In an earlier post on The Pope and Islam, I noted some remarks that Benedict XVI made regarding terrorism. As it happens, a condemnation Benedict made of terrorism in the immediate aftermath of the second attempts at public transport bombings in London and the atrocities in Egypt has occasioned no small measure of controversy. Benedict said at his weekly Angelus address on 24 July:
Even these days of tranquillity and rest have been disturbed by the tragic news of the despicable terrorist attacks that have caused death, destruction and suffering in various countries, such as Egypt, Turkey, Iraq and Great Britain. As we entrust to divine goodness the deceased, the injured and their loved ones, victims of these acts that offend God and man, let us invoke the Almighty so that he may stop the murderous hand of those motivated by fanaticism and hatred who have committed them, and convert their hearts to thoughts of reconciliation and peace.
You’d have thought this was unexceptional, and would be echoed by all people of good will. Not so. Exception was taken by the Government of Israel, who claimed that the Pope should have condemned recent attacks by Palestinians, and later asserted that the Vatican had a long standing policy of not condemning attacks on Israeli citizens, allegedly demonstrated by “the silences of Pope John Paul II”. Use of this particular wording can only be intended to recall the controversy over whether Pope Pius XII failed to speak up against the Holocaust.
The Israeli government has a long history of disarming any criticism by illegitimately assimilating it to inaction or complicity with regard to The Holocaust.
The Vatican has hit back.
Pope Benedict XVI has become immersed in the first big diplomatic crisis of his papacy after the Vatican issued an unusually blunt statement criticising Israel for its response to Palestinian attacks.The Vatican’s stinging rebuke came after Israel demanded to know why the Pope did not refer to a Palestinian suicide bombing in remarks he made last Sunday condemning terrorist attacks in London and Sharm el-Sheikh.
In a 1300-word communique, the Vatican said: “It has not always been possible to follow every attack against Israel with a public declaration of condemnation.”
It said one reason for this was that “the attacks on Israel were sometimes followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the norms of international law … It would thus be impossible to condemn the (terrorist operations) and pass over the (Israeli retaliation) in silence”.
The statement also expressed irritation with the reaction of the Israeli Government to the Pope’s original comments and said it was not prepared to “take lessons or instructions from any other authority on the content and direction of its own statements”.
Israel has repeatedly demanded that other governments recognise Palestinian attacks as part of an international Islamist campaign against Western democracy, therefore implicitly not connected to its own actions in the occupied territories.
The Israeli foreign ministry called in the Vatican’s envoy on Monday to complain that the Pope, in condemning terrorist attacks in several countries, had “deliberately” omitted mention of a July 12 suicide bombing in the coastal city of Netanya in which five Israelis died. The Pope’s spokesman replied that the pontiff had explicitly indicated that he was referring to all the recent attacks. He said it was “surprising that one would have wanted to take the opportunity to distort the intentions of the Holy Father”.
The generally conciliatory tone of the Vatican’s initial response appeared to have put an end to the row. But the next day an Israeli foreign ministry official told the Jerusalem Post that it had been Vatican policy for years not to condemn terrorism in Israel. Thursday’s statement was framed as a response to that claim. It included a long list of references to statements made by the previous pope condemning violence against civilians in Israel.
After the July 7 bombings in London, Israel’s foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, said suicide attacks around the world were driven by a common hatred for freedom. “Ultimately terrorism can strike any country in the world that has an ideology of freedom, of democracy, that has an ideology of openness,” he said.
It’s absolutely remarkable that Israel would seek to argue that what has gone on over recent years is some sort of undifferentiated terrorist campaign against freedom and democratic values. The link between Israeli state policy, and violent resistance to it, could not be clearer.
The Vatican is quite right about this:
Navarro-Valls said the claim that the Israelis had repeatedly asked John Paul II to speak out was “invented,” and that the pope’s statements on the subject were “numerous and public.”
And the Vatican is right to condemn violent attacks on Israeli citizens, but note their causes, and to condemn equally the retaliatory actions on the part of the Israeli state for their indiscriminate violence and illegality under international law.
Elsewhere: Expert analysis from NCR Reporter and Benedict biographer John Allen, and the text of the Vatican statement [pdf].
