As usual: the rabbi and the priest are both talking bollocks

After centuries of persecution various christian and jewish leaders have established a fairly elaborate facade of mutual love and respect. If you read the letters pages of the Times (or perhaps any other C of E read paper) you will see that this facade has been momentarily broken by that ridiculous man - the chief rabbi. In response to C of Es decision to divest from catterpillar, on account of the involvement of their products in the building of the apartheid wall the Chief Rabbi stated that 'The Church’s gesture will hurt Israelis and Jews without helping the Palestinians.'A fucking stupid thing to say which deserves no further comment

I was however disturbed by the response from general synod member, Paul Oestreicher that Tragically, Israel's policies feed it [anti-semitism] - and when world Jewry defends Israeli policies right or wrong, then anger turns not only against Israel, but against all Jews.

To be honest I thought the phrase 'world jewry' had gone out of fashion. I certainly did not think it was still acceptable to talk about 'world jewry' doing this wrong or that wrong as if we were homogeneous mass. Mr Oestreicher if he is enlightened enough to engage with secular thought would not have to look very far within the Palestine solidarity movement or even within contemporary commentary to find elements of 'world jewry' that do not suppport Israel full stop.

I suppose expecting religious leaders not to say stupid thingss is like expecting the royals to lead the revolution.