, the late film-maker John Pilger accurately predicted in 2018 that NATO’s next war would be with Russia because of the NATO bases provocatively sited all around Russia’s borders. The professor advocated building up our military ‘defences’ and said, ‘As a largely benign military hegemon, the US protected us…’ But a ‘benign military hegemon’ is an oxymoron and, since 1945, the US has started over 200 armed conflicts.
There are well-known reasons to avoid building up armaments. These include, in escalating cycles and in many countries: costs borne by the public and funds diverted away from public welfare; subsequent increase in inequality, poverty, public distress, unrest and anger; the politicians’ tradition of diverting this anger against injustice into fearful hostility against other disadvantaged groups and other countries; growing xenophobia and support for war, fed by politicians and journalists; powerful pressures from arms companies on governments to buy and use their arms, freeing them to increase further production and profits.
When warfare moved from battle fields into and over urban areas, civilian casualties multiplied. Drones and other technologies are transferring major death tolls away from the military and onto civilians, particularly of poorer countries with lower median ages, that means onto children. The median age of people in Gaza and Sudan is under 19-years, and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is 16 years. War is likely to force injured and bereaved surviving children to wreak revenge in future wars.
Research, resources and workers diverted into warfare are extremely urgently needed for work on reducing and coping with the effects of climate change. Instead, war, destruction and the rebuilding they require emit massive amounts of CO2.
Governments’ vast ‘defence’ budgets are notoriously overspent, under-regulated, inefficient and wasteful. When war-hungry politicians, military advisers and journalists dominate national politics, then chemical, biological and nuclear armaments are more likely to be developed and used. Developing AI, lasers, and cyber warfare can force hostile nations also to upgrade their stores of these weapons. ‘Deterrence’ encourages defensive aggression from rival states. Transferring international aid into military spending multiplies all the above national problems at international levels, harming billions, not only millions, of people. All these problems increase threats to the survival of humanity and all living beings.
Martin Birdseye, a radical Catholic, drew a Nuclear Morality Flowchart https://nuclearmorality.com/. It helps you to decide if nuclear war fits with your personal moral standards and choices. You could ask your MP to work through the Flowchart and cut through the strong current assumptions in today’s debates about nuclear ‘deterrence’.
We need to speak truth to power and aim to promote the public good and justice, and refrain from supporting destructive policies, factions and industries.
Rachel Shabi is an award-winning journalist and author who has reported extensively on Israel-Palestine and the wider Middle East, including the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Her recent book, Off-White: The Truth about Antisemitism, received widespread acclaim. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown praises her ‘unique sensibility, embodying multiple identities and universal, non-negotiable human rights’.
Rachel’s lecture looks at the West’s selective empathy and deeper ignorance of racism in all its forms and argues for a genuine universalism rooted in consistent, principled antiracism.
The lecture will be live at Friends House and will be online for all attending the Quaker 2026 Yearly Meeting.
N.B. To watch online, you must be registered for Yearly Meeting to receive the link. The lecture will be recorded as usual, and will be available for viewing on YouTube some days later.
By Sheila Taylor (in collaboration with Lyndsey Jenkins).
Dr Lyndsey Jenkins came to talk with QSS on her research into the Labour MP Joyce Butler (1910-1992) on 30 March. Dr Jenkins has been conducting a project based at Bruce Castle Museum and Archive in Tottenham and has curated an exhibition on Butler’s life and work which is currently open at the Museum.
Butler was raised as a Quaker in Birmingham, attending meeting at Moseley Road, and described her family as ‘birthright members of the Society of Friends.’ After moving to London with her husband Vic, she was elected as a councillor for Wood Green, and then as MP for the constituency in 1955. Butler was only the 67th woman ever elected to Parliament, and at that time, was one of only 24 women in the House of Commons.
[Photograph on the left reproduced by permission of Bruce Castle Museum and Archive.]
Joyce Butler only made one reference to her Quaker upbringing in the Commons, suggesting that in part because of this background, she had never experienced discrimination as a woman. Nevertheless, Dr Jenkins argued that the values that she inherited from the Quaker tradition were central, even if not explicit, in her politics throughout the rest of her life.
This was particularly visible in her lifelong commitment to peace. She was part of the generation which came of age in the aftermath of the Great War and spent the interwar years working as part of the Young Friends and the Friends Anti-War Group, arguing that capitalism and imperialism were the root causes of war. During the Second World War she was the secretary of the industrial and social order council of the Society of Friends. Though this explicit connection is less visible after the World War II, Butler maintained a lifelong commitment to peace, serving as a Vice President of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, secretary of the Parliamentary Group for Nuclear Disarmament, and was a key figure in leading Labour Party opposition to the Vietnam War.
Her commitment to simplicity was also evident in her advocacy of consumer rights, during a time in which scientific and technological progress seemed to tip the balance in favour of producers and manufacturers. There was little information and limited regulation governing what could and could not go into different products. Butler took up the cause of labelling—on food, cosmetics, and the chemicals used in farming and gardening’. This might also be seen as a manifestation of stewardships, which can also be discerned more broadly in her care for the environment, which extended to worries about waste and pollution.
But perhaps the most obvious manifestation of the lasting influence of Quaker principles is on Butler’s lifelong commitment to equality. From her earliest days in parliament she was particularly interested in women’s rights, including equal pay, equal treatment in the taxation and pension systems, and improved healthcare for women. Most significantly, she instigated what eventually became the Sex Discrimination Act in 1975.
Dr Jenkins argued that Joyce Butler exemplifies a certain ideal of public service based in compassion and expertise, informed by evidence and statistics but never forgetting the human stories. One of the hallmarks of her politics was her ability to work collaboratively, and she was at the forefront of coalitions which crossed party lines and extended beyond party politics. She was also a dedicated local politician who was widely recognised for her expertise in housing and planning.
