Dear Archbishop Cottrell,
We have read your report in Church Times with great interest and with genuine appreciation. As organisations bringing together thousands of UK Anti-Zionists (many of whom are Jews; indeed some are Holocaust survivors and their descendents) who support Palestinians under Israel’s brutal occupation, we greatly appreciate your commitment to human rights and your stance against the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Many Jews supported CAMPAIN’s unanswered request to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury. Since 2023, we have been writing to the Church, leafleting the Synods and carrying out vigils outside Westminster Abbey and Lambeth Palace, hoping and praying it would oppose Israel’s conduct and British support for it. We had almost lost hope of any constructive engagement, so particularly appreciate your unprecedented statement. Would you now consider arranging such a meeting?
We realise that you refrained from calling the Israeli action ‘genocide’, preferring to use the more cautious phrase ‘genocidal acts’. However, there is no reason for such restraint. The crime of genocide, as defined in Article II of the 1948 Convention, consists of acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such. The standard objection that we have heard against defining Israel’s action in Gaza as “genocide” – that Israel had the military capacity to kill far more people in Gaza than it has – is simply a moot point as maximising the number of immediate deaths forms no part of the formal definition of genocide. This term was used by 800 academic experts a short while after the destruction started, in their report of October 17, 2023, calling it, even at this early stage, ‘potential genocide’. Even Jewish and Israeli genocide scholars, such as Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg, who were initially reluctant to define what Israel is doing as genocide, have long since concluded that its actions more than meet the definition.
We especially value your visit to the scene of recent crimes in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers and soldiers commit numerous and shocking crimes daily, including the destruction of whole communities, the burning and stealing of olive trees, destruction of harvests and agricultural machinery, homes and plant, let alone the wanton murder and injury to men, women and children in widespread pogroms. The destruction of mosques, churches, medical facilities and homes has become normalised, along with the bombing and demolition of schools and colleges in a deliberate effort to prevent an entire generation of Palestinians from receiving an education. In most cases, even murders are not investigated, though many have been recorded by Palestinians, and the accused remain free to repeat their crimes. No Palestinian is safe from these attacks, whether in Gaza or the West Bank, and they feel doubly vulnerable, as most religious leaders of both Islam and Christianity remain unacceptably silent, not to mention rabbis in Europe and the US, who sometimes even blame courageous and committed critics of Israel; as was the case in the UK where the Chief Rabbi had the temerity to call such critics “irresponsible”. We strongly condemn such accusations as there is little Jewish about Israel’s crimes – two millennia of life in the diaspora has not supported such behaviour by Jews against other humans, and it is against the fundamental tenets of Judaism. The support offered to Israeli crimes by Jewish Zionist organisations is not only illegal and highly embarrassing but will put the lives of British Jews in jeopardy as it is likely to encourage antisemitism. Indeed, Israel itself is closely related to many antisemitic leaders in Europe and never calls them “irresponsible”.
We hope you shall not be cowered by such voices as that of the Chief Rabbi, and continue to voice your moral disdain about the crimes against Palestinians, committed falsely and dangerously in the name of Jews everywhere. There is little Jewish about Israeli Zionism.
As requested above, we would welcome a meeting with you to thank you in person for your courage and devotion for human rights and to discuss practical future collaboration to promote a just peace.
Yours sincerely, David Cannon, Chair of Jewish Network for Palestine
Endorsed by; IJAN, CAMPAIN, JVL, Convivencia and ODS UK
