Why I am a (Critical) Zionist

by Fr. Matthew Kirby

Introduction

First, some definitions. Anti-Semitism is animosity towards Jews because they are Jews, and normally includes beliefs that Jews are generally untrustworthy, avaricious, manipulative, malicious towards Gentiles and too powerful. These purported characteristics may be ascribed to racial and cultural factors or to religious ones. Anti-Zionism is the belief that the modern state of Israel is morally and legally illegitimate and that Jews should not have been given their own nation-state within their ancient homeland, the region renamed as Palestine by the Roman Empire. The reason given for this opposition to the return of Jews to (part of) their old national territory is that it occurred through the (partial) displacement of Palestinian Arabs who had been there for centuries. The question of whether anti-Zionism is by definition anti-Semitic is contested, including by Jews, and I will not automatically assume an identity between them.

There is increasing animosity around the Western world towards Israel (and Jews outside it) that has surged since the terrorist attack on it of October 7 2023 and its aftermath, the war in Gaza. Is this anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism? Or is it both? The fact that, in Australia and elsewhere outside Israel, it has involved numerous attacks on synagogues and Jewish businesses plus the targeting of Jewish people and communities per se, answers the question. Whether enacted by leftists, Islamists or neo-Nazis, clearly this phenomenon is often a thoroughly anti-Semitic brand of anti-Zionism. Russian Australians are not being targeted for Putin’s acts, nor is anybody seeking out immigrants from China, Iran or Pakistan to persecute, whenever those nations commit or sponsor some outrage.

Parallel to this, influential figures of the religious right have become increasingly and outspokenly skeptical about Israel’s right to exist or even harshly condemnatory of Judaism and its adherents. Some have also been willing to revisit old conspiracy theories regarding Israel and the Jews, or even Holocaust revisionism and denial. Conservative voices accused of manifesting some or all of these behaviours include Candace Owens, Fr Calvin Robinson and Tucker Carlson. It is only fair to note that all three disclaim anti-Semitism and do not attack Jews on a racial basis.

Candace Owens has, it is claimed, resurrected old blood libels against the Jews, disputed Nazi atrocities, implied Israel was founded to protect paedophiles and claimed it has taken over the USA,¹ all after an earlier false, and surprisingly clueless, allegation that Jim Crow-style segregation is practised in Israel. (She alleged this based on her belief at the time that there are parts of Jerusalem that Muslims are forbidden to enter, since people talk about the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Armenian Quarters of that city.) Fr Robinson has associated with alleged anti-Semites, uncritically platformed their opinions, copied their use of the term “noticing” (which they  use to communicate the idea that Jews are behind the world’s ills), and pushed for an apparently unqualified supersessionism that denies the Jews remain a people special to God in any sense. Tucker Carlson has, among other things, disputed the loyalty of many American Jews and uncritically platformed alleged anti-Semites.²

These stances are not new, of course. They are reflective of certain tendencies found in traditional Roman Catholicism, as well as within certain strands of popular piety among the Eastern Orthodox (EO), of which more will be said in the next section.

Further elements of this shtick one can find in other sources are characterising the Jews as a relentlessly growing cancer in the Middle East, misquoting or quoting out of context various Talmudic texts in order to demonise Judaism as paedophilic and racist,³ and a pseudo-scientific denial of the ancient Jewish ancestry of modern Ashkenazi Jews—either through the debunked Khazar hypothesis or misunderstood genetic analyses—in order to paint them as European invaders and colonisers of Palestine. The Khazar hypothesis claimed that the Ashkenazi were descended not from ancient semites but from a European tribe that converted en masse to Judaism in the early Middle Ages. But genetic data proves their semitic roots despite an admixture (about 50-60%) of European (but not Khazar) ancestry. Not only that, but Jewishness, biblically, has always prioritised religious over ancestral criteria, as the Old Testament (e.g., Ruth passim) teaches us that non-Jews can and do become Jewish and and marry other Jews. The seed of Jacob have never been or claimed to be “pure-bloods”.⁴

Now, it is only fair to note that anti-Zionism does not always entail anti-Semitism. For example, there are anti-Zionist Hasidim, ultra-orthodox Jews who reject the validity or justice of the secular state of Israel. And there are Jews and Gentiles who have genuine doubts about the legitimacy of past mass Jewish immigration into the region insofar as it led to the dispossession of Arab Palestinians, and on philosophical and political grounds question the ethical justification in modern times for an ethnostate. Nevertheless, regarding the latter concern, it is hard not to notice that their distaste for ethnostates is rather selective, in that other obvious examples of nations that are in practice clearly ethnostates—in that they have a majority ethnic group and immigration policies to protect that majority status, e.g., Japan or Malaysia—don’t seem to keep them awake at night.

In responding to the Israel-Palestine conflict, criticism of Israel too is far from being automatically anti-Semitic, especially as Israeli Jews themselves often harshly criticise the actions or inactions of their own government regarding Palestinian people and the protection of their rights and welfare. However, while it is naive to think the fault is all on one side in this conflict, it is also intellectually lazy to use this fact to assert a moral symmetry between the two sides. A false equivalence is often used by anti-Semites to treat Israel’s actions in response to terrorism, which involve civilian deaths despite attempted safeguards,⁵ as a mirror image of the terrorist actions themselves where civilians are deliberately targetted.⁶ Yet even here, the accusation of anti-Semitism should not be used to prevent criticism of genuinely malicious acts by Israeli governments or citizens, which incontestably do occur, as one would expect due to sinful human nature and the desire for revenge after terrorist atrocities.

But if harsh criticism of Israel (especially its government) is not necessarily anti-Semitic, but has been so in practice often enough, we still come to the more fundamental question. Is Zionism defensible? That is, does Israel have a right to exist as a majority Jewish state, especially from a Christian perspective? To help answer this, we will need to investigate how the anti-Semitic stream within Christianity and its modern advocates, along with their connection to anti-Zionism, fit within the broader context of a post-Constantinian theo-politics of coercion.⁷

Traditionalist Christian Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

E. Michael Jones is a traditionalist⁸ Roman Catholic (RC) whose writings provide a particularly unsubtle example of anti-Semitism. He says of present-day Jews as a group that they are hostile to all other peoples, “feel compelled to infiltrate and subvert the institutions which admit them as members” and are “responsible for virtually every social ill in our day”.⁹

Another example of this brand of reactionary Roman Catholicism is Robert Sungenis. Once a contributor on the popular and orthodox RC television network, EWTN, he has long been disowned by them after veering into anti-Semitism (including Holocaust scepticism) and a bizarre adherence to Geocentricism. One of his more astonishing claims to fame is having not only used a Nazi propaganda pamphlet as a trusted source, but having plagiarised it, quoting it almost verbatim without attribution! Again, within his oeuvre Jews are blamed for various social ills and a number of historic catastrophes, such as World War I.

A Russian Orthodox example of this thinking is given in this video: “How to Understand the Jews as Being a Chosen People: An Orthodox Analysis” https://youtu.be/Zwtcox3ivCs?si=vQTyQym04V_otLhF. The comments on this video are also instructive, albeit depressingly so. For example, we have: “Their God is not Jesus Christ. They are chosen by the other side. Easy to understand.” And this charming example of projection: “out of all the nations, none hates us more and procures our evil as the jews [sic], ... Christian approach towards the Jewish people in general must remain very suspicious”. Here is an excerpt from the article¹⁰ upon which the video is based:

If the Old Testament is understood as a foreshadowing, then one sees that the true Jews of the Old Testament are a foreshadowing of Christians, since all true Jews of the Old Testament are a foreshadowing of Christians, since all true Jews of the Old Testament lived spiritually in expectation of Christ the Savior, the Messiah. On the other hand, their enemies in the Old Testament are a foreshadowing of contemporary Judaism, that is, those who either consciously or unconsciously confess the Jewish religion, the very foundation of this religion being a rejection of Christ ...

One cannot doubt that those who consciously confess the Jewish religion strive for the universal supremacy of Judaism, or rather of the Jews. ...

For this reason the religion of the Jews is directed towards the future, to meet the Messiah, not Christ, but rather the Antichrist, who must establish the supremacy of the Jews and Judaism upon the whole world. In this way we see the difference between the philosophies of Judaism and Christianity. …

This Jewish materialistic approach openly and more subtly, under the appearance of various social theories and philosophical systems, encroaches upon the consciousness of Christians, breaking down Christian nations. In particular the penetration into the Christian consciousness of this Judaistic idea explains many heresies, the rise of Islam, the substitution of Christianity with humanism, altruism, Marxism, and separatist nationalism.

What common denominator do some people seek in order to equalize black and white, Christianity and Judaism?

And so we have here, in these three sources, the tropes relied upon as justification by those Christians who have humiliated, dispossessed, exiled, attacked or killed Jews through the ages. Jews are portrayed as the traitors within who corrupt their host societies, the source of all evils, the planners of world supremacy and tyranny, the future followers of Antichrist, and the epitome of darkness. Is it any wonder, then, that many Christians (both nominal and pious) have dehumanised and marginalised them persistently after absorbing this theologically rationalised atmosphere of hatred and fear?

Now, it must be emphasised that these examples are drawn from radically traditionalist¹¹ or anti-ecumenical voices within the RC and EO communions, not from the mainstream, authoritative ones. Why is there so much anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism amongst so-called Rad Trads? It is the inheritance of old ideas—ideas which were applied assiduously and often coercively—from medieval Christendom. And the age of Christendom is seen by them as a golden age. In practice, however, much of what Rad Trads look to as the venerable norm of Catholicism requiring preservation is based on its manifestation in the pre-Vatican II modern period, which often involved trying to force medieval solutions to modern questions and problems.¹² What that amounted to with respect to the Jews and the wider RC theo-politics is well summarised in the excerpt below. It comes from a superbly balanced article on the RC Church’s response to the Nazi regime and atrocities, The Holocaust: What Was Not Said, which was published in the journal First Things.¹³

This defense of the Church [against accusations of collaboration with the Nazis by pointing to “the Church’s uncompromising condemnation of Nazi racial doctrine”], however, fails to account for a number of important facts. It ignores the existence of a specifically modern anti-Semitism, shared in varying degrees by Catholics. Nourished by traditional Christian anti-Judaism, it had social, political, and economic aspects as well. In its Catholic form it was rooted in the Church’s political and social antimodernism, especially its opposition to liberalism and all its works. ... Finally, there was the Catholic openness to an authoritarian state, which allowed people to think, at the start of Hitler’s rule, that the Nazi state might be an acceptable alternative to liberal democracy and a bulwark against the looming threat of Bolshevism.

Anti-liberalism and openness to authoritarianism—as long as the civil authority empowers and aids the RC Church—are key characteristics of the traditionalist RC approach to Church-State relations, integralism. Integralism sees the theo-political ideal in a RC confessional state like that once common in Western Christendom. Such a state privileges the RC Church. It also uses legal means and the arm of the state to restrict freedom of religion and speech, to discourage or forbid whatever that Church deems should be so suppressed, and to enact policies conforming to RC social justice teaching. The similarities between integralism and Islamic sharia law are many and have been pointed out by RC authors such as John Zmirak.¹⁴ Both believe that

• the religious authorities should have the right to command the civil ones whenever they deem religious principles are relevant, since spiritual and eternal concerns have the highest priority

• the civil authorities should take steps, including the use of violence or its threat, to favour and protect the true faith as defined by the religious authorities

• freedom of conscience and religion are not human rights, especially if that means that followers of the wrong religions are not to be subject to civil disadvantages or penalties for their religious affiliation¹⁵

• but these purported rights may be used (and appealed to by an ad hominem¹⁶ argument) to protect those identified as of the true faith in liberal democracies while they are a minority or until liberal democracy is replaced by the ultimate sovereignty of the religious authorities

• members of the religion defined as true should be made subject, with the aid of the civil authorities, to the rulings and discipline of their religious authorities, and

• both authorities may go beyond the appeal to Natural Law to enforce dictates of revealed religion.