The Vatican communique and the statement of Dr Navarro-Valls are inconsistent - which is to say one or both are bullshit. First, the claim is made that failure to mention Israel is an explicit policy based on an equivalency theory of terrorism and Israeli responses to it. Then there is the exceedingly lame and insulting contention that the Pope “indicated” he was referring to all recent attacks - no snub intented.
Israel’s neighbours want to eradicate it root and branch, that’s the crucial difference here. The Vatican is wrong on and disgacefully so. By creating the mendacious impression of equivalence between Israeli self-defence and the campaign of decades-long terror against it, the Holy See has given an inadvertent green light to murder. Its functionaries have more or less stated: ‘attack Israel at will and we at the Vatican will say nothing.’
As a Catholic, I am ashamed of the naive, clerkish dilletantes of the Vatican (would that they had Sharon’s balls) telling sickly-sweet whoppers about the sick man of world religion - Islam - while insulting a people Pope John Paul called Catholicism’s “elder brothers” in faith. Wojtyla would be ashamed of his successor.
I await a “stinging rebuke” or an “unusually blunt statement” from the Vatican about the hundreds of people being murdered by adherents of Islam every six months or so. Oh wait… that would require real - not faux - courage.
The Vatican itself may very well have just become a ‘root cause’ of future homicides, which - I dare say - is taking the ‘preferential option for the poor’ a step too far. The terrorists of Palestine, the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia and the state apparatuses of Iran and Syria have been given this explicit message: don’t kill Israelis - BUT if you do we won’t say a word. Why? “It would… be impossible to condemn the (terrorist operations) and pass over the (Israeli retaliation) in silence.”
God knows what these Most Reverend Humphrey Applebys would have made of D-Day. Allied ‘retaliation’ probably. If only the Holy See was this forthright about American child molesters; if only this passionate about the degradation of Catholic liturgy, education and theological orthodoxy throughout the Western world. For good reason, Daniel Mannix was a Gallican who never gave much credence to any political policy favoured by the Vatican.
Your D-Day comparison is just silly, CL, when the reason given for refusing to comment was that Israel’s response is frequently outside international legal norms. D-Day clearly was not.
Thankfully, the UN and its international legal ‘norms’ didn’t exist at that time.
CL,
It was the “United Nations”, the formal name for the Allies during WWII, that undertook the D-Day invasion. They created the UN that chaps like yourself like to disparage.
International law most certainly did exist before the UN, CL. D-Day fits within the then-prevailing law of “just war”.
Stop being so silly.
Fyodor is mistaking the nascent United Nations of the 1942 Atlantic Charter declaration with the post-victorious body which, indeed, I “like to disparage.” (For such enlightened innovations to peace-keeping as its Sudanese rape squads).
No Monte Cristo for Fyodor’s humidor.
Israel’s neighbours want to eradicate it root and branch, that’s the crucial difference here.
The only Middle East state not to have accepted the legitimacy of Israel’s right to exist is Iran.
The rest of your comment is hyperbole. Now the Vatican is giving terrorists a justification, hey? Whatever.
Yes, CL, stop being silly. Your PhD isn’t in history, is it?
The Atlantic Charter was signed in 1941, about six months before the Declaration by United Nations, which included Australia, BTW. Those same nations created the UN as we know it, and Sudanese rape squads were not, and are not, their creation. Hyperbole, thy name is Currency Lass.
And you’re supposed to be teh intellect RWDB? Must try harder.
Frankly, (as Kevin Rudd might say) the normally sagacious Vatican appears to have muffed it. If the aim really was to express abhorrence for terrorism in general, (which looks to be too conveniently retrospective a take for mine) then clearly, conveying the message in a country-specific list was problematic from the outset. The Netanya bombing, carried out after a long suicide bombing hiatus, had particularly powerful resonance in Israel and Jerusalem’s reaction to it’s omission from the Vatican’s list of terrorist-afflicted countries might, in the circumstances, have been predictable.
To then get all huffy when one’s obvious faux pas is named is hardly indicative of the sort of seamless Metternichian expertise with which the Holy See’s diplomacy is normally regarded.
Diplomacy is supposed to prevent this sort of escalation, not exacerbate it
I agree with Geoff. Omission of Israel appears to be at best thoughtless, at worst reckless.
