A Letter to the Church Times

Sir,
 
There was cause for both hope and despair in Church Times articles this week.

You gave Irene Lancaster space to inform your readers about the place of Zionism in Judaism.  Whilst Eretz Israel is not important to all Jews, Anglicans need to show much more awareness of the importance of the covenant promises about the Land of Israel, cherished over centuries of exile, to the faith of religious Jews.  Her article makes a significant contribution to that awareness.

However, Giles Fraser’s comments elicited a sigh of despair.  Talking to Hamas is simply not like talking to the IRA. Only last week, Osama Hamdan, a Hamas leader based in Lebanon, said in an interview on Al-Kawthar TV that there were no Jews living in Palestine prior to 1917: that people who moved to Israel since 1917 were not Jews at all: and that Israel should prevent members of the public from using public transport so that they won’t be blown up when terrorists target members of the IDF travelling on Israeli buses.  Presumably they should not use restaurants, nightclubs or markets either, on the same principle.

Hamdan ended his farrago of untruth and hatred with “The final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity (ie Israel) off the face of the Earth.”

When will Giles Fraser and others who put forward similar opinions, pay Hamas spokesmen the compliment of believing what they say, and accept that we should not be talking to governments who threaten their neighbours with annihilation, however they got into power?

Yours sincerely

Frances Waddams
Anglican Friends of Israel