Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis, part eight

Rather than supplement material that was contained in part seven of this series, which was published on Gaudete Sunday, December 15, 2024, and the Commemoration of the Octave of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, I have decided to add an eighth part to “Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domine” series because of some developments in the past few days and then to explain once again how the conflict in the land where Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ became Man, was born, lived, conduct His Public Ministry, and underwent His Passion and Death to redeem us and then to show forth His Easter Victory over the power of sin and death when He rose from the dead on the third day is intractable as long as adherents of false religions adhere to their falsehoods and refuse to convert to His true Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order.

As Syria Continues to be Torn Apart and Divided into Spheres of Influence

The Israeli Defense Force are continuing their effort to destroy what is left of Syria as they work to set ever-warring factions of the Mohammedan and Arab world, which are largely but not altogether entirely coextensive, against each to their own destruction. It was to advance this effort that the IDF unleashed what some call an “earthquake bomb” in Syria on Gaudete Sunday:

This is the dramatic moment a colossal explosion erupted in Syria, marking the "heaviest strikes" to hit the region in over a decade - and even registering on the Richter scale.

Astounding video showed a giant mushroom-cloud fireball filling the sky alongside deafening sounds - with claims that the blast was caused by an Israeli strike.

The explosion is believed to have taken place in northwestern Syria, near the city of Tartus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

Israel was targeting a munitions depot in the area, the war monitor claimed.

And they revealed how the ground-shaking blast measured the same as a 3.0-magnitude earthquake on nearby seismic sensors.

Dozens of other Israeli attacks were seen across Syria on Sunday with warplanes reportedly launching pinpoint strikes on weapons depots. (Moment 'Israeli earthquake bomb' hits Syria in heaviest blitz on region for 12 years that registered on Richter scale.)

Mind you, the leaders of Israel have not declared war upon Syria or Lebanon. Enabled by their American allies, which fund their own unconstitutional interventionism in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world at the expense of American taxpayers, the Israelis simply in unconscionably amoral ways to effect whatever ends they seeks to accomplish as they have no regard for the lives of non-Jews in general and those of Arabs in particular.

The Israeli disregard for the lives of innocent Arabs, whether this or that sect of Mohammedanism or the lives of Catholics and Orthodox Christians, has been aided and abetted by the United States of America, whose current (and probably future) leaders are more than happy to see the area turn into a never-ending civil war between various Mohammedan factions. The ultimate goal of this is for Israel to use strategic military force to ignite various internecine battles within and among countries that will result in an “ethnic cleansing” to make the concept of a “Greater Israel” a permanent reality, or so goes the plan:

Take a look at the map above. It explains everything.

This is roughly the situation on the ground today. The majority of Syria’s landmass is controlled by 5 groups: Al Qaida (HTS), the Kurds (SDF), the IDF (Israel), the Turks, and remnants of the Syrian Army (SAA). Of course, the situation is extremely fluid so some of the territory is likely to change hands in the near future as rival groups fight among themselves. But here’s what won’t change: A government will not emerge that is capable of stitching together a unified, contiguous, viable centrally-governed Syrian state. That’s not going to happen. The various armies are too powerful for any one group to crush the others and reestablish a government that rules all of Syria’s previously controlled territory.

Why does that matter?

Because we need to acknowledge that Israel has accomplished what it sought from the very beginning; they not only enlisted allies to help them topple Assad, but they also obliterated the Syrian state. Syria is gone; it no longer exists. And that has been Israel’s goal for more than 40 years.

So, we shouldn’t view the events of the last week as random or spontaneous, because they are neither. Everything that has taken place aligns closely with a strategic blueprint produced by a Zionist intellectual (Oded Yinon) more than four decades ago and which—according to biographer Israel Shahak—concocted “an accurate and detailed plan….for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states.” Full Stop.

This is where readers need to pause for a moment and honestly consider whether this accurately explains the endless fighting and turmoil we’ve seen in the Middle East for the last two decades?

The answer is: It does. Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Syria etc. These are not just countries; they are agenda items on a Zionist checklist for regional domination. So, stop thinking that the wars have something to do with Assad or oil or pipelines or Hamas or even Israeli security. Because they don’t. These are wars aimed at establishing Israeli hegemony across the Middle East. Let’s look at the document itself which is titled A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties by Oded Yinon:

The Moslem Arab World is built like a temporary house of cards put together by foreigners without the wishes and desires of the inhabitants having been taken into account. …every Arab Moslem state nowadays faces ethnic social destruction from within, and in some a civil war is already raging. All of the Arab states east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with conflict… This national ethnic minority picture extending from Morocco to India and from Somalia to Turkey points to the absence of stability and a rapid degeneration in the entire region. When this picture is added to the economic one, we see how the entire region is built like a house of cards, unable to withstand its severe problems…..A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties, Oded Yinon, voltairenet

So, in the opening paragraphs, the author identifies the vulnerabilities within the current societies that can be exploited for Israel’s strategic advantage. The focus, of course, is on “ethnic minorities” that can be incited to exacerbate existing divisions within the society in order to weaken the larger body politic leading to regime change. Here’s the kicker:

The Western front… is in fact less complicated than the Eastern front. Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precendent for the entire Arab World….. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart in accordance with its ethnic and reliegious strtucture, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northenr Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today…. A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties, Oded Yinon, voltairenet

Repeat: “This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run.” In other words, inciting ethnic and religious violence against other groups within the society, is the operational strategy for achieving regional dominance. In order to establish Israeli security, Arabs must be encouraged to kill each other.

Are we clear about that?

Regarding the Palestinians, there’s this little nugget:

Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over the land only when the Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between the Jordan and the sea, they will have neither existence nor security. A nation of their own and security will be theirs only in Jordan. A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,

Keep in mind, this was written in 1982 which means—that among the politicos in Netanyahu’s party—there was never any intention of exchanging land for peace or fulfilling their obligations under US Resolution 242 to evacuate the occupied territories. It was always a ruse aimed at confusing credulous nitwits in the US.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs has confirmed much of what we’ve stated here. He has recently been quite outspoken in a number of interviews on YouTube where he has laid blame for all the recent wars in the Middle East on Benjamin Netanyahu. Here’s Sach’s in a recent piece at Consortium News:

The fall of Syria this week is the culmination of the Israel-U.S. campaign against Syria that goes back to 1996 with Netanyahu’s arrival in office as prime minister. The Israel-U.S. war on Syria escalated in 2011 and 2012, when former U.S. President Barack Obama covertly tasked the C.I.A. with the overthrow of the Syrian Government in Operation Timber Sycamore. ….

Syria’s fall came swiftly because of more than a decade of crushing economic sanctions, the burdens of war, the U.S. seizure of Syria’s oil….. and most immediately, Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah… Netanyahu’s ambition to transform the region through war, which dates back almost three decades, is playing out in front of our eyes…

The long history of Israel’s campaign to overthrow the Syrian government is not widely understood, yet the documentary record is clear….

Israel’s war on Syria began with U.S. and Israeli neoconservatives in 1996, who fashioned a “Clean Break” strategy for the Middle East for Netanyahu as he came to office…..The core of the “clean break” strategy called for the Israel (and the U.S.) to reject “land for peace,” the idea that Israel would withdraw from the occupied Palestinian lands in return for peace….

...Netanyahu’s strategy was integrated into U.S. foreign policy. Taking out Syria was always a key part of the plan. This was confirmed by General Wesley Clark after 9/11. (The role of the Israel Lobby is spelled out in Ilan Pappé’s new book, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic)….

The U.S. has by now led or sponsored wars against Iraq (invasion in 2003), Lebanon (U.S. funding and arming Israel), Libya (NATO bombing in 2011), Syria (C.I.A. operation during 2010s), Sudan (supporting rebels to break Sudan apart in 2011), and Somalia (backing Ethiopia’s invasion in 2006).

A prospective U.S. war with Iran, ardently sought by Israel, is still pending….. The U.S. and Israel are high-fiving that they have successfully wrecked yet another adversary of Israel and defender of the Palestinian cause, with Netanyahu claiming “credit for starting the historic process.”...

American interference, at the behest of Netanyahu’s Israel, has left the Middle East in ruins, with over a million dead and open wars raging in Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine, and with Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal, being pushed against its own inclinations to this eventuality. US & Israel Destroyed Syria & Called it Peace, Jeffrey Sachs, Consortium News

These are Israel’s wars, and they are prosecuted to pursue Israeli interests not American interests. The US military (and political class) has been hijacked by the maneuverings of strongarm lobbyists who know how to work the levers of power to achieve their own ends. Their rate of success speaks for itself. Much of the Middle East lies in ruins which was the plan from the get-go.

But now comes the hard part, because nothing has really been resolved in Syria. Yes, Assad is gone and, yes, the Syrian state has disintegrated. But how long will it take before Turkey is fighting the US-backed Kurds in the East, or before Israeli and Turkish interests clash in central or southern Syria or before HTS proves to be the unreliable terrorist organization it is known to be and refuses to follow its marching orders from Washington and Tel Aviv? So, yes, the invaders may be congratulating themselves this week “for a job well done”, but the Syrian conflagration is not over yet, not by a long-shot.

There was an important development that took place last week that provides a window into future goings-on in the battered country, although the statement was downplayed by most of the media. On Wednesday, officials of Hayat Tahrir-al Sham (HTS) announced that Mohammed al-Bashir had been appointed as Syria’s interim prime minister. Al-Bashir, who has been running the Idlib province, has been chosen to lead a small cabinet whose job will be to make sure the government agencies, banks and public services continue operate without interruption. More importantly, al-Bashir, who speaks English, is the likely the designated technocrat chosen by Washington to jumpstart the sale of the country’s state-owned assets and businesses, its natural resources, and anything else of value. Judging from past experience, he will probably oversee a sharp reduction in government spending, as well as dramatic cutbacks in education, public safety and health care. He will also seek hefty loans from the IMF for reconstruction that will be diverted to foreign accounts for his family and cronies leaving ordinary Syrians with an ocean of red ink they can never hope to repay. Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, Bashir’s debut did not go as well as expected. Here’s the story from NBC News:

When Syria’s new interim prime minister, Mohammad al-Bashir, chaired a Cabinet meeting in Damascus on Tuesday, hanging behind him was the flag of the country’s suddenly victorious opposition. Next to it, however, was a second banner popular with the region’s Sunni Islamist fighters, featuring the large Arabic letters of the Shahada, an Islamic declaration of faith.

As a new Syria fast emerges from the ruins of the Assad regime, the world is watching for hints of what that might look like — and that second flag has concerned those hoping for a future of moderation and tolerance….

HTS is banned as a terrorist organization in the United States and elsewhere and grew out of a branch of Al Qaeda. Its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, said a decade ago that there would be no room for religious minorities in the Islamist Syria of which he dreamed about. He also suggested that he could bring terrorism to the West unless it withdrew from the Middle East’s wars.

More recently, however, Jolani, who now uses his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has undergone something of a rebrand, trimming his beard, donning Westernized green fatigues and espousing tolerance for all of Syria’s myriad faiths. Nevertheless plenty of observers are reserving judgment until these words become actions….

Seeing Syria’s corridors of power welcome a flag “indicating Islamist-Salafist leanings” has “put people on alert,” Sukkar said. Although he does not think deploying the emblem was a “wise” move, he sees it as more reflective of the rebels’ origins in Idlib rather than anything else….

The classic worry among Western foreign policy watchers was that Assad might be toppled but replaced by something that is not much better: an extremist terror group….

Displaying the flag in an image meant to represent Syria’s new transition government shows how HTS and Jolani are still “deeply entrenched in their Salafist-Sunni ideology and worldview”….

With the group now making more moderate noises, and also in a position of considerable influence, the United States is exploring removing HTS’ terrorist designation, two current administration officials and a former senior U.S. official told NBC News. Although Washington will watch closely the militant group’s moves from its new political vantage point. Why a photo of Syria’s interim leader could hint at trouble ahead, NBC News

Mohammed al-Bashir before and after his Western Facelift

Let’s see if I got this right: The Biden administration replaces Assad with a terrorist organization but is suddenly surprised when it discovers the group is led by terrorists. Is that it?

Indeed, it is. As you can see, none of this resolves the basic crisis created by the removal of Assad. Instead, the main proponents of regime change—Turkey, the US and Israel—have merely transformed Syria into an even bigger battleground where their own competing interests will soon play out by way of mortal combat.

How long will it be before Turkey locks horns with Israel or the United States? How long before sectarian war engulfs the country?

Not long, I’d wager. And for the people who thought that toppling the “evil dictator” would bring peace and security. They’d better think again. (Has Bibi Achieved his Dream of Obliterating the Arab World?, by Mike Whitney.)

The media brothel has presented the HTS terrorist/democratic opposition as Syria’s rescuer promising peace and friendship. But videos emerging reveal a campaign of violence, hangings and machine-gunning of people. It is Muslims killing Muslims, Arabs killing Arabs. The reason Arabs are powerless is that they had rather kill each other than fight against their common enemies. The borders of Arab countries were created by European colonists like the countries in Africa that combined hostile tribes into a country. So Middle Eastern countries contain Shia and Sunni populations. The two sects have been at sword’s point for centuries, enabling the West to use one against the other. Here are a few of the videos of the democratic opposition’s brutal violence.
The truth is in the videos, not in the media staged scenes of Syrians celebrating the downfall of Assad:

See this and this.

Iran is largely Persian, not Arab and more unified. But there are progressive, pro-Western elements, and among the young there is desire for lessening of religious restraints. There are always those who prefer sin to righteousness. The US works on the progressive elements and now Iran has a reform government. Isolated as Iran now is, thanks to Putin’s betrayal of Syria, there will likely be increased pressure for accommodation to the West. However, Iran might not be given a chance. Trump’s Zionist appointees are pressing him to attack Iran, claiming that Iran’s nuclear facilities can be changed from peaceful uses to military uses, thus enabling Iran to defend itself. Trump’s Zionists expect Putin to desert Iran just as he did Syria.

If Iran is overthrown, the CIA will begin sending jihadists into the Muslim areas of the Russian Federation, and the same forces of disorder used against Middle Eastern countries will be used in the effort to break up the Russian Federation. It is a puzzle what Putin was thinking when he agreed to Syria’s destruction.

The Arabs have always been their own worst enemy, and now they have managed to destroy the Arab world with only Saudi Arabia remaining. Recently, the Israeli Zionist government added a large part of Saudi Arabia to the map of Greater Israel.

The Zionist neoconservatives agenda of 7 countries in 5 years took longer but has been essentially accomplished. (Seven Countries in Five Years.)

Some readers, especially those who are new to this site, may find it impossible to believe that the Israelis have such a wanton disregard for non-Jewish life, but they do.

Here is a reminder of this fact from a news commentary that was published in 2023:

‘Israeli forces have disappeared thousands of Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip’

“The images are showing us and telling us how central imprisonment or carceral practices are to the settler colonial regime,” said Farraj, making reference to the decades-long abuse of arbitrary or otherwise political arrests.

Since the beginning of the current 57-year occupation, Palestinians have been subject to capricious arrest in the occupied territories or for violating Israeli military orders criminalizing civic activities such as participation in protests, the printing and distribution of political material, along with waving flags, using other political symbols, or posting something undesirable on social media, deeming such activities “hostile propaganda” and “incitement.”

Even prior to the current conflict these Palestinian political prisoners (i.e. “hostages”) numbered in the thousands, including at least 33 women and 170 children, of whom at least 1,200 were being held without charges or trial.

While many have also argued that the 2.2 million people present in Gaza are effectively prisoners, the United Nations reported last July that “since 1967, Israel had detained approximately one million Palestinians in the occupied territory, including tens of thousands of children.”

One 2020 report from international advocacy group Save the Children found these children “face inhumane treatment such as beatings, strip searches, psychological abuse, weeks in solitary confinement, and being denied access to a lawyer during interrogations.”

The high volumes of these arrests over the years equate to one in every five Palestinians being incarcerated for violating Israeli military orders, and two of every five men.

Yet, “since October 7, over 7,000 Palestinians have been detained,” Farraj said, “which is a number unheard of over the past decade.” And “the torture, humiliation, and degrading conduct against Palestinians is not simply restricted to the Gaza Strip,” but videos come from the West Bank as well.

Human rights groups say Israeli forces have disappeared thousands of Palestinian prisoners from the Gaza Strip. Including men, women and children,” states a screen text in the film. “Palestinians say they have experienced severe beatings, torture and humiliation while in Israeli custody.”

The Al Jazeera presentation moves into a compilation of soldier-filmed videos of enormous explosive detonations, fires, or otherwise demolitions of buildings. These films appear to be uploaded for mocking or otherwise entertainment purposes.

“The Israeli soldiers have quite remarkably taken to converting their massive, really unprecedented destruction of Palestinian homes, hospitals, mosques, universities, churches, [and] schools, into entertainment videos,” observed Whitson.

One includes soldiers posing and casually smoking while feigning to be modestly surprised at the enormous series of detonations in the background leveling multiple buildings.

Other clips show pop songs attached to the images of homes burning or olive trees used for farming being destroyed. Other pictures show Israeli soldiers displaying women’s undergarments “mocking and advertising their very deliberate intrusion of the home of a Palestinian woman, the confiscation of her most intimate apparel, and flaunting that in a way that’s definitely intended to be provocative and humiliating,” Whitson said.

Displaying a well-known clip of Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declaring, “We are fighting human animals and we are reacting accordingly” as he announced the cutting off of all electricity, food, water, and fuel into Gaza, Hajjar observed, “the videos further reinforce a discourse that is coming out of every sector of the Israeli official machinery, where all Palestinians are the enemy.”

Israeli soldiers exhibit ‘exultation of spirit’ as they ‘destroy Palestinian homes’ and completely ‘disregard’ their humanity

In a November interview with Candice Owens, Jewish Middle East scholar Norman Finkelstein explained that what is happening in Gaza “is not a particularly complicated situation right now. The Israeli government has openly, unabashedly, flagrantly, blatantly declared a war of genocide on the people of Gaza.”

“That’s not exaggerated language,” he said, recalling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to the Old Testament story of Amalek in a speech last October. “And what’s a war against Amalek? Well just open up the Old Testament. It obliges Israel to kill every man, woman and child.”

Elsewhere Finkelstein has published a long compilation of quotes from other Israeli officials stating their intention to “obliterate civilian infrastructure,” “create a humanitarian crisis,” make Gaza “unfit for living” and drive the population out into Egypt.

“Can there be any doubt in the minds of any objective observer, when Israel declares a policy of prohibiting any food, water, fuel, or electricity from entering Gaza” that genocide is their policy?, he asked.

And, according to Hajjar, these directives can be seen “manifested in that kind of joie de vivre [exultation of spirit] that soldiers are expressing as they destroy Palestinian homes. And there is a consumption of this kind of image that kind of fortifies the anger, the hatred, the anti-Palestinian sentiment, and the kind of complete disregard of the humanity of Palestinian civilians.”

Israel has perfected ‘dehumanization of subjects’ which is necessary to inflict violence, soldiers ‘exempted from complying with international laws’

“There’s such a high level of confidence among these IDF soldiers that they can do whatever they want,” said Whitson. “They say to the whole world, ‘Look at what we’re doing to Palestinians in Gaza! Look at how we are brutalizing detainees. Look at how we’re humiliating every single man, woman, and child as we destroy their homes, set fire to them, and make fun of it!’”

“And they are provoking and challenging the whole world [as if] to say, ‘We can do this. We can get away with it, and no one in the world can stop us,’” she said.

Since no Israeli has been sanctioned by the international community, this “has only reinforced the belief of Israeli soldiers that they are immune, that they are exempted from complying with international laws, from basic human rights laws, that they are above the law,” Whitson explained.

“There’s a long-practiced history of racializing and dehumanizing Palestinians,” Farraj added. “These images and these videos entirely show how Israeli violence is also not only directed towards Palestinian livelihood, but also their material beings, their houses, their belongings, eliminating Palestinian existence.”

“History has taught us that the dehumanization of subjects is essential to the infliction of violence,” he continued. “I think Israel has perfected this in discourse and in practice. But this is not new, it dates back to the beginning of this state through which Palestinians were expelled, degraded, humiliated, killed, and effectively, forcibly disappeared.”

Al Jazeera reports Israeli authorities declined to comment on the “practices of their soldiers” as shown in these videos, but released a communication to their troops last month stating they are “not on a campaign of killing, revenge, or genocide,” and urged soldiers “not to use force where it is not required, take anything that isn’t ours or film revenge videos.”

Al Jazeera a highly credentialed news network, Western legacy media ‘skewed by a systemic and institutional bias’ toward Israel

While some Western influencers may challenge the credibility of the Al Jazeera news network, in 2018 the National Press Club came to their defense highlighting their winning “several Emmys, a Peabody and the Overseas Press Association’s Edward R. Murrow award,” along with many other honors over the years. “The accolades received by Al Jazeera from respected American professional organizations attest to the quality of their news coverage.”

Additionally, even The New York Times editorial board affirmed in 2017 that the network’s “reporting hews to international journalistic standards and provides a unique view on events in the Middle East.”

The current unprecedented Israeli assault on the people and civil infrastructure of Gaza has also elevated the degree to which many Western media organizations’ heavy bias towards Israel has been clearly exposed.

Last month, several employees at CNN told The Guardian that there was a “growing [internal] backlash against the leadership’s pro-Israel slant” in its war coverage which is “skewed by a systemic and institutional bias” toward Israel and thus amounts to “journalistic malpractice.” Similar internal disquiet over the BBC’s “skewed” coverage happened in January.

And while CNN is happy to employ an anchor like Wolf Blitzer, who is a former employee of AIPAC, a flagship of the Israel Lobby, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch also has a tight attachment to Israel, including a close family relationship with Netanyahu, perhaps due in part to his mother reportedly being an Orthodox Jew.

In fact, elsewhere, Finkelstein has stated that the “ethnic element” relating to “a large Jewish presence” in the mainstream media and a resulting “sense of Jewish ethnic solidarity [with Israel]… plays a role” in the presentation of a broad media bias in favor of the Jewish state.

As it stands, prior to his being fired by Murdoch’s Fox News, Tucker Carlson, the most popular cable news host in history, was feared as being “a Big Problem for pro-Israel Conservatives” and “a threat to the pro-Israel community” due to “his lack of enthusiasm for the Jewish state,” not to mention his overt opposition to the neocon supported war in Ukraine, all of which may have contributed to his ouster.

Israel is ‘a genocidal society,’ ‘a satanic state,’ Jewish commentators

Since their besieging of the Strip after the October 7 attack by Hamas, reports indicate the Israelis have killed at least 32,078 people including 31,645 in Gaza (72 percent women and children, even by sniper fire) and 435 in the West Bank (115 children), with injuries numbering 73,676 in Gaza and 4,665 in the West Bank). Additionally, an estimated 7,000 more individuals are reported missing and are presumed dead and buried under the rubble (4,900 women and children).

Moreover, 1.7 million (75 percent) of Palestinians are displaced, and 2.2 million are facing crisis, emergency, or famine levels of food insecurity with at least 31 deaths (27 children) being reported thus far due to malnutrition.

Furthermore, with hundreds of American-made 2,000 pound bombs being dropped on this most populated region in the world, an estimated 50 percent to 62 percent of all buildings in Gaza had been damaged or destroyed by the end of January alone.

Surprisingly, a poll released in late October, after weeks of reports and images of the monumental death and damage inflicted on the civilian population of Gaza, showed that only 1.8 percent of Israelis thought their government was using too much firepower in its assault on the besieged Strip. And perhaps more surprising, 57.5 percent believed that the daunting assault was utilizing too little firepower. Other polls from December and January have confirmed similar attitudes.

Back in November, Jewish journalist Max Blumenthal assessed that what is happening in Israel is “a fundamentally genocidal political movement, and a genocidal society. This Israeli society is primed for genocide.”

In fact, the Israeli Defense Force has recently been compelled to admit that it sponsored a propaganda channel on internet messaging platform Telegram aimed at Israeli citizens that featured snuff videos taken by their soldiers reveling over “Palestinians being murdered, dehumanized as insects and vermin, their bodies desecrated, and the destruction of Gaza glorified,” according to Breaking Point.

Reflecting not only on the Israeli leadership’s statements supporting genocidal ends in Gaza and the operations of the Israeli army executing such objectives, but also on the high levels of support for genocide among the nation’s citizens, Finkelstein lamented that Israel is “a satanic state.”

Despite Israel’s continued infliction of overwhelming damage and loss of life, the Biden administration continues to offer rhetoric against the assaults while simultaneously continuing the weapons supply facilitating them. This happens while growing majorities of U.S. voters support a ceasefire with numbers having trended up to 60 percent in December and then to 67 percent in late February including solid majorities among Democrats, Republicans and Independents calling for an end to the killing.

In recent years, the Israel lobby has been increasingly acknowledged as the driving force that has invincibly secured the virtually unconditional support of the United States for Israel’s ongoing violations of international law, both financially and diplomatically, even to the exclusion of authentic American interests. (Israeli soldiers celebrate the 'torturing, humiliating, and mocking' of Palestinians on social media. Also see Melkite Rite Father Emmanuel Charles McCarthy’s post of a forty-eight minute on the plight of Palestinians two years after the establishment of the Zionist State of Israel: The Palestinian People Two Years After the Beginning of the State of Israel & Today. View this and you will never listen to anything that Benjamin Netanyahu or other Zionist apologists have to say ever again.)

As I have noted so many times in the past, stating these facts in no way justifies terrorist attacks upon innocent Israeli citizens. While the State of Israel was founded upon the Zionist/Judeo-Masonic plan to displace Palestinians from their homes and placing them into “detention centers” while their property was seized and belong despoiled, its existence is a fait accompli and, like any other nation, it has the Natural Law right and duty to protect its own citizens.

However, the Just War Theory, which means nothing to the Zionists, demands that noncombatants be held harmless as far as humanly possible. Not only does the Israeli Defense Force not do this, but its commanders also target civilian population centers by leveling homes of supposed “terrorists” even though none live there, doing this without realizing that such wanton bombing is only creating future waves of terrorists for them to destroy.

Caught in the middle of this intractable conflict are the relatively small number of Catholics and Orthodox Christians who have remained in the Holy Land. Those who believe in the Sacred Divinity of Our Blesesd Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the Middle East have suffered at the hands of the Zionists and the Mohammedans as some of those who belong to these false religions rejoice exceedingly when their bitter enemy kills Christians. The Talmudists consider Christians to be blasphemers and their Talmud blasphemes Our Lord and His Most Blessed Mother. Mohammedans consider Christians to be infidels and their "holy book," the Koran, denies the Sacred Divinity of Our Lord, reducing to Him to but a mere "prophet," as it rejects the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity.

Why, some might ask, is there still such support for the Zionist State of Israel amongst “conservatives,” especially Protestants and a whole lot of Catholics, despite the existence such well documented evidence of the ongoing Zionist brutality against Arabs and the long history bombing the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as happened in 2002 and several times since then (see the Appendix below for more information). T

The answer is relatively simple if one considers the fact that Talmudists were in the forefront of undermining Catholicism in Spain before they, along with the Mohammedans with whom they collaborated frequently, were expelled by the heroic and saintly Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand in 1492, and they were important instigators in the work of Martin Luther and thus in the Protestant Revolution against the Divine Plant that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ institute to effect man’s return to Him through His Catholic Church:

What is certain is that the bull-necked Augustinian [Martin Luther], who despaired of human nature because he could not at once achieve perfection in his cell, found the soil well ploughed for him for such men as Franz von Sickingen and other pupils of Reuchlin; without which he might have made no more disturbance than Huss or Wycliff had. What is equally certain, but strangely kept well in the background of most historical research, is that the Protestant Revolt, far from being an “advance” or a “progressive step,” was a long retrogression toward the moribund Judaism of the Pharisees of the time of Christ. Its multitudinous offspring of more than 200 sects would lead in the course of time to a return of the dismal skepticism of the Sadducees. Caiaphas was a Pharisee, Annas a Sadducee. It was old Annas, the Nasi, who would have the last word.

