Many Christians in the Middle East harbor “anti-Zionist” resentments,
but those resentments are rooted political injustices and not theology,
according to a top Church official in the Holy Land.
Franciscan Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa said the tensions were
reflected in the recent Synod for Bishops on the Middle East, but he
rejected charges that the synod was biased against Israel.
"I don't think the Synod Fathers were taken hostage by anyone," he told the Italian newspaper Il Foglio Oct. 27.
Father
Pizzaballa is the Vatican-appointed custodian of the ancient Christian
holy sites in Israel and Palestine.
In an interview with the paper’s
Vatican analyst Paolo Rodari, he responded to charges made by Israel’s
deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon.
Ayalon charged that the synod had become an "important forum for
political attacks" and was "taken hostage by an anti-Israeli majority."
"That the Arab world might have little sympathy for Israel is
evident," Father Pizzaballa said, noting that 90 percent of Christians
in the Middle East are of Arab origins. He called it a "normal thing"
that this sentiment might surface "in some way" during the synod’s
discussions.
But the synod's final message also included condemnations of
anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism and a reminder that Christians must study
both the New and the Old Testaments, he said.
It is "not a given," that the synod fathers of the Middle Eastern world would write these words, he said.
Father Pizzaballa also pointed out that the synod’s final message
condemned all forms of racism and “Islamaphobia,” and called Jews,
Muslims and Christians to greater commitment to dialogue.
While individual bishops might express their opinions on these
issues, only the final message of the synod reflects the official
position of the assembled Church leaders, he stressed.
The synod’s message, Father Pizzaballa said, is “not the voice of the
Vatican nor the Church.”
It is rather "simply the voice of the synod
fathers."
The synod’s final message offered little new with respect to Israel,
he added. The gathering of bishops condemned Israel’s continued
occupation of Palestine and any use of God's name to justify violence.
These are positions "already expressed in the past” by Church leaders,
he noted.
Accusations that the synod fathers harbor an “anti-Zionist” bias are
misguided. Zionism, the belief that Israel has the right to a homeland
in the territory promised to the Jews in the Bible, is a “Western
category,” Father Pizzaballa said. “It is a way with which the West
tries to describe a situation."
"That a certain anti-Zionism might be present also among Christians
in the Middle East is evident,” he said. “But this anti-Zionism, if it
exists, it does not have theological foundations.
It is more than
anything a sentiment motivated by the Israeli-Palistinian conflict. It
is a reaction to a dramatic situation and in which immediate solutions
are not seen"
The issue of anti-Zionism surfaced after remarks by Melkite
Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros of Newton, Mass. in the concluding
press conference of the synod, Oct. 23.
Archbishop Bustros said the biblical ideas of the “chosen people” and
the “promised land” could not be used to justify “the return of Jews to
Israel and the displacement of Palestinians." He added, "Sacred
Scripture should not be used to justify the occupation by Israel of
Palestine.”
Father Pizzaballa said the controversy reinforces the need for
greater dialogue between Jews and Catholics and deeper study of the ways
Scripture is interpreted in each tradition.
Christians, he said, “are
accustomed to making a spiritual and allegorical reading of the
Scriptures and our reading does not always fit together with that of the
Jews."
SIC: CNA/INT'L