The National Women’s MP is on display at Bruce Castle Museum and Archive until August. The exhibition is open to the public and free to visit during museum opening hours (Wednesday to Sunday, 1pm to 5pm). Dr Jenkins would be delighted to hear from anyone who remembers Joyce Butler or who has views on this subject.
The recently issued ‘Guidelines on Antisemitism’, published by Friends House in the midst of a genocide, have created a storm of controversy, as you will quickly realise if you look at the succession of comments on this website and the letters of protest in the Quaker Friend magazine.
I was astounded from my first reading. I have closely followed hundreds of Quaker position statements but never before felt so frustrated at the way in which the effort to be fair minded to one community results in a messy lack of fairness to another. These are my principal reservations and criticisms:
The stress in the Guidelines on the unique nature of the Jewish holocaust under the Nazi regime is highly problematic. It comes, at the precise time when the state of Israel, established for Jews to escape from genocidal pogroms and the long history of antisemitic treatment, has embarked on a genocide itself against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. How is it that a people and to an extent, a faith, facilitates its own participation in the genocidal destruction of its near neighbours, with such strong levels of internal support? Why should it be unacceptable to suggest that a people who suffered a holocaust should be especially vigilant and faithful to avoid perpetrating one themselves. Certainly, as a few of my ancestors were slavers, I would expect to be challenged not to perpetrate such oppression. And, further, to be challenged to find appropriate ways of making amends.
At the same time, the Guidelines make clear that criticism of Israel may be antisemitic, whether deliberately or unconsciously. What are we supposed to make of that? What criticism of Israel is too strong? The Guidance just talks about the importance of context. Strange, then, that the Genocide in Gaza and the West Bank (developing) is not mentioned. I chant “Israel is a Terror State” with the Palestine marchers in Manchester each Saturday. I believe it to be true. This is in part a matter of definition. The Guidance looks at both the IHRA and the Jerusalem declarations but leads us to favour the former as organised Jewish opinion is “mistrustful” of the latter. But the former warns much more strongly of a danger of criticism of Israel sliding into antisemitism. No doubt this does happen. But I do not believe that it applies to most criticism of Israel. Moreover, to try to make Quakers hesitate or moderate their criticism of a country engaged in ruthless oppression of a subject people, ethnic cleansing and a pitiless genocide is an insult to our Quaker stress on plain speaking.
And then there are tropes, the long standing conspiracy theories as to Jewish wealth and power and the like. I don’t want to further the trope but I do think I should be able to say that the British establishment seems to me to be much more sensitive to the well-organised lobbying of the Board of Deputies of British Jews than towards any Muslim voices.
And I would go further down this route, to try to explain the establishment’s failure to call out Israel’s genocide, despite popular opinion siding with Palestine. My hunch is that there is an undeclared neo-colonialism and equally brutally, racism, at work. The Jewish Israelis, I believe, are seen as closer to “us”, whiter than the Palestinians. Our Establishment over time has found it easier to identify with them. Needless to say, this is not in the Guidance. Indeed there is hardly anything in it of the context of the creation of the Western-enabled Jewish state and the endless conflict with the Palestinians who remained – and indeed with communities of Palestinians exiled all over the Middle East.
My last word – in this article – on criticism of Israel deals yet again with the admonition to make sure that one’s criticism of Israel is not out of proportion. In other words, criticism is acceptable only so long as it is matched by one’s concern for the Uighurs, the Sudanese, the Ukrainians etc. This is the result of a stultifying Quaker timidity. The UK has a special responsibility for the creation of Israel, failing in its expressed obligation to ensure that Palestinian interests were protected. This conflict has also been running for 80 years or more and the UK Government has been wickedly supporting the oppression of the Palestinians both by its actions and its failures to act.
P.S. This may seem harsh. I am aware of the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish dream of a safe haven. I am aware that they fear an attempt to drive them out … but they have never really tested this out by offering genuine olive branches rather than uprooting and burning Palestinian olive trees. I also fear deeply for the corrosive effects on the Israeli Jewish population both with hundreds of thousands of young men and women engaging in horrific acts of violence, almost without pause; and even more, being schooled to think in terms of such actions being perpetrated with almost total impunity. What does that do to the soul?
by Nicola Grove (Feb 06), David Wright, Ken Cohen, Ol Rappaport, Roger Bartlett, Nicola Grove, Ol Rappaprt, Priscilla Alderson, Ol Rappaport, Mike Beranek, Denise Cullington, Nicola Grove and Gareth Dale.
Editor: Since the publication of ‘Challenging Antisemitism’ by Quakers in Britain and the response to it by Priscilla Alderson, a QSS member, there has been an extensive debate, either in website comments, comments in the Friend magazine, or comments on social media. This post shows how the debate evolved in February and March. None of the contributors, it should be stressed, represents QSS. Within QSS there is a division of opinion. Some believe that the document is inadequate by virtue of its inaccuracy and bias. Some believe it should not have been issued without an accompanying document on Islamophobia. Some believe it should never have been issued at all.
Gareth Dale (19 March 2026). Comment sent to QSS website:
“It is staggering that Quakers are disseminating a pro-Zionist pamphlet during Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians, and that it does not mention that genocide once. Even worse: in the ‘recommended reading’ section ALL the recommended books and pamphlets are written by Zionists. (And they all – literally all of them – were leading voices in the witch-hunt against the Labour left during Corbyn’s tenure as party leader.) It is appalling, too, that five of the six Quaker MPs refused to vote in the Commons against Israel’s genocide. Without any serious rebuke from the Society of Friends. Does the British Society of Friends wish to be seen as complicit in genocide? Certainly its most prominent figures are.”
