{"id":768298,"date":"2026-09-12T11:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T11:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/768298\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T11:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T11:54:11","slug":"christian-charities-bishops-team-up-with-british-government-to-push-israel-sanctions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/768298\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Charities, Bishops Team Up with British Government to Push Israel Sanctions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leading Christian nonprofits, known for their anti-Israel advocacy, have applauded Britain\u2019s sanctions against Israel, after lobbying the Labour government for almost two years to punish the Jewish state for<\/a> its \u201clong-standing violations of international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hours after Britain\u2019s Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced<\/a> sanctions against Israel on September 8, 2026, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development<\/a> (CAFOD) and Christian Aid<\/a> released statements welcoming the penalties.<\/p>\n

Christian Aid, which identifies<\/a> itself as \u201cthe official relief, development and advocacy agency of 41 sponsoring churches<\/a> in Britain and Ireland, and part of the church community worldwide,\u201d praised<\/a> the \u201cban on importing goods from illegal Israeli settlements as an important step in confronting the forcible displacement of Palestinians from their land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking in the House of Lords, [Archbishop of York Stephen] Cottrell, England\u2019s second-most senior bishop, noted that \u201cfurther measures\u201d may be needed against Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new policy measures, highlighting the illegality of the occupation and pledging firm action against those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements, mark an encouraging step-change by Andy Burnham\u2019s government,\u201d CAFOD, the \u201cofficial<\/a> aid agency of the Catholic Church in England and Wales and part of Caritas International,\u201d said<\/a> in its news release.<\/p>\n

While Chief Rabbi Efraim Mirvis condemned<\/a> the sanctions as a \u201cdark day for British Jews,\u201d prominent Anglican bishops, including Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, Bishop of Gloucester Rachel Treweek, and Bishop of Chelmsford Guli Francis-Dehqani, joined the Islamist-linked<\/a> Muslim Council of Britain in commending the sanctions.<\/p>\n

Speaking in the House of Lords, Cottrell, England\u2019s second-most senior bishop, noted<\/a> that \u201cfurther measures\u201d may be needed against Israel. \u201cWe\u2019ve called for such principled action over many years,\u201d he said. \u201cWe believe these measures are just necessary and frankly overdue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treweek called<\/a> Miliband\u2019s statement \u201cbrave and courageous,\u201d noting that his \u201cstrong words lay out clear action, which is neither binary nor zero-sum, and reflect God\u2019s justice, love and mercy.\u201d Francis-Dehqani urged<\/a> the government to implement sanctions with \u201cnecessary urgency\u201d alongside \u201can assessment of additional measures\u201d to deter Israel\u2019s E1 settlement project.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Canterbury<\/p>\n

Canterbury Cathedral, part of the Church of England.<\/p>\n

The Church of England and the Christian nonprofits, which operate globally, have a track record of activism against the Jewish state.<\/p>\n

In July 2026, the Church of England\u2019s General Synod approved<\/a> Kairos II, a Palestinian manifesto condemning Israel as a Jewish supremacist state and defending Hamas\u2019s October 7, 2023, massacre as the consequence of Israeli occupation.<\/p>\n

Just before the Synod vote, Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally sparked<\/a> controversy after championing<\/a> anti-Israel activists linked to terrorist organizations and praising their \u201cfaithful resistance<\/a>\u201d on her pilgrimage to the Holy Land from June 19\u201324, 2026.<\/p>\n

Christian Aid and CAFOD have lobbied the government for sanctions against Israel over the past two years. In September 2024, both charities signed<\/a> a letter to the Business and Trade Secretary calling for urgent review of trade relations with Israel.<\/p>\n

In September 2025, both charities published a report<\/a> titled \u201cTrading with Illegal Settlements: How Foreign States and Corporations Enable Israel\u2019s Illegal Settlement Enterprise.\u201d It called<\/a> for laws banning all trade, investments, and services \u201cwith businesses that are based in or operate from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January 2025, Christian Aid urged<\/a> the United Kingdom to \u201cchallenge the occupation,\u201d including \u201ca ban on any trade and investment with Israeli Settlements.\u201d In February 2025, it submitted<\/a> seven pages of evidence to the United Kingdom\u2019s Foreign Affairs Committee, demanding a review of the British-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement, \u201cin response to Israel\u2019s internationally wrongful acts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201csustained demonization\u201d of these nonprofits \u201cis central in moving the discourse on settlement trade from the margins into parliamentary proceedings and government policy discussions,\u201d NGO Monitor stated<\/a> in a report published on September 8, 2026. <\/p>\n

The success of these nongovernmental organizations in colluding with the government to sanction the Jewish state also demonstrates their influence on London policymaking regarding Israel and their affinity with the Labour Party.<\/p>\n

There is no record of the Anglican bishops, CAFOD, or Christian Aid calling for sanctions against other nations committing human rights abuses.<\/p>\n

NGO Monitor reports link<\/a> Christian Aid funding for the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which has close ties to the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, founded by George Habash, whom Time christened<\/a> \u201cTerrorism\u2019s Christian Godfather.\u201d <\/p>\n

Similarly, CAFOD has provided grants to several \u201chighly biased and politicized NGOs active in the Arab-Israeli conflict,\u201d including Islamic Relief Worldwide<\/a>, a charity that the United Arab Emirates included in its list<\/a> of designated terrorist entities in 2014.<\/p>\n

There is no record of the Anglican bishops, CAFOD, or Christian Aid calling for sanctions against other nations committing human rights abuses, including India and China, whose government and legislation targets Christians, or Nigeria and Sudan, where jihadi massacres of Christians increase.<\/p>\n

In response to the sanctions, Anglican theologian Ian Paul compiled a list of 17 countries, noting that \u201cthe US State Department\u2019s country-report system<\/a>\u201d documents human rights issues from Egypt to Bangladesh. \u201cNot only are we not thinking about pursuing sanctions on any of these countries, [but] we are seeking to develop appeasing relations with them,\u201d even though Israel is \u201cthe only democracy in the region, and the only one which gives full democratic rights to its minorities,\u201d including Arabs, women, and sexual minorities, he wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leading Christian nonprofits, known for their anti-Israel advocacy, have applauded Britain\u2019s sanctions against Israel, after lobbying the Labour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-768298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}