{"id":4627,"date":"2014-02-28T09:45:56","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T04:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/?p=4627"},"modified":"2014-02-28T09:50:32","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T04:20:32","slug":"vatican-against-israel-book-review-glulio-meotti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/?p=4627","title":{"rendered":"Vatican Against Israel ; Book Review Glulio Meotti"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Vatican Against Israel”: Review of\u00a0\u00a0 New Meotti Book<\/strong><\/span>
\"vatican<\/a><\/p>\n

In his new book, “The Vatican Against\u00a0\u00a0 Israel: J’Accuse”, Giulio Meotti explores the theological foundation for 1,700\u00a0\u00a0 years of Catholic enmity toward Jews and how this is played out against Israel\u00a0\u00a0 since the start of modern Zionism.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n

From Janet Levy<\/b><\/p>\n

\n
“The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse”, by Giulio Meotti, Mantua Books\u00a0\u00a0 Ltd., 2013 204 pp., $22.00<\/i><\/div>\n
With the election of Pope Francis this past March as the 266th Pope\u00a0\u00a0 of the Catholic Church, hopes have run high for a much-needed turnaround in\u00a0\u00a0 Jewish-Catholic relations that would finally extinguish centuries-old,\u00a0\u00a0 Catholic anti-Semitism and its concerted efforts to sabotage the Jewish\u00a0\u00a0 State.<\/div>\n
Those hopes took shape when, as cardinal of Argentina, he maintained\u00a0\u00a0 close ties with the local Jewish community, attended Rosh Hashanah services,\u00a0\u00a0 co-hosted a Kristallnacht memorial ceremony, and was the first public figure\u00a0\u00a0 to condemn the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center in\u00a0\u00a0 Buenos Aires by the Islamic terrorist group, Hezbollah.<\/div>\n
But the jury is still out on how the relationship will progress with\u00a0\u00a0 the new papacy, especially in light of a recent meeting Pope Francis held with\u00a0\u00a0 Malaysian politician, Anwar Ibrahim, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood (MB)\u00a0\u00a0 operative and founder of the MB front organization, the International\u00a0\u00a0 Institute of Islamic Thought. Ibrahim has kept alive charges of Islamophobia\u00a0\u00a0 in the West and has close ties with Bosnian imam Mustafa Ceric, another Muslim\u00a0\u00a0 Brotherhood member who himself is tied to controversial Egyptian Islamic\u00a0\u00a0 theologian, Youssef Qaradawi, who has been banned from entering a number of\u00a0\u00a0 Western countries because of numerous anti-Israel, anti-U.S.\u00a0\u00a0 statements.<\/div>\n
Pope Francis may indeed be struggling against the weight of the past.\u00a0\u00a0 The Catholic Church has an extensive history of anti-Semitism beginning with a\u00a0\u00a0 belief that the destruction of Judea by the Romans, the fall of Jerusalem, and\u00a0\u00a0 the destruction of the Holy Temple in the first century signified rejection\u00a0\u00a0 and punishment of the Jews by G-d.<\/div>\n
The fall of Jerusalem, or \u201cDeicide City\u201d, is enshrined in Christian\u00a0\u00a0 liturgy and teaches Christians that they have been substituted for the \u201cbroken\u00a0\u00a0 branches\u201d of the Jews and \u201cgrafted on the stem of the Covenant.\u201d<\/div>\n
Ostensibly a religion of \u201clove and goodness,\u201d Catholicism has\u00a0\u00a0 harbored animosity and intense hatred for the Jews and been complicit,\u00a0\u00a0 directly and indirectly, in many crimes and atrocities against\u00a0 them.<\/div>\n
In his new book, “The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse”, Giulio\u00a0\u00a0 Meotti uses the famous title that publicist Emil Zola coined for his public\u00a0\u00a0 revealing of the French anti-Semitism that destroyed the life of Alfred\u00a0\u00a0 Dreyfus in the late nineteenth century.<\/div>\n
Meotti explores the theological foundation for 1,700 years of\u00a0\u00a0 Catholic enmity toward Jews that led to manifold persecutory actions and\u00a0\u00a0 atrocities through the centuries and how it continues to play out in Church\u00a0\u00a0 policy toward the Jewish State today.<\/div>\n
Mr. Meotti explains how the Catholic Church has continued to\u00a0\u00a0 undermine Jews through its politics, statements, and contemptuous relationship\u00a0\u00a0 with the state of Israel. Since Israel\u2019s founding in 1948, the Vatican has\u00a0\u00a0 consistently worked against the best interests of the Jewish state and aided\u00a0\u00a0 and abetted its enemies.<\/div>\n
