Pope Francis in Israel
Pope Francis in IsraelFlash90

“With pain,” says Pope Francis, I think of Gaza, of so much cruelty, of the children being machine-gunned, of the bombings of schools and hospitals. What cruelty!" The Pontiff is worked up, impatient, angry. He wants an unspecified court to decide in his favour – Israel is committing genocide

In fact the Pontiff could settle the matter for himself in ten minutes. The ‘discovery’, to use lawyers’ jargon, will not be to his liking. What exactly should the applicant Google to obtain compelling evidence that Israel has a record of trying to exterminate a Muslim population? Most would Google, ‘Israel/Gaza/genocide’ – the wrong track. It yields nothing better than stock opinions which a rookie counsel might quash before a Pope can say, ‘From the river to the sea.’ A Vatican team worth its salt will Google ‘Plight of Christianity’. To zoom onto the Middle East, it could do no better than click on the link above.

The totality of evidence discovered can make a summing up statement well nigh impregnable. Under Muslim sovereignty the plight of Christianity is dire. Under Jewish sovereignty, opposite to plight, Christianity grows. The Pope alleging that genocide is in the wind is directed at the wrong door. His Holiness must not even try going to reliably anti-Israel Wikipedia. He will find there the galling truth confirmed that, “Christians are on the verge of extinction in the Middle East”. It is elsewhere than Gaza he will discover proof of genocide. Rather than committing it, Israel is fighting it; doing so for Jews no less than for Catholics and Protestants. No doubt the papal gut will find digesting the truth a painful process.

The loci of Israel’s fighting genocide used to be the ‘Palestinian territories’ where 99% of Palestinians live. That was before the horrors of Oct 7, 2023. Then its fight spilled over the borders into Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iran – all listed in Open DoorsWorld Watch as countries where Christians face “very high or extreme levels” of persecution. For reason known to itself, Open Doors steers clear of the ‘Palestinian territories’. But no matter - into the breach steps the Jerusalem Centre of Public Affairs.

“Demographics don’t lie,” declares the title of the JCPA’s December 2024 report. The subtitle reveals which demographics don’t lie: “The Christian population within the Palestinian Authority and under Hamas is declining.” Factors cited are the lack of police protection, work discrimination, harassment, coercion to convert to Islam, and types of socio-economic hardship.

Demographics in Gaza also don’t lie. From the time Israel abandoned the strip to Palestinian control in 2005, Christians have dwindled from 5,000 to 1,100 in October 2023, on the eve of the war in Gaza.

What of the so-called, ‘West Bank’? Practically synonymous with Christianity, Bethlehem hardly has a better record than Gaza. When the city came under the Muslim dominated Palestinian Authority in 1994 Bethlehem was, “The most populous Christian town in the Holy Land.” Christians at this time made up 15% of all residents, By 2020 they were down to no more than 5%. On Christmas day 2024, not more than a small element remained to celebrate the birth of Jesus – to a Jewish couple. The beleaguered contingent bemoaned that Ramallah, the central seat of Muslim government, had hijacked Christian holidays. “Jesus was born in Bethlehem, not Ramallah,” a tour guide reminds the Palestinian Authority. “What the Palestinian leadership is doing is an insult to not only Bethlehem but all Christians.”

Hold onto where Jesus was born and highjacked. His Holiness plays the highjacking game when he swaddles Christ in a Palestinian keffiyeh. Since the garment is a worldwide symbol of ‘resistance’, the catchword for Islamic sovereignty over the Holy Land, the Pope converting Jesus into a Palestinian (Arab?) follows hard on its heels. These embattled thoughts of the Bishop of Rome are out of sync with Catholicism. And so we arrive at some critical clues into delusion-caused blindness. The Pope divorcing Jesus from Judaism may account for a refusal to accept that Christianity under Israeli sovereignty has fared close to faultlessly.

Demographics don’t lie. According to a 2021 poll, 84% of Israeli Christians were satisfied with life in Israel. It ties in neatly with a new report by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics. Far from the dwindling trend in ‘Palestinian territories’, the Christian population in Israel portrays growth at a steady rate. In December 2023 there were some 190,000 Israeli Christians, increasing their proportion to 1.9% of the total. A year-on-year growth of 1.2% consolidated a long term upward trend. “As opposed to the trend in many countries of the Middle East,” says the report, “Israel reflects a different reality.”

