It’s time to end Israel’s destruction of Christianity in Palestine
...The death of Carter triggered another possible initiative to be considered as reflected in an email I had received from a friend in the peace movement the day before. My friend was complaining about the lack of any condemnation from world leaders for what is occurring in Palestine and she asked herself what would happen if someone like Pope Francis were to travel to Gaza in a peacekeeping role. Surely even monsters like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have to pay attention to the possible impact of such a proposal and would have to let the Pope visit with the remaining Catholic community in Gaza to help ease their suffering. The Vatican has, in fact, already put out feelers in that direction. On December 22nd it convinced Israeli authorities to allow Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the leader of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, to enter Gaza and celebrate a pre-Christmas Mass with surviving members of the territory’s small Christian community. A more aggressive move involving the Pope himself might even lead to a ceasefire and something like a peace arrangement that would enable the two communities to work out some formula to live side by side even though it is difficult to imagine such an outcome given the hardline of the Israeli government and its clear intention to proceed with the elimination of the Palestinians.
Organized Christianity, apparently terrified of being labeled antisemitic by the usual strident voices in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has been largely silent and ineffective when confronted by the systematic Israeli destruction of the Christian faith in the land where it was born. Indeed, America’s largely Bible belt Christian Zionists generally applaud Israeli suppression of what it agrees to call “terrorists.” Pope Francis has in fact bravely spoken out about Gaza and has been as a consequence attacked by the Israeli government and the usual suspects in Europe and the US. Nevertheless, there is no official Catholic church pronouncement on Israel/Palestine as far as I have been able to determine except for calls for peace and a ceasefire, though there are a few activists who have been demanding that a more definitive position be developed. Some American Catholics have even been demonstrating and holding signs in front of churches and diocesan offices urging Pope Francis to go to Gaza. Can individual Catholics persuade their parish priests to take a stronger line and pressure bishops and the church hierarchy to “do something?” I am convinced that this is a movement that is just waiting to happen and that once it starts it will capture the public imagination because it attacks a genocidal horror and is manifestly the right thing to do. Certainly, those who believe that life and also freedom of worship are gifts from God have seen enough posters of dead babies and desecrated churches and hospitals to begin to demand that the Church must harness its moral authority to the cause of peace and make it happen. (more...)
Pope Francis Should Go to Gaza!
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