Nicola Grove (March 2026): This is a short version of an in-depth analysis of ‘Challenging Antisemitism’, sent to Oliver Robertson by Nicola Grove, with evidence and references. It is available from QSS on request:
“I have deep concerns regarding the “Guidelines on Antisemitism” produced by Friends House. We gather that Friends have been asking for these guidelines for some time, and that they were informed by consultation with Jewish groups who use our premises. At a time when all forms of racism are on the rise, including antisemitism and Islamophobia, practical information for Quakers that reinforces our commitment to equality, the value of every human being, and to social justice, is indeed to be welcomed. Unfortunately the document is not an appropriate educational tool for a faith community committed to active peace work, to hearing and respecting and different perspectives on complex and tragic conflicts, and speaking truth to power.
By failing to take account of the many Jews in Britain and globally who do not hold zionist beliefs, and alternative traditions such as the belief that Judaism means belonging in the diaspora, and the orthodox traditions that oppose zionism, the guide fails to respect diversity or indeed to show anything more than a superficial acquaintance with Judaism.
In the Guide there is active disparagement of socialism, neglecting the vital antifascist contributions of Jewish working class socialists. There is utter failure to recognise the targeting of Jewish activists for Palestinian rights and peace in the Labour party. Ideas redolent of hasbara (Israeli propaganda) are perpetuated. The downgrading of genocides other than the Jewish holocaust (of Roma and Sinti peoples; disabled, black and LGPT people) to “victims of Nazi persecution” is shocking – I wonder if any of these communities were consulted by the writers to ask how they view this relegation of atrocities committed against their ancestors.
Finally, I regard it as antisemitic to assume that Jewish people – like other sentient, empathetic human beings – would not be horrified by the actions of the Israeli government in Palestine, with the active complicity of the US, Europe, India and shamefully the UK.
Friends who still think anti-zionism aligns with antisemitism are recommended to read this article by Robert Rosenthal, The Progressive Jew; this article on 130 years history of Jewish anti-Zionism, and watch Peter Beinart’s webinar on what it means to be Jewish in the face of genocide.”
Denise Cullington (March 2026): letter to Quake Editors, Oliver Robertson and BYM in general:
“I was pleased and interested to see your recently published guide – and then dismayed. Clearly anti-semitism is an important and contentious topic, and differentiating what is that and what is legitimate disagreement with Israeli politics over the last 2 1/2 years is essential. Sometimes confusion is just that, but it can also be used as a political tool – and I think this is likely what has happened in this case. (Sometimes the action is more direct, like UK Lawyers for Israel threatening to take charitable Institutions to court if they make any public reference to the impact of genocide, as happened to my Institution in the area of child and mental health).
In line with all our impressive history of speaking truth to power, Quakers last year came out admirably and called what was happening in Gaza ‘genocide’. This new document in contrast, is unclear and unhelpful. Can I offer you three examples?:
The IHRA v the Jerusalem Declaration on anti-semitism: Your doc describes how “some have explained that the Jerusalem Declaration is used mainly by politically left-wing groups and that many Jews will immediately suspect a document which promotes it….(and add) we’re here informing readers about them rather than endorsing any particular definition – but in fact the Jerusalem Declaration was developed by a group of scholars in Holocaust history, Jewish studies and Middle East studies and has over 370 signatories in that field ‘to strengthen the fight against anti-semitism by clarifying what it is, and how it is manifested (and ) to protect a space for an open debate about the vexed question of the future of Israel/Palestine’. Your explanation invites readers to distrust a highly regarded document, dismissed only by an undocumented “some”.
The Jewish Lobby: in fact the IHRA and the Jerusalem both state the ‘myth’ or the ‘grossly exaggerated…fantasy’ of a Lobby is anti-semitic. I am not sure how phantasmagorical the idea of the Lobby needs to be, but certainly (as you state) there are many powerful well-funded and presumably inter-connected lobbies, run over 70 or more years and documented by Ilan Pappe among others, funding and pushing politicians in the UK and the US (and presumably elsewhere) to support pro-Israeli positions in the defence and intelligence industry and in the media. And we are finding out more as the Epstein scandal continues to unravel. That is fact, not anti-semitism. Your guidance is obfuscating.
The need for a Jewish homeland: ‘having a nation in their ancestral homeland deeply matters to many Jews, a place where they can feel safe from the antisemitism and persecution felt and experienced in the rest of the world’ is fair enough, but you ignore what the Jerusalem Document points out, the native Palestinians: they say ‘it is not anti-semitic to support arrangements that accord full equality to all inhabitants “between the river and the sea” … in whatever form’. Your document does not mention them, nor the historical context and history of the violence.
I do hope that you will welcome feedback and agree the need for more threshing before hopefully putting out a revised version – and one that is authored and acknowledges your sources. Thanks for all that you are doing. I do hope this important discussion can be continued.
And lastly, separately, I read a most impressive piece over the weekend by Avraham Burg a former speaker of the Knesset, which is a thoroughly muscular argument for why peace not war.”
Mike Beranek (March 2026): letter to Oliver Robertson, Head of Witness & Worship, Quakers in Britain:
“Although I write in a personal capacity, I must state that I have not restrained myself from mentioning to local Friends my profound objection to the document currently being circulated by Quakers in Britain – ‘challenging anti-Semitism’
I believe it represents one of the most maladroit, untimely, and reactionary publications I have ever seen from Quakers, and I have encountered several problematic positions held by BYM in the past, in particular, above even major misunderstandings around the proxy war against the people of Russia and of Russian ethnicity by US/NATO and the UK/EU.
This document – challenging anti-Semitism – amounts to an apology for Zionism. Though it may not state this in so many words, it tends toward what is known as ‘Jewish exceptionalism’—the suggestion that the experience of Jewish people in the Holocaust (term only allowed for the Jews) and all ongoing discrimination is of a unique nature that cannot be compared to any other crimes against humanity, neglecting to credit for instance the mass murder of Roma, Slavs, communists, Hungarians, the disabled and people of all ethnicities during the Nazi regime last century, or indeed, to the wide variety of other peoples around the world now faced with ongoing genocide – not to mention the around 70,000 indigenous people already killed in Gaza by the Zionist entity of Israel.
