UK: Slaughter in the synagogue is just politics as usual. That is the characteristic deficiency and true failure of the international community.

There is a perception, if not a widespread understanding, that anything to do with Jews and everything to do with Israel is acutely political. Throughout its recorded history and deeply divided textual historicity, questions of critical substance, reliability, ideology and theology abound. They may be reviewed, redacted, reformed or reaffirmed, but whichever way the Chosen People and the Promised Land are configured, theology becomes politics and politics is theological. You put a bunch of Jews in a synagogue in Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel, and the business of shul becomes a political process because Israel’s existence and Jerusalem’s status are problems awaiting international resolution. Their slaughter is tragic, but it may be construed as a justifiable political act by the oppressed people of Palestine because Israel cannot be conceived apart from its self-belief: there is no Israeli politics apart from its defining theological self-presentation.

Hence the tweets from Liberal Democrat MP David Ward and, for the Conservatives, Baroness Warsi. “Attack by #Palestinians in Jerusalem sickening madness – driven to madness by failure of international community to deal with Israel,” says Ward. “Israeli extremists storm Al Aqsa & intimidate worshippers Palestinian extremists storm synagogue & kill 4 worshippers #Tragic #peacenotwar,” says Warsi, then taking a swipe at Tory Chairman Grant Shapps for his hypocrisy.

It is quite astonishing moral turpitude to equate a blatant act of terrorism against worshipping Jews with Israeli national self-preservation. It is sickening indeed that the Palestinian “madness” is excused on the grounds of international indifference and the “failure..to deal with Israel”. Deal how? Do what? On what legal basis? With what equitable moral justification? [...]

To slaughter praying Jews in their shul for no other reason than that they are Jews praying in their shul is not a madness which can be blamed on the indolence of the international community. Nor is it equivalent to any protest made on Temple Mount. It is an insufferable act of evil of the subversive sort to which Israel has long been accustomed, and Jews have chronically endured. Slaughter in the synagogue is just politics as usual. That is the characteristic deficiency and true failure of the international community.

More: Archbishop Cranmer blog