The Scandal of the Catholic Zionist

A tell-tale sign of having become the victim of propaganda is the eruption of particularly vehement and irrational anger, leading invariably to name-calling, calumny, scapegoating, and insinuation, when confronted with a fact, idea, or argument that might refute the propaganda, or at least make the victim aware of his having been propagandized. This anger eruption is itself a product of the propaganda, a built-in defense mechanism effectively precluding awareness of not only the spurious content of the propaganda but also the fact of its very existence in the victim's mind.

The amount, intensity, and sophistication of the propaganda surrounding, distorting, and cloaking the Israeli genocide of Gazans is unprecedented. Nevertheless, some things one can’t hide. It is now indisputable that Israel has committed genocide. The Vatican has now condemned Israel’s actions, and so have the vast majority of the countries of the world. What is also indisputable is that the primary cause of the violence in Gaza, as well as the violence in the Middle East for the past seventy years, is not the primitive, home-made “rockets” that kill less Israelis in seven years than the state-of-the-art, American-produced “smart bombs” kill in seven days, nor “Islamic terrorists who hate democracy and freedom,” but the unconscionable treatment of Palestinians by the state of Israel since its very inception, what can be accurately called ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Indeed, Cardinal Martino called Gaza a “concentration camp,” a quite deliberate description, implying that Israel has treated the Palestinians in Gaza in a manner not unlike the Germans’ treatment of prisoners in Warsaw during World War II. As many reputable commentators have insisted, if Israel were only willing to observe the pre-1967 borders, a lasting peace with the Palestinian Arabs could be arranged quite quickly. However, Israel, due to its Zionist/Talmudic ideology of racial superiority and political hegemony, is fanatical about its “right” to the entire area of land, that is, its right to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians.

Any person with even the slightest sense of justice would condemn any regime for targeting civilians—this has nothing to do with the fact that it is Israel. What those of us who criticize Israel are doing is objecting to policies that are immoral and illegal under international law, for Israel has voluntarily agreed to abide by the UN Charter, which forbids offensive wars of aggression and interruptions of the peace. America has broken this charter in Iraq, and this fact is also indisputable. Yet, Catholics who make their objections known are automatically accused of anti-Semitism by fellow Catholics for merely affirming these facts, facts that, as I have said, cannot be objectively disputed.

Now, I can certainly understand a fanatical Israeli Zionist defending this kind of behavior, for being both bereft of the light of Christ and possessed by a powerful, pernicious ideology that permits acts that no Catholic can ever condone, it would make logical sense. But the phenomenon of practicing, otherwise charitable, and otherwise orthodox Catholics, defending the indefensible, and of demonizing fellow Catholics for not doing so, demands an explanation.

It is reasonable to conclude that their lack of any criticism whatsoever of the Israeli regime in its recent attacks on Gaza, even when the Pope himself has condemned Israel’s violence, and even when the targeting of homes and hospitals is now there for all to see—thank God for the Internet!—is that these misguided Catholics believe that certain human beings or nations are exempt from moral criticism, from the moral law. Now, for an Israeli to defend its nation’s actions “right or wrong” can be chalked up to simple fanatical nationalism, but why would Americans do so, and American Roman Catholics for that matter! I think that behind this disturbing phenomenon is a form of idolatry, an idolatry that can be described as reverse racism.

Racism is evinced when one automatically condemns a person’s or groups’ actions merely because of the racial identity of the person or group while completely prescinding from any evaluation of the moral quality of the actions themselves. However, is not racism revealed also in an a priori and infallible defense of a person’s or group’s actions? For it is to exempt a particular group of humans from the strictures of the universal moral law, which is to say, to render them divine.

Based upon their relentless defense of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, indeed, of all of Israeli’s acts of terror and violence beginning with the “Nakba,” the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by the pre-Israeli army prior to the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948. The Nakba marked the beginning of the theft of Palestinian land that continues to this day, with the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the inhumane blockade, and the genocide in Gaza. Based upon their assigning all blame for any violence in the Middle East to Muslims alone, to Hamas, Hezbollah, to anti-Semitism, that is, to any other group or ideology rather than Israel and Zionism; it is reasonable to conclude that these Catholics are thinking as racists. To wit, anti-Semite racists immorally condemn the actions of Jewish people regardless of the moral quality of their actions; Catholic racists immorally celebrate, or at least refuse to condemn, their actions, as if they were impeccable. Both are instances of the sin of racism, though the latter includes the sin of idolatry as well.

For these racist and idolatrous Catholics, as long as they are actions conducted in defense or the name of the special race, nation, ideology, or religion, they are never to be criticized, even if they are morally objectionable actions according to Catholic standards. Instead of recognizing this racism in themselves, however, they automatically assign these vices to those who manifestly do not think as racists and idolaters. Such rejecters of racism and idolatry, that is, those relatively few practicing, orthodox Catholics who have remained immune from the brainwashing campaign of the Israeli and American Zionist propaganda machine, those not cowed by threats of being labeled as racists and anti-Semites, are thus branded as anti-Semites and racists—and all discussion and argument ceases.

There can be no other explanation than racist idolatry as far as I can see for this radical moral blindness to what is obvious to any decent person on the planet. It must be said that having even the slightest inclination to this kind of racial thinking is supremely dangerous to one’s soul. As Rene Girard’s pioneering work on the origin and nature of violence has taught us, being an authentic Christian means, almost more than anything else, being on the side of the victim in instances of sacrificial violence. Jesus, being the sacrificial victim par excellence, is the Divine Defender of Victims. Satan, on the other hand, is the demonic defender of the victimizers.

Though Hamas is no innocent victim, for it certainly shares some of the blame in the death of innocent Palestinians by providing the pretext—though not the justification—for Israel’s grossly disproportionate use of force against them, those siding solely with Israel in the Gaza war, and those who refuse in principle to utter one word of condemnation, due to its racial and/or religious identity, of the Israeli regime, or any regime, institution, group, or person, for what are objectively immoral, violent acts, are in principle expressing their perennial loyalty to the victimizers. This is pledging eternal allegiance to anti-Christ.