Church of England leaders must do more to support British Jews

Lord Toby Young’s powerful speech in London in support of British Jews sets an example for the Church of England. The leaders of the established Church should be way more vocal in speaking out against the rising tide of hatred against Britain’s 270,000 Jews.

The Free Speech Union founder was speaking on the Campaign Against Antisemitism protest opposite Downing Street on April 30. This was the day after the stabbings of two Jewish men in Golders Green, north London.

He said: “I would like you to assume what Britain would appear like without British Jews. What sort of country would we be if Jews had not been tolerated in Britain because the mid-Seventeenth Century and fully emancipated because the mid-Nineteenth Century? … Well, for one thing, there probably wouldn’t be a Labour Party.

“Jewish trade union organisers in London, Leeds and Manchester played a pivotal role within the creation of the party – the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906 lists 39 Jewish unions arrange between 1882 and 1902 – and left-wing Jewish intellectuals like Harold Laski and Ralph Milliband provided the party with its conscience.”

He continued: “Without Benjamin Disraeli, that great radical Prime Minister who passed the 1867 Reform Act, we may not have a Conservative Party either.”

He then addressed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer directly: “Prime Minister, has there ever been a non secular or racial minority within the history of those islands who’ve contributed a lot to our national life, who’ve been so public spirited, so desperate to contribute, so pleased to serve?”

Young concluded his speech by telling Starmer: “We only must imagine how much poorer our country would have been without the contributions of British Jews over the past 200 years to understand just how much poorer we might be without them in the long run.

“Prime Minister, we’d like to guard this precious, vital, patriotic minority. For over 200 years they’ve shown us in so some ways how much they love our country. If we would like them to remain, it’s time for us to indicate how much we love them.”

Indeed. And considered one of the ways to support British Jews is to combat the lie that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. That lie incites hatred against all Jews.

As Jewish Chronicle and Times columnist Melanie Phillips told Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, accusing Israel of committing genocide “is inciting hatred because if persons are committing genocide you have got to destroy them”.

Last November, in an interview with the Church Times, the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, accused the Israeli government of committing “genocidal acts” in Gaza.

This was a dangerous misrepresentation as Lord Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology on the University of Oxford, has identified: 

“In waging war against the genocidally racist empire of the Nazis, the Allies killed about 70,000 French civilians and an extra 60-80,000 non-combatant Italians. They didn’t need to cause those deaths, however the urgent necessity of overcoming the Nazi enemy and the available military technique of doing so meant that civilian casualties on a big scale were, tragically, unavoidable. 

“The same could well be true of the Israeli Defence Force’s prosecution of the war against Hamas, which, judging by its constitutional determination to destroy Israel and the sadistically atrocious character of the massacre of October 7, 2023, really is ‘genocidal’.

“Indeed, the undeniable fact that Israel has permitted aid to civilians in any respect, and that the IDF customarily warns them of impending military motion, is unquestionably clear evidence that total, ‘genocidal’ extermination is just not its aim.”

Biggar, who can be an Anglican priest, concluded: “I currently consider Israel’s recent military operations to have been ‘disproportionate’. Nevertheless, it was not appropriate for the archbishop to explain them as ‘genocidal’. It was also very unwise. The excessive charge of Israeli ‘genocide’ has been used to justify the no-holds-barred, atrocious, sadistic horrors of October 7. 

“And the enthusiastic recourse to it of too many stinks of antisemitic prejudice. Add to that the history of antisemitism within the Christian church itself, and the Archbishop of York must have been much, way more cautious.”

Will the leadership of the Church of England now do its best to be sure that British Jews are usually not being swept up in a tide of hatred resulting from a false accusation of genocide against Israel?

Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.