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.
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 statement 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
PS. 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.
This was my contribution to ‘What Does Socialism Mean to Me?’ – a discussion evening organised by the Quaker Socialist Society (QSS) on 14th October 2025.
What Does Socialism Mean to Me? Truthfully? Is it a ‘love of hopeless causes’; the pipe dream that political centrists would have us believe? The desperate hope that the Left will stop atomising into various factions; embrace social equity without being distracted and divided by identity politics, and organise to build a cohesive progressive movement that’s collectively worth fighting for?
My political exhaustion aside, here’s a very current analysis of what socialism means to me: Eco-socialism is the current iteration that is making waves for a variety of important issues, including a free Palestine. I do think socialist policies should aim for our Quaker values of peace and justice, which must entail climate justice. Such policies should include:
• fair redistribution of wealth and resources, and degrowth, in an acknowledged symbiosis between happier, healthier people and a thriving, sustainable planet.
• renewable energy over further neo-colonial fossil fuel extraction.
• a wealth tax, debt cancellation for global south countries, reparations and loss and damage funding.
• Equitable access to clean air, land, water, food, social housing, health care, a decent education, support and opportunities.
Could the prefix ‘eco’ bring a much-needed collective focal point, or is it misleading to supplement socialism with its own properties? Could it compromise socialism? Further, it seems that given the decidedly right wing red/blue UK political landscape that concerns itself with destruction and injustice for endless economic growth, while scapegoating vulnerable people who are trapped into poverty via oppressive structures and inequitable austerity policies – we are hardly at the point of finely tuning socialism.
On the other hand, with so many left politically homeless after Jeremy Corbyn brought temporary hope via a Labour Party that strove to serve the many – not the few – a gaping hole lay in wait for a new socialist narrative. Eco-socialism is well- positioned to deliver progressive policies in a timely and effective rebranding.
Let’s face it, socialism per se is a problematic, heavily loaded term. This repackaging is already delineating it from authoritarian associations and capturing its capacity to accommodate the progressive modern zeitgeist.
Is ‘eco’ the right property to extract, isolate and combine with the term socialism? Instinctively, there is an – often distinctly capitalist – privilege that is associated with the prefix ‘eco’: from fancy solid toiletries to the ability to afford and maintain an electric vehicle, thriving garden or allotment; even to becoming vegan, or an eco-warrior. While these things can be beneficial up to a point, when people have nothing or very little, individual actions and behaviour changes can be nearly impossible. In fact some of these make life even harder for disabled people, for example paper straws.
And given that we won’t recycle our way out of the climate crisis, is this prefix appropriate? Worse still, does eco-privilege threaten swinging the political pendulum further away from active socialist solutions to poverty and injustice? While climate justice is deliverable through socialist policies, my concern is that the hyphenation between eco and socialism may become a chasm. It might back the continuation of neo-colonialist offsetting, greenwashing, carbon-capturing and a continued focus on ‘net zero’, as opposed to, say, divestment, a 1% progressive levy on consumption of fossil fuels, Global South debt cancellation and investment in fast, independently triggered climate breakdown grants.
Ethical socialism is another flavour of socialism that you can read about in the writing of our Friend Graham Taylor and the Quaker Socialist Society. Edward Bennots said that “If it is possible to have a moral society without socialism, we would promote the moral society. But we do not think it is possible.” So, Bennot thinks socialism follows from a moral imperative. In practical terms, could ethical socialism reinvigorate socialism it to give it broader political momentum?
The media demonise socialism on modern historic grounds, and consequently, people are understandably terrified or dismissive of it as idealistic, unviable and undesirable. Ethical socialism injects desirability in universally basic moral terms such as humanitarianism. But how stable are ethics as a universal standard?
I am tempted to think that when push comes to shove, if we all understand the fairly unsubtle meaning behind children’s books and films like Paddington, surely we can resist over-complicating this? However, a quick glance at the red crosses graffitied on Hornchurch infrastructure suggest that making the leap from a cute, well-spoken Peruvian bear, to a variety of people experiencing persecution and hardship – is less straightforward than storytellers would have us believe.