What can be said from a Christian perspective against this general inheritance, within which particular anti-Semitic legislation found its home? Quite a lot, as it happens. We will look at its flaws in terms of ethical philosophy, Scriptural and patristic precedents, and an analysis of the factual and theological flaws of its apologetics in the Excursus below.

An Excursus on Theocratic Violence in Western Christendom

Regarding the traditional RC cliché that “error has no rights”, referred to in a footnote, the following must be said. This dictum is true but irrelevant and misleading for three reasons. First, an error is a false proposition or mistaken action, and neither propositions nor actions can have rights, only persons can; so, the dictum is trivially true inasmuch as its denial would be a category mistake. Second, because it is whether people have the right to obey their consciences in religious (or other) matters that is really in question in the debate between integralism and classical liberalism, the dictum constitutes a non sequitur and is nihil ad rem if proposed as the answer to that question. Third, since a person cannot normally be coerced into sincerely changing their inward beliefs, using coercion is instead used to prevent the outward following of conscience, which, even according to Catholic moral theology, risks tempting a person to sin in subjective terms of intent,¹⁷ such temptation being a sinful act under normal circumstances.¹⁸ Thus, the dictum is irrelevant in its proper meaning and morally vicious in its conventional application.

What is particularly remarkable about the resort by Churches to coercion and enlisting the state to aid in this use of force is how manifestly it contradicts the Gospels. Not only did Christ reject the offer of worldly dominion at his temptation in the wilderness (Matthew 4:8-10), but he explicitly stated that his kingdom was “not of this world” and not intended to be physically fought for as he faced death (John 18:36), and had earlier rebuked the disciples for wishing to punish those who rejected Him (Luke 9:52-56). A biblical case was mounted to counter these facts as follows:

1. The theocracies of the Old Covenant were seen to provide plenty of precedent for the utilising the civil sword to do enforce religious goals.

2. An allegorical use was made of the mention of two swords (Luke 22:38) in possession of the disciples at Christ’s arrest to argue that these represented the spiritual and temporal authority committed to St. Peter, and to the Pope as his successor.

3. Appeal was also made to Peter’s prophetic death sentence to Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) to prove that the Church had the general right to physically punish the baptised.¹⁹

While it may seem overkill to counter arguments whose weaknesses are obvious, for completeness sake I note the following in response:

1. The Old Covenant’s kingdoms were of this world and did require physical defence by Divine decree. The New Covenant’s kingdom is, as mentioned above, explicitly described by our Lord as having the opposite characteristics.

2. The 2 swords are mentioned not by Peter alone but the disciples as a group, and we can only be sure one sword belonged to Peter himself (John 18:10-11). More importantly, there is no reason to think the two swords are symbolic in this way, especially since Peter is told in this very context, “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Matthew 26:52). Arbitrary allegorical claims are problematic in themselves, but they are worthless when opposed to the plain literal sense of the text.

3. St Peter’s action in Acts 5 is a unique, miraculous and prophetic one, involving no instruments of the flesh or the world. Similarly, St Paul was empowered to miraculously blind a wicked false prophet temporarily (Acts 13:6-12). Again, his only weapon is the inspired word of God. Nothing here would lead us to believe this was a power able to be exercised at human whim, otherwise the Apostles could have perpetually proved their divine authority AND short-circuited persecution by smiting their human enemies regularly. And nothing suggests it supplies any justification for physically coercive acts against either believers or unbelievers, whether directly or via worldly powers as proxies.

While it is easy enough to find defences of coercion of and violence towards the baptised among theologians from St Augustine onwards and ecclesial support for integralist state policies, the earlier Fathers denied any such right to the Church and Christian individuals, even to the point of espousing a thoroughgoing embrace of pacifism for Christians and freedom of religion for all.²⁰ And we see remnants of the same approach later in surprising places: for example, St Vladimir the Great, Kievan Rus’ first Christian monarch, abolished capital punishment and judicial torture.

Here are some relevant patristic excerpts:

“Above all, Christians are not allowed to correct with violence the delinquencies of sins. For it is not those that abstain from wickedness from compulsion, but those that abstain from choice, that God crowns.” (St Clement of Alexandria, fragment)

It is only just and a privilege inherent in human nature that every person should be able to worship according to his own convictions; the religious practice of one person neither harms nor helps another. It is not part of religion to coerce religious practice, for it is by choice not coercion that we should be led to religion. (Tertullian, Chapter II, To Scapula)

[F]rom the Lord’s advent, the new covenant which brings back peace, and the law which gives life, has gone forth over the whole earth, as the prophets said: “For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem; and He shall rebuke many people; and they shall break down their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks, and they shall no longer learn to fight.” … if the law of liberty, that is, the word of God, preached by the apostles (who went forth from Jerusalem) throughout all the earth, caused such a change in the state of things, that these did form the swords and war-lances into ploughshares, and changed them into pruning-hooks for reaping the corn, into instruments used for peaceful purposes, and that they are now unaccustomed to fighting, but when smitten, offer also the other cheek, then the prophets have not spoken these things of any other person, but of Him who effected them. (Irenaeus 4.34.4)

Torture and piety are widely different; nor is it possible for truth to be united with violence, or justice with cruelty. . . . For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty, but by patient endurance; not by guilt, but by good faith: for the former belong to evils, but the latter to goods; and it is necessary for that which is good to have place in religion, and not that which is evil. For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, and by tortures, and by guilt, it will no longer be defended, but will be polluted and profaned. For nothing is so much a matter of free-will as religion; in which, if the mind of the worshipper is disinclined to it, religion is at once taken away, and ceases to exist. The right method therefore is, that you defend religion by patient endurance or by death; in which the preservation of the faith is both pleasing to God Himself, and adds authority to religion. (Lactantius, Divine Institutes 5.20)

We have also conceded to other religions [in addition to Christianity] the right of open and free observance of their worship for the sake of the peace of our times, that each one may have the free opportunity to worship as he pleases. This regulation is made that we may not seem to detract from any dignity of any religion. (Emperor Constantine I, recognised as a saint in the EO Church, in his famous Edict of Milan)

Let those who delight in error alike with those who believe partake of the advantages of peace. ... Let no one disturb another, let each man hold fast to that which his soul wishes. ... What each man has adopted as his persuasion, let him do no harm with this to another. (Emperor Constantine I, Edict to the Eastern Provincials)

There exists, nonetheless, an old RC apologetics strategy designed to vindicate or at least excuse the later “development” away from this evangelical and humane approach, and then back to it again more recently. Classic examples of it can be found here and here from the original Catholic Encyclopedia. There are three main defences attempted. First, that religious toleration was virtually unthinkable in that social context due to the close connection of Church and State, which is why by both Catholics and Protestants repressed or persecuted dissidents. Second, that the close connection aforementioned meant that religious toleration would in fact be positively harmful to society. And third, that the RC Church’s purported monopoly on truth was more obvious in the Middle Ages, making any deviation then more blameworthy than now, and so justifying both the harshness then and leniency now.

All of these defences are specious. The claim that toleration was unthinkable in that social context is nonsense. The famous Edict of Milan had not been forgotten, so the idea was very thinkable indeed for the educated. Poland provided a 16^th C example of religious toleration, with the RC King Sigismund II Augustus proclaiming "I am not the ruler of your consciences". Although Queen Elizabeth I eventually harshly persecuted those loyal to the Pope in England, especially when she believed that they were planning rebellion, regicide or to assist Spanish invasion, even her initial policy was quite tolerant and her attitude is summarised by one of her court (Sir Francis Walsingham) as follows:

Her Majesty, not liking to make windows into men’s hearts and secret thoughts except the abundance of them did overflow into overt and express acts or affirmations, tempered her law so as it restraineth only manifest disobedience, in impugning and impeaching advisedly and maliciously her Majesty’s supreme power, and maintaining and extolling a foreign jurisdiction

The argument that Church and State had become intertwined, making toleration for heresy purportedly more dangerous even in purely civil or secular terms and intolerance safer, has three problems. One, this was not really the reason then given, which was instead the paramount obligations to protect souls (E.g., Summa Theologica II II Q.11 A.3), quite apart from any negative but purely civil effects. Two, this intertwining occurred partly via centuries of the persecution of dissidents from not long after Constantine. We should not swap cause and effect, or allow the effects of persecutions to be used to justify more persecution. Three, this defence of intolerance is irrelevant theologically since Jesus never gave civil harmony as an excuse to oppress non-believers or wrong-believers.

The claim that heresy was more blameworthy back when RC Church's identity as the “One True Church”, and thus its monopoly on Christian truth, was more “obvious” suffers from a severe case of romanticised history. Unchristian behaviour by the official Western Church was hardly unknown back then, such that its identity as the “light on a hill” could be seriously obscured. The schism with the Eastern Church, along with disunity, arguments and scandals within Western Church itself, were a potently visible reality even then. The supposedly monolithic integrity the Church exhibited at that time has been idealised retrospectively.

As noted before, one significant element of this dubious heritage was a great deal of ecclesial anti-Semitic legislation. Unfortunately, it has to be accepted that the similarities between these and later Nazi legislation are not accidental. Despite multiple earlier papal decrees aimed at protecting the Jews (to an extent) from injustice and the RC Church’s condemnations of the racism of Nazis, the latter were able to point to these precedents. Here is a very partial list of the kind of ecclesiastical laws or acts that the fascists happily echoed.²¹

• Jews not allowed to hold public office, Synod of Clermont, 535 AD

• Burning of the Talmud and other Jewish books, 12th Synod of Toledo, 681 AD

• The marking of Jewish clothes with a badge, 4th Lateran Council, 1215 AD, Canon 68 (copied from the legislation by Caliph Omar II [634-644 AD] who had decreed that Christians wear blue belts and Jews yellow belts)

• Compulsory ghettos, Synod of Breslau, 1267 AD

• Jews not permitted to obtain academic degrees, Council of Basel, 1434 AD, Session XIX33

Jews in the Middle Ages were also often officially banned from land ownership and other normal occupations, but then popularly blamed for not doing honest manual labour! They were pushed into banking by default due to these restrictions combined with the fact that Canon Law forbade the application of usury by Christians in making loans, effectively excluding Christians from a business they nevertheless wanted access to—but then condemned and scapegoated as greedy money-lenders!²²

The fundamental approach of the Western Church was Augustinian at best.²³ A key component of this approach was the belief that the scattered state of Jews as a Diaspora was a witness to their Providential subjugation.²⁴ It is no surprise then that integralists and their ilk see the return of the Jews to the Holy Land as unwelcome and contrary to God’s will. An analogous irritation exists widely among Muslims who believe that land they have conquered in the past, Palestine included, cannot ever be released back to non-Muslims.²⁵ In both cases what we have is the frustration of a morally questionable sense of satisfaction that they had previously experienced from their religious "superiority" over Jews being expressed geopolitically.

We see then that the medieval inheritance is deeply flawed, both in terms of general principles and specific actions. The theo-politics that underpins Roman Catholic Traditionalist anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is morally deficient and contrary to the Gospel. And it forms part of the larger complex of legalistic and imperialist²⁶ distortions of the Petrine ministry in Rome that also contributed to the need for the English Reformation in its positive achievements and justified protests. This complex of errors was the result of often prioritising fear over faith, power over loving service, ceremony over personal encounter, and law over Gospel.²⁷ Its consequences were, inter alia, linguistically ossified liturgies with even the supposedly didactic Scripture readings incomprehensible to most, torture and execution in Jesus' name through the Inquisitions, marginal or superstitious pieties popularised and prioritised (e.g., obsession with relics, often fake, and even worship of purportedly miracle-working statues), and the sidelining of core beliefs and practices by comparison (e.g., sacramental communion, simple trust in God’s mercy). All of these were criticised by the Church of England during its own ressourcement in the 16^th Century and corrected, either immediately or gradually. The RC Church had to wait much longer, till Vatican II, to fully correct them.