It now seems especially untimely considering now that we have the attack by the Zionist entity on the people of Iran, largely on millions of Shia Muslims which was kicked off by the murder of of around 100 school children this week. The subtext of this document represents a tendency to suppress valid criticism and opposition to the racism and militarism of the state of Israel by utilizing this position of Jewish exceptionalism, and one has to wonder what kind of ‘advice’ and resources (propaganda) were used in constructing this document.
This position also reminds me of the tactics used by the ‘Labour Together’ faction within the Labour Party, which effectively destroyed a genuine popular Labour movement headed by Jeremy Corbyn — a charge of anti-Semitism being a convenient way of suppressing valid debate about all kinds of racism and militarism, in particular, opposition to the Islamophobia that remains endemic in British society.
I am sorry, but it is very hard to find anything positive about this document, and I cannot recommend that it be given much weight in our local meeting. I am suggesting to any Friend who really wishes to understand and discern the nature of the issues in this report that they look at the work on this, the response to this, by the Quaker Socialist Society.
In this critique of this BYM publication, Priscilla Alderson argues that the document’s attempt to address the issue is deeply flawed and unbalanced. She contends that the report promotes “Jewish exceptionalism,” relies on anonymous authorship, and obscures the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism by implicitly adopting a framework that labels criticism of Israeli state policies as inherently biased. Furthermore, Alderson highlights the report’s failure to include Palestinian voices or incorporate critical historical contexts regarding the occupation, suggesting instead that the guidelines prioritize a form of “neutrality” that ignores power imbalances and effectively silences dissent. Ultimately, she calls for a comprehensive revision that engages a more diverse range of Jewish and Palestinian perspectives to better reflect the realities of the ongoing conflict. (Gemini summary)
If this document is to be properly discussed, I believe these kinds of criticisms need to be aired for Quaker discernment, and I am not getting the feeling that this is currently being done.
I would be grateful to hear your feedback on these concerns.”
Ol Rappaport (Friend, 2026 Feb 27):
“I have read the Quaker Socialist Society’s criticism** of the new ‘Challenging antisemitism’ guide. But it misrepresents the booklet, and judges it against expectations it never claimed to meet.
The booklet is a short, practical guide for Quakers in Britain, focused on recognising and responding to antisemitism in a UK context. Its concision is a strength. A longer, more theoretical document would be read by far fewer readers and achieve much less.
It does not ask to be accepted uncritically, nor does it deny other forms of racism or create a hierarchy of oppression. It simply addresses antisemitism in its own right, recognising that different prejudices have different histories and dynamics.
Much of the criticism centres on the booklet’s treatment of Israel and Zionism. In my reading, the booklet is careful and explicit that criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitic, while also insisting that context matters. This is not about silencing debate, but about ethical attentiveness.
The criticism appears uncomfortable with the idea that antisemitism can be unconscious, particularly among those committed to justice, but being a Quaker or a socialist offers no exemption from unconscious prejudice.
I write as a Quaker and a practising Jew. From that position, I believe the booklet handles a complex and sensitive subject with care and restraint, aiming at understanding rather than enforcement.
Quakers addressing antisemitism seriously in our own communities are not prevented from opposing other injustices. These commitments belong together, working together.”
[**Editor: Ol has misunderstood. Articles on the QSS website are always signed by the author. They do not represent the policy of QSS. Priscilla Alderson’s article no more represented the views of QSS than Ol’s article represented the views of the Friend.]
Priscilla Alderson (Friend, 27 Feb 2026)
“The recent Britain Yearly Meeting guide on challenging antisemitism is welcome for addressing this tragic problem. Antisemitism as hostility or violence towards Jews involves cruelties that every Quaker abhors.
Many Jews say it is vital to contrast antisemitism with anti-Zionism, when military and colonial forms of Zionism can increase antisemitism by bringing all Jews into disrepute however unfairly. These Jews stand for rights and justice for Jewish people everywhere, and against wrongs and injustice to Palestinians and oppressed peoples anywhere. The new report appears to support Zionism by defining it solely in positive terms: ‘the national liberation movement of the Jewish people’, ‘a religious/spiritual concept about reviving a profound Biblical ideal of a homeland grounded in justice and peace’.
This seems to contradict Yearly Meeting Minute 30. Can further discussion be had? We hope Friends will read the response to the report on the Quaker Socialist Society website.”
Ol Rappaport (Friend, 2026 Feb 21):
“Nicola Grove’s response misses a central point of my article: my concern was not primarily political but theological. I apologise if I didn’t make this clearer.
For the record, I did not deny other genocides, nor label particular responses sentimental; my concern was with how Holocaust memory is used. The Holocaust nonetheless remains historically distinctive in its industrialised, bureaucratic machinery of extermination.
It confronts faith traditions with the brutal challenge that human beings systematically murdered others not for what they had done, but for who they were — a slaughter carried out by people in whom Quakers nonetheless affirm “that of God”. The brutality of the Holocaust, and of other genocides, forces me to ask how such language survives contact with history, or how it must be deepened to remain truthful.
This was the question I sought to raise. Other lessons may indeed follow, but they cannot replace the prior work of facing this moral and theological crisis itself. The disturbing truth is that ordinary people, often formed by religious or moral frameworks, can participate in annihilation while believing themselves justified.
Recognising this does not diminish compassion for present suffering. But if remembrance is to be more than symbolic, it must first confront us with the theological and moral chasm such events represent.”
Nicola Grove (Friend, 2026 Feb 20):
“I consider Ol Rappaport’s argument confused in his reply (13 February) to my letter (6 February). I also find his use of the term ‘sentimental’ as borderline offensive in the circumstances, and his claims misleading: we do in fact have closely documented evidence of other genocides.