This extensive, historical Church enmity toward the Jews and the\u00a0\u00a0 attendant atrocities have led to today\u2019s shocking alliance with Islam and,\u00a0\u00a0 even more surprisingly, has prevented the Church from aiding persecuted\u00a0\u00a0 Christians throughout the Muslim world. By disavowing Jewish roots and forging\u00a0\u00a0 a strategic Muslim-Christian alliance, the Church has embarked on a precarious\u00a0\u00a0 path for the future of Christendom.<\/div>\n
Furthermore, the Church\u2019s adoption of the Muslim narrative on\u00a0\u00a0 Palestine precludes the recognition of a very real problem jeopardizing the\u00a0\u00a0 lives of thousands of Christians in majority Islamic nations.<\/div>\n
The Church steadfastly ignores the reality behind the Muslim chant,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cFirst the Saturday people, then the Sunday people,\u201d which scripturally links\u00a0\u00a0 Jews and Christians as the infidel, \u201cPeople of the Book,\u201d making both targets\u00a0\u00a0 for violence and repression. However, for Church leadership to admit their\u00a0\u00a0 vulnerability in this regard would require them to grant legitimacy to the\u00a0\u00a0 Jewish people in their ancestral land of Israel, abandon the idea of\u00a0\u00a0 punishment for the deicide, and bear the Jews’ ultimate insult, namely,\u00a0\u00a0 failure to follow the gospel of Jesus Christ.<\/div>\n
The Church and the Death of Jesus<\/b><\/div>\n
In his book, Mr. Meotti explains that anti-Jewish sentiments were\u00a0\u00a0 founded on Church pronouncements that Jews are responsible for the death of\u00a0\u00a0 Jesus. He shows how, until very recently, the Church taught that Jewish\u00a0\u00a0 history ended with the appearance of Christianity and that Jews were a cursed\u00a0\u00a0 people who killed Jesus, rejected Christ\u2019s gospel, and were destined to wander\u00a0\u00a0 the earth for eternity.<\/div>\n
Catholic religious leaders have taken the position that the Church\u00a0\u00a0 constituted the \u201cnew Israel\u201d and Jews were forever abandoned by G-d. It is\u00a0\u00a0 this well-entrenched theological doctrine, he says, that resulted in\u00a0\u00a0 banishment of Jews throughout Europe, ghettoization and marginalization of the\u00a0\u00a0 Jewish community, levying of heavy fines on Jews, forced conversions,\u00a0\u00a0 kidnapping of Jewish children to be raised as Christians, confiscation of\u00a0\u00a0 Jewish property (including synagogues transformed into churches), and the\u00a0\u00a0 torture and murder of Jewish people.<\/div>\n
Mass anti-Jewish actions included the Crusades, the Inquisition,\u00a0\u00a0 Russian pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust, which annihilated one-third of\u00a0\u00a0 world Jewry.<\/div>\n
Meotti’s book reveals that not only these actions, but the genocide\u00a0\u00a0 that was the Holocaust were made possible by the fertile environment of\u00a0\u00a0 anti-Semitism created over centuries by the Church.<\/div>\n
The Church and World War II<\/b><\/div>\n
In “The Vatican Against Israel”, the author examines how the Church\u00a0\u00a0 has continued to be a willing and eager partner in the destruction of the\u00a0\u00a0 Jewish people in the modern era.<\/div>\n
The Church helped promulgate the anti-Semitic hoax of a Jewish plan\u00a0\u00a0 for global domination as set forth in The Protocols of the Elders of\u00a0\u00a0 Zion<\/i>. The first translation of this damaging blood libel was translated\u00a0\u00a0 by Arab Christians and published by a periodical of the Catholic Community in\u00a0\u00a0 Jerusalem in 1926.<\/div>\n
When Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany, the Vatican was the\u00a0\u00a0 first state to formally recognize the legitimacy of the Third Reich and it\u00a0\u00a0 maintained diplomatic relations with the Nazi government through the very end\u00a0\u00a0 of the war.<\/div>\n
Mr. Meotti reports that during the Holocaust, the British envoy to\u00a0\u00a0 the Holy See provided daily briefings on the Nazi atrocities. Meotti reveals\u00a0\u00a0 that Pope Pius XII chose to remain silent and resisted many calls for help\u00a0\u00a0 from the Jewish people. While Jews were being gassed throughout Europe, most\u00a0\u00a0 Christian churches failed to respond. Some even collaborated with the\u00a0\u00a0 Nazis.<\/div>\n
Astonishingly, in 1943 at the height of the Jewish genocide, Pius XII\u00a0\u00a0 reaffirmed in his encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi, the supersession of\u00a0\u00a0 Christianity over Judaism and the replacement of the Jewish Bible, which had\u00a0\u00a0 been abolished, with the Christian Bible.<\/div>\n
