Church's shame

So now we know where we stand.

As far as the Church of England is concerned, the opinions of the Jewish community - its fears, its concerns and even its hopes - count for nothing. As Vivian Wineman rightly put it after Monday's vote, the Church has simply ridden roughshod over us. Synod's vote to endorse the grotesquely partisan EAPPI shows that it holds decades of interfaith work in contempt.

It has metaphorically stuck two fingers up to the Chief Rabbi and to the Board of Deputies - indeed to the entire community. Quite how those who voted for the motion expect to be able to carry on relations with Jews as if nothing was amiss is a mystery. In that context, the president of the Board of Deputies deserves credit for responding with a statement which makes no attempt to smooth over the damage that the Synod's actions have done to relations between Jews and the Church of England. He has told it exactly as it is - antisemitic overtones and all.

Because no one should be in any doubt about what is going on here. A debate about Israel in which speakers refer to "powerful lobbies", the money supposedly spent by Jews on lobbying, "Jewish sounding names" and the actions of Jews "bringing shame on the memory of victims of the Holocaust" is not a debate about Israel. It is a debate about Jews.