The Church of England as a general principle rejected the abuses of power once endemic to Western Christendom, abuses which included official anti-Semitism. It is no surprise, then, that Anglican statesmen and clergy came along like Anthony Ashley-Cooper (the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury), Disraeli, Hechler, Balfour and Churchill who criticised anti-Semitism, were open philo-Semites and supported Zionism. Anglican bishops like J.C. Ryle and H.C.G. Moule were also philo-Semites, the former explicitly Zionist long before the State of Israel existed. Yes, these bishops and at least two of the other men were Evangelicals.²⁸ Anglo-Catholics have tended to the same suspicions as RCs, due partly perhaps to the same medieval romanticism or Roman sympathies. However, we should not forget that Pusey, the “father” of modern Anglo-Catholicism, respected and loved Evangelicals and tried to minimise perceived differences with them.²⁹ And these Evangelicals are all important witnesses and part of our Anglican patrimony, men who, unlike some Protestant Zionist Dispensationalists, neither rejected the universal Church’s soteriology by denying the necessity of the Christian Gospel for all men, including Jews, nor posited the eschatological innovation of a Rapture that removed Christians from tribulation before Christ’s return.

I will argue in this essay that Anglican Catholics should not only, of course, forthrightly reject all anti-Semitism, but should also, I contend, embrace the philo-Semitic dimension of their patrimony and take a critical stance toward Anti-Zionism, subjecting it to a deserved hermeneutic of suspicion.³⁰ However, in service of truth, fairness and charity we should also criticise actions (or inactions) of the Israeli government that unjustly harm their Arab and Christian citizens and unofficial practices or prejudices that discriminate against them.³¹ This is especially the case now, when the Israeli government includes ministers who are extremists and, in one case, a convicted criminal and supporter of terrorism.

Justifiable Catholic Zionism

But how should we as Anglican Catholic Christians interpret the Patristic and later consensual teaching, built on Pauline and other biblical foundations, that Judaism has been superseded by Christianity and that the Jews should accept Christ as their Messiah, submitting to the New Covenant? Obviously, one cannot be a Christian without affirming the truth of Christianity, which has undeniably and always proclaimed that the Messiah has come and both fulfilled and renewed the older religion. Logic (particularly the law of non-contradiction) demands that in affirming the Catholic Faith we deny the ongoing need, salvific utility or obligation of some parts of the old covenant, in contrast to Judaism. However, this does not necessitate or entail the simple erasure of Jewish identity or election, nor does it invalidate a morally and theologically defensible version of Zionism, as we will see.

Fr Calvin Robinson recently shared the following:

Last week, I tweeted a quote a day from the Church Fathers, covering the first five hundred years of the Church.

It is interesting to learn what the early Church taught, in comparison to what many Christians seem to believe today:

St Justin Martyr:

“For the law promulgated on Horeb is now old and belongs to yourselves [Jews] alone; but ours [the Christian law] is new and for all men… For the true spiritual Israel, and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham… are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ.”

Dialogue with Trypho (Chapter 11)

St Augustine of Hippo:

“The Old Testament is revealed in the New, and the New is veiled in the Old… The Law and the Prophets bore witness to Christ, but now the Gospel and the Apostles bear witness to the fulfillment.”

On the Spirit and the Letter (Chapter 15)

St John Chrysostom:

“The synagogue is worse than a brothel… it is the tomb of the prophets and a den of thieves… The Jews have no further share in the divine promises, for they have been fulfilled in Christ.”

Homilies Against the Jews (Homily 1)

St Irenaeus of Lyons:

“The Law of Moses was a type and shadow of the things to come, but the truth is found in Christ, who is the end of the Law.”

Against Heresies (Book IV, Chapter 14)

St Cyprian of Carthage:

“The Jews have erred from the truth, and the light of Christ has shone upon the Gentiles… The old has passed away, and the new has come.”

Treatise on the Unity of the Church (Chapter 6)

St Melito of Sardis:

“The people [Israel] was a model, but the Church is the reality… The old was precious before the new, but now the new has surpassed it.”

On Pascha (Peri Pascha, Section 39–45)

Tertullian:

“The Law was given for a time, until the Seed should come to whom the promise was made… Christ has come, and the Law has ceased.”

An Answer to the Jews (Chapter 3)

St Ambrose of Milan:

“The synagogue has fallen, and the Church has risen… The old covenant has passed away, and the grace of the Gospel has taken its place.”

Exposition of the Gospel of Luke (Book 7, Section 87)

St Gregory of Nyssa:

“The Law was a shadow of the good things to come, but Christ is the substance… The old things have passed away, and the new creation has come.”

Against Eunomius (Book 12, Chapter 1)

St Jerome:

“The Jews cling to the shadow of the Law, but we hold to the truth of the Gospel… The old rites are abolished, for Christ is the end of the Law.”

Commentary on Galatians (Chapter 3, Verse 24)

St Ignatius of Antioch:

“Those who live according to the old practices of Judaism have not received the grace… For it is not in the old things, but in Christ Jesus, that we find life.”

Epistle to the Magnesians (Chapter 8)

St Athanasius of Alexandria:

“The Law was a shadow, and Christ is the fulfillment… The Jews hold to the letter, but we embrace the Spirit who gives life.”

On the Incarnation (Chapter 40)

St Basil the Great:

“The old covenant was a tutor until the coming of Christ, but now the truth has appeared, and the shadows have vanished.”

Homily on Psalm 44 (Section 5)

St Hilary of Poitiers:

“The synagogue has been replaced by the Church, for the old law has been fulfilled in the new grace of Christ.”

Commentary on Matthew (Chapter 13, Section 3)

St Leo the Great:

“The figures of the Law have ceased, for the truth of the Gospel has appeared… The old sacrifices are no more, for Christ is the eternal offering.”

Sermon 68 (On the Passion)

These teachings were shared by more contemporary theologians, too, including major Reformers:

St Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274):

”The state of the Old Law was to last until the promulgation of the Law of the Gospel.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546):

“The Jews are no longer God’s people, for they have rejected the Messiah”

John Calvin (1509–1564):

“The shadows of the Law are abolished by the coming of Christ”

Karl Barth (1886–1968):

“The election of Jesus Christ is the election of the community which is His body, the Church”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971):

“The Christian faith sees the fulfillment of the Law in the Cross, and the Church as the new community of God’s people”

R. C. Sproul (1939–2017):

“The promises to Abraham are fulfilled in the spiritual seed, which is the Church”

John H. Walton (b. 1952):

“The Law was a shadow pointing to Christ, and its fulfillment renders it obsolete for the Church.”"

Most of the above is just standard orthodoxy, barring Chrysostom's and Luther's vindictive rhetoric. This orthodoxy teaches us that the New Covenant (NC) saves through Christ, whereas the Old Covenant (OC) does not save and is superseded for that purpose. And that the spiritual and liturgical functions of temple and synagogue are now the responsibility of the Church, spiritual Israel, as it draws on the power of the Cross.

Yes, all that is true. But the OC referred to by the Fathers is primarily the Law of Moses (as the patristic catena shows), not the promise to Abraham. This promise, though kept in highest form through the inheritance of the saints in heaven, is not merely annihilated for the Jews, but awaits complete fulfillment. This is the whole logic of Romans 11. Non-Christian Jews as a group still have a distinct ethno-religious identity recognised in the Church age (as also shown in the catena), a special place in God's Providence with an eschatological and soteriological significance for all men (as noted by medieval theology)³², and an ongoing divine promise or gift, as the following verses prove:

As concerning the gospel, [they are] enemies for your sakes: but as touching the election, [they are] beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God [are] without repentance. (Romans 11:28-29)

Note too that the catena does not justify the theory discussed above that Jews are the cause of every social ill and the great Apocalyptic enemy, as if St Paul’s teaching that the Fall corrupted all humanity and his remonstrance that our battle was not against flesh and blood had never existed. The recognition that the NC has fulfilled and thus superseded the OC does not require the vicious misrepresentation and scapegoating of the people still mistakenly holding on to the old.

The continuing positive significance of the Jews does have an assured place in patristic thought. As noted by Thomas F. Madden at https://catholiceducation.org/en/culture/the-church-and-the-jews-in-the-middle-ages.html:

It was St. Augustine who laid the second foundation of the medieval Churchs attitude toward the Jews. Writing in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, Augustine rejected the claims of some Christians that the Jews were the servants of the devil. At the core of Augustines philosophy on the Jews were the words of Psalm 59: Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord our shield. The Jews, Augustine wrote, were clearly wrong. The course of history had shown that their faith and rituals had been supplanted. But they served as a constant reminder of the antiquity of the Christian faith and the glorious gift of salvation that Christ had poured out on the Gentiles. Clinging to their scriptures, the Jews were a witness for the veracity of the Old Testament and its prophecies of Christs coming. Augustine insisted that Jews should be treated with respect because they belonged to God, who would bring them one day to the fullness of salvation.³³

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting from Romans 11, states,

The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel,” for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus. . . . The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles,” will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” in which “God may be all in all” (674).

Thus any attempt to erase their ongoing historic identity or deny their special connection to God as a group is opposed to Scripture and Tradition. What about their connection or even rights to the Holy Land? Past papal statements would seem to deny this: for example, "the Jews and even the Apostles wrongly supposed that the Messiah would restore the liberties and the kingdom of Israel" [from Quas primas, the encyclical of Pope Pius XI on the Feast of Christ the King (1925)].³⁴ But even Roman Catholics are not bound by non-infallible teachings such as these.

What does the Scripture say? Luke 21:24 and Revelation 11:2 could be taken to mean that earthly Jerusalem's control by the Gentiles was to cease before the end.

And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. (Luke 21:24, AV)

But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty [and] two months. (Revelation 11:2)

The first part of the first verse could very reasonably be taken to refer to the diaspora of the Jews that occurred after both the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and the crushing of subsequent Jewish rebellions against Rome.³⁵ If so, the second part implies an end to this dispossession before the Second Coming of Christ, as there is nothing in the passage stating that the end of the times of the Gentiles is simultaneous with the end of this world. Instead, the next verses indicate a subsequent set of heavenly signs before that end.

While the verse from Revelation, given the saturation of the book with symbolism, may well refer primarily to the Church and its eschatological oppression rather than the earthly Temple court and Jerusalem, a secondary meaning cannot be excluded given the Lucan parallel. And, again, the wider context of the book indicates the ending of Gentile domination is not simultaneous with the Parousia.

So, there is a plausible case from biblical prophecy to be made that an enforced Jewish exile from their land and capital would end before “the end”. The return of the Jews to their homeland and repossession of part of it and of Jerusalem in 1948, followed by the capture of all Jerusalem in 1967 were certainly seen by many Christians, mostly Protestant, as fulfilling these prophecies. Such a connection does not require, however, investing the State of Israel, a secular legal entity and republic, with its own theological status as a continuation of the Davidic kingdom. This would clearly misrepresent present reality and flagrantly contradict the New Testament’s identification of Christ and his followers as the inheritors of that kingdom (Matthew 21:4-11, Luke 22:29). But it does require re-visiting a common assumption by Christians historically. And that assumption was that the spiritual fulfilment of the promises to Abraham in the existence of the Church (those blessed, justified and indwelt by the Spirit through faith: Galatians 3:7-9, 14) and her homeland the Heavenly Jerusalem (Galatians 4:26, Hebrews 11:13-16) annulled any literal fulfilment for the Jews of re-inheriting their ancient promised land.

