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.