(LifeSiteNews) — Christian Palestinians have issued a thorough rebuke of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for its collaborating with a pro-Israel advocacy group on a document which they say “distorts reality” and “equates Palestinian resistance (to Israel’s illegal occupation) with antisemitism.”
Sent on March 25, the letter from Kairos Palestine was addressed to USCCB President, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, of the Archdiocese for Military Services and was signed by 16 prelates, priests, ministers and community leaders representing Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches in the Holy Land.
The Kairos Palestine movement was initiated with its extensive 2009 document A Moment of Truth, which was self-described as “the Christian Palestinians’ word to the world about what is happening in Palestine.” It was endorsed at the time by heads of all the churches in Jerusalem including all the Catholic and Orthodox rites, along with the Anglican and Lutheran denominations.
At that time this full union of Christians in the Holy Land explained the brutal reality of the 57-year Israeli occupation of internationally recognized Palestinian territory, calling it “a sin against God and humanity” which every Christian has a “duty” to resist. Throughout these decades the Vatican and scores of bishops from around the world have confirmed and maintained this same humanitarian and diplomatic perspective standing in support of international law as the pathway to ending the occupation and establishing a two-state solution which is supported by the overwhelming number of national governments of the world as well.
USCCB partners with pro-abortion ACJ ‘to silence voices advocating for truth and justice in the Holy Land’
This latest March letter, signed first by former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Michal Sabbah, expresses “deep sorrow and urgency” regarding the USCCB’s joint resource with the pro-abortion American Jewish Committee (ACJ), titled Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition.
The decision to endorse such a document which seeks to address supposed verbal hatred of Jewish identity in the United States “comes at a time of immense suffering for our people, as tens of thousands are being killed, starved, and displaced under Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the West Bank,” the Kairos letter laments.
READ: Genocide ‘only reasonable conclusion’ to Israel’s crimes in Gaza: Amnesty International
Jewish scholar, author and Middle East expert Norman Finkelstein has chronicled how accusations of antisemitism have regularly been used to discredit and distract from legitimate criticism of the Israeli government.
In a 2016 interview, he made the point that when one goes to their local library and looks up “new antisemitism,” they will find scare titles from the 1970s, 80s, 90s and then a sharp increase in 2001 during the Second Intifada in the Holy Land when Palestinians sought to throw off the illegal Israeli occupation and apartheid government from their internationally recognized lands.
“These campaigns occur at regular intervals, correlating with Israel’s periodic massacres (of occupied Palestinians) and consequent political isolation,” he explained.
READ: How the ‘antisemitism industry’ became the biggest threat to freedom in the West
While these factors in this conflict may be elusive to many or most Americans, including Catholic bishops, due to extremely effective Zionist influence in the news media, the Kairos letter highlights that the ACJ / USCCB document “misrepresents our struggle and seeks to silence voices advocating for truth and justice in the Holy Land. It negates also the immense injustices inflicted upon Palestinians, including the indigenous Christian community whose presence in the Holy Land is on the verge of extinction.”
Bishops’ document fundamentally biased, ‘a form of hate speech against Palestinians’
“The document’s failure to address hate speech propagated on the Israeli side renders it fundamentally biased, effectively turning it into a form of hate speech against Palestinians,” the letter continued.
A recent report from LifeSiteNews chronicled a broad selection of Zionist rabbis, Israeli politicians, and even public polling of Jewish Israeli citizens revealing a radical hate-based ideology of racist Jewish supremacy, which serves to dehumanize the Palestinian people and other non-Jews, reducing them to animals, thus allowing Israelis to rationalize their mass eradication.
READ: Israeli extremist rabbis instruct soldiers heading to Gaza: ‘Kill all their children’
In addition to religious Zionist rabbis instructing soldiers to target and kill Palestinian children, Israeli politicians too have repeatedly expressed genocidal intent against all two million people of Gaza who are currently suffering through their 7th week of an Israeli imposed starvation and massacre campaign at the hands of the U.S.-supported Israeli army.
To quickly contact your members of Congress and implore their support for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza click here.
With even the Washington Post echoing concerns that such cynical efforts to combat supposed “antisemitism” are intended to “silence criticism of Israel,” the Kairos organization countered this tactic by reaffirming “our criticisms of Israel’s policies and the actions of its leaders are not directed at Jewish communities or Judaism itself. Israel and its policies must not be conflated with Jewish identity, and our call for accountability is not an expression of antisemitism. Rather, it is a moral and just demand for peace, security, and dignity—for Palestinians and for Jewish communities alike. True justice does not come at the expense of one people over another but ensures the safety and rights of all.”
False charges of ‘antisemitism’ used ‘to justify oppression and to criminalize our legitimate struggle for our basic rights’
According to the letter, Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition “claims that accusations of settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing in Palestine are ‘categorically false,’ disregarding overwhelming evidence from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem and many Israeli historians, even early Zionist figures such as Ze’ev Jabotinsky.”
The ACJ / USCCB document also “equates Palestinian resistance with antisemitism, a dangerous conflation that distorts reality and undermines legitimate criticism of Israeli racist laws and policies.”
“We categorically reject all forms of antisemitism, just as we reject any attempt to use this charge to justify oppression and to criminalize our legitimate struggle for our basic rights and our right for self-determination,” the Christian leaders wrote.
Bishops’ document offers ‘selective portrayal of history’ omitting ‘staggering Palestinian casualties in Israel’s wars against our people’
“Furthermore, the document’s selective portrayal of history omits the staggering Palestinian casualties in Israel’s wars against our people in their quest for freedom,” they continued. “Most egregiously, it ignores the current devastation in Gaza, where entire families—our families—have perished, and where churches sheltering the innocent have not been spared Israeli bombardment.”