I am suggesting we consider going somewhat beyond this stance of the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:

“a theologically-understood acquisition of land (in the sense of new political messianism) was unacceptable…a strictly theologically-understood [Jewish] state — a Jewish faith-state that would view itself as the theological and political fulfilment of the promises — is unthinkable within history according to Christian faith and contrary to the Christian understanding of the promises. … At the same time, however, it was made clear that the Jewish people, like every people, had a natural right to their own land. As already indicated, it made sense to find the place for it in the historical dwelling place of the Jewish people. … In this sense, the Vatican has recognized the State of Israel as a modern constitutional state, and sees it as a legitimate home of the Jewish people, the rationale of which cannot be derived directly from Holy Scripture. Yet, in another sense, it expresses God’s faithfulness to the people of Israel.”³⁶

His position was premised on the beliefs that any literal biblical promise of the land to the Jews is superseded and that the “times of the Gentiles” meant the entire Church age before Christ’s return.³⁷ But in the same way that the author of Hebrews was able to refer to Israel as the “land of promise” (11:9) despite acknowledging the ultimate promise did not rest there (see the citation above) and St Paul can connect the promises to the Jews even as they do not yet receive their Messiah (e.g., Romans 9:3-4), we can profitably distinguish between lower and higher fulfilments while accepting that the higher does not have to annihilate all operation of the lower, despite qualifying its significance and displacing its ultimacy. Even Benedict comes close to seeing this in the last sentence quoted above.

Another argument against considering our citation from Luke as relevant to modern Israel and its incorporation of Jerusalem is given by the Zionist theologian Menahem Macina,³⁸ who identifies as both Jewish and a Catholic Christian. He first argues that the eschatological context of Luke 21:24 precludes any reference to the events of 70 AD, which is both implausible on its face and a minority position amongst both Catholic and Protestant exegetes. Second, he relies on the fact that the phrase “trodden down” does not mean occupation.

In fact, the Greek verb (katapatein), used in this verse, is also found in such phrases as “the Lord has trodden as in a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah” (Lm 1:15); or: “if salt have lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” (Mt 5:13), etc. And it is clear that there is no question of ‘occupation’ in these contexts.

Furthermore, even uneducated people can understand that, the English verb ‘tread’ - that translates the Greek ‘katapatein’ - has nothing to do with “occupation,” and rather connotes a punctual defeat followed by violent oppression, destructions, deportations and massacres.

But this seems a very weak objection for four reasons. First, violent oppression and deportations do not only do not exclude foreign occupation, but would naturally be frequently associated with it, and were for the Jews in the case considered. Second, the verse itself connects the treading down to Jewish exclusion from the land, implying their replacement. Third, the passage he quotes above from Lamentations 1:15 does have the historical context of exile from (cf. v. 3) and foreign dominion (v. 5) of Jerusalem, though not necessarily occupying settlement. Fourth, the verse from Revelation, that Macina himself posits as a parallel passage elsewhere in his paper, uses the phrase “given unto the Gentiles”. 1967 did mark the end of any Gentile dominion of Jerusalem, as the Twentieth Century over time had marked the end of exile for Jews and the elimination of foreign oppression as Jews regained possession of East Jerusalem in 1948 and the rest in 1967.

Another relevant scripture is Acts 1:6-7, where the Apostles ask their last question of our Lord before his Ascension.

When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

Note that their question regarding national restoration was not simply rejected, but deflected and construed as a timing and epistemic issue. Macina persuasively argues that the common (albeit non-dogmatic) ascription by various Fathers and the RC Magisterium to the Apostles of erroneous premises in asking the question is unnecessary and not supported by the text.³⁹ We do not need to follow Macina in his adherence to early patristic millenarianism,⁴⁰ with its literal 1000 year earthly kingdom centred on Jerusalem, in order to see that our Lord does not simply extinguish natural Jewish hopes for a safe and free homeland.

But even without these possible direct New Testamental warrants, a world which ethically and legally recognises indigenous land rights and ethnic groups' rights to self-determination ought to recognise that Jews have a right to settle in their ancient homeland (that some never left), and that this right must be prioritised because of the additional factor: centuries of marginalisation, persecution and/or exclusion in most other host territories, including Arab ones,⁴¹ culminating in the Holocaust (which also had Arab support⁴²). This is basically the moral argument of Pope Benedict XVI in the paper quoted above.⁴³

The only question then is, in 1948, after World War II and the Shoah, what shape should this self-determination have taken and how should it have interacted with the rights of other indigenous peoples in the Holy Land? To answer this fairly we cannot ignore two things.

First, that many Arab families in Palestine had themselves come there through immigration in the previous century or so and thus were not ancient indigenes. They had been drawn there largely by improved economic opportunities due to investment in infrastructure, land and other capital by: first the late Ottoman Empire; second the British, during their Mandate; and thirdly the Jews as they, their resources and advanced skills migrated into the area and revitalised it. The proportion of recent arrivals among the Arab population may have been as much as roughly 50%.⁴⁴ Before the major influx of both Jews and Arabs, the land was underpopulated and underdeveloped according to numerous contemporaneous witnesses of the 19^th Century.

Second, what was said above about Arab treatment of Jews, whether in the Holy Land or elsewhere. Not only did Palestinian Muslim leaders collaborate with or even join the Nazis, Palestinian Muslims had earlier repeatedly engaged in repeated massacres of civilian Jews in the first part of the 20th century. These massacres were not instigated by Jewish aggression but Jewish presence. While many of the victims were recent immigrants unwanted by the Arabs, at no time in the lead up to 1948 did these immigrants forcibly invade and steal private land; they purchased it from Arabs. (Other land they ended up with by 1948 was state land not privately owned by anybody.) A number of Arab nations outside Palestine from 1948 onwards expelled all or most of their own Jewish population—who usually had to leave most of their property behind without compensation—as a reprisal for the establishment of Israel! Obviously, this is analogous to beating up the smaller younger brother to express anger with the older brother, after picking an earlier fight with that larger brother and losing. More to the point, given that the unjustly expelled Jews then had to find a new home, this completely undermines any subsequent Arab complaint against an autonomous Jewish homeland.

For over a millenium prior to the Zionist immigrations, the Jews had been tolerated but treated as second-class citizens (like the Christians) in the surrounding Muslim countries. This status, known as dhimmitude, included not only an extra tax on affected peoples but provisions for deliberate humiliation. Whilst Jews in these areas had times of provisional peace and prosperity despite these limitations, punctuating this long period of repression were many violent episodes, including massacres.

The 1948 UN plan was thus a fair compromise. The area with a Jewish majority (plus a significant Arab minority) was assigned to be the new state of Israel, the rest, with its overwhelming Arab majority was to become another Arab nation.⁴⁵ Establishing one multi-ethnic state, as many have suggested since, was impossible due to repeatedly proven Arab hatred of Jews. The Israeli Jews accepted their Arab minority and gave them citizenship. Most Arabs and Arab nations rejected the two-state solution, invading the nascent state with a declared genocidal intent.⁴⁶ But they lost the war they started and, as often happens in this case, lost land. I’m afraid I must put this consequence under the category of “Tough: unjustified murderous aggression to gain land should cost land”. The growth of Israel’s borders is thus primarily the fault of Arab aggression, both in 1948 and the 1967 “Six Day War”.⁴⁷

Many Arabs fled in 1948 and 1967, either of their own accord because they did not want to inhabit an active war-zone or because they were at times actively encouraged⁴⁸ to temporarily leave by some Arab leaders in the expectation they would return home after Israel was destroyed; a significant minority were deliberately expelled by Israeli military units.⁴⁹ However, a number of Jewish leaders tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to encourage their Arab neighbours to stay in 1948.⁵⁰ Those who left were never to return to within the new borders of Israel, with some exceptions after 1967. This is what is often called the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe”.

It is often said by Palestinian apologists that it was unjust and illegal under international law for displaced Palestinians—through Israel refusing them a “right of return”—to be made to suffer personal or familial territorial consequences due to their side’s corporate loss of land in war. In other words, the movement of national boundaries should not cause “ethnic cleansing”. But if most of those exiled initially left without being expelled, and most were and are confessedly implacable foes of the state now controlling their land, denying its right to exist, at some point their “right” to return must be deemed questionable. Indeed, it was the general hatred towards the Jews of the exiled Palestinians that was a major reason for Israel refusing to accept them back.⁵¹ It is incontestable that this hatred had become endemic, especially since it had been deliberately whipped up among Muslims for years by leaders like the Grand Mufti, even before the inevitable hardening of attitudes in war.

It is also worth noting the fact that similar movements of refugees in the very same time period have received very different treatment from the international community. Nobody talks about the refugees from India or Pakistan after their partition. Nor do pro-Palestinian protestors demand Arab nations which pushed out their Jews compensate them. Nor do they demand repatriation or compensation of ethnically German civilians who were expelled from other countries after WW II. And so on. The double standard of very selective outrage tells us all we need to know.

What about the occupied territories outside the 1967 borders, the West Bank and Gaza?⁵² After losing potential national territory and private property largely as a result of their own leaders' actions, Arab Muslims (many themselves, remember, descendants of relatively recent immigrants), persistently solely blamed the Jews, called them European colonizers (though most Israeli Jews are now non-European) and proceeded to again embrace genocidal rhetoric and terrorist actions. And they continued to idolise their chief early leader, who had, as abovementioned, eagerly embraced eliminationist rhetoric and enthusiastically collaborated with the Nazis.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, most still reject a two state solution and desire and intend to eradicate Israel utterly.⁵³ On numerous occasions they have had the opportunity to get a two-state solution, and have always rejected it. The October 7 massacre being just the latest proof of this genocidal mentality. As such, Israel justifiably refuses to just leave those on their doorstep mostly to their own devices and allow them autonomy, given that doing this in Gaza led to horror. If you tell your own people and your neighbour that you will devote your resources to that neighbour’s destruction, and back those words up with repeated action, don’t be surprised if they take you seriously and act accordingly. So, their impinged freedom is on them, so to speak.

What about the intrinsic land rights of Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza? For prudential ethical reasons, it would be wrong to simply try to force into exile all those who are genocidally minded or actively committed to the destruction of Israel. But this is no longer, I believe, because those kinds of Palestinians necessarily retain land rights on a genuine ethical basis, since consistent, pro-active and ideologically committed murderous intentions and actions towards neighbours should eventually seriously qualify or even annul one’s prior right to be in the neighbourhood in any sensible moral calculus.

Anti-Zionists would no doubt respond that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and claim that Israel also is guilty of “consistent, pro-active and ideologically committed murderous intentions and actions towards neighbours”. Is there moral equivalence? No. There never has been an Israeli state doctrine of total exclusion or extermination of all Arabs, despite this attitude being found among some ultra-Orthodox and extremists. While many early Zionists hoped for a relocation of some or all Arabs from a new Jewish state, and this desire grew after Arab massacres of Jews in the 1920s and 30s, they mostly thought in terms of voluntary resettlement or compelled exchanges of populations by the agreement and administration of foreign powers, but all financially incentivised and compensated for by the Jews; and distinguishing between Muslim and Christian Palestinians was also part of this thinking, precisely because of the differing levels of animosity and violence from these groups.⁵⁴ Palestinian Muslims, on the other hand, and their leaders have commonly called for the erasure of Israel, exclusion of all Jews or even for death to all Jews in the Holy Land. Even in armed conflict with the Palestinians Israel often warns civilians before missile strikes in order to minimise collateral damage. Palestinian Muslims deliberately target civilians as the norm. There is no symmetry. Is there serious fault on the Jewish side too? Yes, quite a bit, as we will see in the next section of the main text. But nothing nearing symmetry. Many early Zionists were socialists who wanted to cooperate with Palestinians on a class-solidarity basis. Also, note that Palestinian refugees exist because of a war they and their ethnic and political brethren started by invasion. Jewish refugees from Arab countries, on the other hand, exist because of racially and religiously motivated proxy vengeance, as shown previously. This accentuates the asymmetry.

