Great teachers
Thank you, Daniel Clarke Flynn, for this article (‘Thought for the week’, 25 October). It ‘speaks to my condition’ and helps me with the language of faith. I can call ‘the greater wisdom’ the ‘Holy Spirit’ without unease.
We can be thankful for the great religious teachers throughout the centuries for helping us to be in touch with the ‘greater wisdom’.
From Socrates to the Buddha to Jesus, Spinoza to George Fox, to William James to Carlo Ravelli, to name some of those who have helped me be in touch with that wisdom.
Kate Allen
'Principled impartiality'
I am saddened that there are still Friends such as Tim Robertson (18 October) who feel that Britain Yearly Meeting can be seen as antisemitic in singling out Israel for criticism over its harrowing and largely one-sidedly destructive actions in Gaza and all over the Middle East.
Tim’s position seems to be that we must give equal weight to all similar situations if we are to avoid the label of antisemitism in relation to Israel. This is an unreal position. None of us gives equal weight to all similar conflicts. Historical and current connections to the conflict are always in play and understandably so. I was more outraged by the French military response to the Algerian independence struggle than most British citizens because I was a French teacher. In the case of Israel and Palestine it is partly because we are responsible through the Balfour declaration. But far more because it is western powers, including the UK, that have in effect granted Israel carte blanche to do whatever it wants, led by the US.
That impunity has created the disaster – for the people of Palestine and Lebanon, for the standing of the western powers, now exposed to a justified critique of their hypocrisy in relation to violations of international law, and to Jewish people of Israel who will have suffered generational damage from not only the direct experience of the effects of the appalling violence but also from the moral and spiritual shrivelling and distortion that arises from hearts closed to empathy.
So, I am profoundly grateful for the statements of Britain Yearly Meeting. I would go further, however. Nothing can justify what we have witnessed. We should be outraged. And we should not take refuge from the truth in our sensitivity to our many Jewish Quaker Friends, as I believe may be true of some local Quaker response or silence.
Jonathan Dale