There are many competing ethical theories and ideologies that may further clash with ecological interpretations. To give a local example of a possible or perceived disconnect between environmental and ethical socialist concerns, when it came to plans to build a monstrous eyesore of a data centre on Greenbelt land not far from where I live in North Ockendon, I have nevertheless decided not to join Upminster friends and residents in condemning this development. This is because to me the ethical imperative to take some responsibility for our data storage trumps the ecological imperative favoured by some so-called NIMBYs (a somewhat contentious acronym for Not In My Back Yard). Similarly, I think basic needs like shelter should be top of any socialist agenda because currently a child in every classroom is homeless.
As we’ve seen, both logically and in practical terms, there is potential for tension or even a decoupling of any prefix that modifies socialism. If morality, ecology, democracy and feminism…are tenets of socialism…what are the long-term impacts of one aspect being definitively prioritised over others?
My sincere hope it that eco-socialism as a political movement – in conjunction and alliance with democratic or other framings of socialism – functions collaboratively and in good faith to contribute positively to turbo-boosting concrete solutions to poverty, injustice and inequality.
Ultimately, being any kind of socialist is about having the will to be part of a transformative paradigm shift that de-commodifies basic needs to uphold universal human rights.
A good and wise activist friend of mine, Fer’ha Syed invokes the term ‘good’ in a way that broadly aligns with both eco and ethical socialism. She recently said to me: “I don’t think you can be pro-environment without being a socialist; I don’t think you can be a good Muslim without being socialist.”
Personally, this rings true, and being a good Quaker entails being socialist. For the sake of the inmost Light that resides in all of us; peace, justice, equity, truth and simplicity can be politically configured into socialist policies through the lens of humility and care, whether or not you conceive of our values in the personified form of Jesus of Nazareth.
For me, socialism and my faith are separated only superficially; arbitrarily, even. My eldest little girl’s crushing neurodevelopmental diagnosis; the 1946 horror film, Bedlam; and the post-punk goth rock band, New Model Army brought me to Quakerism. A perfect storm of disillusionment, music, patterns of oppression, and matters of conscience led me to seek out radical Quakers rooted in the agrarian socialist ideology of the Diggers or True Levellers.
As a child I asked my dad, ‘If everybody is needed to make the word go round, why aren’t bus drivers paid the same as politicians?’ How would the politician get to work to run the country if it weren’t for the bus driver? How little I knew (or anticipated in terms of the primacy of modern car culture – complete with its urban SUV monstrosities, no less!) – but the principle had legs, as does the prospect of a universal basic income combined with access to universal public services.
Currently, we are valued in terms of economic productivity and rewarded at the expense of the majority of workers, disabled survivors, carers – who hold society together – and refugees. For many of the above, power and agency are limited by lack of access to social, economic and even cultural mobility in the capitalist race to extinction.
Too many people spend their whole lives grafting – often in multiple jobs, with little in the way of career prospects, and very little pay-off economically; but also psychologically, in terms of the confidence and self-esteem afforded to swathes of manifestly average, white, privileged men in suits.
In Georg Büchner’s play, the eponymous character Woyzeck retorts to his casually provocative boss and apparent ‘better’ that being poor means that you can’t afford morals. This incapsulates a big part of what socialism means to me. There are newborn babies with their lives laid out in front of them in narrow hospital corridors with prisons at the end of them.
Alongside latent or activated genetic predispositions, ethics, social sensibilities, manners, emotional regulation, and the conscience…are all conventionally nurtured; socially constructed.
For me, socialism is not straightforwardly about class either as it’s understood in the UK today. Blue-collar jobs can be extremely lucrative – especially with good social and economic support that is so strongly – although not exclusively – associated with privilege.
Socialism is not about charity, and it is not even about compassion. Rather, it is solidarity borne out of deep-seated awareness of historically embedded injustice in terms of the ongoing systemic abuse, exploitation and oppression of so many of us for profit.
