The Church of England sanctifies anti-Zionism

The Church of England’s General Synod has managed to turn “hearing all sides” into an ecclesiastical form of putting Israel on trial. Its July 13 vote to engage with Kairos Palestine II gives institutional standing to a document whose treatment of Zionism, Israel and Jewish history is so tendentious that calling it theology feels charitable.

The procedural defence has already been prepared. The synod did not formally “endorse” Kairos II. The original motion asked the Church to “receive” it; an amendment substituted the softer verb “hear.” The final resolution described Kairos II and three earlier Palestinian Christian declarations as “heartfelt expressions of the lived experience of Palestinian Christians.” It encouraged every level of the Church to engage with them, called for a review of Church investments connected with the “occupied Palestinian territories” and asked Church financial bodies to report on their policies. The motion passed comfortably in all three houses: bishops voted 25–0, clergy 115–20 and laity 113–27, with abstentions in each.

“Hear,” however, is doing the work of a cathedral buttress. Institutions confer legitimacy through attention, circulation and solemn debate as much as through formal assent. The synod selected these declarations, placed them within an official moral framework and instructed the Church to engage with them. A disclaimer that agreement is unnecessary hardly removes the imprimatur. The Archbishop of Canterbury herself supported the motion while explaining that hearing Palestinian Christians did not entail accepting everything in the documents. That distinction may soothe the minutes; it will travel less successfully through public discourse.

Kairos II, formally A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide, was issued by Kairos Palestine in 2025. It portrays the Gaza war as the continuation of a Zionist design to seize Palestine and remove its people. Zionism appears in its pages as a settler-colonial enterprise grounded in racism and Jewish supremacy. The text challenges prevailing definitions of antisemitism, treats the atrocities of October 7 through a narrative of prior Palestinian oppression and calls for the exclusion of Zionist voices from certain forms of dialogue. The Board of Deputies of British Jews warned the synod that the document assails Jewish identity and historical experience while jeopardising decades of Jewish–Christian relations.

A Zionist can acknowledge Palestinian suffering without accepting this indictment. Zionism arose from the Jewish people’s ancient attachment to their land and the modern necessity of political self-determination after centuries of persecution. Jews who fled European and Middle Eastern antisemitism did not become foreign interlopers merely because Kairos II requires a cleaner morality play. Israel’s conduct remains open to criticism. Jewish nationhood cannot be reduced to an original sin.

The Church should understand this with particular clarity. Christian institutions spent centuries teaching Europe to view Jews as spiritually corrupt, collectively guilty and fit for marginalisation. Political theology repeatedly supplied moral language for exclusion. Kairos II offers a contemporary variation: Jewish collective sovereignty becomes uniquely illegitimate, Jewish historical memory becomes an alibi, and Jewish fears become obstacles to the preferred narrative. The synod’s declarations against antisemitism cannot neutralise that architecture. A warning label does not purify the contents.

The motion also reveals a peculiar economy of compassion. Palestinian testimony is elevated as lived experience; Jewish objections are acknowledged as concerns. One receives ecclesiastical amplification, the other pastoral reassurance. Such asymmetry rewards maximalism. Palestinian Christians deserve to be heard in their grief and fear, but solidarity does not require treating their political theology as authoritative. Listening carries no duty to suspend judgement.

Antisemitism often advances through precisely this respectable vocabulary. It seldom announces hostility to Jews. It speaks of justice, decolonisation and human rights, then constructs an account in which the Jewish state alone has no legitimate birth, no defensible national character and no history preceding its alleged colonial crime. European anti-Zionism has learnt to pronounce anathema in the language of human rights.

The General Synod wanted to hear a cry from Palestine. It ended up lending the Church’s acoustics to an accusation against Jewish nationhood. Now it seemes surprised that Israel noticed.