My letter points out precisely what Ol claims is the message of the Holocaust for us all: ‘ordinary religious people participate in atrocities whilst maintaining a sense of moral righteousness’. If we cannot apply this truth to contemporary conflicts, I fail to see how it can have any force at all. It is sad to see the implication that the work of the Etty Hillesum Trust, and an account of the terrible murder of Hind Rajab and her family, dismissed as ‘sentimental’. The Jewish historian Nira Yuval-Davis describes a tension in Judaism between exceptionalism and universalism in relation to the Holocaust, which interested Friends can read (www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/against-jewish-exceptionalism>). It is clear to me which of these two positions accords with our Quaker testimonies.”
Roger Bartlett (Friend, 2026 Feb 16):
“Ol Rappoport (today) wishes to cast the Holocaust as a uniquely clear case of genocidal evil. I have some sympathy with that view, but not if it precludes reflection on other equally clear cases which pose his question just as much as the Nazi project. He says: “The Holocaust was an ideologically-driven, continent-wide project to eliminate an entire people.” Replace ‘continent’ with ‘from the river to the sea’ and you have B. Smotrich. He continues: “Holocaust remembrance exists precisely because it confronts us with an enduring and unsettling truth: that ordinary, often religious, people can participate in atrocities while maintaining a sense of moral righteousness.” Netanyahu? Certainly members of the IDF. And other genocidal atrocities pose the same question. Placing the Holocaust at the head of a list is not “instrumentalising Jewish trauma” or “collapsing history”. It is to say that the Nazi project is the most egregious example of a much wider and tragic human problem.”
Ol Rappaport (Friend, 2026 Feb 13):
“Nicola Grove’s response (Letters, 6 February) to my article ( ‘A human project’, 23 January) expresses sincere compassion for Palestinian suffering. But it misses the purpose of my article, and raises a serious concern about historical and theological clarity.
My article addressed how faith traditions confront the Holocaust as a uniquely-documented example of intimate, human-to-human evil: neighbours murdering neighbours, parents and children betrayed by those around them, and ordinary people participating in systematic extermination. The question I raised was theological: how belief survives, and must change, when confronted with humanity’s capacity for such acts.
Introducing Gaza as a direct parallel to the Holocaust risks obscuring, rather than illuminating, that moral challenge. The Holocaust was an ideologically-driven, continent-wide project to eliminate an entire people. Drawing equivalence between this and a contemporary conflict, however tragic and deadly, flattens crucial historical distinctions and risks turning Holocaust remembrance into a rhetorical device within present-day political debate.
Recognising this distinction does not diminish Palestinian suffering. Compassion is not a finite resource, and moral seriousness requires us to acknowledge all human suffering honestly. But using Holocaust memory primarily to frame modern political conflicts risks instrumentalising Jewish trauma rather than learning from it.
Holocaust remembrance exists precisely because it confronts us with an enduring and unsettling truth: that ordinary, often religious, people can participate in atrocities while maintaining a sense of moral righteousness. If theology or public reflection turns away from that challenge, it risks becoming sentimental rather than truthful.
‘Never again’ demands not comparisons that collapse history, but honest engagement with the human capacity for evil that the Holocaust so starkly revealed.”
Ken Cohen (Friend, 2026 Feb 06):
“As a Jew, I particularly welcome the new guide on recognising and challenging antisemitism (see ‘Challenging antisemitism’, 23 January). The range of references and resources in the text was truly impressive. But I was disappointed that the authors failed to give a mention to the important work being done by the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, part of the University of London, one of only two university centres in the whole of Europe dedicated to understanding this phenomenon.”
David Wright (Friend, 2026 Feb 06):
“The dire situation in Gaza has understandably angered many Quakers, and their condemnation of the Israeli government has in turn attracted condemnation as being antisemitic. This raises a serious question as to what is the appropriate Quaker response to such egregious oppression and violence against fellow human beings.
It’s particularly challenging when religion is invoked to justify violence, as in the crusades, and the ‘troubles’ in Northern Ireland. To the extent that the Israeli government relies on religious text to justify its actions, it is bringing Judaism into disrepute. So who is being antisemitic?”
Nicola Grove (Friend, 2026 Feb 06): in response to an article by Ol Rappaport in the Friend.
“Ol Rappaport (‘A human project’, Friend, 23 January) presented us with a detailed, harrowing and immensely moving set of personal stories to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January. As he rightly reminds us, these atrocities were not carried out from a distance, but by human beings on other human beings: close, personal encounters that happened in many different countries – by neighbours, by mothers, by fathers, sons and brothers who had come to see their fellow citizens, from babies to elders, as vermin to be exterminated.
On that same day, Etty Hillesum Cards began broadcasting its third vigil, naming the names of 18,454 children killed in Gaza since 7 October 2023. The readings by 370 people take more than two-and-a-half days to read and commemorate what one Jewish reader described as ‘the Holocaust of another nation’. We cannot forget that 29 January is the third anniversary of the up-close-and-personal murder of six-year-old Hind Rajab as she waited for rescue by paramedics in a car filled with the dead bodies of her family. You can listen to the six hours of her desperate phone call on YouTube.
On social media, someone describing themselves as a Quaker Friend of Israel posted that Hind’s family were to blame for ignoring IDF instructions. But the reality was that they desperately attempted to do as they were told, but ran into a murderous road block. This is only one of the thousands of atrocities carried out against the Palestinian people, which parallel those that Ol so vividly describes. Never again means never again for all peoples.”
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Rare families have to be nothing short of incredible. 28 February marks this year’s Rare Disease Day. A disease is classified as rare when fewer than 1 in 2,000 people are affected. 70% of rare diseases begin in childhood and 72% are genetic.
Today is the one day when hard working families caring for children with rare diseases – often accompanied by severe and complex health and developmental conditions – are empowered to emerge from the shadows of inconvenience and speak frankly and openly.
Children with rare diseases are among the most misunderstood of us all: medically – due to underfunded research – as well as socially, so it’s important that we stand proudly with them. And parent carers are endlessly proud of our wonderful children and everything they achieve – in spite of the multifaceted thrashing systemic current they are swimming against.