I’d suggest that some Monsignor previously responsible for diplomatic finessing of Vatican press releases is tonight enroute to the upper Amazon to do the Lord’s work for the forseeable future…..
”By creating the mendacious impression of equivalence between Israeli self-defence and the campaign of decades-long terror against it, the Holy See has given an inadvertent green light to murder. ”
Elaborate on this CL, now that that M.E. history is long past Egyptian, Jordanian and Syrian armies queueing up to throw them into the ocean, do you mean that when non-state actors react against occupiers by killing their civilians that’s always reprehensible (and it is, depending on the last resort self defence argument between them and history/supreme being ) but a state actor that kills, among others, civilians in response to that, is always right, and that’s not reprehensible?
No nouse for the Vatican nuance ”A Pox on Both Houses–variable with the particular circumstances?”
[Oh no! we await our arguments being construed as the Sinatra/Gambino retort]
Geoff, I don’t think it was an oversight. The Vatican - no matter what C.L. thinks (and he should read the texts of what JP2 had to say on it) - has always condemned Israeli state violence and supported a Palestinian state. And so they should.
Individual non-judicial assassinations, collective punishment (including bulldozing the houses of the families of suicide bombers), mortar and tank attacks and bombings of refugee camps and Palestinian government buildings - all these actions by the Israeli state deserve condemnation in the strongest terms and cannot be justified as legitimate self-defence because they are illegal and/or kill and maim civilians who are not responsible for the attacks.
Of course, attacks against innocent Israeli citizens are equally deserving of the strongest condemnation.
Yes Fyodor, I’ll try harder to be teh intellect. Chasing you off to Google fulfills my didactic doctoral duty for the day - which is a start.
Quite so Geoff. I think the overwrought Vatican response indicates they didn’t like being called out on this. At. all.
First, a communique is issued stating Israel is explicitly not mentioned in such circumstances; then Dr Navarro-Valls says Israel was left off a generalised list for no particular reason. In Washington or Canberra, that’s called ’spin.’ Or ‘lying’ everywhere else.
Not good.
And yes, Mark, I regard as shocking a statement from the Holy See arguing Israel is somehow not worthy of being considered a victim of terrorism. This is he stupidest thing the Vatican has done in tense geopolitical circumstances since Roncalli met Kruschev’s son-in-law as a demonstration of his doomed ‘Ostpolitick.’ That didn’t go down well in the Gulag Archipelago.
C.L., as I’m suggesting - this is not some sort of departure.
The Vatican did not recognise the State of Israel until 1993.
Pope Paul VI explained why in 1975:
As to John Paul II’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
The article from which I’m quoting has more.
I’m familiar with the Holy See’s history on Palestinian independence, which I support by the way - if and when the PA & Co cease being a dangerous rabble. And, for the record, I applaud your bold willingness to speak of Israel’s “long history of disarming any criticism by illegitimately assimilating it to inaction or complicity with regard to The Holocaust.” That is a very forthright and a very true statement, however reluctant you probably were to make it. I too have criticised Israel and do not acknowledge it has any special dispensation from the ordinary slings and arrows of political criticism and commentary.
As usual, I think Geoff has gone to the real nub of the issue presented here, however, by his reference to nuance. I think the Vatican has tried to be a little too cute and has been caught out. For my part, the balance of sympathy and the balance of understanding vis-a-vis its rigorous self-defence (including offensive self-defence) are still in Israel’s favour. I also suspect that Iran’s policy represents the real politics of sentiment throughout much of the Middle East, however much other nations there have pragmatically accepted the very different orientation we call realpolitic.
I think this was a bad error of judgement, loosely founded on the pro-statist policy of the Vatican but forged in politically correct, media-savvy expediency. The obvious solution would have been to add both Israel and Palestine to the list of places where terrorist organisations have lately caused death, mayhem and discord - as, in the latter location, civil strife indubitably has. The Holy See can rarely take sides in secular affairs. That is a strength in its diplomatic modus operandi. It is a distinct weakness, however, where - as I claim - the balance of moral sympathy is self-evidently to be apportioned to one side.
Yes, I do believe the upshot is the Vatican has given moral impetus and gravitas to the cause of non-state actors taking terrorist action against Israel.
