Letters - 17 October 2025
From enough hate speech to flag waving
Enough hate speech
I presume Simon Risley’s letter (3 October) was intended as a squib in the spirit of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. But then I got to the phrase ‘chosen people’. In other words, Jews. All Jews. Swift’s savagery was motivated by compassion. What motivated Simon? I don’t know where he got his (inflated or outdated) figure of eighty-nine per cent, but I don’t think he actually has much idea what is going on in Israel, or what is going through the minds of ordinary Jews wherever they live. He certainly seems unaware that, despite all the lying propaganda, intimidation, beatings and bans, tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis have been demonstrating repeatedly for an end to the slaughter.
I read this letter on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) while joining many other Jews fasting in solidarity with Gazans, and in anguish and shame at what is being done in our name to the Palestinian people. The timing of publication could hardly have been more insensitive, even without taking into account the murderous attack in Manchester. Like Eric Walker, I sometimes wonder whether the editors of the Friend apply any filter at all to the letters they receive. Frankly, I am very tired of reading these aggressive and disrespectful letters, whether the target is Jews, trans people or Britain Yearly Meeting staff and committee members. Isn’t there enough hate speech without Quakers joining in? What impression does this give of the Quaker community? I’m not suggesting censorship, only urging a return to ‘in all things charity’. As John Myhill put it, on the same letters page: ‘We seek the common ground, especially with those who seem to disagree with us most.’ Hope so.
Stevie Krayer
Saviour complex?
Today was the day I realised that the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers in Britain) is really, truly, actually antisemitic. I no longer accept it is only a critic of the Israeli government and military but that, in the wake of the Heaton Park attack, and continued support for proscribed organisations and other charities that act as a front, it is deeply and obsessively focused on Palestinians solely as helpless victims.
To me, with fresh eyes, it looks like nothing less than a saviour complex.
Emma Roberts