The alcoholic in the alcove – he is me. The pregnant young drug addict on the streets – she is me. The family of refugees, fleeing war and persecution – they are us. The economic migrant determined to build a better life…name one person who hasn’t at least tried to lead a decent quality of life.
The couple who inherited money to buy a house and lose the will to tell the truth about the privileged nature of the successes that followed – perhaps they would be me too.The investment banker, completely divorced from so many of life’s basic struggles – is he me? Would I do any differently in his position? I hope so.
Does The Light within go out for some of the most powerful and destructive figures in history?Sometimes it flickers and fades, then roars back into fullest fire when fuelled with sadness and rage upon witnessing the extinction of the Light in our friends who experience the horrors of politically sanctioned dehumanisation.
The Light requires oxygen; the space away from fear, anxiety and hardship to wait and listen. But at the bottom of the capitalist chain, spirits can break and the Light – most visible in children, I think – is choked.
Further up the capitalist chain, the spirit of socialism is the conscious clipping of our wings in open and active rejection of our Icarian impulses towards entitlement and greed, as we meaningfully embrace our testimony to simplicity. Socialism entails dignity for everyone, but requires honesty and humility because it rejects the lie of hierarchical meritocracy that divides us, actively serving those with power and privilege.
Socialism – whatever the brand or flavour, if mobilised in good enough faith – is an effort of the will, spurred by the truth of deep, deep inequality, and the understanding – not only that this is categorically wrong in every sense – but that we are complicit in neo-liberal structural injustice unless we find meaningful, practical ways to join together and fight it.
At a recent Quaker Socialist Society (QSS) meeting, three members responded to this question, followed by a general discussion. Socialism is widely attacked and wrongly linked to repressive communism although it promotes democracy, peace and justice. How relevant is socialism to Friends today?
Ian Martin, co-clerk of QSS, welcomed 39 people online.
Christine Green began: Quaker testimonies, the gospel message, socialism – one andthe same? Jesus would have been a socialist!
Christine has been an active environmental and peace campaigner for 50 years and she was recently vice chair of the Movement for the Abolition of War. She is a former Labour member, currently a Green member, and was an Anglican until she became a Quaker in November 2018.
Christine cannot imagine a Quaker belonging to any other political system than socialism, which once guided the Labour Party, and is now adopted more by the Green Party. ‘As a Quaker, I would only ever be a socialist.’ The Oxford English Dictionary defines socialism as ‘a set of political and economic theories based on the belief that everyone has an equal right to a share of a country’s wealth and that the government should own and control the main industries’. Quaker testimonies of truth, simplicity, equality and peace express socialist values. Socialism is not perfect, but it is a means of organising society that is most likely to result in our testimonies being lived out in all of society.
Capitalism is most directly opposed to socialism and to our testimonies. Long before the term ‘socialism’ was introduced, and according to liberation theology, Jesus was a socialist in his ethics and his communal way of living. He would not have joined a political party, being nonpartisan and open to all, but he had the heart and intent of a socialist.
Ruth Kettle-Frisby: Socialism is an Effort of the Will, Spurred by the Truth.
Ruth is an unpaid carer to her eldest of two young daughters, who has a severe neurodevelopmental condition, CDKL5. Ruth is a trustee for the charity CDKL5 UK. She is a writer with a background in philosophy, and also a disability and carers rights activist, a clean air campaigner, and co-founder of Clear the Air in Havering and CND Essex. A full copy of Ruth’s talk is on this QSS website.
Is socialism a ‘love of hopeless causes’, a pipe dream, the desperate hope that the Left will at last unite and work for social equity in a cohesive progressive movement? Eco-socialism should aim for our Quaker values of peace and justice and include:
• fair redistribution of wealth and resources, and degrowth for happier, healthier people and a thriving, sustainable planet
• renewable energy ending neocolonial fossil fuel extraction
• a wealth tax, reparations, and cancelling of global south countries’ debt
• Equal access to clean air, land, water, food, social housing, health care, a decent education, support and opportunities
Instead, we have destruction and injustice for endless economic growth, scapegoating of vulnerable people trapped in poverty, and austerity.
