Just months after the Gaza ceasefire was signed—although hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza have since been killed and killings of Palestinians in the West Bank continue—Israel in conjunction with the United States has attacked Iran. The United States’ society and political elites have traditionally been unwaveringly pro-Israel, but recent events have left many Americans confused or angry at their nation’s Middle Eastern ally. How should Catholics approach Israel? The Bible, papal teachings, and history can all be helpful in formulating a coherent Catholic response.

When considering political conflicts, it is worth recalling St. Paul’s words that “[t]here is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Thus, the Church is truly universal and eternal and favors no state or nation over another out of principle. During World War I, Pope Benedict XV condemned the wanton slaughter of both sides, but neither the Entente nor the Central Powers felt he favored them.

When thinking about the Church’s stance on Israel, I recall visiting Rome’s Great Synagogue, which can be a humbling, uncomfortable experience for a Catholic. The synagogue’s museum exhibit details the two-thousand-year history of the Eternal City’s Jewish community; we learn, for instance, that it was not Hitler nor Mussolini but Pope Paul IV who established Rome’s first ghetto. Yet the exhibit features a video on loop in which the late grand rabbi of Rome Elio Toaff praises St. John Paul II for becoming the first pontiff to make an official synagogue visit there in 1986, shortly after a Palestinian terrorist had killed an Italian Jewish child praying in that temple. As described in Darcy O’Brien’s book The Hidden Pope, John Paul worked behind the scenes with his dear Jewish childhood friend from Poland, Jerzy Kluger, providentially a resident of Rome since after the war, to establish diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel in 1993.

Thus, the Church is truly universal and eternal and favors no state or nation over another out of principle. Tweet This

This does not mean, however, that since 1993 the Church has been unapologetically pro-Israel. During his 2009 visit to the Holy Land, Benedict XVI appealed for a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict; likewise, Popes Francis and Leo XIV have condemned Israeli violence against Palestinians and called for two states.

While Catholics in Northern Ireland had genuine grievances prior to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, this was no excuse for the terrorist violence of the IRA. Meanwhile, whereas U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East hasn’t always followed the principles of Wilsonian idealism, the nearly 3,000 Americans who were murdered on 9/11 did not deserve such a tragedy. Similarly, the nasty, brutish, and short fate of Palestinians in Gaza does not justify Hamas’ cold-blooded murder of about 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023.

In the Catholic just war theory, there is no room for justifying terrorism. As John Paul II said on the World Day of Peace in 2002, shortly after 9/11: “Terrorism is built on contempt for human life. For this reason, not only does it commit intolerable crimes, but because it resorts to terror as a political and military means it is itself a true crime against humanity.”

Thus, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas. Yet it is difficult to accept Israel’s response to Hamas’ crime as appropriate. First, as Eric Sammons rightly points out in his podcast on the matter, proportionality is a key aspect of Catholic just war theory. Whereas Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7, in response Israel killed more than 75,000 Palestinians, more than half of whom were women, children, and the elderly. That’s more than 60 Palestinian deaths for one Israeli killed.

Thus, Israel had the right to defend itself against Hamas. Yet it is difficult to accept Israel’s response to Hamas’ crime as appropriate.Tweet This

By means of comparison, historian Alex Kay has estimated that Nazi Germany killed 13 million non-combatants during World War II: Jews, Roma, Poles, Soviet POWs, people with disabilities, and others. Yet the casualties among civilians during Allied bombings of German cities were far lower: the bombing of Dresden in 1945, for instance, amounted to about 25,000, comparable to the death toll of the German bombing of Warsaw in 1939 and London a year later.

Israel’s defenders will say that this shocking disproportion is because Hamas has perfected the macabre art of using human shields. Yet this cannot explain away the starvation of many Palestinians as Israel has blocked humanitarian aid. Furthermore, the rhetoric and behavior of Israeli government officials and significant segments of Israeli society betray inexcusable sadism contrary to both the Jewish and Christian religions and indicative of the Netanyahu government’s intentions. Israel’s defense minister has called Palestinians “human animals” against whom Israel will “act accordingly,”while crowds of Israelis swarm at hilltop viewing platforms complete with vending machines to watch mass killings in real time while drinking Coke and snacking on Bamba Peanut Butter Puffs. 