However, it would be impossible to identify and exile the anti-Semitic Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza by force without causing greater evils. And, it must be remembered, Palestinian Christians did not and do not normally valorise the Nazi collaborators of the past or practise terrorism, so they should have their land rights respected. Of course any attempt, no matter how justified, to treat the Christians differently would result in their destruction by Muslims. So, while most (but not all) Palestinian Muslims have arguably lost moral rights to the land near or in Israel, this is practically irrelevant.

By all means, then, allow what's left of Palestinian territory to be a free Palestinian State. But only if it agrees to a non-aggression pact with Israel without making it conditional upon a Palestinian "right to return" within Israel's borders. As a show of good faith, Israel could then allow some to return to private property with accompanying citizenship, but only those who publicly renounce as subhuman or Satanic the Nazi collaborations and terrorist crimes of the past by Palestinians. This may effectively advantage displaced Christians. Again, that would come under the category of “Tough”.

Is my stance on the toxicity of much of the Palestinian Islamic culture racist? It has nothing to do with race, as racially the Arabs and Jews are akin to “cousins”. Social, historical and primarily religious factors explain the anti-Semitic poison that is endemic to Palestinian nationalism, a poison that is openly and persistently taught to Palestinian children from a young age.

Israeli Sins are Real

Nevertheless, having said all of this does not change the fact that modern Israel has often acted foolishly and unjustly towards Palestinians, and that in various ways this has been getting worse for the past two years. Even if one accepts that the exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands in 1948 and 1967 was an unavoidable and mostly justifiable push-back against prior atrocities and invasions they and their Arab allies wanted, much of what has happened to Palestinian civilians on both sides of the new borders since then has been morally and legally wrong. While criticism of Israel is often exaggerated or even dishonest, sometimes even being reliant on Islamist or Neo-Marxist propaganda, not all is. Much criticism over the years has come from Israelis themselves and their allies.

The work of Benny Morris⁵⁵ and other historians has shown that Jewish soldiers⁵⁶ did themselves sometimes commit atrocities during the 1947-8 conflict and afterwards, including deliberate massacres of civilians and even rapes. And while these more blatant war crimes were due to localised excesses and not official policies, it is also true that as hostilities continued, earlier demands for moderation and humanity from above gave way to a tit-for-tat mentality. For example, if in ambushes of Jewish road traffic the Arabs were willing to indiscriminately shoot both vehicles and occupants, then it was time the Jews reciprocated—this was a change from an initial policy of only damaging the vehicle.⁵⁷

Israeli sins are not limited to events during the late 1940s, and one could point to multiple trespasses over the decades since and in the most recent Gazan war.⁵⁸ It is also true, however, that Israelis themselves—whether politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats, military, journalists or ordinary citizens—will criticise and challenge these. The problem is that this democratic tradition of self-criticism regarding treatment of Palestinians and its corollary desire for a two-state solution have become less and less appealing to Israelis after the shock and horror of October 7.

Apart from numerous state actions over decades which have been questionable or worse, including recently in the war on Gaza, there is the more subtle but still significant inaction by the government in the face of ongoing and increasing violence towards and harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli “settlers”.⁵⁹ (These are the inhabitants of Israeli settlements built outside its official borders in the occupied West Bank. Most other nations and the UN consider them all illegal, whereas Israel considers those legal⁶⁰ that it has permitted officially and others, which it calls “outposts”, illegal.) Palestinian Christians have been targetted as well as Muslims. Indeed, recently, even conservative pro-Zionist Christians have been losing patience with Israeli violence (whether military or settler) against Palestinian Christians.⁶¹ It has got to the point that these settlers will target their own military at times.

Even before the recent worsening of conditions in the West Bank, the building of the wall to protect Israel from terrorist incursions had for years caused great hardship for Palestinians near the border.⁶² And it is not only Arabs outside the borders that have at times been systematically disadvantaged. Those Arabs who are Israeli citizens or permanent residents have faced various forms of disadvantage or deliberate discrimination.⁶³ Some claims of “inequity” are dubious, such as the complaint that all Jews worldwide have a “right of return” to what is, after all, a Jewish state, a right that is not granted to any other group, particularly Palestinian refugees. This complaint relies on a tendentious denial of the Jews unique connection to the Holy Land and wilful ignorance of the commonality of anti-Semitism in the Diaspora. But many other criticisms of government practice have weight, such as less investment in Arab-majority towns and more difficulty for Arabs in getting permits to build.

Indeed, the complaints about governmental, military or settler treatment of Palestinian Christians⁶⁴ in particular are also usually valid. And while some Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank have been far more likely to countenance the deliberate persecution or killing of Christians than the Israeli government,⁶⁵ in practice the greatest existential threats to them are Israel's bombs via collateral damage and Israel’s lawless settlers via deliberate crimes that face little to no legal repercussion.

However, without doubt the cause célèbre for those condemning Israel’s policies and actions towards Palestinians, other than the military occupations and associated abuses, is the issue of the settlements in the West Bank, known commonly in Israel by its biblical and Jewish names, Judaea and Samaria. This is an area between the Jordan River’s westward side (hence the name) and the Eastern border of Israel. We must now briefly examine this issue in a balanced fashion.

Excursus: Settlements pro and contra

The reason why there is a broad consensus, right and left, in Israeli politics that the largest settlements just outside their borders are legitimate and and must be folded into their nation even in a two-state solution⁶⁶ is that these settlements were deliberately established after the 1967 war on the high ground near the border. As one Reddit commenter explained:⁶⁷

Israel has minimal strategic depth. The West Bank is the high ground that overlooks the core of Israeli civilization, with the West Bank being a mere 12 miles from the downtown core of Tel Aviv (even closer for the suburbs. The area in and around Tel Aviv contains the bulk of the Israeli population.

Militarily speaking, it would be suicide for the Israelis to allow a hostile force to control the West Bank (or Golan Heights). It would be insanely easy for a hostile force to bombard the Israeli population base from the West Bank.

Considering that Israel has faced Palestinian terrorism since before declaring their statehood, and given that the majority of Palestinians still support conquest of all of Israel through military conflict, it would be suicidal to consider giving up military control of the West Bank. Giving Hamas or another Iranian backed militia a foothold in the more strategic parts of the West Bank could mean a lot more deaths than October 7th.

The reality is that Israel's first obligation is to protect its own people. Giving up the high ground a dozen miles from the heart of Israeli civilization to a hostile group is the exact opposite of that.

On the other hand, settlements have grown beyond strategic necessities and a proportion of the settlers believe all of that land belongs to the Jews because it was part of their ancient homeland and contains a number of their historic or holy sites.⁶⁸ These settlers overtly and shamelessly intend the displacement of Palestinians across the whole West Bank, no matter their personal beliefs or character, and often criminally harass them and damage their property.⁶⁹

Israel’s own military recognises the criminality of recent settler attacks on Palestinians:⁷⁰

Israel's civil administration in the West Bank is demolishing illegal outposts in a bid to stem violent incursions by settlers into Palestinian villages.

Last week, security forces demolished structures in an outpost built illegally on privately-owned Palestinian land. Settlers in the outpost clashed with troops, hurling stones and burning tires to block the roads. The violent clashes continued throughout the day.

While the civil administration demolitions are at an administrative level, even the Netanyahu government is starting to act against the outposts. Last week, the government ordered the evacuation of the Oz Zion B outpost after the Shin Bet security service presented an intelligence report which warned [attacks?] coming out of the Oz Zion outpost could turn the West Bank from a secondary front in the war into the main front.

Five settlers were arrested on suspicion of throwing stones and disorderly conduct, but were released after border police declined to press charges.

The outgoing head of IDF Central Command said this week that settler political and religious leaders are not acting to stop ultranationalist violence against Palestinians. Major General Yehuda Fuchs was speaking at the handover ceremony in which Major General Avi Bluth accepted control of the command.

"To my great distress, in recent months and just this week ultranationalist criminal activity has raised its head, under the cover of the war and the lust for revenge, terrorising Palestinian civilians who posed no threat," Fuchs said.

“Unfortunately, the local leadership and most of the religious leadership... is deterred and cannot find the strength to act on the Jewish values they teach their children."

Fuchs accused settlers of “adopting the ways of the enemy” and criticised local leadership for failing to speak up against extremist aggression.

"Even if the perpetrators are a minority, those who are silent and fail to exclude them bring criticism upon…all settlers,” he said.

Fuchs said he did all he could to protect both Israelis and Palestinians, treating seriously "every stone or bottle thrown" and he pointed out that he saw himself as responsible "for anyone wounded physically or mentally. Each and every fallen person seared me. We investigated, we learned and we drew conclusions. I was not always successful. Sometimes, I failed. I will carry the bloody cost with me forever."

Fuchs added that the ability of the Central Command to carry out its tasks, to protect Israel and residents of the sector also depends on a strong, functioning Palestinian Authority with effective security agencies enforcing law and order.

"Concern for the welfare of working, productive Palestinian civilians... is not only the legal responsibility of the head of command, and not only a moral value, it also serves Israel's security interests." [emendation added]

But recently the Israeli parliament has effectively endorsed this mindset by voting in favour of a non-binding resolution to extend sovereignty over the entire area.⁷¹ And more direct appropriation of Palestinian land also continues, albeit under the guise of creating a new military training zone.⁷² These actions and the continued relative inaction regarding settlers’ unofficial war of expansion against Palestinians combine to lessen the potential for a workable, integrated Palestinian territory becoming its own nation-state, which is the undoubtedly the motivation behind the whole approach for many in Israel.

The problem for Israel is that they cannot have these three things together: a Jewish state, all of Palestine, and democracy. If they were to swallow up all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza to create a one-state solution, the Jews would no longer be a clear majority and so would either no longer have a Jewish state or they would no longer have a democracy as they would have to limit or exclude the voting rights of non-Jews, making the accusations of apartheid literally true. The only way to resolve this internal contradiction would be a massive and militarily-enforced program of ethnic cleansing of civilians, which would be a practical, moral and political nightmare.

The unsustainability and irresponsibility of the increasing expansionism and its accompanying abuses, including terrorism by settler extremists, is fortunately still recognised by many Israeli Jews. They decry the crimes of settlers and the counterproductive acts of the state, and often still lobby for a peaceful two-state solution.⁷³ Nevertheless, as noted above, whereas Israelis used to be mostly open to this solution, the majority have now given up hope because they believe, especially after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas (with the overwhelming support of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank), that the Palestinians will never settle for this and will, if granted independent statehood, simply continue to attack Israel with the goal of elimination.⁷⁴ This is probably why many have stopped caring about the problems associated with the settlements, making it easier for those with the most aggressive instincts to dominate policy.

To conclude this section, it should be clear that the largest settlements are there to stay for good reasons and will need to be incorporated into Israel eventually, whereas others will need to be evacuated. It is also clear that, unless the Israeli government starts taking its responsibilities towards Palestinians seriously and prosecutes and prevents settler crimes, while also ceasing other expansionist moves, a just peace can never be achieved.

The unpleasant fact is that, as aforementioned, the cabinet of the present Israeli coalition government contains genuinely bigoted criminals. Looking wider, within Israeli law enforcement and politics more generally, some clearly tacitly approve settler crimes, while others condemn them. Presently the Prime Minister’s coalition partners would not allow a crack down, and so the crisis festers. Meanwhile, the Trump administration in the US has rescinded the sanctions of the previous administration against extremist Israeli settler groups credibly accused of violence, worsening the situation.

