And that Baby Jesus with the keffiyeh seems to be yet another attempt to erase the Jewish people and their three-thousand-year-old bond with the Land of Israel
Di Amichai Chikli
Amichai Chikli, Israeli Minister of Diaspora and Against Anti-Semitism, author of this article
His Holiness Pope Francis, Shalom. It is a known fact that Jesus was born in the city of Bethlehem, as described in chapter 2 of the Gospel according to Matthew: “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the time of King Herod…”.
This is the same city near which Rachel, our matriarch, died giving birth to Benjamin: “On the way to Ephrathah, that is, Bethlehem.” It is also the same city, located in the northern part of the territory of the tribe of Judah, where David, son of Jesse of Bethlehem, was born, who became king of Israel, made Jerusalem his capital and built the altar on Mount Moriah, on to which Solomon, his son, later built the Temple.
It is a known fact that Jesus was born to a Jewish mother, lived as a Jew, and died as a Jew.
It is also known that the term Jew [giudeo] derives from Judah, the fourth son of Leah, from whom the tribe of Judah descended. It is a known fact that there were those who sought to erase the connection between the Jews and Judah; one of the most important was the emperor Hadrian.
Seventy years after the Great Revolt, in which Titus destroyed the Second Temple, an intense revolt broke out in Judea between 132 and 135 AD – the Bar Kochba Revolt. It was a rebellion of a small Jewish nation against a global empire, a nation deeply committed to not kneeling before idols, not to give up the study of Torah, and not to abandon its religious and national identity.
The consequences of the revolt were serious. The Roman historian Dio Cassius wrote: “…985 of their most important villages were destroyed. 580 thousand men were killed in battles and attacks and the number of deaths from hunger, plague and fire is incalculable; few survived…”.
Hadrian was not satisfied with the physical destruction of the Jewish settlement; he foretold the future, the day when the Jews would try to return to Judea. Therefore he renamed the province of Judea to Syria Palestinetaking its name from the Philistines, historical enemies of Israel. The name of Jerusalem was also changed to Aelia Capitolina removing the ancient and historical name linked to the Jewish people. Jews were forbidden to visit or settle in their holiest city.
Pope Francis in the Vatican in front of the Nativity with a Baby Jesus lying on a keffiyeh, a gift from the Palestinian High Committee for Church Affairs
Just a 13-minute drive from St. Peter's Basilica, engraved in stone on the Arch of Titus, is the procession of Roman legions carrying the sacred objects of the Temple of Jerusalem, including the Menorah, the same Menorah that today is the symbol of the state of Israel. Titus also minted a humiliating coin depicting it Judea captured showing Judea as a woman in captivity.
Two weeks ago, you attended an event that echoes the Palestinian narrative, portraying Jesus as a Palestinian Arab. There is no other way to understand the decision to present his image in a cradle, wrapped in a keffiyeh.
If it had been an isolated case, I would not have written this letter. However, just a few weeks before this strange homage, in an even more serious expression you echoed a new accusation of genocide, insinuating that the state of Israel “may” be guilty of genocide in Gaza. You said that allegations of genocide in Gaza should be “carefully examined.” He wrote: “According to some experts… what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
As a people who lost six million of their sons and daughters in the Holocaust, we are particularly sensitive to the trivialization of the term “genocide” – a trivialization that comes dangerously close to Holocaust denial.
One of the main supporters of this new accusation against Israel is the human rights organization Amnesty International, which opened its report with the distressing and disgusting claim that Israel launched an unprovoked attack on the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023.
This is a desperate and disgusting attempt to rewrite history. As you and citizens around the world know, on that terrible day of October 7, Israel did not launch any attack on Gaza; on the contrary. The terrorist organization Hamas, together with thousands of Gazans, launched a ferocious attack against the southern region of Israel. These terrorists have committed horrific war crimes against humanity, including the massacre of dozens of Israeli families in their homes and on the streets, rape and sadistic torture, the killing of dozens of foreign workers, the massacre of hundreds of people at Nova festival and the cruel abduction of children, women, elderly and men, 100 of whom are still detained in Hamas tunnels. Many of the hostages are already dead, and those who are still alive are suffering extreme suffering in the merciless hands of Hamas.
Jerusalem: the faces of the hostages still in the hands of Palestinian terrorists in Gaza
It is a right and a moral duty to fight evil, to fight the jihadist monsters of Hamas. It is baffling that this has to be explained to the world.
Let us remember what a genocide is and, in particular, the experience of the genocide lived by the small Jewish people. Let us remember that between the Jews, who constituted less than one percent of Germany's population in the 1930s, and the Germans there had been no violent conflict, territorial, religious or political. For the first time in the history of nations, a government established as its ultimate objective the complete annihilation of an unarmed people, with whom it had no conflict and most of whom did not even live on its territory.
This is not the place to recall the entire plan of the Final Solution; but we remember only one extermination camp – Treblinka. On July 23, 1942, a 58-wagon train arrived at the camp's gates, filled with 7,350 people. Many had already died due to the intense heat, lack of water and inhumane overcrowded conditions. From the platform, the victims were sent to the gas chambers. Slowly walking children and elderly people were directed to a building marked with a Red Cross flag; behind it there were mass graves. Between September and October 1942, an average of two or three trains a day arrived at the camp, and the number killed in a single day could reach 10,000-13,000 people. Sometimes, the gas chambers operated at night, killing up to 20 thousand people in a single day. At Treblinka, 845 thousand Polish Jews were murdered. This is what genocide means.
The silence of the Vatican during those dark days of the Shoah is still deafening.
Next year we will celebrate a significant anniversary in the relationship between the Jewish people and Christianity: the 60th anniversary of Dichiarazione Nostra Atate of the Second Vatican Council.
We know that you are a dear friend of the Jewish people; this year alone, he has met families of hostages, wounded soldiers, rabbis and Jewish leaders from around the world. We appreciate these efforts and wish to deepen the relationship between the Vatican and the state of Israel, as well as between the Christian and Jewish people.
His guidance, actions and leadership have immense influence throughout the world. For this reason, I kindly ask you to clarify your position regarding the new accusation of genocide against the Jewish state.
Truth and God are one.
Amichai Chikli
Israeli Minister of the Diaspora and against anti-Semitism
(From: Il Foglio, 20.12.24)
In a few days two billion people around the world will celebrate the birth of a Jew… (click image for video)
Click the image for the video
December 20, 2024
Actuality
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