Reliable reports of death tolls from Israeli massacres in Gaza since October, 2023 number at least 50,983 including approximately 15,600 children with many being decapitated by American-made 2,000 pound bombs and other explosives. The cumulative impact of these hundreds of bombings exceeds five atomic bombs the likes of which were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
According to a rationale presented in a July Lancet study, one can conservatively estimate total deaths, including indirect fatalities due to causes like starvation, lack of medicine or proper medical care, by multiplying direct deaths (50,983) by five to arrive at 254,915 total fatalities. And with a November UN Human Rights Office report identifying fatalities in Gaza comprising of approximately 44% children, it is reasonable to estimate 112,163 total deaths of children.
Document ‘a thinly veiled attack on Palestinians and all who stand for a just peace in Palestine-Israel’
Philip Farah, from the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace—comprised of Palestinian Americans in a variety of Christian churches—told Jewish outlet Mondoweiss, “At a time when Palestinian civilians are being massacred and starved to death, the USCCB has adopted a document that purports to counter antisemitism, but which is a thinly veiled attack on Palestinians and all who stand for a just peace in Palestine-Israel.”
According to Farah, many PCAP members—like their Muslim countrymen in the U.S.—”have lost loved ones to Israel’s industrial-scale killing machine in Gaza.”
Partnering with the pro-abortion AJC, USCCB implicitly consigns the Gospel to ‘classic antisemitism’
The ACJ has long been a committed advocate for contraception, abortion and same sex “marriage.” Following the June 2022 release of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which overturned the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, the ACJ expressed “profound disappointment” emphasizing their opposition to any “government interference in a woman’s right” to kill her preborn baby, seeing such restrictions as a violation of “religious freedoms.”
They also actively participated in the overturning of the Defense of Marriage act in 2013, and publicly celebrated the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex “marriage” nationwide.
In partnering with the pro-abortion ACJ in this supposed “anti-hate” document, the USCCB signs on to a definition of “antisemitism” which relegates the Gospel of Jesus Christ to being “antisemitic” as well. Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of “antisemitism” which classifies “claims of Jews killing Jesus,” an overwhelming truth witnessed to in the four Gospels, as “classic antisemitism.”
For their part, the Palestinian Christians hold this IHRA definition to be “highly problematic” as it also “dangerously equates Zionism with Judaism – despite the fact that thousands of Jews around the world reject Zionism as a political ideology.”
READ: Orthodox rabbi: Zionism a ‘cardinal sin’ for Jews, creation of Israel is ‘satanic’
Israel reaffirms ongoing blockade, Gaza becoming a ‘mass grave’
Since March 2, Israel has imposed a total blockade of all humanitarian aid into the Gaza enclave depriving the approximately two million Palestinians, with one million children, imports of food, water, medicine, energy and other supplies.
On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz doubled-down on this war crime affirming the IDF would maintain this blockade while announcing his nation’s intention to permanently occupy captured territory in the Strip indefinitely, a measure consistent with the century-old goals of Zionism and the plan advanced by U.S. President Donald Trump for the ethnic cleansing of the entire Gaza population.
READ: Expelling the Palestinian people has always been a goal of Zionism
Katz’s comments come as aid organizations warn of the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the enclave due to the almost seven-week blockade and routine Israeli massacres of Palestinian civilians.
Doctors Without Borders reported on Wednesday that “Gaza has become a ‘mass grave’ for Palestinians and those helping them.”
“Gaza has been turned into a mass grave of Palestinians and those coming to their assistance. We are witnessing in real time the destruction and forced displacement of the entire population in Gaza,” said Amande Bazerolle, the group’s emergency coordinator in Gaza. “With nowhere safe for Palestinians or those trying to help them, the humanitarian response is severely struggling under the weight of insecurity and critical supply shortages, leaving people with few, if any, options for accessing care.”
Trump ‘fully supports’ Israeli genocidal bombing and starvation campaign against Gaza civilians
Trump’s White House has affirmed his full support for the Israeli-imposed starvation blockade along with its renewed large-scale bombing campaign which has taken the lives of hundreds of children.
In the short span of Trump’s current term, he has signed off on over $12 billion in new military aid for Israel and emboldened the religious Zionists who have taken power in that government by repeatedly calling for the expelling of the Palestinians from the land of their forefathers.
Last November the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant “for crimes against humanity and war crimes,” including “starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
Christian Palestinians urge USCCB to retract document and reject ‘narratives that conceal suffering and excuse oppression’
In its conclusion, the Kairos organization emphasized their dire situation in facing existential aggression from the Israeli army and urged the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to stand in solidarity with them in defense of their basic human rights and in service to authentic justice and peace.
“By partnering in this document, the USCCB has alienated the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land, causing deep pain to a community struggling for survival,” their letter cries out. “Ignoring their unalienable rights to live in their ancestral homeland and offering the State of Israel a justification for their forced displacement… only deepens this harm. We urge you to reconsider your stance and retract this endorsement.”
“We need the Church’s voice to stand with justice and truth, not with narratives that conceal suffering and excuse oppression,” they concluded.
To quickly contact your members of Congress and implore their support for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza click here.
Editor’s Note: Catholic readers are also encouraged to cordially contact their respective bishops, kindly pass along this article and ask them to please stand with our Christian brethren in the Holy Land, in speaking out against the horrendous U.S. / Israeli war crimes currently being inflicted upon them and to disavow this “highly problematic” Translate Hate document from the USCCB and pro-abortion ACJ.
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