My own daughter lives with CDKL5. Like many rare diseases, this neuro-developmental condition profoundly impacts every aspect of her life, and yet in addition to being a clinical enigma – along with 3.5 million people in the UK who are living with a rare disease – she routinely comes up against high levels of systemic ableism.
In practice, rare families have to be nothing short of incredible. However, being incredible is exhausting. We fight up-hill battles and are forced to negotiate within hostile systems – always forging forwards, often silently bearing daily heavy loads.
The truth is, all too often the onus is on parents: to raise both public and professional awareness; to advocate – even for our children’s basic dignity – such as for continence pads; to take on the role of highly receptive detectives when our children are non-speaking; and to map our children’s needs in the context of their unique clinical history and a multitude of complex, interconnecting conditions.
Blanket policies regularly overlook needs that are rare-disease-specific, and in times of crisis, it is up to parents to fight. We quite literally go extra miles, seeking expertise overseas (a privilege wrapped in an ordeal that is by no means available to everyone).
This Rare Disease Day, let’s be better because every person with a rare condition is valuable: inherently valuable, a valuable part of our communities…a valuable part of us.
[Ruth Kettle-Frisby is a QSS member and a member of the QSS committee. A version of her article has appeared in the Havering Daily of 2026 March 04.]
1. Antisemitism is a very serious, tragic problem and it is good that Quakers address it in a new 24-page Guidelines. The Guide has many valuable ideas for avoiding discrimination and for fulfilling Advices & Queries 17. However, the Guide raises problems.
2. The Guidelines define Zionism in positive terms: ‘the national liberation movement of the Jewish people’, ‘a religious/spiritual concept about reviving a profound Biblical ideal of a homeland grounded in justice and peace’. The Guide agrees ‘violence in Israel and Palestine is a big driver of modern-day antisemitism’. Yet this sentence implies violence and suffering are equal on both sides.
The Guidelines ignore the peace-making views of thousands of Jews and their organisations such as Jewish Voice for Liberation, who ‘stand for rights and justice for Jewish people everywhere, and against wrongs and injustice to Palestinians and oppressed peoples anywhere.’ They campaign against antisemitism (hatred of Jews) but support anti-Zionism (when Zionism involves genocide in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank). Many Jews join the Palestine Support demonstrations, horrified about the genocide. Some Jews see Zionism as antisemitic, when it risks bringing all Jews in the world into disrepute however unfairly. Some object to Israel on theological grounds. Some are Zionist but don’t think the Jewish state should be in Palestine. The Guidelines add to this danger when they confuse instead of clarifying differences between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The Guidelines imply that Friends side with political Zionism, and they ignore Quakers and Jews and all other people who oppose it.
3. ‘People with stronger connections to Israel (such as by living there, or in Israeli occupied Palestine, or having greater personal links with Israel) have greater leeway to speak about the country than those of us elsewhere in the world.’ Here, the Guide seems to ask us to respect the views of leaders of the war in Gaza and violent occupiers in the West Bank.
4. Why are the Guide’s authors and quoted reviewers anonymous? The authors will know of pro-Israel lobbying and donations that shape UK and USpolicy, and therefore the need for transparency in all related discussions. An anonymous version can imply this Guide is general Quaker policy, but it has not yet been approved by any committee. Israeli ‘lobbying’ keeps appearing in the Report in quotation marks as if it might not exist. The Jewish professor Ilan Pappé reports Israeli lobbying and pressures on the US and UK governments that have achieved unparalleled military aid, recognition of unlawfully occupied territories, erasure of Palestinian rights, and beliefs that Palestine supporters are ‘antisemitic’ and ‘Jew haters’. There are global effects. These false beliefs overturned the Labour shadow cabinet in 2019. Jewish members of the Labour Party were six times more likely to be accused of antisemitism than non-Jewish members, and 13 times more likely to be expelled for ‘being antisemitic’. The false beliefs are still repeated or implied in the Friend when Jeremy Corbyn is mentioned, although the beliefs differ from repeated views of Quakers in Britain.
5. The Guidelines mention ‘The ancestral home of the Jews’, but not the Palestinians’ historic right to the land, or that the UN has deemed the Zionist occupation of Palestine illegal, apartheid, and genocide. Although the Guide is ‘for Quakers based in Britain rather than people talking about Israel and Palestine’, ‘Israel’ is mentioned 58 times. Many readers’ attention to Palestine is inevitable, given the overwhelming complex entanglements between Israel and Palestine.
6. The references and the reading list are one-sided, with many Jewish sources but no Palestinian voice, and no critical sources, such as Jewish Voice for Liberation. Recently, 64% of adult British Jews surveyed identified themselves as ‘Zionist’. Yet among the 20-30 age group, only 47% did so; 20% of that age group described themselves as ‘non-Zionist’ and 24% as ‘anti-Zionist’. Their views are not heard.
7. One sentence states that ‘the Jerusalem Declaration is used mainly by politically left-wing groups and that many Jews will immediately suspect a document which promotes it.’ It is not clear why left-wing views are ‘suspect’. The Guide takes a right-wing approach when it emphasises behaviours but ignores powerful political contexts, which partly explain and motivate those behaviours. To understand causes is the crucial first step towards real change, peace and justice – just as doctors investigate causes and diagnoses of illness before they can prescribe treatment.
In 2012, 48% of British Jews said antisemitism in Britain was a problem, but now 82% of them report problems. The Guidelines link this increase to the attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023 and ‘the Israeli response attacking Gaza’. They do not mention the many decades of Zionist oppression and atrocities and Palestinian resistance that begin to explain the 7 October attack. Instead, they go straight on to challenge ‘myths about Jews’. Analysis that offers hope of peace, justice and ending the tragedy of antisemitism, through understanding crucial differences between antisemitism and anti-Zionism and unravelling complex Zionist denials of genocide, is missing.
