York Synod, Sunday 12th July

CAMPAIN's Lambeth Witness Group (LWG) has long been seeking to persuade the established Church to take a robust stance vis-a-vis Israel's ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Palestinians.

The Church's two Archbishops, Mullally of Canterbury, and Cottrell of York, are now shaping up to the challenge, and for the first time the Synod will be debating a motion asking the Church as a whole to stand with Palestine. In particular, it asks the Church to engage with the challenges faced by Palestinian Christians, similar to those faced by the Muslim majority. The Lambeth Witness Group will be leafletiing them with this message.

You can join us outside the Minster at 12.15 pm and later at the University of York where the Synod is taking place, to express our thanks and warm support. The contact person is Sharen Green whom you can call on 07816 962345.

Britain's Israel lobby is furious that the motion is being debated. Ephraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogues has taken extreme exception to the fact that the motion asks the Church to formally receive and engage with a bunch of documents including one entitled a Moment of Truth in the Time of Genocide, known as Kairos II after the Kairos Palestine group that produced it. It states that:

The genocidal war on Gaza is the continuation of the Zionist project to seize all of Palestine emptied of its Palestinian people .... This genocide has been carried out by Israel after decades of apartheid, settler colonial and (political) repression.

For further information please see this article.

For long, and particularly in the time of Archbishop Welby, Rabbi Mirvis has been able to count on a compliant Church of England that prioritised above all else harmonious relations with members of the Jewish Establishment - notably Rabbi Mirvis. This consensus is crumbling under his feet and anti-Zionist Jews question his authority to speak for most British Jews. This is well expressed in the leaflet (below) that we shall also be handing out in York.

The motion will be debated on the University of York campus on Sunday 12th July, at 8 pm We dearly hope the Synod will endorse the motion without amendments, and that it will act on Kairos II. Some delegates will object that is is antisemitic or that it not even handed, ignoring the violence of Hamas....... Such arguments abound among Anglicans who overlook the fact that Hamas (born in 1989) grew out of Israel's dispossession and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948 and since 1967. We hope that Anglicans will focus on this underlying cause and not be swayed by special pleading for the Israeli side.