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This is a disquieting sign of resurgent Vatican dhimmitude. If the Vatican really thinks Israel violated international law, Navarro-Valls should specify when and where. If he cannot do so, he shouldn't make such statements. Otherwise, all a flat, non-specific statement does is lend support to the idea of moral equivalence, and give aid and comfort to the jihad terrorists.
From Al-Jazeera, with thanks to all who sent this in:
The dispute erupted on Monday, when Israel summoned the Vatican envoy to complain that Benedict had "deliberately failed" to include a "suicide bombing" in the Israeli city of Netanya when he listed countries recently hit by terrorist attacks....Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls made an unusually harsh rebuttal on Thursday, issuing a two-page list of the times John Paul condemned attacks against Jews and calling Barkan's accusations "groundless" and invented.
"The attacks against Israel sometimes were followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the rules of international law"
Vatican statement
He said the Vatican couldn't condemn every attack against Israel because often Israel would respond in ways that violated international law."It would consequently have been impossible to condemn the former and remain silent on the latter," he said in a statement.
"It's not always possible to immediately follow every attack against Israel with a public statement of condemnation, and for various reasons, among them the fact that the attacks against Israel sometimes were followed by immediate Israeli reactions not always compatible with the rules of international law," a statement from the Vatican press office said on Thursday night....
Seymour Reich, who has been involved in Jewish-Vatican negotiations in the past, said both sides had overreacted and urged them to "take a deep breath and look at the bigger picture regarding Israel-Vatican relations and the Vatican's world Jewry relations"....He said he also didn't think the spat would affect celebrations this fall commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Vatican's "Nostra Aetate" declaration that revolutionised relations with Jews.
In the document, the Vatican rejected anti-Semitism and the notion that Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Christ.
Posted by Robert at July 30, 2005 9:51 AM
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There is not a single unified "Vatican" on the matter of Israel's defense against the Jihad being conducted against it (presented to the world by Arab and anti-Israel propagandists as merely a "struggle" (carefully unexamined as to its methods) for the "legitimate rights'" (carefully undefined) of the "Palestinian people" (whose invention after the Six-Day War,, and whose defining features, are carefully left completely unmentioned and unmentionable).
There are several schools of thought, lines of thought, tendencies within the Vatican, about both Israel, and about the menace of Islam and how to deal with it. There are those who continue to bear a permanent anti-Israel animus (among them in Navarro-Valls himself), and others free or capable of being freed, of that animus. The heads of Christian churches in the Near East, of course, keep counselling an anti-Isarel line, for the sake of themselves and their church -- what else can they do, surrounded by murderous Muslims, except adopt an islamochristian line and even come to believe it themselves, understandably because it it psychologically more appealing to come to believe a lie than to have to repeat it, out of fear and self-interest, while continuing to know it is a lie. These churchmen of the East, who can in private, in the United States, be candid about the self-imposed requirement that they do nothing to anger Muslims, and everything to appease them (and the coin of that appeasement is Israel's safety, Israel's legitimacy). But outside a very limited circle, they revert to the nonsense and lies, or half-lies, that their position requires them to accept -- in order to protect their own flocks, who themselves live lives under constant threat of Muslim -- let's just call it "tolerance."
Posted by: Hugh![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 30, 2005 12:29 PM
It seems that some in the Church have also adopted Taqya.
Posted by: Cynic at July 30, 2005 1:01 PM
Ha ha ha ha
Posted by: ia786 at July 30, 2005 2:22 PM
While Pope John Paul II did issue formal condemnations of terrorism, he also
1. Condemned the Israeli security fence (he said both sides should "build bridges, not walls"), which perhaps is the single greatest factor in the decline of casualties from Palestinian suicide bombing.
2. Hosted Tariq Aziz with great diplomatic fanfare before the U.S. attack on Iraq. Other Vatican officials fell all over themselves during Aziz's time in Rome. As we know, Aziz was a crony of a brutal tyrant who paid families of suicide bombers as much as $25,000.
3. Failed or refused to discipline effectively the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, who has been known to make pro-Palestinian public statements (see http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16525).
4. Tolerated the anti-israeli editorial stance of L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's official newspaper.
Such public activities and words aren't likely to endear the Vatican to Israeli government ministries or media outlets.
Moreover, the condescending snippiness Navarro-Walls displayed reflects the arrogance of isolated bureaucrats who think they're better and smarter than everybody else, and don't need to be held accountable for their actions. It was the exact same attitude that mestasticized into the clerical sex-abuse crisis.
The lack of any empathy, even diplomatic, for the fact that Israelis face death, dismemberment and maiming practically every day also speaks volumes about Rome's broken moral compass.
I would suspect that if Navarro-Walls and the lace-wearing Roman bureaucrats had to face such threats every time they visited their favorite trattorias, they would be less snippy and condescending.
More's the pity that they need such an experience to develop moral empathy.
BTW, I'm Catholic.
Posted by: Joseph D'Hippolito at July 30, 2005 3:04 PM
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