The Pope Cites a Favorite Verse of Anti-Semites in His Letter to Middle Eastern Catholics

Oct. 23 2024

While Israel and its friends commemorated the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, and its foes celebrated it, Pope Francis marked the date with a letter to Middle Eastern Catholics. Ethan Schwartz finds nothing objectionable about the Vatican sending a missive to this vulnerable population, but is disturbed by the pope’s decision to cite John 8:44:

[Francis] urges that Catholics “must never tire of imploring peace from God” and calls for a day of prayer and fasting to “defeat our one true enemy: the spirit of evil that foments war, because it is ‘murderous from the beginning,’ ‘a liar and the father of lies.’”

In its historical context, John 8:44 is part of a disagreement between specific Jews about an internal matter. However, as Christianity developed, the verse was understood as a fundamental, eternal indictment of the entire Jewish people, by a Jesus who stood fully apart from and against them. The Jews are the children of the devil, the embodiment of evil, the enemies of humanity.

It would not be unreasonable to speculate that no individual sentence has caused more Jewish death and suffering than John 8:44. . . . Regardless of Pope Francis’s intentions, this is the legacy that he invoked when he chose John 8:44 to characterize “our one true enemy” on the anniversary of October 7. In a war that much of the world blames on the Jewish state, citing a verse that condemns all Jews as the murderous children of the devil creates an unavoidable implication: the Jews are the reason for this horror. They are the enemies of those who seek peace—the enemies of the church and, indeed, of humanity itself.

It is impossible to overstate what a disaster this is for Jewish-Catholic relations.

Read more at Religion News Service

More about: Anti-Semitism, Gaza War 2023, Jewish-Catholic relations, Pope Francis

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula