What the Catholic Patriarch Emeritus Says about Israel’s Battle with Terror in Gaza

The statement of the Patriarch Emeritus of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah on the recent round of armed conflict in around Gaza with our comments.

By Israel Today Staff | | Topics: Operation 'Breaking Dawn', Catholic Church
Former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, in meeting with Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas terrorist organisation in Gaza, April 30, 2008. Photo: Wissam Nassar/Flash 90

“The war on Gaza means that there will be still more wars to come. It means that Israel entered a war more than seventy years ago, and has not been able to get out of it yet. Israel should reconsider its calculations. Israel won and lost. It is still losing. The winner is the one who earns peace, justice and humanity. Nothing of that, so far, was achieved.”

“More than seventy years ago” refers to the establish of the State of Israel which the Palestinians like to say started the wars. They angrily refuse to even consider that the Palestinians together with all the surrounding Arab nations refused the world’s decision to give the Jewish people even a sliver of their homeland and attacked Israel from all sides.

“Israel is facing a Palestinian people who lives on its own land and demands Israel and the world to give it back its freedom, in its own land, not in the land of anyone else. This reality cannot be ignored. All major world powers cannot ignore this reality.”

No they cannot, and neither can the Palestinian people who systematically refuse to acknowledge any responsibility for their wars and terror on Israel these 74 years.

“The peace of Israel, the peace of Abraham, the peace of God, begins in Palestine first, and with the Palestinians first, and then extends to the neighbors and to the whole region. Israel and the world must understand this. Otherwise, they will keep the region in the grip of death, and turn themselves into death makers. And they are the responsible.”

That “the peace of Israel, Abraham and of God begins with the Palestinians” and not the Jewish people, the Bible and Jesus sounds like Islam, not Christianity. This deceitful blasphemy has become a regular talking point for Muslim terror groups and the naïve Christians who support them.

“The land and the peoples of the land say: Peace and justice and talk about the rights of the Palestinians. This is a voice that cannot be ignored. It is time for Israel to listen. It is time for Israel to end a war it began more than seventy years ago. It is time to get out of it, not according to the logic of force and weapons, but rather according to the logic of justice and truth.”

Again, no mention of any responsibility of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or all the other Palestinian terror organizations. They are the ones stuck in a circle of irrational violence, lies, and injustices to their own people.

 

Then-Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah, the top Catholic Clergyman in the Holy Land, Dec. 25, 2006. Photo: AHMAD GHARABLI/FLASH90

Michel Sabbah was appointed in 1987 by then Pope John Paul II to serve as the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.

Sabbah was born in Nazareth, and in 1980 he was named President of the Bethlehem University. From 1999-2007, Sabbah was the International President of Pax Christi, a Catholic organisation promoting peace. Sabbah is currently the Grand Prior of the chivalric Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, one of the knightly orders founded in 1099.

Together with other Palestinian Christian leaders, Sabbah launched the blatantly anti-Israel Kairos Document against Israeli settlement in the Land.

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