“Geoff, I don‚Äôt think it was an oversight. The Vatican - no matter what C.L. thinks (and he should read the texts of what JP2 had to say on it) - has always condemned Israeli state violence and supported a Palestinian state. And so they should.”
Occam’s Razor, Mark. I seriously doubt that the Vatican deliberately set out to piss the Israelis off and if I’m right, there’s no other explanation for what has unfolded other than a fuck up.
Support for a Palestinian homeland would not have been compromised by adding the Netanya bombing on to the country-specific list of terrorist bombings - the Palestinian Authority condemned it; why would the Vatican not do so?
C.L., I’m not at all reluctant to make the statement in the post which implies that the Israeli government should not have “any special dispensation from the ordinary slings and arrows of political criticism and commentary”. I’m not sure why you thought I would be.
Geoff, I don’t know, you could be right. Or it might be a habit of thought inculcated by Vatican policy.
As an addendum: the current Pope is a German, old enough to have been part of the Third Reich’s social engineering machinery, no matter how directed that participation might have been. At the very least, this might indicate that a certain heightened sensitivity about Israeli feelings might have been judicious…..
In this circumstance, to denounce terrorism in specific geographic locales, omitting Israel, is simply stupid. To later claim that one’s statement had nothing to do with specific geographic locale, is doubly so.
I’m not sure why you thought I would be.
Just assumed you wouldn’t lightly link all manifestations of Israeli sensitivity to the recent murder of 6,000,000 of that people’s forebears.
Silly me.
Should have read:
Just assumed you wouldn’t lightly reject a link between manifestations of Israeli sensitivity and the recent murder of 6,000,000 of that people’s forebears.
I’m always careful, C.L., to distinguish between the Israeli state and the Israeli people. As I’ve commented before, a majority would like peace with the Palestinian people and a growing number would be perfectly happy with a secular state encompassing the whole territory - even should Palestinians become a majority.
The Israeli state has long played on the terrible memory of the Holocaust to disarm criticism. Since s11, it’s played on that terrible memory to justify its own illegal and violent acts by arguing that the violence directed at it - and against Israeli citizens - is dehistoricised and decontextualised disdain for “values” - rather than a historical struggle which has been re-ignited by the Sharon government’s scorn for the peace process.
In reality, it may just have been an oversight. Several statements by the curia have been ‘corrected’ or ‘amplified’ since Benedict became pope and Sodano, the Cardinal Secretary of State, is widely expected to move on to other duties in the near future. Equally, this is Israel’s first chance to try it on with a new pope and not one they’re going to pass up. Israel and the Vatican have a long history of diplomatic tension and crossfire because they have fundamentally different views on the Palestinian question. The tensions were there under John-Paul II, but tended to get ignored because of his reputation.
Yes, Alan, and Benedict is widely expected to put a broom through the Curia soon. Apparently one of his principal concerns is the Secretariat of State, from what one reads. Another is said to be conflicting messages coming from different officials.
The position taken by the Vatican is an important one - the diplomatic stance of the Vatican in favour of human rights and the norms of international law is powerful because it’s able to adopt this stance (as a sovereign entity) without being accused of the sort of power politics that all states must incorporate into their diplomacy, however well-intentioned they are.
Here’s why Israel doesn’t exactly trust Palestinian bona fides. An outdoorsman like Papa Wojtyla would have been outraged. I’m not sure about our bookish German.
Has anyone got God, Yahweh or Allah’s direct input on this issue? I’m talking like signed and FOI enabled memos here. Not any of this “I read it a book” crap.
Nabs, I’ve been chatting with the guy upstairs and he’s promised another couple of stone slates from the mountain-top to clear everything up directly. Delivery date next Tuesday. Wanted: suitable prophet, preferably wild-eyed with bushy beard, must have own staff.
(Or maybe I haven’t taken my pills today…)
It’s probably worth calming CL’s slightly excitable allegations about the tendencies of ‘bookish Germans’ and outdoorsman. There is no difference between Benedict’s and John-Paul’s attitudes to the Palestinain question.
The big picture behind the Vatican spat
The pope needs a blog.
would that mean talking about the papal position or would it be double deutsch?