In the Gazan war, it is difficult to get any unbiased and well-informed reporting, since Israel has blocked international journalists and both the Israeli military and local Palestinian journalists and officials are known to deceive and propagandise. Nevertheless, even though Israel had ample justification to wage war against the Gazan regime of Hamas after its mass murder, mass rape and hostage-taking, jus ad bellum is not the only question. Jus in bello is just as significant, that is, the morality of how war is waged. Early Israeli overreaction due to the red mist of rage was understandable but not permissible, and some of the statements from then were outrageous. But more substantially, Israel’s policy of withholding food aid to hinder Hamas was indefensible. Even if allowing in plenty of food empowers Hamas economically when they acquire and control it, the non-combatant population (especially children) must be fed, and foodstuffs are not weapons. There is no possible proportionate justification for this policy.

Israel must change course. It may be that the only way this can happen is a change of government. May God help Israel to turn away from these sins. May God grant that Christian Zionists help and not hinder this.

Replies to objections

1. Only Christians are the "true Israel" and inheritors of Abrahamic promises, as St Paul clearly teaches.

It is true that St Paul’s language implies that the Church is spiritually Israel and inherits OT promises of God to his people. In his letter to the Galatians in 3:29 he writes “if ye [be] Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” and in 4:5 he says that Christians “receive the adoption”. But in Romans 9:4 he speaks of “Israelites” as those “to whom [pertaineth] the adoption, ... and the promises”. The parallelism is clear. Many scholars take Galatians 6:16 to apply the term “Israel of God” to the Church due to the prior context of the letter, which makes spiritual descent (rather than mere physical descent) from Abraham the key throughout history, and due to the fact that the Greek can be translated to support this: “Peace and mercy be upon all who walk by this rule, upon the Israel of God.”⁷⁵

Other elements of his language, however, validate the reality of earthly Israel. They are still called “outwardly Jews” (Romans 2:28), “[w]ho are Israelites” (Romans 9:4) and constitute “Israel” even while their “zeal of God” is marred by ignorance of Christ’s gift of righteousness (Romans 10:1-4). They are genuinely connected to the covenants even in spiritual self-exile (Romans 3:1-3 & 9:3-5). And they are still “natural branches” (Romans 11:21, 24), even in their disconnectedness from the fullness of grace.

It is also difficult not to notice that the OT promise regarding Jews returning from the North and the ends of Earth (Jeremiah 31:8) was even more literally fulfilled in 20th Century than its original fulfilment after the Babylonian Exile. Europe is well North of Israel and the influx of Jews most recently has been from further afield than that first return. It is perfectly reasonable and not uncommon for biblical prophecies to have a near and far application. For example, the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14 which was fulfilled in Christ’s virgin birth probably also had a more immediate fulfilment in the time of the prophet and King Ahaz, to who the prophecy was directed to assure him that a deliverance from Israel’s enemies would come soon (cf. verses 4 and 16 from the same chapter). Similarly, Hosea 11:1 refers to the original Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt but is applied to Christ in Matthew 2:15. So, not only does the evidence support a continued connection to the old promises, but a continued fulfilment of them.

If it is responded that the non-Christian Jews are compared to Hagar and her son Ishmael (rather than Isaac) in Galatians 4:22-29, it should be remembered that even she received a promise (Genesis 16:10-11)!

2. Judaism since the First Century AD, as distinguished from Christianity— the continuation and fulfillment of Jewish faith founded by Jews—is defined by its rejection of Christ, the Son of the Father, so the Jews are not only not truly Jewish (Romans 2:28-29) or God’s people (Acts 3.23), but “Antichrists” (1 John 2.22-23) and the “synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9). So, they have no biblical rights to anything.

1 John 3.19 makes it clear the context of the letter in its reference to Antichrists is a discussion of apostate or heretical Christians, not just any unbelievers, Jewish or Gentile. The labelling of the synagogue as Satanic in Revelation 2:9 assumes a specific context where the Christians are persecuted and their faith vilified by the local Jews, as shown by the reference to “tribulation” and “blasphemy”. While the other verses cited above teach that non-Christian Jews are self-excluded presently from the Ark of salvation, they still have a special place and role, as shown by the evidence already given above.

Non-Christian Jews are Jews and constitute Israel in the natural realm. It is not enough for salvation, but it is not nothing either. Also, it must be remembered that their non-conversion to Christ is arguably partly due to sinful acts by Christians misrepresenting the Son of God. And, since most Jews have not been exposed to the Gospel in its loving purity and power and do not harm or insult Christians, most are NOT in exactly the same position as the original Messiah-rejecting and Christian-condemning (and even Christian-killing) generation to whom Christ and the Apostles directed their prophetic denunciations. Applying those kinds of verses to them is highly questionable at best.

3. Rabbinic Judaism was created de novo and is discontinuous with earlier Judaism, being based on the Talmud and Synagogue rather than the Torah and Temple.

False. It is continuous with Pharisaism, as many of the same critics inconsistently note, which was the most significant opposing school to Christ because it was the one theologically closest to him, despite its errors. The oral traditions criticised by Christ—partly because of their content, and partly for their unjustified and oppressive elevation to equity with Scripture—became the Talmud.

The temple sacrificial system of old Jewish religion has, it is true, gone or been partly replaced in Judaism with sacrifices of prayers, good deeds, repentance, etc.⁷⁶ However, there are many OT precedents for considering these acts as spiritual sacrifices of at least as much value as the ceremonies of the temple. Indeed, this very understanding is reflected in Christian theology. Even when it comes to the forgiveness of sin, Christ's gratuitous⁷⁷ offering is less about ceremonial bloodshed than self-sacrifice in obedient love (John 15:13, Romans 5:8, Hebrews 10:8-9). The bloodshed is the natural consequence of this self-offering, but the value lies in the loving obedience despite suffering (Luke 22:42).⁷⁸ Instead of the re-framing of sacrifice by Jews being used by Christians to deny Judaism’s integrity, it should be used as bridge!

As for the synagogues replacing the temple, they had in fact, as the NT makes obvious, already been long established by Christ's time and were accepted and frequented by him.

4. Modern Jews are not descendants of Abraham.

False. There is and always has been a portion of non-Semitic lineage due to intermarrying with converts over the ages, but this is irrelevant due to the OT’s understanding of descent and incorporation. Jesus, remember, was "of David" via his foster father Joseph.

5. The Jews should still, according to principles in the Tenach, be exiled and scattered due to rejection of Messiah and other sins, including persecution or hatred of Christians and Palestinians.

Historically, they have been more sinned against than sinning. The degree of anti-Semitic hatred and violence has far outweighed their own malicious acts against outsiders.

And Christians can't have it both ways, asserting grace over law to criticise Judaism but assuming law over grace to justify Jewish exclusion from Promised Land. And not all promises to them were conditional on consistent obedience anyway: the Abrahamic one wasn't, though the Torah was. There is nothing to stop God restoring them to the land prior to conversion as part of prevenient grace, especially since they have suffered so much. The Prophets did, after all, appeal to God’s empathy for Jewish suffering as explanation for his deliverance or restoration of them (Zechariah 1.15), beginning with the Exodus and the period of the Judges: remember, they were not righteous then either.

Galatians 3.17-18 shows the Abrahamic covenant was not merely conditional, as noted above. Some might reply: "But the wider context of the same chapter shows only Christians inherit these promises, as Christ is the seed!" Regarding the spiritual promise of justification, yes, that is what it says. But the lesser, earthly aspect of the promise is not necessarily annihilated, though it may be qualified. Galatians refers to the promise of Genesis 22:17-18 regarding the seed. But a similar promise in Genesis 12.1-3 does not mention seed at all. Finally, the possibly relevant NT verses regarding a return from exile discussed earlier in this essay say nothing of this being a matter of just deserts.

6. Christian Zionism is derived from a recent Protestant heresy known as dispensationalism, and is opposed to RC and EO teaching.

Not all early Christian Zionists were dispensationalists. Indeed, most were not. See, for example, the discussion of the Anglican history of Zionism above.

RC and EO churches were often complicit in persecution or pogroms and, ironically, appropriating wordly instruments, methods and goals, while at the same time accusing Jews of earthly/carnal ethics and religion. The hypocrisy and malice underlying some customary attitudes to Jews in these communions justifies a critical approach to the accompanying anti-Zionism. This is a case where non-dogmatic traditions were rightly corrected by Anglicans recovering biblical perspectives and ethics. Note also there were exceptions to the rule. For example, there was the Zionism of Fr Lev Gillet, an ecumenical catholic who went from the RC Church to the EO Church and became a great friend of Anglicans.⁷⁹

7. Jews, because of the earthly and supremacist priorities of Judaism, are the source of atheism, abortion, communism, etc.

This is dumb, historically selective conspiracism and outright anti-Semitism, scapegoating Jews as the despised “other” and a social cancer. Such accusations always ignore all the other races involved and other causative factors. However, it is only fair to observe that vicious marginalisation by Gentiles would naturally push some Jews to revolutionary movements.

8. Zionist policy always had ethnic cleansing as part of the plan, regardless of whether they were invaded or not.

This accusation is based largely on selective quotation from “Plan D” or “Plane Dalet”, an official document of the nascent Israeli military written prior to the war of 1948. What hardly anyone wielding this document as a weapon mentions is that it is explicitly and entirely premised on the assumption of attack by both regular armies from Arab states, and semi regular or local village militias of Arabs, including terrorist raids. In other words, it is a defensive plan and intrinsically reactive rather than pro-active. The document itself describes the primary “Operational Objective” as: "Self-defense against invasion by regular or semi-regular forces."⁸⁰

The parts normally quoted by those making accusations of genocide are as follows:

Mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:

Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.

Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search7 inside it. In the event of resistance, the. armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.

The villages which are emptied in the manner described above must be included in the fixed defensive system and must be fortified as necessary.

But they don't generally quote these excerpts:

In the absence of resistance, garrison troops will enter the village and take up positions in it or in locations which enable complete tactical control. The officer in command of the unit will confiscate all weapons, wireless devices, and motor vehicles in the village. In addition, he will detain all politically suspect individuals. After consultation with the [Jewish] political authorities, bodies will be appointed consisting of people from the village to administer the internal affairs of the village. In every region, a [Jewish] person will be appointed to be responsible for arranging the political and administrative affairs of all [Arab] villages and population centers which are occupied within that region. ...

Generally, the aim of this plan is not an operation of occupation outside the borders of the Hebrew state. However, concerning enemy bases lying directly close to the borders which may be used as springboards for infiltration into the territory of the state, these must be temporarily occupied and searched for hostiles according to the above guidelines, and they must then be incorporated into our defensive system until operations cease.

Bases located in enemy territory which are intended to be temporarily occupied and controlled will be listed among the operational targets for the various brigades. [Emphasis added]

So, Plan D did authorise the destruction of villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants if they were “enemy population centres” (again, during a war of invasion against Israel) and fought the Israeli army. But if they did not, the Plan mandates a different approach that collaborates with local leadership and assumes the people stay.

Another quotation used is from the man who would become the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion:

In the area allocated to the Jewish State there are not more than 520,000 Jews and about 350,000 non-Jews, mostly Arabs. Together with the Jews of Jerusalem, the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment, will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition , there can not even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority …. There can be no stable and strong Jewish state as long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%.