At the end of World War II, in the vilest disregard for the memory of\u00a0\u00a0 millions who perished during the Nazi genocide, the Vatican sheltered from\u00a0\u00a0 prosecution a number of Nazis, in effect, granting tacit approval for the\u00a0\u00a0 actions of these Nazi butchers. War criminals, including Adolph Eichmann, Dr.\u00a0\u00a0 Joseph Mengele, Klaus Barbie, Franz Stangl, and others fled through Italy with\u00a0\u00a0 assistance from the Catholic network.<\/div>\n
Mr. Meotti reports that Vatican support and admiration for the Nazis\u00a0\u00a0 didn’t end there. In 1994, Pope John Paul II conferred papal knighthood on\u00a0\u00a0 documented Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim, who had gone on after World War II\u00a0\u00a0 to become Secretary-General of the United Nations. The papal honor, given\u00a0\u00a0 despite a well-known 1985 controversy over Waldheim\u2019s Nazi past, was in effect\u00a0\u00a0 spitting on the memory of Holocaust victims, survivors, and their\u00a0\u00a0 descendants.<\/div>\n
To further confer disgrace on its actions, the Vatican recognized\u00a0\u00a0 Waldheim’s \u201cefforts for peace,\u201d demonizing Israel for defending itself against\u00a0\u00a0 Arab-Palestinian terrorism which had occurred during Waldheim\u2019s tenure as\u00a0\u00a0 Secretary-General. By welcoming Waldheim to the Vatican as an honored visitor,\u00a0\u00a0 the Vatican was symbolically cleansing him of the stain of his Holocaust\u00a0\u00a0 crimes and glorifying his work on behalf of the U.N. to destroy the Jewish\u00a0\u00a0 State.<\/div>\n
The Church and Creation of the Jewish State<\/b><\/div>\n
In “The Vatican Against Israel”, the author reveals how the Church\u00a0\u00a0 initially fought against the British Mandate for Palestine that established\u00a0\u00a0 Israel and, after its founding, demonized and delegitimized Israel\u2019s\u00a0\u00a0 existence. Even as Jews were being gassed during the Holocaust, the Church was\u00a0\u00a0 consumed with stopping the creation of Israel and the return of Jews to their\u00a0\u00a0 ancestral land, because this ran counter to Church theology that Jews were\u00a0\u00a0 condemned to eternal homelessness for their crime of deicide almost 2,000\u00a0\u00a0 years earlier.<\/div>\n
The Church stridently maintained the position that Zionism was\u00a0\u00a0 anti-Christian and anti-Catholic and that the sole route to salvation was\u00a0\u00a0 through conversion. The ultimate founding of the Jewish State was problematic\u00a0\u00a0 for the Catholic Church because it invalidated the church\u2019s replacement\u00a0\u00a0 theology and its doctrine about the Jewish people \u2013 that all Jews for\u00a0\u00a0 generations to come were to be cursed and punished for deicide. As late as\u00a0\u00a0 1904, Pope Pius X told Theodore Herzl, Zionism\u2019s founder, that he would never\u00a0\u00a0 approve the movement as \u201cthe Jews have not recognized our Lord.\u201d<\/div>\n
It was not until 1965, 1,700 years after the Church had condemned\u00a0\u00a0 Jews for all eternity, that the Vatican issued Nostra Aetate, releasing the\u00a0\u00a0 Jews of today from responsibility for the death of Christ. However, the\u00a0\u00a0 document failed to apologize for past Christian anti-Semitism and did not\u00a0\u00a0 validate Judaism or recognize the Jewish State, which by then had existed for\u00a0\u00a0 17 years.<\/div>\n
The Church and Arab Muslims<\/b><\/div>\n
As for political involvement in the Arab-Muslim war against Israel,\u00a0\u00a0 Meotti describes how the Vatican made common cause with Arab-Palestinians,\u00a0\u00a0 supporting their apocryphal claims to territory and even excusing acts of\u00a0\u00a0 terrorism.<\/div>\n
Pope John Paul II went so far as to publicly brand as an\u00a0\u00a0 Israeli-initiated Shoah, what were actually falsified accounts of Israeli\u00a0\u00a0 oppression of Palestinians.<\/div>\n
Pope John Paul II granted several audiences to Yasser Arafat, the\u00a0\u00a0 father of modern terrorism and the head of the Palestinian Liberation\u00a0\u00a0 Organization (PLO), who had ordered and carried out attacks against Jewish\u00a0\u00a0 civilians and was seeking publicity and legitimacy on the world stage. While\u00a0\u00a0 openly proclaiming hatred of the Jews and plans to annihilate Israel, Arafat\u00a0\u00a0 and his henchman were granted respectability by the Catholic\u00a0 Church.<\/div>\n
In 1974, the Vatican formally recognized the Palestinian Liberation\u00a0\u00a0 Organization. It wasn’t until 1993, almost 20 years later, that the Church\u00a0\u00a0 recognized the State of Israel.<\/div>\n