There are further conclusive indicators of a “different reality”, of Israel being a Christian haven. Nine churches are officially recognized, including the Roman Catholic and Armenian Catholic churches. Secondly, Arab Christians happen to be the most educated ethnic group in Israel. "The Christian number is increasing because of freedom of religion," says Pastor Petra Heldt, a leading Christian scholar and Israel resident for 40 years. "This is not true of Muslim-majority countries in the region."

Yet the Pope reacts to Israel as he would to a slap in the face. Why is that?

A commonplace explanation is that the Argentinean prelate is cowardly.

“Perhaps he believes that pointing a finger at the Jews will divert Muslim rage from the Vatican. Perhaps he believes it distracts the world from his own cowardice and failure to protect Christians.”

There must be truth in this; Protestant leaders display the identical fear. The now disgraced Anglican leader, Archbishop Justin Welby, had Pope Francis’ fear. One, Welby treated Muslims with kid gloves and two, he looked on his persecuted flock as sacrificial lambs. It therefore stands to reason what buckles the Pontiff’s pink knees: his pathetic fear. Thus far it explains him but no further.

A Pope prostituting the Messiah simply to divert and distract from his gross cowardice? Would he really go that far? The fact is, he shares a trait which is common to leading clerics of different churches. This involves borrowing the Messiah to have a go at the Jews. If politicised Protestants can do it, and 3rd Reich Hitler-loyal clerics could do it, why not a Woke Pontiff? Francis may be well be driven by Jew-hatred pure and simple, to abandon the Old Testament and the Gospels, and subvert Jesus into a divine zealot for the Palestinian Arab cause.

There is no lack of modern precedents. Kairos borrows Christ not to beat swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks, rather for daily all-too human acts. Rather than Jesus walking on water, Kairos gets him to walk through a military checkpoint manned by Israelis.

For another precedent, at the Bethlehem ‘Christ at the Checkpoint Conference’, clerics debated what Jesus would do and say, if he had to cope with the ‘Occupation’. How would the Messiah deal with the anger and bitterness Palestinians feel? Munther Isaac, Dean of Bethlehem Bible College, stepped into the Son of God’s big shoes to address this captivating idea.

The applications of Jesus seem endless. His agony on the cross is not immune to abuse. An Easter sermon by Arab Protestant Naim Ateek, draws a most bizarre image regarding this.

“It seems that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him, said Ateek. “The Israeli government’s crucifixion system is operating daily.”

In short, Gospel narratives are cunningly worked into anti-Semitic propaganda. The United Church of Christ, embarrassed by the New Testament testifying to Jews living in a land they were supposed to have pinched from Palestinian Arabs in the 20th Century, reverts to the canard of Zionist colonizers.

Apparently therefore, outrage for Palestinian Arabs living under the Jews, though far better off than their brethren rotting and dying under Muslims, is a way to go to heaven. Curse Israel and God will bless you.

Is Pope Francis another high priest of anti-Zionism? He would not be the first anti-Israel Pope. The Vatican’s refusal in 1948 to recognize the newly declared State of Israel was not pro-Arab bias, but an issue of dogma. Nor is the Vatican out on a limb. The World Council of Churches, the Presbyterians of America, the Greek Orthodox and diverse clerics, think in St Augustine’s terms. Get the hell out of Palestine. After you rejected Christ you lost your place as the Chosen. Go back to being the witness wanderers God meant you to be.

Not only Christianity thinks like this. Israel’s rise from Holocaust ashes troubles secular anti-Zionists. Their problem is not doctrinal but perceptual. The anti-Zionist cannot come to terms with such a thing as a military Jew. The stereotype of the Jew of old – a bearded bookish stateless wanderer – could never have evolved into a mean machine. What vinegary thoughts turn on Israel, what sourball gaze at the juggernaut Jew. Get the hell out! Go back to your natural born fate.

So there we are; a Pope who is driven to defame the un-chosen people. Israel’s destiny was never to make the desert bloom; to build a Tel Aviv of Manhattan skyscrapers; to win Nobel Prizes by the wheelbarrow full; to boast a bustling high-tech economy stronger than Italy’s; to be a rare and isolated haven for blessed Arab Christians. The Pontiff’s pores leak not envy but error, the faith-losing error of dogma. We now have the cause of his dogmatic angst and bluster: the spoilage of the plot, the shattering of the icon.

Steve Apfel is an international authority on anti-Zionism and a prolific author published on many sites and journals since 2003. Books include: Hadrian’s Echo. War by other means (Contributor) Hitler at Heart (at publishers). The Paymaster (Fiction)