Ruth asked if ethical socialism could help to reinvigorate political socialism, making it more publicly acceptable and, for example, increasing public support for refugees. She sees morality, ecology, democracy and feminism as tenets of socialism. Eco-socialism is a political movement, working with other framings of socialism to turbo-boost concrete solutions to poverty, injustice and inequality, and to uphold universal human rights.
Ruth’s wise friend, Fer’ha Syed, said, ‘I don’t think you can be pro-environment without being a socialist; I don’t think you can be a good Muslim without being socialist.’ Ruth believes being a good Quaker entails being socialist. For the sake of the inmost Light that resides in all of us; peace, justice, equity, truth and simplicity can work through socialist politics through humility and care, whether or not you formally follow Jesus of Nazareth. ‘For me, socialism and my faith are separated only superficially; arbitrarily, even.’
Ruth’s eldest little girl’s crushing neurodevelopmental diagnosis and other troubles in ‘a perfect storm of disillusionment, music, patterns of oppression, and matters of conscience’ led her to seek out the first radical Quakers, who chimed with her life-long socialist beliefs. Socialism is not about charity or even compassion, but it is solidarity that opposes injustice and identifies with the oppressed. It may enlarge our understanding of the privileged too. Would we do any differently in their position? We can hope so. Ruth reflected on how the Light ‘sometimes flickers and fades, then roars back into fullest fire when fuelled with sadness and rage upon witnessing atrocities. ‘The Light requires oxygen; the space away from fear, anxiety and hardship to wait and listen.’ Capitalism can break spirits ‘when ‘the Light – most visible in children, I think – is choked’. We need to reject entitlement and greed and instead embrace simplicity, which entails dignity for everyone, honesty, humility and real equality.
‘Socialism is an effort of the will, spurred by the truth. We are complicit in neoliberal structural injustice unless we find meaningfully, practical ways to join together and fight it.’ Ruth discussed other vital questions, shown in the full copy of her talk.
Chris Newsam: Creatively Is There a Vision for Our Time in Quaker Socialism?
Chris has been a ‘convinced’ Quaker of more than 25 years. He is an Eco-Socialist, Interfaith Minister, Pacifist and Human Rights Campaigner. Here is Chris’s record of his talk:
As Quakers we are different, often holding quite diverse views from one another. I contend we need vision and hope. Today, sadly, politicians and other leaders often appear to be rather hope-less, lacking in vision for a positive future. We Quakers, corporately and individually, are at our best when we hold to a positive vision. Quoting the Bible: ‘Where there is no vision the people perish’.
Much of the news is very negative especially the appalling and disturbing reports from Gaza and many other places. These can leave us disheartened and largely hopeless. The concept of combining Quakerism with Socialism might make many Friends uncomfortable especially when socialism is often, mistakenly in my view, conflated with the repressive regimes of the former Soviet Union under Stalin or with Marx’s seemingly negative view of religion as the ‘opiate of the masses’. Socialism is a broad-ranging way of looking at the world and one which often seeks a fairer and more peaceful world. Socialism has been likened to ideas taught by Jesus.
I recognise that holding a vision can be dangerous, but also hopeful in helping us to find a meaning in life. George Fox’s vision of that of God in everyone means we are all essentially of one kind, whatever our background or skin colour. At Malton, in North Yorkshire, where I live, George Fox preached at the parish church in 1651 and had such an effect that soon a group of several hundreds calling themselves Quakers gathered in worship for several days on end and soon after decided to burn in the marketplace their items of expensive garments to protest at what they saw as the inequalities between rich and poor.
Quakers, I would contend, were practising what we would now call socialist principles from their beginning. Our Testimonies to Peace, Simplicity, Equality and Truth for me are those integral to Ethical Socialism. Quakerism offers to Socialism the way of peace as the way. Robert Owen, who first used the word ‘socialism’ in the 1820’s, is often credited with founding what has subsequently been termed ‘Utopian Socialism’. He said, ‘There is but one mode by which man can possess in perpetuity all the happiness which his nature is capable of enjoying, and that is by the union and cooperation of all for the benefit of each.’* Owen became known as the father of the Cooperative movement – that led to the formation of the Independent Labour Party and much of the trades union movement.
