Quoting the Olive Tree

A newsletter from The Vatican in Exile:

Vance’s astonishing break with the orthodoxy of “boomer conservatism,” as his speech was introduced, includes a revision of the meaning of the U.S.-Israel alliance: “We have to sort of ask ourselves, what do we want out of our Israeli allies?”

No one in this position has asked that question of Israel in living memory. The fact that this obvious question is shocking shows the fact that obvious questions are shockingly absent from the national conversation.

Vance is very likely aware of another shockingly obvious question. Israel – whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been a driving force behind all the preemptive wars of regime change – is itself no friend to Christianity in its birthplace.

What is the alliance with Israel delivering for Christianity in its most historic site of all?

For years, Church leaders in the Holy Land have warned that “Israel is persecuting Christianity to extinction.” In a systematic and state-sanctioned process of escalating hostility to Christianity, attacks on priests and the desecration of graves and holy sites have increased following the Israeli parliament’s 2018 passing of a nation-state law that insisted “Israel is a Jewish state.”

This removes legal privilege from all non-Jews – Muslims, Christians, and Druze alike. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem called on Catholics and all Christians to protest the new legislation.

Given the enormous power of the neoconservative lobby and that of its allies, it is exceptional for anyone at the top of the U.S. political establishment to speak in defense of Christianity and against the doctrine of “forever wars” which extinguishes it.

It is extremely hopeful for the world, in a time of crisis almost entirely precipitated by the recklessness of the liberal-global order, that its unquestioned alliance with an increasingly unstable Israel faces a realistic reappraisal. The doctrine of permanent war which partners this is set to be abandoned at last.

Will be archived in The Olive Tree./HGL