8. The Guidelines state: ‘In the context of the current (2025) world situation, some reviewers of this paper queried why there have been many public demonstrations and statements about the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, but not about mass killings in e.g. Sudan or Myanmar.’ And ‘If people are repeatedly or prominently criticising Israel but not criticising the same actions by other countries, then it can feel like Israel is being singled out or held to a higher standard than other countries.’
If only we had time and resources to campaign about all atrocities. Yet Israel is a priority because: the intended total destruction of Gaza is exceptional; Britain led the creation of the state of Israel and continues to give political and military support to Israel’s wars in Gaza and nearby Arab countries; Britain’s aid and education work in Palestine involves many close interpersonal international ties; we hope to alter specific UK government policies, funding and activities; Israel claims to be part of Europe (Eurovision song contest, for example) so needs not a ‘higher standard’ but a basic democratic non-apartheid standard.
9. The Guidelines say they ‘do not endorse’ the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism, which regards any criticism of Israel as likely to be antisemitic. Yet the Guidelines seem to adopt that view. To veto all criticism of a government denies democracy. The Guidelines ignore Jewish people’s and others’ criticisms of the IHRA.The IHRA is creatinggreatproblems.
10. Conflicting meanings of peace are confusingly combined: personal peace – being polite to others; political peace – working for justice to ‘take away the occasion of all war’. Impartial balance can be mistaken for (superficial) peace but, in cases of extreme inequality and injustice, attempts at ‘neutral’ justice inevitably side with and are exploited by the powerful. Desmond Tutu said, ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor’. Might Britain Yearly Meeting’s valuable work with ecumenical accompaniment, which depends on Israel’s permission, prevent or at least discourage open support for Palestine? The early Quakers supported peace and justice by speaking truth to power in ways that offended and enraged people. ‘Radical peace-making requires us to engage with and to acknowledge truth in all its discomfort, complexity and cruelty.’
11. The Guidelines say, ‘As in other “difficult conversations”, it is important to listen respectfully and look for “kinder ground” rather than demand an absolutist or (to you) internally logical position.’ This seems to allow illogical relativism, and even collude with denying truths that millions of Palestinians, both Arabs and Christians, have been murdered or exiled into refugee camps.
12. Repeated mention in the Report of ‘the unconscious influences on our thought’ only refer to thoughts that are antisemitic or critical of Israel, although the unconscious influences all positions.
13. Quakers are the only church, so far, to name ‘genocide’ formally. Yet what action has followed? ‘As long as Israel knows it is above the law, then nothing will change,’ said the Palestinian Christian pastor, Isaac Munther. The Guidelines name ‘genocide’ six times in relation to the Holocaust, but never to Gaza.
14. The long BYM Minute 30, named the war in Gaza as genocide. The Guidelines quote only one sentence, from Minute 30, a sentence that supports Jews. Like the Guidelines, Minute 30 (BYM, 2025) is confused. The Minute refers to ‘heinous, unjustified crimes of Hamas on 7 October 2023’, ignoring many decades of violent oppression of Palestinians. The Minute states: ‘And so, we cannot say clearly enough: it is this current Israeli government that we are led to say we believe is committing genocide. Jewish people are not committing genocide. The Israeli people are not committing genocide.’ However, ‘Genocide is never done by a small group of people. It is always done with the cooperation, and often the support, of an entire society.’ For example, Israel’s Fundamental Guiding Principles state: ‘The Jewish people have an exclusive and indisputable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The Government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel.’ In one survey, 70% of Israelis said that, if Gazans leave, Israel should not allow their return at all.
15. A big omission from the report is mention of far-right Christian Zionists that complicate antisemitism, the dangers they pose, and the Churches’ responsibility to address these dangers.
16. Islamophobia is more prevalent in Britain than antisemitism. The Guide mentions the recent ‘spike’ in Islamophobic incidents. When will that be addressed too, other than in short personal accounts?
17. How can Zionists claim a ‘homeland’ (in the Guide’s words) that they are destroying, and where they commit ecocide? Gaza has largely been reduced to rubble mixed with thousands of corpses. Occupiers in the West Bank burn and raze forests and farmland with British bulldozers. They attack and kill Palestinian farmers, prevent them from watering their crops and herds, and steal the herds. They poison and fill in wells. The army has destroyed nearly 1 million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olivetrees.
18. Can we have a revised Guide, informed by a wider range of Jewish voices, and also by Palestinian Arabs and Christians, and enlightened by the concerns that Quakers have shared for decades with our allies, including Jewish allies, in Oxfam, CND, Liberty, Amnesty, UNHRA, WHO and many related NGOs?
Useful books include:
Lerman, A. 2022. Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the ‘Collective Jew’, Pluto Press.
Marfleet, P. 2025. Palestine, Imperialism and the Struggle for Freedom. Bookmarks.
Munther, I. 2024. Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza.Eerdmans.
Oborne, P. 2022. The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam. Simon & Schuster.
Pappé, I. 2017. The Biggest Prison on Earth: The History of the Israeli Occupation. Oneworld.
Pappé, I. 2024. A Very Short History of the Israel–Palestine Conflict. Oneworld.
Pappé, I. 2024. Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic. Oneworld.
Shabi, R. 2025. Off White: The Truth about Antisemitism. Oneworld.
by Rebecca Hardy, Joseph Jones and Elinor Smallman.
QSS Editor: At last year’s Yearly Meeting of Quakers in London there was a protracted debate about Gaza. It ended with British Quakers becoming the first British church to say they “believed” that Israeli actions in Gaza constituted a ‘genocide’. Since then there has been fevered debate about Palestine Action, islamophobia, antisemitism, and the attacks in Manchester and on Bondi Beach. Now, with preparations under way for the Yearly Meeting in May 2026, a Quaker ‘Guide to Antisemitism’ has been issued. As this will surely renew the controversy, it may be useful to remind Quaker socialists what Quakers actually decided last year and how meticulously they discussed it.