But, curiously, they omit the very next words of that last sentence and a key paragraph after it:

There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as she has a Jewish majority of only 60 per cent, and so long as this majority consists of only 600,000 Jews…

We have been confronted with a new destiny — we are about to become masters of our own fate. This requires a new approach to all our questions of life. We must reexamine all our habits of mind, all our systems of operation to see to what extent they suit our new future. We must think in terms of a state, in terms of independence, in terms of full responsibility for ourselves — and for others [Emphasis added]

This statement cannot be fairly assessed until the larger context is recognised that explains the aspirations expressed. And that context is the devotion of the Israeli state and people from the beginning to aliya: Jewish immigration to Israel. Their main solution to the demographic problem was to massively increase the number of Jews, which they then did and had always intended to do.⁸¹

The fact is that even on the matter of whether to allow Arabs who had fled or been expelled from villages to return eventually, there was disagreement among the early Jewish leadership during the war and no final policy decided upon then, although there was already consensus that Arabs who had fled villages but remained within Israel’s borders should be allowed to return to their homes.⁸² So, the imputation of a prior, general and settled intent to expel Arabs is unjust. It is certainly true the majority of Israeli Jews were in the end happy to cement the demographic changes the war against them had brought about, but this is hardly shocking. As Ben-Gurion put it:

But war is war. We did not start the war. They made the war. Jaffa waged war on us, Haifa waged war on us, Bet She’an waged war on us. And I do not want them again to make war. That would be not just but foolish. This would be a “foolish hasid.” Do we have to bring back the enemy, so that he again fights us in Bet She’an? No! You made war [and] you lost.

Conclusion

A valid form of Zionism does exist for Christians, but it must include support for Palestinian Christians and peace-loving Palestinian Muslims, and acknowledge Israeli excesses and responsibilities. It must repudiate traditionalist anti-Semitism, instead affirming the ongoing chosen-ness, special role and connection to the Holy Land of the Jewish people. But it must also repudiate Protestant dispensationalism, by affirming everyone's need for faith in and love for Christ, while avoiding both dubious eschatological speculations about a rebuilt Third Temple leading to the Apocalypse, and heterodox conflations such as treating modern Israel as theologically equivalent to ancient Israel.

The Jews remain primordially chosen and always beloved, with many temporal blessings, but will fail to fully realise their spiritual identity until they accept their Messiah, the Lord Jesus. Modern Israel is a Providential gift (which may or may not have eschatological significance) to the Jewish people and a legitimate national homeland for them, but is not the kingdom of God or a parallel ark of salvation to the Church.

1See https://assets.ctfassets.net/qnesrjodfi80/4rR7bx8wnD4YcM06JiBp3l/36e46704f8d36e2fb6db3c79db3c88ee/a_letter_from_dennis_prager_to_candace_owens.pdf.

2See https://www.jns.org/tucker-carlson-is-officially-an-antisemite/. Common to the two laypeople of this trio is the seemingly unquestioned assumption that consistent bipartisan support for Israel in America is due to politicians obeying pro-Israel lobby groups such as AIPAC for fear of electoral or financial reprisal. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that politicians can count and know that Jews are a small minority of the electorate (2%), or that Americans might have their own rather obvious reasons for customarily supporting Israel: e.g., common enemies in the form of Islamic terrorists and empathy for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust and a long global history of anti-Semitic pogroms and persecutions that are directly contrary to one of the founding principles of America: freedom of religion. AIPAC’s success is clearly largely due to the fact it has a story to tell that is intrinsically persuasive.

3See http://talmud.faithweb.com/.

4See https://jewinthecity.com/2024/07/no-ashkenazi-jews-are-not-genetically-european/.

5Such as warning civilians to evacuate before the attack. Of course, such safeguards can be bungled and fail in various ways.

6And it cannot be forgotten that political Islamism (including Salafism), which is undeniably popular in the Islamic world, explicitly and openly allows for actions and attitudes that have no corresponding permission in Judaism or Zionism. Sharia as commonly implemented and the traditional practices of Muslim warfare are compatible with many of the worst deeds of ISIS and Hamas. See https://mackenzieinstitute.com/2018/08/robert-spencer-exposes-islams-problematic-history/ and https://www.frontpagemag.com/does-islamic-law-sanction-hamas-rape-of-captives/.

7That is, the theology and apologetics that was constructed to justify the system that developed after Emperor Constantine: European “Christendom”. This was a system wherein the Church’s hierarchy habitually attempted to use the power of the civil authority or State(s) to impose its will on the people. Of course, the civil authorities often attempted to dominate and use the Church for is own purposes as well, also sometimes with theological justifications proposed.

8In this essay, the term Tradition with a capital T will be reserved for two correlated elements: the inner “form” of the Spirit’s guidance and keeping of the Church in the truth through the ages, and the outward “matter” of the Church’s authoritative exposition of the Christian Faith from Scripture over time. The latter is dogmatically binding insofar as it has primitive, Apostolic roots and has been practically universal, while allowing for both development in explicit formulation and interludes of imperfect adherence. The terms tradition or traditional, on the other hand, will generally refer to common and customary beliefs, theological opinions or practices that have arisen in the Church, but do not satisfy the above definition. These may or may not be coherent with Holy Tradition. Thus traditionalism will be used as a pejorative description of an ideology that does not properly distinguish between Tradition and traditions, and thus always risks over-stating the historic consensus for favoured beliefs or practices and thus elevates fallible and unnecessary ones into pseudo-dogmas. Not all criticism of modern trends in the Churches is traditionalism in this sense. Unfaithful innovations that do not cohere with Tradition do occur, and criticising these should simply be termed orthodoxy. This means traditionalists will sometimes justifiably defend orthodoxy, but at other times conflate this with stubborn attachment to merely human constructs.

9As quoted in M.L. Brown, (2019) Our Hands are Stained with Blood: The Tragic Story of the Church and the Jewish People (Revised and Expanded Edition), Destiny Image Publishers: Shippensburg PA, Kindle Edition, p.146.

10Author unknown, “How to Understand the Jews as being Chosen”, Orthodox Life, Vol. 41, No. 4, Jul-Aug 1991, pages 36-41. See also https://orthodoxreflections.com/3-harmful-myths-most-christians-believe-about-judaism/ and https://www.equip.org/articles/modern-israel-in-bible-prophecy-promised-return-or-impending-exile/. The former mixes reasonable points with dubious or blatantly false claims and tendentious use of selective evidence, while the latter is a more measured denial of a specifically religious Zionism without anti-Semitic tropes, but still denies any sense in which the Jews remain a divinely chosen people.

11Within the RC communion radical traditionalists are commonly called “Rad Trads” for short.

12Going further back to ever-pristine font of Scripture and the Fathers was what was instead required, and this ressourcement (going back to the sources, Scriptural and Patristic) was exactly what Vatican II assayed to do.

13https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/texts/cjrelations/resources/articles/rhonheimer.htm.

14E.g., see https://aleteia.org/2013/12/31/illiberal-catholicism/, https://stream.org/nobody-expects-the-darwinist-inquisition/, https://providencemag.com/2023/02/integralism-christian-and-islamic/, https://stream.org/is-integralism-catholic-sharia-a-question-and-answer-catechism/, and https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/catholic-integralisms-project-of. While Zmirak’s defence of liberal democracy is liable to criticism for its dogmatic libertarianism, it still provides an eye-opening, useful and accessible critique of reactionary alternatives.

15For example, under Sharia, polytheists can be licitly given only the exclusive options of conversion to Islam or death according to some traditions (see https://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/71519/can-polytheists-pay-jizya), while all traditions are agreed that Jews and Christians must pay a special tax (the Jizya) and bear other signs of social inferiority in order to be granted safe residence. RC integralism uses the dictum “error has no rights” to ridicule religious freedom as absurd.

16Ad hominem in the proper, technical sense, not in the popular one meaning “insulting the character of the arguer rather than addressing the argument itself”. The technical sense is instead “using the premises of the opposition to argue for your own conclusion, without necessarily granting those premises to be objectively true”.

17Especially in the case of purportedly heterodox Christians, who will generally believe evangelisation is a moral imperative, and whose evangelistic efforts will be the very things targetted by integralists.

18The adjective normal is required because there exist cases where the act of following conscience by one person will be manifestly contrary to Natural Law, so that such intervention is justified because a conscience rejecting manifest and general moral truths need never be assumed to be sincere, sane and obligating. This includes especially cases where the act will directly and gravely harm others, and so forceful intervention to defend those others will be necessitated. But any claimed harm to others has to be directly due to the action and impinge upon the others’ freedom. If the others are persuaded by a sincere “heretic” of the truth of what turns out to be false and harmful, the voluntary acquiescence means the actual harm is directly due to the one acquiescing according to their own conscience. Any additional attempts to evade respect for individual conscience by appealing to the “greater good” and claiming that the harm to a few heretical persons must be set against the potential harm to many other souls by their heresy fails. Why? Both because intrinsically evil acts—such as knowingly tempting another person to act contrary to their conscience without being able to appeal to the justifications abovementioned—cannot be used to achieve “good” outcomes, and because empathy for the persecuted will often lead to the opposite outcome to that intended by the persecutors.

19While the RC Church freely admitted that conversions could not be coerced, since real conversions had to be of the heart, it eventually became the common teaching that a person already baptised (whether inside or outside the Catholic Church’s communion) was a rebel if heretical or apostate, and so could be forcibly punished (i.e., not merely by excommunication but by physical means) as they had already submitted to the Church’s jurisdiction and thus were guilty of wilful treachery rather than mere unbelief. So, the unbaptised, not being subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, could not be coerced into conversion or punished for disobedience to the Faith. However, this limitation did not mean, from the medieval Western perspective, that the Church could not direct the State to place limits on the activities (including religious) of non-Christians for the protection of the Faith. In short, the Church could harm or torture only the baptised directly, albeit without shedding blood, but could deputise the state to kill baptised heretics and harm those outside the Church.

20See https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/early-church-origins-religious-liberty-casey-chalk.html and https://www.earlychristians.org/mike-aquilina-expert-in-the-early-history-of-christianity/.

Regarding early pacifism, see https://anabaptistfaith.org/early-church-fathers-on-war-violence-and-pacifism/. For a contrary view, see http://churchinhistory.org/pages/misc/ch-war-pac.htm. However, the last two articles are perhaps answering different questions: “Did the Early Church Fathers countenance Christians using the sword in war or elsewhere?” in the first versus “Were the Early Church Fathers pacifist in the absolute sense of denying the moral permissibility of all use of the sword in war or elsewhere, including by the State?” in the second.

21Quoted from M.L. Brown, (2019) Our Hands are Stained with Blood: The Tragic Story of the Church and the Jewish People (Revised and Expanded Edition), Destiny Image Publishers: Shippensburg PA, Kindle Edition, p.148.

22https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_antisemitism#Restrictions_to_marginal_occupations

23See the discussion of his stance regarding the Jews in the next section. St Augustine had a more generous and nuanced stance than some other Fathers.

24Ironically, this claim is paralleled by a belief among some ultra-Orthodox Jews that the Jews must remain scattered or without control of the land of Israel till the coming of the Messiah and the rebuilding of the Temple, and that only strictly religious observant Jews have any right to the land (if they do purchase some of it). They do not recognise the legitimacy of the State of Israel or secular Zionism. See the video “Religious anti-Zionist Jews: Whose land is this?”. Many of the same people hold that after the coming of Moshiach (Messiah) some of the Gentiles will become slaves of the Jewish people. In other words, a similar supremacism leads by a different path to the same irritation with a free Jewish state. And, theologically, it corresponds to a forgetfulness that mercy rejoices over justice and grace precedes merit, so that God blesses even the presently irreligious or imperfectly pious. More on this error below, in the main text.

25See “It’s Not a War Over Gaza & Iran — It’s a War Over God (And the West Doesn’t get it)” See also the implicit threat contained in Articles 11 and 31 of Hamas’ original 1988 Covenant here: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/doctrine-hamas.

26Papal imperialism involved two aspects. First, asserting the power of the Pope to depose rulers, permit their assassination and dissolve any civil loyalty or promise pledged to a person (including a ruler) the Pope excommunicated, as well as a general authority to command civil rulers. Second, the Popes used their authority to license colonial ventures by European powers, a series of actions only recently condemned by the Vatican.

