Dear Interfaith Leaders

I read your statement, released on 9 Oct 2026 by the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, with interest and growing disbelief. 

You criticise the Green Party for passing the motion that ‘Zionism is Racism’, although you do not refute it, and instead criticise the motives of the proposers by making the very serious accusation that the motion, and by association the Greens, is ‘antisemitic in its formulation and intention’. You offer no proof of that assertion either, and the implication that all Jews are Zionists is itself an antisemitic trope. A brief tour d’horizon of Jewish opinion would show you that many Jews – albeit ‘the wrong kind’ – are staunchly anti-Zionist and believe, on the evidence of its practice, that it is a racist ideology. One of the proposers of the motion was Holocaust survivor Steven Kapos

But before we get into that, I would like to alert you to some facts that have apparently escaped your attention.  You refer to:

1. ‘…the realities of the Hamas led pogrom of 7 October 2023, including the rape and murder of Israeli civilians’.  Apart from the egregious use of the term ‘pogrom’ which applies specifically to attacks on Jews qua Jews, whereas this was a retaliation by an oppressed and occupied people against their oppressors – the fact that their oppressors are Jewish is incidental – the ‘realities’ of the attack on Oct 7 bear no resemblance to your description. Hamas have always denied rape, their treatment of their hostages would seem to support that, and no credible victims have been discovered in the three years since the event. The ‘beheaded babies’ story has been thoroughly debunked. As for the death toll, many of those killed died under friendly fire, as the IDF were told to implement the Hannibal Directive, which tells them to kill Israelis to stop them being taken into captivity. All of this is well documented.
2. ‘…the casual and repeated claim of “genocide”. Repeated? Certainly. Casual? Absolutely not. There are a number of world authorities on genocide, including an Israeli professor, who agree that it is the correct technical term for what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. It’s not a casual slur it’s a very serious accusation and many of us look forward to seeing its perpetrators in the ICC.
3. I cannot comment on Kairos II but it seems to me a step in the right direction for a Church that had been led down the anti-Corbyn Zionist garden path by the previous Cantuar.
4. The idea that Pro-Palestinian demonstrations pass close to prominent synagogues is a
5. canard invented by the Metropolitan Police to excuse the banning of certain marches. They do not and never have. 
6. ‘.. the succession of attacks and alleged plots directed at Jewish communities in Manchester and London’… The key words here is ‘alleged’. The attack on the synagogue in Manchester was a dreadful event, but it was an isolated incident. The arson attacks on the ambulances have never been adequately explained. The four accused have pled guilty but deny terrorism and will be sentenced next year. According to the BBC, MI6 thought Iran might be involved, so it is premature to designate it as an antisemitic attack. As for ‘the stabbing of two visibly Jewish men in Golders Green’ you forget to mention the first person the attacker stabbed, a Muslim gentleman whom he met just before he stabbed the Jews. The perpetrator had been recently released from a mental health ward, so probably not an antisemitic attack at all.

In all of these examples you cite the trauma, pain, and deep sense of insecurity suffered by Jews in London and elsewhere. I can introduce you to a group of more than a thousand ‘Jewish Londoners’ who march in the Jewish Bloc on Palestine marches and don’t feel any of those things, except on behalf of their Palestinian brothers and sisters. There is a similar bloc in Manchester connected to Jewish Voice For Liberation. 

It is glib and antisemitic to imply Jews form a monolithic political entity, as much as the Board of Deputies would like us to believe it. And, as avowed Christians I would like to know why you think it appropriate to privilege the feelings of a proportion of British Jewry over those of British Palestinians whose relatives are being displaced and murdered on a daily basis by the IDF.

Regarding the Greens motion, you go on to say ‘It dismisses as inherently racist the idea of Zionism, that … expresses the centuries-old longing for safety, home … woven through Jewish history, prayer……’ Much as you may wish to believe that Zionism is a centuries old romantic longing, and that Jews have a right to self-determination, that did not and does not justify them exercising that right on someone else’s land. Don’t the Palestinians have a right to self-determination too? I would be interested to know how you justify what is by definition a settler colonial movement, conjured in 1920 from the 1917 Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate for Palestine, which did and is doing to the Palestinians exactly what we did to the Native Americans and the Australian Aborigines. 

You continue, ‘and therefore immediately ostracises religious Jews in the Green Party … ‘ It does nothing of the kind. Jewish Greens are welcome to stay in the party and fight their political corner. Because that is what Zionism is, a political ideology, which in practice has, since 1920, led to the persecution, displacement and murder of the Palestinian population in the attempt to create a pure Jewish ethnocracy on the Palestinians’ land. That is why it is racist. 

The statement you have issued is a farrago of ahistorical fabrication, deliberate misinterpretation and lies. It does you no credit. Whoever drafted it for you; and I don’t think we have to look far from the various organisations that police ‘antisemitism’ here, they have taken you all for the uninformed do-gooders you appear to be. You have been co-opted to the Israeli propaganda machine.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Greens demand an apology. I certainly want one. The Church has no business weighing in on the side of the oppressor. What would Jesus have said? Or, more importantly, done?

Chris Wallis is a retired BBC Radio Drama Producer who spent Covid studying the Balfour Declaration and is currently researching the life of Captain Sir Mark Syk