So I would contend that Socialism is much misunderstood and often deliberately maligned. I think that as a philosophy and practice it dovetails nicely with Jesus’s teaching ‘the first shall be last and the last first’, and points to a time when society is more equal and peaceful. The small Quaker Socialist Society has something to share creatively within Quakers and beyond. Echoing John Lennon, ‘You may say I’m a dreamer – but I’m not the only one’. Thank you’.
Discussion
The discussionbegan with Friends emphasising economic aspects of socialism as a cooperative movement where everyone equally owns the means of production and any profits from their work. Similarly, George Fox, guided by the inner Light, rejected hierarchies and embraced justice, honesty, anti-violence and pacifism. He also rejected ‘frivolities’ such as maypole dancing and theatres, but he did want compassionate conduct in all.
Socialism is rooted in Jesus’s teaching, all based on love as are the Quaker testimonies. We are all brothers and sisters. Quakers do not say enough about inequality. We should end percentage pay rises that constantly increase great and growing salary inequities, and instead have flat rate pay rises. If we called people stakeholders instead of shareholders that might make people more equal. We should replace the highly regressive tax system with a progressive one when the rich pay more, and we should use tax to recirculate national wealth.
An Attender who is a Marxist pacifist said we do not need either Quakerism or socialism. How can we not have both? Why do we need QSS? We all want peace, equality and love. How can we achieve them without socialism or Marxism? Quakers and socialism run hand in hand.
A Labour councillor spoke about massive changes in social housing. There used to be local pride in everyone’s right to a good home, welfare, and good health, before Thatcher destroyed that. Socialist Tony Benn thought that the properly run NHS was pure socialism, free for everyone with no discrimination. The councillor had a ‘run-in’ during a church sermon with a Vicar who said, ‘Communism will never work’, and he replied, ‘It’s never been tried!’ He believes more people should challenge the clergy.
One Friend regretted that the beautiful village she had enjoyed as a child 70 years ago is now an awful mess with neglected houses and gardens and closed-down shops. She had many years of school and university education, all free thanks to socialism even though it is a dirty word to many people. Another Friend enjoyed social housing in the 1960s and believes Christianity equals socialism, though he knows many disagree. A third Friend said the Quaker testimonies speak against capitalism. Austerity continues, he said, because ‘we tinker with the symptoms but don’t change the problems’ of the national economy. Marx’s edict, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ was seen by one Friend as a religious avowal, valuing the communal over the individual with hope for everyone. Although he thinks some Christian conservatives feel they are ‘isolated beacons of righteousness in a world of Sodom and Gomorrah’, they forget to prioritise community.
We were reminded that William Morris, the Victorian socialist (whose inspiring lectures can be read online), said it is not so much about ‘the what’ as about ‘the how’. We had heard about visions, but how can we achieve them, move the little grains of sand, even risk getting arrested for our work? How can we undermine the current greedy system and change things when there are so few Quakers and even fewer socialist Quakers in Britain? Ideas are great but we need people to act. What can we older people leave behind that is of lasting change and value – doing it more than talking about it?
A second Labour councillor recalled helping to create a large council estate in a very poor part of England, with games areas, a youth club, a Sure Start centre and other amenities to draw communities and generations together. Though he said his views on war and peace are not very socialist or Quakerly, his practical socialism was about getting elected and spending money to make positive changes.
An older Quaker said that though she was no longer active, ‘I’m with the protest marchers in spirit’. Like other speakers, she was less interested in theoretical faith than in being a Quaker ‘as a way of life. I live as a socialist.’ Quakers differ over whether to join loud marches or defend Quakerly silence, which the brave Friends who are being arrested for Palestine protests do.
One Friend thought the solemn, peaceful, powerful, loving, solidarity of the protest marches, everyone united in moving forward, though they are noisy, can feel like a gathered Meeting. Others said that socialism works through talking with people who have different views and don’t all have to agree. One said, ‘I try to have a Quakerish kind of life and a socialist kind of life. Neither of these groups I belong to knows I am a member of the other, and I laugh with each of them’.
