Catholic Church Should be the Last to Blame Israel for Mid-East Conflict

By: Abram Shanedling

Many world leaders, governments, and statements have been involved with the now stalled peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. But for some reason, the Vatican thought it should join the fray this past week, unsurprisingly holding Israel to a double standard and unfairly blaming the country for the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.

At the conclusion of a two-week meeting, convened by Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the plight of Christians in the Middle East, Catholic bishops demanded that Israel “put an end to the occupation of the different Arab lands.” They also asserted that Israel should not use the Bible to “justify injustices” against Palestinians, referring to Israel’s presence in the disputed territories.

Going even further, Cyrille Salim Bustros, the archbishop in charge of the committee that drafted the group’s statement, claimed the Bible does not even justify a Jewish presence in Israel and that “the concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians.”

What’s important – and unfortunate – here is to consider the broader context.

The Vatican’s recent statements join an inherently biased set of international institutions that unjustly blame Israel for the conflict in the Middle East. Consider the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which since 2006 has produced more than 170 resolutions against Israel involving human rights, and whose board includes such human rights “defenders” as the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Libya, China and Pakistan.

The irony of the Vatican Synod was that its original goal was not to discuss Israel, but to focus on Christians in the Middle East – an overwhelmingly Muslim region that a century ago was 20 percent Christian. Today, it is only around 5 percent and falling fast.

Absent from the news was the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that protects religious freedom in law and practice, and the only place in the region where Christian communities have not been shrinking, but actually expanding.

In Israel, Christian minorities number more than 150,000 – or 2 percent of the population - including around 85,000 Roman and Greek Catholics. And, according to figures from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, that number has grown steadily for the past two decades.

Meanwhile, Christian communities in surrounding Arab states continue to dwindle, facing growing persecution and abuse from increasingly radical Islamic governments.

Ignored from criticism is Turkey, where a century ago millions of Christians lived, but because of decades of religious persecution and true territorial occupation in Northern Cyprus, the Christian population now stands at 85,000.

The Catholic bishops might also turned to Lebanon – once considered a Christian haven in the Middle East, but that has now seen more than a third of that population flee in the last 30 years amid a growing Islamic movement.

And lastly, if the Vatican really wanted to focus on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it should have looked at the continued abuse of Christians by the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, of all places, continue to face persecution because of their faith, living under the constant threat of kidnapping, torture and even death.

But like the UNHRC, which issued the one-sided Goldstone Report and Investigation into the Gaza Flotilla, the Vatican chose only to target Israel. Why? Because blaming and de-legitimizing the Jewish country is the easiest political strategy.

The Catholic Church, like so many international bodies, attacks Israel because it knows there is no consequence to it. Why risk criticizing the 55 Islamic governments and sparking anti-Christian violence, let alone upsetting the world’s largest oil producers and the strongest terrorist organizations? On the other hand, the Church can condemn Israel as much as it wants knowing full well that Israeli Christians will still be treated equally.

That is a statement about the moral difference between Israel and its neighbors.

Frankly, the Vatican should be the last to criticize the morality of other countries in the name of human rights, given the Catholic Church’s own long history of moral wrongdoings in the name of Christianity. The Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, promotion of Holocaust-denying bishops are just a few highlights – not to mention child abuse.

Israel, meanwhile, should be celebrated for its protection of religious freedoms. Its 1948 Declaration of Independence is clear enough, proclaiming that every religious community in Israel – Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Druze and all others – can openly exercise their own faith, observe holidays and weekly days of rest, and administer to their own community religious affairs.

When it comes to civil liberties, Israel strives to do right. For the Vatican, it's about doing what's easy for so many governments. Clearly, the Church has a lot to learn if it truly hopes to inspire progressive reform in the Middle East.

Additional Resources:

Current Christian populations in the Middle East

“Remarks by Pope Prompt Muslim Outrage, Protests,” 16 September 2010, Washington Post