On Saturday, Pope Francis attended the inauguration of a nativity scene newly erected at the Vatican, titled “Nativity of Bethlehem 2024” and designed by two Palestinian artists from that city. The installation featured a baby Jesus lying on a keffiyeh blanket. Involved in its production was the Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine, part of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

In other words, the pope appeared to endorse a work of art—sponsored by an organization dedicated to Israel’s eradication that churns out anti-Semitic rhetoric and incitement to terrorist violence—whose message is: the Jews shouldn’t be considered the people into which the Christian messiah was born, a status now transferred to the Palestinians. Moreover, the suffering of Palestinians, about which the pope frequently speaks, is akin to the sufferings of Jesus, by implication making the Jewish state his eternal crucifiers.

Such criticism likely led the Vatican to dismantle the installation yesterday, although it has given no official explanation. Raymond J. de Souza puts the episode in context:

In September, Pope Francis spoke about Israeli military operations as “disproportionate and immoral.” The Holy Father telephones the Catholic parish in Gaza every day as an indication of his solidarity but appears distant from Israeli Jews. Is the Vatican insensitive to how Israelis and Jews elsewhere might hear the pope’s words?

A breakthrough in Catholic-Jewish relations occurred in 1986 when St. John Paul II made a visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome, the first pope ever to do so. The indelible memory of that historic visit includes the Holy Father’s felicitous phrase that Catholics consider Jews their “elder brothers.” . . . Catholic-Jewish relations are a family affair, and in families, what is said is not as important as how it is said, and the context in which it is said. Sensitive speech pays attention to that and minimizes needless offense.

Although one might wish Father de Souza had phrased his critique in other language than that of “offense,” it is worth remembering that criticizing the pope is not really the place of a Catholic priest—a fact that makes this essay all the stronger.

In a recent episode of 60 Minutes, a former State Department official tells the interviewer that U.S. support for Israel following October 7 has “put a target on America’s back” in the Arab world “and beyond the Arab world.” The complaint is a familiar one: Middle Easterners hate the United States because of its closeness to the Jewish state. But this gets things exactly backward. Just look at the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various Arab proxies: America is the “Great Satan” and Israel is but the “Little Satan.”

Why, then, does Iran see the U.S. as the world’s primary source of evil? The usual answer invokes the shah’s 1953 ouster of his prime minister, but the truth is that this wasn’t the subversion of democracy it’s usually made out to be, and the CIA’s role has been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, Ladan Boroumand points out,

the 1953 coup was welcomed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, [the architect of the 1979 Islamic Revolution], and would not have succeeded without the active complicity of proponents of political Islam. And . . . the United States not only refrained from opposing the Islamic Revolution but inadvertently supported its emergence and empowered its agents. How then could . . . Ayatollah Khomeini’s virulent enmity toward the United States be explained or excused?

Khomeini’s animosity toward the shah and the United States traces back to 1963–64, when the shah initiated sweeping social reforms that included granting women the right to vote and to run for office and extending religious minorities’ political rights. These reforms prompted the pro-shah cleric of 1953 to become his vocal critic. It wasn’t the shah’s autocratic rule that incited Khomeini’s opposition, but rather the liberal nature of his autocratically implemented social reforms.

There is no need for particular interpretive skill to comprehend the substance of Khomeini’s message: as Satan, America embodies the temptation that seduces Iranian citizens into sin and falsehood. “Human rights” and “democracy” are America’s tools for luring sinful and deviant citizens into conspiring against the government of God established by the ayatollah.

Or, as George W. Bush put it, jihadists hate America because “they hate our freedoms.”