In a time when anti-Semitism is reaching its peak, again, in Europe, and the forces of Islam are trying to eradicate the world of Christianity and Judaism, the Vatican,which has a profound influence on more than one billion Christians around the world,choose to sell the Jews, again, to their own persecutors.
This is the meaning of Catholic Church’s recognition of the “State of Palestine”, which is a totalitarian project aiming to destroy the Jewishness of the State of Israel and to expel(or kill) 600,000 Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria.
But we should not be surprised. In every moment of crisis, the Vatican has sided with Israel’s enemies.
Gulf War, 1991. When Iraqi scuds are fired against Israel, the Pope condemns attacks against “civilians”, without even mentioning the Israeli people.
2000, a few months before the beginning of the Second Intifada: Pope John Paul visits Damascus. Bashar el Assad proclaims that just as Jews murdered Jesus, Israel is torturing Palestine. The Vatican stands silent, de facto justifying the horrible anti-Semitism emanating from the Syrian regime.
April 2002. The Palestinian Arab terrorists enter Bethlehem and the Nativity Church. The Catholic authorities become the world wide leaders of an unprecedented campaign of verbal assault against Israel. The Vatican, from the Catholic NGOs to Pope John Paul II to the official daily L’Osservatore Romano, sanction the terrorists’ right to use the church as a shelter, turning Israel into the aggressor.
2004: Pope John Paul condemns the security fence in the "West Bank" saying “the Holy Land doesn’t need walls, but bridges”.
July 2005. Pope Benedict XVI condemns a litany of terrorist atrocities worldwide, avoiding mentioning the 57 Israelis killed in that year of the Second Intifada.
2006, war in Lebanon. The Vatican rallies against Israel’s response to terror acts, without addressing the latest. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican’s foreign minister, slams “the attack on Lebanon, a free and sovereign nation…”.
2007: a delegation of German bishops visit Israel and territories, they compare Ramallah to the Warsaw Ghetto and the security fence to the Berlin Wall.
2009, Operation Cast Lead: Pope Benedict condemns the “massive violence” in Gaza only after Israel bombs the terrorists’ installations, not before that, when thousands of rockets were fired against Israeli civilians. Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican Council for Justice, calls Gaza “a concentration camp”.
2009: Pope Benedict in Jerusalem participates in an interreligious meeting. Sheik Tamimi, the Palestinian highest cleric, accused Israel of “murdering children”. The Pope stands silent.
2009: the Vatican refuses to boycott the Durban II conference in Geneve, used by Iran’s Ahmadinejad to attack the Jewish people.
October 2010, the Vatican synod of the Middle East bishops in Rome: the Catholic clerics proclaims that there is no “promised land” nor “chosen people”.
May 2014: Pope Francis is pictured praying at Israel’s security barrier beneath a graffiti that compares Palestinian Arabs with Jews under the Nazis.
Would you like to talk about the Fourth Lateran Council which introduced the idea that European Jews wear badges (1215)?
It is a new chapter of an old story.
Would you like to talk about Pope Gregory VII’s prohibiting the Jews from holding office in Europe (1073)?
Would you like to talk about the first Crusade in Germany which resulted in the killing of 12,000 Jews along the Rhine River (1096)?
Would you like to talk about the Fourth Lateran Council which introduced the idea that European Jews wear badges (1215)?
Would you like to talk about King Louis IX’s who demanded all Jews be baptized, and burned 24 cartloads of Talmud in Paris with the approval of Pope Gregory IX (1226-1274)?
Would you like to talk about the Spanish Inquisition which, under direction of the Roman Catholic Church, perpetrated against Jews torture, heavy fines, confiscation of property, banishment, and death (1483-1492)?
After WWII, theologians and philosophers were forced to face the fact that the Holocaust occurred in the heart of Christian Europe, and that Christianity had, at the very least, helped create the environment in which this massacre could take place. The historical challenge was to learn how this had happened. By embracing, without any shame, the “State of Palestine”, the Catholic Church shows not only that it didn’t learn the lesson, but also that has no regret for its mistakes.
To teach, as the Vatican did about the Jews, that a people’s mission in God’s providence is finished, that they have been relegated to the limbo of history, has murderous implications which murderers do in time spell out.
Today, exactly as during the Holocaust period, there are only two possible reactions: being concerned and resisting, or being complacent and collaborating.
The Vatican has made its choice.