Review of Slating Silence by David Morris, published by Journeymen Theatre Press 2025. [A version of this review appeared previously in the Friend of 01 August 2025.]
Quakers around the country know David Morris as one half of the Journeymen Theatre. Since 2012, he and Lynn Morris have been performing plays at Quaker Meeting-Houses, and no one who has witnessed Lover of Souls, or Red Flag over Bermondsey, will fail to remember the power of Lynn’s Elizabeth Hooton or her heart-rending, and triumphant, portrait of Ada Salter. Though Lynn and Dave have now announced their retirement from performance on the stage, the plays are still available as texts [see the panel on the left, Journeymen Theatre: Our Legacy Project], and in some cases as videos, for a future generation to rediscover and acclaim.
Less well known is David’s poetry – rugged, punchy and dark. An expert wordsmith, his lines are as tight-packed as Latin, and his sounds as alliterative as Anglo-Saxon. Some will find him too allusive. He does not write for the uninformed, and the notes at the end of SlatingSilence make reference, amongst others, to Bertolt Brecht, Bishop Bell, the Christadelphians, T.S. Eliot, Hugh MacDiarmid, John Milton, Michael Rosen, and William Shakespeare. Yet the density of his poetry is always spiced by tart humour, and by the passion of his Quaker spirituality.
David says Slating Silence is “a Quaker’s wrestle with hatred” and the opening sentence states his plangent theme:
“I was a Quaker once who
Relished the sublime simplicity
Of uninstructed faith
That there is That of God In everyone.”
But now, as he watches every day the massacre of women and children, thousand after thousand, he has felt his sublime simplicity slip away. It once was easy to believe there was that of God in everyone: “But now? Not so.” When an Israeli minister says, “Israel should find ways more painful than death for the Palestinians”, and when an Israeli MP says, “none in Gaza is innocent”, his faith falters. If there is God in them, it is not the God of love.
He knows Palestine well, he and Lynn visiting year after year. Before the raid in October 2023 (which was as understandable, he feels, as a Jewish attempt to break out of the Warsaw Ghetto) there were many similar massacres of Palestinians, though on a smaller scale. He himself had written as long ago as 2014, in a tone of exhaustion, bordering on boredom: “The harvest in Gaza again – the seed crop of child-life – all is safely gathered in plastic bags in bloody bits of children’s bodies.” What he wrote in 2014 could have been written yesterday.
But Slating Silence is chiefly “a Quaker’s wrestle with silence”. Not only has the presence of God in everyone become discredited but silence, that Quaker virtue, has become discredited too.
David is angered by the atrocities but even more so by the silence for over a year from the politicians, the mass media, the academics, and the bishops. He howls: “What’s this, a Quaker slating silence?! A Quaker hating?” In anguish he is driven to confess: “Yes, I hate their silence of nothing speak./ The silence of their nothing saids.”
The poem returns in the end to ‘something of God’, where it started. His Quakerism has been tested to breaking point – how can he believe there is something of God in everyone in the face of that 18-month silence by the powers-that-be?
He concludes he is “Quaker still” but fears, “the That of God in Everyone now but a postulate”. He is in despair: We live now in “a night of reason… The best that we can do is stay awake/ And learn to live with hate.” I disagree. All violence and evil have consequences and will rebound on the perpetrators in the future. Already there is the success of Zohran Mamdani, elected Mayor in New York. The old tactic of equating criticism of Israel with anti-semitism was deployed against him in America, as previously against Corbyn in Britain, but this time it did not work. Those children without arms and legs will grow up. And history will deliver its verdict in their favour.
[Note by David and Lynn Morris: If people would like a copy of Dave’s poetry book, they should contact us directly by email: lynnmorris32@yahoo.co.uk. We will send copies out postage and packing free. There is no charge for the book, but we would like recipients to donate £5 either to Medical Aid for Palestinians or to Oxfam’s Gaza Appeal. See their websites. ]
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