Does Israel Want to Join Western Civilization?
Then it should legitimize the institutions under the Patriarch of the West
We tend to forget how much of the bloodshed of the 20th century has more to do with the pulling back of authority rather than the overuse of it, and the partition of Palestine is a good example. The partition of India is regarded by most Indians and Pakistanis as a disaster to this day, but the same is not true of Israel and Palestine.
Both Palestinians and Jewish settlers revolted against the European caretakers, who stood the best chance at securing lasting peace; the Israelis in particular were very skilled at assassinating notable participants in Western Civilization, including a member of the Swedish royal family. The Stern Gang kidnapped a consulate employee of the United States, revolting, therefore, chiefly against the countries that had fought against the Nazis.
This past week was the anniversary of the adoption of UN Resolution 181, approving of the idea of partitioning Palestine. Partition set the conditions for the creation of Israel. It’s important to remember the history of this because the Vatican’s position has been misrepresented by EWTN. One of their articles claimed last year that the Holy See “signaled its support” for partition. This would be troubling indeed because the main great power whipping votes for UN 181 was Joseph Stalin.
I think what is referred to here by EWTN is an incident where the future Pope John XXIII secured a meeting for the head of the political branch of the Jewish Agency in Europe with the Secretary of State Cardinal Tardini. It is not very clear, and to interpret these events as early support for a two-state solution is to see something that isn’t there. At any rate, the only thing the Vatican weighed in on officially is the international custody of Jerusalem.
The second issue is juridical recognition of Catholic institutions within Israel, which the Basic Law passed in 2018 moved further away. Today, the legal rights of Catholic institutions are more solid in the West Bank than in Israel. To the extend that in John Paul II’s pontificate, he reached out to both Israel and the Palestinians, those overtures have been more realized on one side than the other. Israel didn’t have a nuncio until 1994, after the signing of the Fundamental Agreement the year earlier, which Israel is now in breach of in several ways.
The hope was after the ‘93 agreement, Israel might be moving toward being a member of Western civilization, which is to say, recognizing institutions under the authority of the patriarch of the West, but Benjamin Netanyahu has put that off his entire career since his first election as prime minister in 1996.
So, when Mark Levin is doing his Jüd Suß act with the president, a lot of Catholics are not amused. They’re pushing the line that they are an integral part of Western civilization, and in some ways the people who get to say what that is, even though Israel has put off joining Western civilization the entire time Netanyahu has been in power. So they’re lying, like they do about many things.
This is much more important from the Vatican’s perspective than a one-state or two-state solution, neither of which are matters of Church governance or theology. Since Palestine and Israel have embassies to the Vatican, it implicitly recognizes a two-state solution already, and Pope Francis consistently stated his support for it. And when Pope Leo says on his trip this week that it’s the only solution, it’s the one that is implied by the Vatican’s diplomatic relations. A Catholic is perfectly free to disagree, though one should take his opinion about pretty much everything with a sense of filial seriousness.
Here’s the question I think is sort of being missed. The things in which the Vatican has an interest in Palestine, based on statements by the Vatican are:
The status of the holy sites
The legal rights of Catholic communities
The status of other Christian communions which, as the head of the universal Church, the pope has a right and perhaps a duty to speak for in the interest of unity
The legitimate political rights of Palestinians
A two-state solution is one way to achieve these things, but it’s not the only one. While President Trump has said annexation of the West Bank is now off the table, it’s happening on a creeping basis anyway, and that situation could change. So the danger in what the pope has said is, he says it’s the only solution, but it’s not actually the only solution.
The other one is the Peter Beinart solution, one state with full democratic rights for Israelis and Palestinians, which would have to be imposed from without. This is probably in the long run the solution more consistent with classical ideas of statesmanship, because a reasonable chance of success is one of the conditions of a just war.
The outstanding issues are, more specifically:
The Knesset has not formalized the legal status of Catholic communities within Israel’s own borders
There are about a hundred thousand Catholics in the West Bank
Israel’s insane government and increasingly radicalized people keep spitting on Christians and stealing their stuff, chiefly of other apostolic churches, and they need to stop that
More annexation bills in the Knesset are likely to keep rolling
Whether or not a two-state solution is the only solution, the reality is this is tending in a direction of the Vatican having to parlay with the Israeli government more, mostly to get it to behave more like a civilized country and less like, as President Trump might put it, a shithole country. It will have to insist that Israel abide by the terms it has already agreed to, some of which it is in breach of now. The leaders of Israel, chiefly Benjamin Netanyahu, have kept this process on hold for more than three decades as they rolled out the red carpet for every sleazy Russian gangster with ten million dollars, and the bill is due.
There are the rights of the Church, and there are also human rights. If one might be so bold as to suggest the pope has a role to play in the Holy Land, nobody is better suited as the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics, to insist that Israel realize its public presentation as a liberal democracy with full political rights for the inhabitants within its borders. He’s got a lot of leverage; he can interdict pilgrims, he can make an issue of the breach of terms, all sorts of things.
A real wild card is a lawsuit the wife of Bibi’s chief domestic rival, Yair Lapid, filed against an anti-missionary rabbi in Jerusalem, Tovia Singer. She claims he said she was a Christian, and thereby her Jewishness was defamed. Of course from a Christian perspective, this would make her no less Jewish, but more. “Not as though the word of God hath taken none effect,” to quote St. Paul. “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.”
Do they ultimately matter compared to India? I wish India would join.