The Salter Lecture 2026 – The Middle East: a moral catastrophe?
A leading British-Israeli journalist has warned of a catastrophic breakdown in international law and shared values, in this year's Salter Lecture.
Delivering The Middle East: a moral catastrophe? on 3 May, Rachel Shabi told Quakers gathered in Friends House, Euston, and online that the war in Gaza is part of a wider decline in global norms.
It was, she said: “A shattering so seismic that it ripped through all our institutions as they supported or funded, obfuscated or misreported the intolerable violence that rained down upon the people of Gaza without mercy and without end."
But she added: “In truth, the moral collapse goes deeper."
Conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, she argued, had already torn up established rules, creating what she described as a kind of “permission architecture" for further abuses.
The roots of the current situation in the Middle East went back much further, she said.
Shabi, who was born in Israel to Iraqi Jews, said the creation of the Israeli state cannot be separated from European antisemitism, a form of racism that drove Jewish communities to seek safety.
At the same time, she said: “The Jewish national project that produced Israel was, from the perspective of Palestinians, unequivocally and unambiguously colonial."
Quoting historian Hakem Al-Rustom, she urged audiences to see these histories “as strands of the same rope, tightly braided together".
Despite her stark analysis, Shabi said universal values still endure. She pointed to individuals and movements continuing to defend human rights.
She ended by encouraging steady, principled action, drawing on Quaker traditions of peace and justice.