27In another irony, these same weaknesses are frequently identified in Pharisaic and Talmudic Judaism by Christians, including Catholics.

28The “New Zionism” of Anglican Evangelical Gerard McDermott will not be analysed here. The author simply notes that he believes it draws a long bow in its exegesis arguing against the New Testament’s identification of the Church as the new Israel. This identification is still the most natural reading of St Paul, and accords with the orthodox Tradition. As we will see below, distinguishing between fleshly/earthly and spiritual Israel is a better way to interpret the New Testament language and avoid unbiblical erasure of Jewish identity.

29“Although the Evangelicals often accused Pusey of Romanism, he maintained a remarkably generous attitude toward them. Whereas Newman and other spokespeople for the Oxford Movement strongly disdained the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century, Pusey was restrained in his criticisms of their teachings. When the Evangelicals proposed erecting a martyrs’ memorial in Oxford to honor the reformers, he supported the effort, even though his colleagues in the movement regarded it as a device to embarrass them.” From: James E. McGoldrick (2023) E. B. Pusey ebsco.com/research-starters/history/e-b-pusey

30To see modern RC apologiae for Zionism, cf. https://firstthings.com/catholic-zionism/, https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2019/09/the-new-catholic-zionism/ and https://www.hprweb.com/2024/07/why-israel-matters-the-biblical-roots-of-catholic-zionism/.

31E.g., see “Arab Israelis: Are you living under apartheid?”. And https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel.

32https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2010/10/jews-in-medieval-christendom.html

33See also https://www.christiancentury.org/reviews/2009-05/augustine-and-jews-christian-defense-jews-and-judaism, https://adfontesjournal.com/commonwealth/augustine-and-antisemitism/ and https://thomaslmcdonald.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/st-augustine-and-the-jews/.

34See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholicism_and_Zionism#History_of_the_Vatican's_political_approach_to_Zionism

35It could also have layers of meaning or applicability in addition to this, as is common for Apocalyptic texts.

36 Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Grace and Vocation Without Remorse: Comments on the Treatise De Iudaeis’, Communio 45, no. 1 (2018): 178–79.

37Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Grace and Vocation Without Remorse: Comments on the Treatise De Iudaeis’, 175.

38https://www.academia.edu/12867991/Did_the_times_of_the_Gentiles_Lk_21_24_have_ended_after_Israel_s_victory_in_June_1967

39See footnote 29 of his https://www.academia.edu/16301125/Restoration_of_the_Kingdom_to_Israel_Acts_1_6_Millennialist_Dream_or_Eschatological_Reality]

40https://www.academia.edu/71084888/For_an_ecclesial_reexamination_under_Ireneus_patronage_of_the_apostolicity_of_the_Millennium_belief

41https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-treatment-of-jews-in-arab-islamic-countries

42Hitler had an important alliance with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the infamous Hajj Amin Al- Husseini, who visited the Fuhrer in Nazi Germany and worked closely with the regime. One chilling example of the Mufti’s efforts on the their behalf was this statement in 1944 on Radio Berlin: “Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.” This was some time after he himself said he had been told about the “Final Solution”. Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, correctly pointed out in 2015 that, “In 2013 [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas praised him as a Palestinian ‘pioneer.’ That the mufti remains an iconic figure among the Palestinian leadership today speaks volumes about that leadership’s real attitude towards Israel.”

See also https://adin1664.medium.com/not-just-the-mufti-the-real-extension-of-the-palestinian-nazi-collaboration-67e6340b6773

43Cf. https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/12/86231/ wherein St John Paul II is quoted as saying “It must be understood that the Jews, who two thousand years ago were dispersed among the nations of the world, decided to return to the land of their ancestors. This is their right . . . recognized from the outset by the Holy See, and the act of establishing diplomatic relations is simply an international affirmation of that relationship.”

44https://theettingerreport.com/palestinian-claim-examined and https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-arabs-in-palestine.

45Some complain that the partition plan gave Israel just over half the land when they had only about a third of the population. But this just shows deep geographical ignorance. Most of Israel's portion of the land was and is the "Southern District". And, as a quick look at Google Earth will teach you, this is overwhelmingly a sparsely populated desert.

46Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the Arab League, said, “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.” King Farouk of Egypt said, “It was possible that in the first phases of the Jewish-Arab conflict the Arabs might meet with initial reverses. [But] in the long run the Arabs would soundly defeat the Jews and drive them out of Palestine.” The same Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin el-Husseini, who had been a Nazi ally also stated in 1948 that the Arabs must “together attack the Jews and destroy them as soon as the British forces have withdrawn” and characterised the conflict as “a battle between two conflicting faiths, each of which can exist only on the ruins of the other.” Interestingly, the effectiveness of the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Mufti may have been a strong contributing factor in pressuring Arab leaders away from an earlier openness towards a two-state solution. See https://jcpa.org/article/aftershock-nazi-war-jews-1947-1948-could-war-middle-east-prevented/.

47Although the first attack in 1967 was by Israel on Egypt, this was immediately preceded by Egypt signing military alliances with Syria and Jordan, blocking Israeli shipping, moving its forces to the border and telling the United Nations Emergency Force (meant to keep the peace) to leave the area. Jordan had also just invited both Egyptian and Iraqi forces to deploy in their territory, which they did. Israel was surrounded by mobilised enemy armies, again, and so chose to act pre-emptively. If a nation does not want to be struck first by a neighbour in this way, it should not signal its intent in multiple ways to invade that neighbour with overwhelming force. Choices have consequences.

48Sometimes the “encouragement” to leave was unintentional, in that it was designed to increase animosity and resistance but led to panicked fleeing instead. This was the effect on Palestinians of propagandised exaggerations about the Deir Yassin massacre. See The Nakba (I’m famous! But also wrong?), 11.30 onwards.

49Even in considering the more problematic expulsions one should remember that the clear categoric distinction between soldiers as active threats and innocent civilian bystanders which is assumed in the laws applying to modern warfare often did not accurately reflect the actual situation in Palestine. Plenty of Arab villages had had many of their ordinary adult males engaged in “irregular” guerilla-ambush warfare targetted at Jewish non-combatants.

50https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/myths-and-facts-the-refugees#c

51Benny Morris, THE BIRTH OF THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE PROBLEM REVISITED, PDF (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 313, 316.

52While Gaza before the war that began after October 7 2023 had had no Jewish occupation since 2005, it did have an ongoing blockade of varying intensity imposed by Israel to prevent weapons or related material entering and starve Hamas of funds by severely restricting exports. The blockade was in retaliation for (and designed to limit additional) attacks on Israel and operates by collaboration with Egypt, which has its own problems with Hamas.

53The belief that all or most Jews should be displaced from the land (or killed) as part of the imposition of a one-state solution is quite common amongst Palestinians. E.g., see: What will happen to the Israelis when you take back Palestine of 1948 (Israel)? Interestingly, many of those interviewed are willing to accept Jews from before 1948 and claim that Arabs and Jews peacefully co-existed before then. But this is manifestly untrue. An excellent illustration of both the anti-Semitic nature of traditional Palestinian “anti-Zionism” and its independence of the events of 1948 is the 1929 massacre of 66 non-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews in Hebron: Morris, THE BIRTH OF THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE PROBLEM REVISITED, 10.

54Morris, THE BIRTH OF THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE PROBLEM REVISITED, 24–26, 39–64.

55E.g., Benny Morris, THE BIRTH OF THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEE PROBLEM REVISITED, PDF (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

56However, given that, in the first stages of what began as a civil war before the establishment of the Sate of Israel, the Jewish forces comprised the majority Haganah, plus the off-shoot Irgun and further off-shoot Lehi, it is important to note that the latter two were more militant, frequently unapologetically terrorist in modus operandi, and often acted independently of the nascent Israeli government.

57Ibid. 71-74.

58https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Israel is useful summary of relevant criticism based on accusations of such trespasses and Israeli responses.

59https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/magazine/israel-west-bank-settler-violence-impunity.html

60https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/facts-about-jewish-settlements-in-the-west-bank#2

61E.g., Israel Strikes the Only Catholic Church in Gaza and U.S. Accuses Israeli Settlers of an “Act of Terror” Against Christians.

62https://imeu.org/article/israels-west-bank-wall. But see also https://israelmyglory.org/article/the-new-wall-of-jerusalem/ for a justification of the wall’s construction.

63https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel

64https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Christians provides a useful historical summary of this group.

65https://christianpersecution.co.uk/news_and_comment/37/living-under-the-shadow-of-death—what-hamas-ideology-means-for-palestinian-christians. See also https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-834585 and https://ucs.nd.edu/learn/palestine/.

66Past draft agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have generally recognised that the largest settlements will become part of Israel, but in exchange for land swaps elsewhere to compensate Palestine. So the Palestinians have at times shown they can compromise on this issue at least.

67https://www.reddit.com/r/geopolitics/comments/1ba6ey3/what_is_the_reason_for_israel_to_expand_west_bank/

68https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/facts-about-jewish-settlements-in-the-west-bank

https://blog.ricksteves.com/blog/settlements-in-the-west-bank-from-an-israeli-point-of-view/

69Seizing the West Bank: Extremist Israeli settlers in control - BBC World Service Documentaries

70https://thejewishindependent.com.au/israeli-army-struggling-to-control-settler-violence-in-west-bank

71https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/knesset-passes-non-binding-motion-on-judea-and-samaria-sovereignty/

72https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/7/10/west-bank-palestinians-prepare-to-lose-homes-as-israel-pushes-for-expulsion

73The growing cancer of lawbreakers in West Bank must be cut out, before its too late – Jerusalem Post editorial

https://www.thejc.com/opinion/settler-violence-is-corrosive-to-the-soul-of-israel-it-must-be-confronted-tlxvfhog

https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/settler-violence/

https://israelpolicyforum.org/west-bank-settlements-explained/

74A Two-State Solution is NOT the solution (So what is?) and Free Palestine? No thanks! (The Israeli perspective).

75Others take it to refer only to the Jewish Christians in accordance with a more straightforward translation of the Greek that would distinguish rather than equate the two descriptions of people: “as many as walk according to this rule” versus “the Israel of God”. For example, the translation of the Authorised Version accords with this distinction as follows: “And as many as walk according to this rule, peace [be] on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God” [emphasis added]. See the discussion in https://www.preceptaustin.org/the_israel_of_god. In any case the other evidence cited above is sufficient to show the Church’s spiritual continuity of identity with Israel.

76https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_in_Judaism

77Many Christians would reject the Jewish claim that God can forgive without physical sacrifice, thinking they were defending a Christian doctrine that God could not forgive us without the suffering of the Cross, as his wrath or justice simply had to be appeased. This is in fact not a dogma at all, but a dubious theological opinion opposed by Aquinas (Summa Theologica P3 Q46 A1 & A2). The Cross was not mandated by justice as an absolute condition for God to forgive, but freely given as a more fitting, costly and loving way to heal us. Thus it is rightly called gratuitous.

78As P.T. Forsyth put it in The Cruciality of the Cross (pp. 78-79, Second Edition, Hodder and Stoughton, 1910), “we must not think that the value of the atonement lies in any equivalent suffering. Indeed, it does not lie in the suffering at all, but in the obedience, the holiness.”

79https://allianceforthepeaceofjerusalem.com/christian-zionism-its-historical-roots/. See also https://www.trinityorthodox.ca/documents/Kinzer-ForewordCommunionMessiah.pdf, p. 6

80https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/plan-dalet-for-war-of-independence-march-1948

81The quotations of Ben-Gurion are from https://adin1664.medium.com/there-was-no-zionist-ethnic-cleansing-plan-in-1948-320b53aeb856. See also https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/benny-morris-and-the-reign-of-error for further criticism of similar selective quotation.

82As explained in the section “Misrepresentation” of https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/benny-morris-and-the-reign-of-error