Born in southeastern Germany in 1927, Joseph Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth as a teenager, and was drafted into the Wehrmacht in 1943. He later became one of the Catholic Church’s leading academic theologians, before being made Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. In 2013, he took the unusual step of retiring due to his declining health, and passed away on December 31, 2022. Rabbi Mark Gottlieb considers Benedict’s ideas and his historical significance:

Benedict . . . had nearly as much reverential regard for his “elder brothers in the faith” as his famously philo-Semitic predecessor. At the same time, his deeper appreciation of the eternal bond between God and His people Israel—of the flesh—is tempered by orthodox Catholic teaching on the exclusive salvific power of [Christianity’s founder]. Thus, Benedict’s affirmation, following in the catechetical footsteps of John Paul II, that the “gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29) is complexly woven into more traditional claims.

As the Conciliar scholar Gavin D’Costa chronicles Benedict’s pronouncements on Jews and Judaism, he underscores that this “pontificate is marked by an increasing use of Jewish terms, familiarity with Jewish rabbinical literature, and a clear sense of contemporary Judaism as being the covenant people of God.”

Jews . . . were concerned when in 2008 Benedict reintroduced the Latin Rite Good Friday liturgy, which called for the conversion of the Jews. Benedict amended the full text of the older prayer, removing some of the pre-Conciliar language, but retained the calls for mission and conversion. Jews concerned over a clearly internal Catholic matter, namely the propriety and doctrinal purity of a matter of liturgy, should remember the late, great Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s injunction in his 1964 agenda-setting essay, “Confrontation.” For Soloveitchik, the deepest form of respect for the integrity of another faith community—and hence, one’s own—is demonstrated when we avoid the imposition of our own faith’s standards or interests onto the faith of the other.

This prudent counsel [allows] us to dwell on . . . Benedict’s singular defense of European culture and the West, and his restoration of reason as the crowning achievement of that very civilization under duress.

On March 5, Riyadh appointed Salman al-Dosari—a prominent journalist and vocal supporter of the Abraham Accords—as its new minister of information. Hussain Abdul-Hussain takes this choice as one of several signals that Saudi Arabia is inching closer to normalization with Israel:

Saudi Arabia has been the biggest supporter of Palestinians since before the establishment of Israel in 1948. When the kingdom’s founder Abdulaziz Ibn Saud met with the U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in the Red Sea in 1945, the Saudi king demanded that Jews in Palestine be settled elsewhere. But unlimited Saudi support has only bought Palestinian ungratefulness and at times, downright hate. After the Abraham Accords were announced in August 2020, Palestinians in Gaza and Ramallah burned pictures not only of the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain but also of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Since then, many Palestinian pundits and activists have been accusing Saudi Arabia of betraying the cause, even though the Saudis have said repeatedly, and as late as January, that their peace with Israel is incumbent on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While the Saudi Arabian government has practiced self-restraint by not reciprocating Palestinian hate, Saudi Arabian columnists, cartoonists, and social-media activists have been punching back. After the burning of the pictures of Saudi Arabian leaders, al-Dosari wrote that with their aggression against Saudi Arabia, the Palestinians “have liberated the kingdom from any ethical or political commitment to these parties in the future.”