Two weeks ago, I wrote a scathing column denouncing Pope Francis for swaddling the Vatican’s baby Jesus figure in a keffiyeh. Perhaps, I speculated, in displaying Jesus with the modern symbol of Palestinian “resistance” to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, the Pope had forgotten a key tenant of both history and his religion: that Jesus was a Jew. Or, more likely, had conveniently misplaced it on the altar of an offensive and anti-Semitic political agenda.
Now the Philippine’s newest cardinal, Pablo Virgilio David, has jumped right on board. The Palestinians, he insisted in a Christmas Eve homily delivered in Filipino, “continue to live as refugees in Gaza, displaced from their lands that Israel has occupied.”
Hmm, apparently, he doesn’t believe the Bible. Which specifically portrays Jews as indigenous to that part of the world, having inhabited it long before Muslims—or even Christians—existed. Or, if he’s referring only to Gaza, perhaps he doesn’t believe in the right of a Jewish State to defend its borders and civilians from vicious attacks like the one on Oct. 7, 2023. Not just defend, in fact, but prevent from ever happening again.
Anti-Semitism, of course, isn’t new to the Catholic Church. “For centuries,” Catholic historian Stephen A. Allen writes, “Catholics persecuted Jews, crowding them into ghettos, forcing them to convert to Christianity, and frequently killing them. For centuries, Catholics accused Jews of ritually murdering Christian children, engaging in sorcery, poisoning wells and desecrating images of Christ. For centuries, Catholics were taught that Jews—all Jews—were cursed because they had killed Christ…”
That hostility withered somewhat during World War II when many Catholics—including a young Polish woman who saved my Jewish aunt’s life—spoke out and acted in opposition to the Nazi Holocaust. This despite the reluctance of some of their leaders—most notably Pope Pius XII—to do so. The trend continued under Pope Paul VI who, in 1965, officially condemned the charge that the Jews killed Christ, and Pope John Paul II, who made reconciliation a priority and apologized for the Church’s inaction during World War II.
And now comes Pope Francis, who recently suggested that Israel’s defense of its homeland constitutes a “genocide.”
Gosh, I hardly even know where to begin. For starters, the legal definition of genocide—coined, incidentally, to describe what happened to European Jews during World War II—has never been about casualty figures, but intent. And I have yet to see any credible evidence that the intent of Israel’s actions against Hamas and its allies is anything other than what Israel claims: to destroy the military capabilities of a ruthless enemy that has so far refused to surrender or disavow its longtime aim of obliterating the Jewish state.
If that is genocide—i.e. the intentional elimination of an entire population or race—all one can accurately say is that the effort has exhibited profound inefficiency, not a quality for which Israel is generally known.
Second, even if one defines the conflict by its allegedly high civilian casualty rate—which everyone can and should decry in any conflict — those figures have been greatly exaggerated. According to a recent analysis by the Henry Jackson Society, a UK-based think tank, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, “has systematically inflated the death toll by failing to distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, over-reporting fatalities among women and children and even including individuals who died before the conflict began.”
The report’s leading author, Andrew Fox, offers a concise conclusion. “You can’t say it’s a genocide,” he asserts, “when half the people [killed] are still fighting.”
The good news is that most Filipinos don’t seem to share their religious leaders’ assessments of Israel, a reality the new cardinal openly admitted in his Christmas Eve homily. Apparently, they have more knowledge, common sense, and moral clarity than he does.
What a shame.
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David Haldane is an American journalist and author living in Northern Mindanao. His latest book, A Tooth in My Popsicle, is available on Amazon. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