[The report below appeared in the Friend magazine of 30 May 2025. It was written by Rebecca Hardy (journalist), Joe Jones (Editor of the Friend), and Eleanor Smallman. Anyone interested in Quakers should subscribe to the Friend, a weekly magazine running since 1843. Every week it covers a range of spiritual and ethical issues, as well dealing with topics as diverse as poetry, protest, climate change, and world affairs.]
Rebecca Hardy, Joseph Jones and Elinor Smallman: Report on Yearly Meeting 2025 (Gaza):
Monday 26th May 2025: Session 6 picked up where Session 5 ended, with some nominations business shunted into the later session to make space for deep (and protracted) discernment. Fred began by reading from The Background to Quaker Work at the United Nations by Duncan Wood. It is a profound piece of writing, and was well chosen: ‘Since we are not in a position of power, [some] dilemmas are not ours to solve. The choices not ours to make. From time to time at the United Nations we are brought close to those who have to find the solutions and make the choices. On such occasions, it may or may not be given to us to make suggestions which promote the better of two choices or solutions. It is more important that we express our conviction that decisions affecting the lives of multitudes cannot be dictated by worldly expedience, but must be taken as we would express it: under concern. We must suppose that those in authority are unaware of this, but we must recognise that their liberty of action is often circumscribed by the nature of their office. The powerful are not necessarily free. We who are freer than they are to follow what we believe to be the will of God may at times be called upon to stand beside them as they seek for light on the road to peace.’ In the following worship Friends were ready to offer vocal ministry, but the elders were not moved to take any.
[Yearly Meeting 2025. Photograph, in the Friend, by Mike Pinches of BYM.]
The Meeting then heard from the Epistle from Southern Africa YM, 2025: ‘Many spiritual journeys take us through difficult and winding ways… to beauty… What binds us together, what pulls us apart? Our willingness to constantly seek the path to righteousness and service to others.’
‘We will get where we will get,’ said Adwoa. ‘Unity does not mean unanimity.’ She then re-read the minute on Gaza under discernment, with its use of the word “genocide”.
There was ‘much I feel able to unite with’, said one Friend. ‘But I don’t think that means it’s right…For me, radical peacemaking must go to the roots of the situation. [It] must draw on the spiritual roots of our discipline… I feel like in using the word “genocide” there is a judgment that certain people should be locked up – a judgment that we no longer intend to be in community with them.’
Another referenced the analogy Friends had heard earlier in the Meeting of the two hands, one saying stop and the other reaching out. ‘This minute has a lot of stop and not a lot of reaching out,’ she said.
One wondered ‘how it might be received by my Palestinian friends… I don’t think the passive voice is right’. He wanted to include more Palestinian voices.
‘Our testimonies are like a braid,’ said a Friend from QUNO. ‘But there is a testimony that could help us: equality’. How can we be a light in darkness? she asked.
Friends had lots of ministry to offer, with several Friends standing or raising hands online. One wanted more focus on Palestinians being forced to move from their homes. Another referenced Mary Lou Leavitt in Quaker faith & practice, pointing out the value of naming things. He wondered if it would be more helpful to say that it was Friends belief that this was genocide – the only people who could declare it as such were at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
At one point an elder stood to speak. These things were clearly distressing, she said, and quoted Isaac Penington: ‘Heed not distressing thoughts when they rise ever so strongly in thee; fear them not, but be still awhile, not believing in the power which thou feelest they have over thee, and it will fall on a sudden. It is good for thy spirit and greatly to thy advantage to be much and variously exercised by the Lord. Thou dost not know what the Lord hath already done and what he is yet doing for thee therein.’ At this point all three clerks were deep in conversation at the table, with Oliver Robertson, who manages QPSW and therefore the EAPPI programme.
Eventually Adwoa stood. She wanted to test something: was the Meeting minded to unite behind the idea that ‘we believe it’s genocide’? Many Friends stood again, with Fred calling ministry sensitively and carefully – a reassuring sign given that he will clerk YM 2026.
The wording ‘we believe’ avoided Friends ‘trying to make lawyers of ourselves’, said one, and so the clerks continued to work on a minute. By the time Adwoa stood again it was past the time that the session was scheduled to end. She asked Friends if they were content to overrun. They were. She tried a revised minute. Was there more ministry we needed to hear? Apparently, lots.
One Friend wanted it noted that the British government ‘is complicit and colluding with this genocide’.
Another referenced the long history of antisemitism, predating European colonialism. One Friend ‘would like to see deep repentance… it would show humility’.
Adwoa asked again if there was unity. She heard mostly ‘hope so’ but a few ‘hope not’. She wanted to hear from the latter group. One Friend elaborated on their inability to unite with the minute. She was concerned about ‘the effect of whatever public statement we may choose to make here’.
Adwoa tried again, but Friends wanted to speak further. She asked them to consider their leadings carefully. One then made what seemed like an impactful contribution. She worked with the Quaker Committee for Christian & Interfaith Relations (QCCIR). Friends were a tiny church, she said, but sometimes spoke with a loud voice. They were taken ‘extremely seriously in interfaith landscape… Our words carry a huge amount of weight, if we time it right and speak it right’. QCCIR had had ‘run-ins with our fellow churches and interfaith friends…Those relationships are fragile and varied and complex.’ She had ‘worried a lot’ about how using the word ‘genocide’ would affect those relationships ‘But I want to say with every leading and sincerity I can find: we can live with this statement… [even] with all the troubles and breakages that it might bring.’
Finally, an hour after the session had been due to finish, the clerks believed they had the sense of the Meeting and the minute was accepted.
QSS editor: At Yearly Meeting, on Sunday, May 03, the Salter Lecture 2026 will be delivered by Rachel Shabi, an internationally famous journalist and the author of ‘Off White’ (2025). The topic will be: ‘The Middle East – A Moral Catastrophe?’. This looks likely to be one of the most highly attended Salter Lectures QSS has ever organised. It will surely attract not just QSS members but all Quakers interested in contemporary ethical issues. Don’t miss it.
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