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Catholics for Israel

An Essay by Janice Lent, jlent0322@aol.com

I went to the Google website the other day and ran an “advanced search” for the exact phrase “Catholics for Israel.” The results I got were no less than appalling. The top site carried the headline, “Catholics Slam Israel” (Google apparently doesn’t understand prepositions), and the first twenty or so below it were equally discouraging. The exact phrase didn’t appear on any of sites, and most contained anti-Israel polemic.

As contradictory as the search results may seem, I probably should not have been surprised. Fr. Edward Flannery has passed away, Sr. Rose Thering is retired, and influential Catholic voices carrying the pro-Israel torch are in short supply. Meanwhile, strong anti-Israel sentiment is growing. In my own neighborhood parish, I hear only a cacophony of sharp and unjust criticism of the Jewish State. Americans should not, of course, be chided for expressing their political opinions, and few of us approve of every action and policy adopted by the Israeli government. Still, I’m disturbed by the increasingly emotional quality of Catholic anti-Israel rhetoric.

Catholics clearly cannot support Israel for the same reasons that undergird the pro-Israel position of Evangelical Protestants. Evangelical groups support Israel partly because they consider its existence a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Christ. Moreover, many Evangelicals–though not all–have little respect for Islam or for traditional Christianity. Their disdain for these religions allows some to write the Palestinians off as evil. The Catholic Church, by contrast, has never taught that a Jewish state was necessary for the Second Coming, and, since Vatican II, the Church has enjoined us to esteem Muslims as fellow monotheists seeking to submit to God’s will. Some of the Palestinians are our own co-religionists, and we can by no means turn our backs on them. Where Evangelicals defend Israel on moral and political grounds, however, Catholics may naturally agree. Indeed, I believe that reason, honesty, and a sense of our own history should lead us to a truly Catholic pro-Israel position.

Catholic Reasons for a Pro-Israel Stance

First, we must emphasize that the Catholic Church formally recognized the State of Israel in 1993. The Vatican now officially acknowledges Israel’s moral and legal right to exist. We can logically conclude that the Church also accepts Israel’s right to defend itself against those who seek to annihilate it.

The basic accusation leveled against the Israeli government in recent months has been that Israel’s army is oppressing the Palestinian people by occupying their cities and perpetuating a “cycle of violence” against them. “Cycle of violence” is a key phrase. It has been used by Pope John Paul II, as well as by many of Israel’s critics, to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The phrase is usually interpreted to imply moral equivalence between the two sides, and sometimes–though not always–it is intended to imply such equivalence.

The Holy Father is correct. The cyclical nature of the violence is undeniable, and, from a religious standpoint, so is the moral equivalence. Surely anyone who has truly experienced God’s presence can testify that God’s goodness is so far above any human goodness that the moral difference between great saints and vile sinners is negligible when compared to the gulf between divine and human goodness. In a profound sense, we mere humans are all about equal, the Blessed Mother alone excepted. This great truth, though it humbles us all in prayer, should not drive our political opinions.

Two Crucial Moral Differences

The daunting complexity of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict almost precludes its fair treatment in a brief commentary, and I don’t mean to imply that every action of the Israeli government regarding the Palestinians has been entirely just. Nevertheless, there are at least two crucial moral differences between Palestinian terrorist activities and Israeli military responses:

1. The salient element in terrorist attacks is their element of randomness. The suicide bomber doesn’t know and doesn’t care who will be on the bus when he or she blows it up. The victims are a randomly selected sample from a large population, and it is precisely this element of randomness that “terrorizes” the large population–we never know who will be next. Israeli military actions, by contrast, are not directed at randomly selected victims. They target those who are actually doing the killing. The practical problem, of course, is that the targeting is very difficult and cannot be done perfectly. Inevitable errors, along with larger-scale efforts to dismantle terrorist infrastructure, make it easy for those looking on with a superficial eye to claim that the two sides are slamming away at each other with equal recklessness. But one need not look very closely to see the profound moral divide between their approaches: for one, the targets are randomly selected representatives of a large, hated population; for the other, they are individuals with names and criminal records.
   
   
2. Palestinian terrorists alone are guilty of perpetuating the cycle of violence. No one doubts that if they stopped their attacks, the Israelis would stop their retaliatory military actions. But the converse is not true. Some of the worst terrorist attacks against Israelis, most notably the Passover massacres of 2002, have followed periods of non-retaliation on the Israeli side. When the Israelis stop retaliating, the attacks against them only worsen. Since their choices are to defend themselves or be slaughtered, the cycle of violence is for them the lesser of evils, and they are trapped in it. The terrorists’ clearly stated goal is the destruction of the State of Israel, not revenge for specific Israeli actions.

It is true that, on the whole, the Palestinian people are suffering much more from the cycle of violence than are the Israeli people. But it does not logically follow that the Israelis are morally responsible for the cycle. The moral differences between the actions of the Palestinian terrorists and those of the Israeli military are obvious to any objective observer. Why do we so persistently fail to recognize them? Here our present-day political reflections collide with a historical reality almost too painful to face: could it be that antisemitism has not yet been completely exorcized from the Church?

Antisemitism and the Catholic Church

The modern Catholic response to the charge of antisemitism is to wrap ourselves in the mantle of Vatican II and subsequent papal condemnations of the disease. Indeed, Vatican II made great progress in delegitimizing Catholic antisemitism and forever laying to rest the “deicide charge” that had fueled it for so many centuries. But we should not become too proud. The deicide charge was not buried until Western society had become so secularized that a charge of this type carried little practical weight. Our historical record is still woefully stained, and we must accept that this very record made the State of Israel necessary for the survival of the Jewish people.

We should also realize that, historically, antisemitism’s most striking feature has been its ability to change its form in order to gain acceptance in different times and circumstances. Today’s antisemitism never looks like yesterday’s. Antisemitism was once political, then religious, there it may be economic or racial, here again political. It’s always been hard to recognize as evil in its own time and place. Medieval Christians sincerely believed that they were avenging Jesus’ torture and crucifixion by persecuting Jews. They were not necessarily evil, just ignorant and easily misled. Modern American Catholics are, overall, more sophisticated, better educated, and–let’s face it–less zealous for the Faith. Antisemitism will not stalk us in its old familiar form, but that doesn’t mean we’ve defeated it.

While not all expressions of disagreement with Israeli policy are motivated by antisemitism, I believe we should, where there is any doubt, choose to err on the side of caution. The demon of antisemitism has plagued the Church for almost her entire history, and it can still outwit us. Should we now expect it to slink away, trounced and humiliated by the tardy pronouncements of Vatican II? The crafty shape-shifter will certainly try to regain a foothold by appearing in a new disguise–perhaps decked out in twenty-first century political garb. Catholics must remain vigilant and remember Jesus’ words to his faltering exorcists, “This kind cometh not out except by prayer” (Mk. 9:29).