Scottish Jews have cautiously welcomed the Church of Scotland’s decision at its annual General Assembly to reject the BDS campaign targeting Israel, as well as its rebuke of Hamas over the group’s continuing denial of the Jewish state’s right to exist. The decisions were approved despite searing condemnations of Israel made by many speakers at the assembly.
Long-regarded as a stronghold of anti-Zionist activism, the Church has come in for heavy criticism from British Jews in recent years over its uncompromising stance on Israel. But at this year’s Assembly, an amendment to a resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was successfully passed that expressed the Church’s “deep concern in regard to Hamas’s continued declaration…that Israel does not have the right to exist.”