Quaker guidelines highlight differing views on antisemitism

Introduction by CAMPAIN

The British Quakers recently issued a a set of guidelines called Challenging Antisemitism

in which they seek to analyse antisemitism and its manifestation in British life of today, and equip people to combat it, or eliminate it from their own conduct.

The Quakers are one of the most interesting religious movements to emerge from the Protestant Reformation in England. They have always been a relatively small denomination but have a record of punching well above their weight in promoting social and political reform. Nowhere was this more evident than in the campaign against slavery where Quaker activism predated that of most other religious groups by many decades - see here.

Plaque to "Bushell's case" 1670, at the Old Bailey

We might also cite Quakers' historic role in a legal case of 1670 that upheld the principle of jury equity, a precedent of enormous relevance to Government's current attempts to diminish the scope for juries to acquit members of Palestine Action on grounds of conscience, when charged under the Terrorism Act 2000.

And let's not forget the Quaker's role in organising the Kindertransport that brought nearly 10,000 mainly Jewish children to the UK, to escape Nazi persecution in the 1930s.

Given this noble background we were happy to report that the Quakers were the first British church to assert that the Israeli government was committing genocide in Gaza. However the new antisemitism guide is a disappointment, as you will understand if you read the comments below from Priscilla Alderson, an active Quaker.

Pricscilla makes many points, notably that these guidelines:

• contain one-sided references.

• confuse instead of clarifying the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

• play down the importance of pro-Israel lobbying that shapes UK and US policy.

• fail to diagnose the causal factors and historical context behind Palestinian behaviour that it considers unacceptable.

• make unreasonable comparisons about pro-Palestinian protests to those over conflicts in Sudan and Myanmar.

• ignore legitimate criticism of the International Holocaust Memorial Association (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

• unreasonably treat the alternative Jerusalem definition as suspect in the eyes of Jews, as it is used mainly by politically left-wing groups. This seems a far-fetched proposition, given that the definition is not framed in left-right terms, and can appeal to people who are not left wing.

• seem to row back on a previous Quaker document (BMY Minute 30) that calls the war in Gaza genocide, while alluding to genocide six times in relation to the Holocaust.

• unreasonably exempt the Israeli public from any responsibility for genocide, despite massive public support for the genocidal policies of the Government of Israel.

  
  

Priscilla's account leaves one with the impression that some leading Quakers are reluctant to carry out the Society of Friends' historical mission of speaking truth to power.. Indeed she suggests they may be acting out of fear that Israel will close down the their valuable work with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme, which depends on Israel’s permission.

Notwithstanding this risk, she asks the Society to thoroughly revise the guide.

Comments on the Quaker Guidelines about Challenging Antisemitism

Written for the Quaker Socialist Society

Priscilla Alderson 7/02/26 - see the original at https://quakersocialists.org.uk/

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 (Quaker) 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 by the genocide. Some see Zionism as antisemitic, when it unfairly brings all Jews in the world into disrepute. Some object to Israel on theological grounds. The Guidelines add further problems by confusing 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 US policy, 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 they differ from repeated views of Quakers in Britain.

5. The Guidelines mention The ancestral home of the Jews, but not Palestinians’ historic right to the land, or that the UN has deemed the Zionist occupation of Palestine illegal, apartheid and genocide. Although the Guide states that it is about Jews in Britain, 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 the 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 war in Gaza and nearby Arab countries; Britian’s aid and education work in Palestine involves many close interpersonal international ties; we hope to alter specific UK government politics, 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 creating great problems. 
   

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, even collusion with lies that deny truths about how millions of Palestinians 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 Britain Yearly Meeting (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, according to Yuli Novak, Executive Director of B'Tselem, 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 Jews 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, and of 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 or fill in wells. The army has destroyed nearly 1 million of Gaza’s 1.1 million olive trees.
    

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.

Shaw, M. 2025. The New Age of Genocide: Intellectual and Political Challenges after Gaza. Agenda.

Shehadeh, R. 2024. What Does Israel Fear from Palestine? Profile.

Shlaim, A. 2025. Genocide in Gaza: Israel, Hamas, and the Long War on Palestine. Irish Pages Press.