When PLO Chairman Arafat died in 2004, the Pope eulogized the\u00a0\u00a0 terrorist as a great leader in this \u201chour of sadness\u201d and spoke fondly of his\u00a0\u00a0 closeness to the Arafat family.<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, Church acceptance of Israel has been tepid at best. Every\u00a0\u00a0 attempt is made to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish State and support the\u00a0\u00a0 Arab-Palestinian narrative even following scores of suicide bombings and tens\u00a0\u00a0 of thousands of rocket attacks on Israeli land. The Church advances the view\u00a0\u00a0 that Palestinian violence is a justifiable reaction to \u201coppression and\u00a0\u00a0 humiliation\u201d by the Israelis.<\/div>\n
Never mentioned are the openly stated goals of Hamas and Hezbollah to\u00a0\u00a0 destroy the Jewish state. No Vatican condemnations have been made for over\u00a0\u00a0 11,000 rocket attacks that have murdered and maimed hundreds of Israeli\u00a0\u00a0 civilians. Israel’s attempts to defend itself have been characterized as acts\u00a0\u00a0 of aggression.<\/div>\n
In 2002, at the height of the Intifada, the Church condoned and\u00a0\u00a0 legitimized Palestinian terrorism by terming the attacks against Israel as a\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201ccry for justice.\u201d At a pro-Palestinian protest parade in Rome in 2002,\u00a0\u00a0 Archbishop Capucci, who had used his Vatican immunity in the past to smuggle\u00a0\u00a0 arms and explosives to Fatah terrorists, defended suicide bombers and stated,\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cGreetings to the sons of the Intifada and to the martyrs who go and fight as\u00a0\u00a0 if they were going to a party. . . . We want our land, or we will die with\u00a0\u00a0 dignity . . . Intifada till victory.\u201d No criticism or repercussions were\u00a0\u00a0 forthcoming from the Vatican.<\/div>\n
In addition to the above, Meotti lists a multitude of Catholic NGOs\u00a0\u00a0 such as Trocaire, Pax Christi, Cordaid, and Caritas which legitimate terrorist\u00a0\u00a0 activities and demonize Israel through boycott, divestment, and sanction (BDS)\u00a0\u00a0 campaigns. The NGOs also compare Zionism to Nazism and stage events in which\u00a0\u00a0 Israel’s security barriers, which have saved Jewish lives, are labeled as\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201capartheid walls.\u201d<\/div>\n
Even today, many Vatican Christian pilgrimage and tourist tour maps\u00a0\u00a0 fail to mention Israel. Instead, the area is labeled \u201cHoly Land\u201d or\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cPalestine.\u201d The Church’s anti-Israel propaganda is intensified by tours that\u00a0\u00a0 are purposely designed to cast the Jewish state in a negative light.\u00a0\u00a0 Palestinian guides focus exclusively on controlled visits to the Palestinian\u00a0\u00a0 territories and instill hatred of Israel by skewing the narrative and insuring\u00a0\u00a0 that visitors leave ignorant of the true nature of the Jewish State, the only\u00a0\u00a0 democracy in the region.<\/div>\n
Meotti , in this excellent account of Vatican history, prophesies\u00a0\u00a0 that the Church\u2019s actions toward the Jews and Israel will result in tragic\u00a0\u00a0 consequences for both Jews and Christians. By attacking Israel and resisting\u00a0\u00a0 significant ties with Jews and the Jewish state in favor of a deadly\u00a0\u00a0 Christian-Muslim alliance, the Church is sowing the seeds of its own demise.\u00a0\u00a0 The future for Christians is glaringly spelled out by the drastically\u00a0\u00a0 diminished populations of Bethlehem, Ramallah, Gaza, and the ‘West Bank'”,\u00a0\u00a0 where Christians are used as human shields and Christian homes serve as rocket\u00a0\u00a0 launch sites.<\/div>\n
Throughout Muslim countries in the Middle East, Christians are being\u00a0\u00a0 massacred and forced out of the land. The bombing of Christian shops, schools,\u00a0\u00a0 and churches, and the torture and murder of priests has become almost daily\u00a0\u00a0 fare, he shows.<\/div>\n
This is the future that awaits the Church and its Christian followers\u00a0\u00a0 if they persist in aligning with Muslims and fail to overcome their historic\u00a0\u00a0 and current anti-Semitic acts.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
www.israelnationalnews.com<\/span><\/a><\/td>\n<\/td>\n\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 print<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n


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The Vatican Against Israel”: Review of\u00a0\u00a0 New Meotti Book In his new book, “The Vatican… more »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4631,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4627\/revisions\/4631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patriotsforumindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}