In the latest Gaza war, Hamas was undisputedly the aggressor. However, the Arab-Israeli conflict did not begin two-and-a-half years ago. In late-19th-century Europe, the Zionist slogan was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” The fatal flaw of this slogan was that the first half of it was untrue; Palestine had been inhabited by Arabs for many centuries. 

Before we blame European Jewish contemporaries of Theodor Herzl for being attracted to this colonial settler movement, we must bear in mind that in this period Jews were themselves increasingly subjected to violence and discrimination. In France, the Dreyfus affair, which led to the sentencing of an innocent man to life imprisonment on the aptly-named Devil’s Island, revealed deep-seated European anti-Semitism, as did the many pogroms in Tsarist Russia, some of the gnarliest anti-Jewish violence before Hitler’s rise to power.

In the latest Gaza war, Hamas was undisputedly the aggressor. However, the Arab-Israeli conflict did not begin two-and-a-half years ago.Tweet This

Thus, for many Jews, immigration to Palestine (first under Ottoman rule, then a British mandate, and since 1948 the State of Israel) was less an ideological statement than a desperate means of ensuring them and their families safety. This is even more true of the European Jews who survived the Holocaust only to encounter postwar ruin, communist dictatorship in many of their native countries, pogroms in postwar Eastern Europe, and the destruction of their centuries-old communities.

Today, however, anti-Semitism is flourishing in the West. It is convenient to blame this on Muslim immigrants (who indeed were responsible for the Bondi attack in Australia, for instance). Yet perhaps the most horrifying case of anti-Semitic violence in America’s history, the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, was perpetrated by a white supremacist. A year later, the Halle synagogue shooting, in which two Jews were murdered, was committed by a young, white, ethnic German. When recalling the establishment of the State of Israel, an examination of conscience of our societies’ historic and present treatment of Jews seems in order. 

Yet all humans share our fallen nature resulting from our first ancestors’ sin, even those whose compatriots and coreligionists have experienced unspeakable trauma. Some Zionists perpetrated shocking violence against Palestinian Arabs and the Holy Land’s colonial rulers; the Deir Yassin massacre or the King David Hotel bombing come to mind. The Swedish U.N. diplomat Folke Bernadotte, meanwhile, was killed by the paramilitary Zionist group Lehi (an action authorized by future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir) for trying to peacefully mediate between the Jews and Arabs. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were brutally expelled from their homes, which were seized by Jewish settlers.

And now there is the attack against Iran led by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Certainly, Iran is a Muslim theocracy with an awful human rights record, having killed tens of thousands of protestors in recent weeks. Yet if every nation with an unsavory treatment of its citizens merited invasion, half the world should be attacked. History also shows us that imposing democracy through airstrikes rarely works; although Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who killed civilians in Iran and Kuwait, Operation Iraqi Freedom destabilized the country and provided fertile soil for the rise of ISIS, making life unbearable for Iraq’s disappearing Christians. Furthermore, can “the only democracy in the Middle East” really claim to be morally superior to dictatorial regimes when killing hundreds of Iranians (including schoolchildren)?

If every nation with an unsavory treatment of its citizens merited invasion, half the world should be attacked.Tweet This

Even if many Israelis consider the Holy Land to have been promised to them by God and can point to monuments and artifacts as proof of their historic claims, the Hebrew Bible instructs: “You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself; for you too were once aliens in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). Arguably, the disregard of many Israeli authorities—and much of Israeli society—for this biblical principle created fertile soil for violent radicalism. 

When thinking about the nearly 80-year conflict in the Holy Land, it is easy to fall into the temptation of being partisan. An example of a prudent Catholic approach is Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, who is on the ground in Gaza and has both offered himself in exchange for Israeli hostages held by Hamas and condemned Israel’s disproportionate military response. As the late John L. Allen Jr. wrote, the Franciscan cardinal “achiev[ed] the rare feat of seeming to be on both sides at once.” Yet Pizzaballa is on God’s side, not on the side of any earthly political power.

Perhaps it is most helpful if we remember that all human beings—including Palestinian children starving to death in the rubble of Gaza, Israeli civilians killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and Iranian victims of the latest war—are created in God’s image. While doing so might not win us friends among the many armchair geopolitics professors with strong opinions on the matter, simultaneously condemning both terrorism and vengeful Israeli retaliation is the Catholic way.