Catholics' naive hope

Editorial

This time of year is one of hopefulness and optimism. For Jews, the celebration of Chanukah is a remembrance of triumphs past and the warm glow of light in the midst of figurative and literal darkness. Our Christian cousins are spending this season – which this year is at the same time as Chanukah – marking the most hopeful event in their theology. This weekend, the secular new year will see many Canadians and others make hopeful promises to themselves on a range of self-improvement fronts, from quitting smoking to getting in shape. This is, for many cultures, a time for hope and the celebration of peace.

So it should not be surprising that the Holy Land's head Catholic, Rev. Michael Sabbah, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, should have uttered in his Christmas message the hope that Israel will dismantle the separation barrier being constructed to keep Palestinian terrorists from killing Israeli civilians.

"We have to remove the walls and put in place bridges of peace and love," Sabbah said, according to Agence France-Presse. He said the barrier has turned Bethlehem, where Christian tradition says Jesus was born, into an "immense prison.

"Those who want to exercise power in the Holy Land must know that they cannot do it through violence, but only by winning the hearts of Palestinians and Israelis," he said.

Christians, over the past six decades, have become some of Israel's greatest friends and its worst enemies. Evangelical Christians, whose theology includes a unique and worrying interpretation of Jews in the contemporary and end-times world, are overwhelmingly supportive of Israel. "Progressive" or liberal Christians have been among Israel's most vociferous enemies. Between these polar extremes are many others, including the Catholic church, which has played a unique and ambiguous role in this conflicted region.

The Catholic Church, which has played a central role in the "passion play" of anti-Semitism from the first century of the common era, through the Middle Ages, during the Holocaust and up until the present day, can contribute much to the discussion of contemporary Middle East affairs. As an important institution in the three monotheistic faiths that count Jerusalem among its holy sites, the Roman Catholic Church can be said to have a vested interest in the events that engulf the region. But it can also be expected to offer interventions that acknowledge the Church's own role in inciting and perpetuating the 2,000 years of anti-Semitism that made a Jewish state both necessary and existentially threatened.

It hardly seems appropriate that the agency that effectively created the Western anti-Semitic tradition and perpetuated it throughout 20 centuries of European history and civilization should now be at the forefront of calling for the dismantling of Israel's barrier. That Israel felt bound to construct around itself a fortress-like barrier to protect the Jewish remnants of the 20th century from the vicious world that is to a great extent a product of the very church that now calls for the fence's dismantling is an irony beyond all reason.

The fence, or "wall" as it is called by some in the contested nomenclature of the region, is a figurative and literal eyesore. As has been noted endlessly by international observers, the World Court, critics of Israel and the CBC, among innumerable others, Israel's barrier separates Palestinian families, delays commuters, divides communities and generally inconveniences those who live nearby or, for various reasons, need to pass through disputed territories over which Israel has administrative control.

It has also reduced by an estimated 90 per cent the number of successful suicide bombings within Israel. The quid pro quo of opposing Israel's security barrier is justifying the killing of innocent Israeli civilians by Islamic jihadists intent on ending the Jewish presence in the Middle East. After four years of "intifada" that killed 1,058 Israelis and injured more than 7,300 – many with massively disfiguring results – Israel constructed the barrier as a last-ditch defence against an enemy that knows no fear of death and indeed revels in it.

To suggest that Israel's situation is secure enough to dismantle the fence is an expression of hopefulness that is truly inspiring and befitting this time of year. It ranks up there with hopes for peace on earth, goodwill to all men and "that was my last cigarette."

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