Thank You For Ted Schmidt’s Article

Letters to the editor

Thank You For Ted Schmidt’s Article

John Dirlik, Montreal, Quebec

Volume 37  Issue 10, 11 & 12 | Posted: January 3, 2023

The Editor:

Alas, the Catholic Church seems to be immune to what Israel is doing.

History, also, is not irrelevant.

While Jews under Christendom suffered millennia of systemic persecution as “Christ-killers” culminating in the Holocaust, as “People of the Book” under Islam they not only co-existed but thrived (Judaism’s “Golden Age” was in Moorish Spain).

Conflict arose in the 1880s when European anti-semitism gave birth to a Zionist movement that sought to recreate a long-lost Jewish homeland in now predominantly Muslim Palestine.

Arab hostility towards waves of colonists with ambitious territorial designs was hardly surprising. Neither was their outrage at the breathtaking hypocrisy of Western powers (Canada included) that shut their doors to Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich but magnimously voted to partition Palestine at the UN.

For decades, Palestinians adamantly refused to “recognize Israel”. They were asked not only to renounce their homeland but also to grant legitimacy to its usurpers. Today, the majority accept a two-state compromise.

Intoxicated with power (and a sugar daddy called Washington) Israel chooses occupation and blockades.

It is high time the Catholic Church takes a principled stance.

   

John Dirlik, Montreal, Quebec