Bishop questions attack by Chief Rabbi over disinvestment decision
-19/02/06
A bishop h
Bishop questions attack by Chief Rabbi over disinvestment decision
-19/02/06
A bishop has defended the Church’s decision to review investment in companies used by Israel in the occupied territories, and called into question an attack on the decision by the Chief Rabbi.
The Church of England Synod voted to review its £2.5m investment in Caterpillar, a bulldozer manufacturer.
Christian campaigners say the company’s bulldozers, in particular the D9 “armoured” version, have been used to flatten 12,000 Palestinian homes, and killed the US peace activist Rachel Corrie.
But Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, criticised the synod’s decision as ill-judged along with other Jewish leaders.
In unusually harsh language, Dr Sacks called into question the Jewish community’s links with the church in a 1,500-word article in the Jewish Chronicle.
Dr Williams wrote to the Chief Rabbi to insist that the vote did not represent a boycott or question Israel’s right to exist or to self-defence.
But now Bishop of Hulme, Stephen Lowe, has said there had been an over-reaction to the decision by the Church.
The Bishop of Hulme questioned Sir Jonathan Sacksís argument that Israel needed support, not calling to account.
He said Sir Jonathan had over-reacted to criticism of Israel.
“I found the reaction to the debate in which I sat in the General Synod a little bit over the top.
“I do find it difficult that if you criticise anything to do with the Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians one is accused of anti-Semitism.
“I think that’s actually wrong.”
The Bishop has been joined by another Anglican who is a leading member of the church’s peace and reconciliation movement
Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Canon Paul Oestreicher, who lost his Jewish grandmother in the Holocaust and was a refugee from Nazi Germany, says Jewish groups are engaging in moral blackmail in raising the issue of anti-semitism against critics of the Israeli government.
He writes: “The main objective of my writing today is to nail the lie that to reject Zionism as it is practised today is in effect to be anti-semitic, to be an inheritor of Hitler’s racism. That argument, with the Holocaust in the background, is nothing other than moral blackmail.
Bishop questions attack by Chief Rabbi over disinvestment decision
-19/02/06
A bishop has defended the Church’s decision to review investment in companies used by Israel in the occupied territories, and called into question an attack on the decision by the Chief Rabbi.
The Church of England Synod voted to review its £2.5m investment in Caterpillar, a bulldozer manufacturer.
Christian campaigners say the company’s bulldozers, in particular the D9 “armoured” version, have been used to flatten 12,000 Palestinian homes, and killed the US peace activist Rachel Corrie.
But Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, criticised the synod’s decision as ill-judged along with other Jewish leaders.
In unusually harsh language, Dr Sacks called into question the Jewish community’s links with the church in a 1,500-word article in the Jewish Chronicle.
Dr Williams wrote to the Chief Rabbi to insist that the vote did not represent a boycott or question Israel’s right to exist or to self-defence.
But now Bishop of Hulme, Stephen Lowe, has said there had been an over-reaction to the decision by the Church.
The Bishop of Hulme questioned Sir Jonathan Sacks’s argument that Israel needed support, not calling to account.
He said Sir Jonathan had over-reacted to criticism of Israel.
“I found the reaction to the debate in which I sat in the General Synod a little bit over the top.
“I do find it difficult that if you criticise anything to do with the Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians one is accused of anti-Semitism.
“I think that’s actually wrong.”
The Bishop has been joined by another Anglican who is a leading member of the church’s peace and reconciliation movement
Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Canon Paul Oestreicher, who lost his Jewish grandmother in the Holocaust and was a refugee from Nazi Germany, says Jewish groups are engaging in moral blackmail in raising the issue of anti-semitism against critics of the Israeli government.
He writes: “The main objective of my writing today is to nail the lie that to reject Zionism as it is practised today is in effect to be anti-semitic, to be an inheritor of Hitler’s racism. That argument, with the Holocaust in the background, is nothing other than moral blackmail.