If there is exaggeration in that astonishing but almost unnoticed statement of Cabrera, himself of a Spanish Marrano family, that “most of the heresiarchs and heretics of this present century have been of those people.” it is beyond question, as a Jewish historian says, that the first leaders of the Protestant sects were called semi-Judaei, or half-Jews, in all parts of Europe.and that men of Jewish descent were as conspicuous among them as they had been among the Gnostics and would later be amog the Communists.

The origin of Calvin (whose real name was Chaurvin) is obscure, as is that of his chief aide and successor, Theodore Beza. But Farel, Rousel and others of the stormiest preachers who carried their propaganda through Europe were of Jewish descent. Michael Servetus may have been, and was certainly influenced by Jews. At Antwerp in 1566 the chief minister of the Calvinist synod, which was the center of the most telling Protestant intrigue and propaganda in the Netherlands, was a Spanish Jew.

Modern research by Jewish historians has made it clear that in the sixteenth century large numbers of the English Protestants (and doubtless the most active in propaganda and organization) were Jews who had put on the convenient mask of Calvinism at Antwerp. For example, “from an early period,” says Dr. Lucien Wolf, “the Marranos in Antwerp had taken an active part in the Reformation movement, and had given up their mask of Catholicism for a not less hollow pretense of Calvinism. The change will readily be understood. The simulation of Calvinism brought them new friends, who, like them, were enemies of Rome, Spain and the Inquisition. It helped them in their fight against the Holy Office, and for that reason was very welcome to them. Moreover, it was a form of Christianity which came nearer to their own simple Judaism. The result was that they became zealous and valuable allies of the Calvinists.”

There was something more in most Calvinists teaching than the desire for religious freedom and the reform of abuses. It was more like the ancient hatred which had followed the Catholic Church from her cradle, seeking not her reform but her utter destruction. Calvin himself was as ruthless in this regard as Mohammed. One of his letters to English Protestants declares that those who refuse to give up the Roman Catholic faith must be put to the sword. Calvinism quickly became an international movement, with a world capital at Geneva and with Calvin as a Pope ruling over a city with a regimentation uncomfortably suggestive of some totalitarian state of the future.

The most active intelligence, liaison officers and propagandists of this international army were the Jews. Only four years after Luther's first outburst, Cardinal Aleander, papal nuncio, reported that Jews were printing and circulating the German monk's books in Flanders. From the Netherlands they sent Bibles even to Spain, concealed in double-bottomed wine-casks. In Ferrara, a great Jewish financial center, they printed heretical bibles for distribution in Italy and elsewhere. No less a person than Carranza, now languishing in the prisons of the Inquisition in Spain, said that this was the reason why the church had to discourage the reading of the Bible in the vernaculars, save in approved versions. Even Jewish physicians and men of business were spies and propaganda agents. In the very year after Philip returned to Spain to stamp out Protestantism there, the Jewish Doctor Rodrigo Lopez, who was to find so unhappy an end in England, was passing over from Antwerp to London as a good Protestant.

A new spirit was abroad in the world, surely. It was not the regenerated Christian thing that Luther imagined it to be. It was the reappearance, in the most formidable array, of something older and far more terrible. The Cambridge Modern History tells us its effect was “to transfer the allegiance of the human spirit from clerical to civil authority,” or to put it more bluntly, to deliver Christ once more into the hands of Caesar. The Jewish historian Graetz expresses it otherwise: “the interest of the marketplace had driven the interests of the church into the background.” Is this not a way of saying that after the great betrayal the money changers were flocking back into the Temple from which they had been ousted by the medieval Church when she was most free and vigorous.

That was the thing, the old and evil thing, the insidious and destructive thing, that Philip was resolved to destroy, if possible, before it ruined the world. It would be far-fetched to say that he saw all its potentialities in 1559. He could hardly have seen what Pope Pius IX saw in 1849, when he declared that all the evils of the modern world (including Communism and its attendant miseries) had their origin in the tragic sixteenth-century assault on the Catholic Faith in the name of Protestantism.

Did Philip imagine, then, that the Jews were to blame for all the ills of humanity? Not even his bitterest enemies could fairly accuse him of that. A Jew-baiter in the vulgar sense he certainly was not. When an attempt was made to introduce into Spain an organization know as the Order of the White Sword aimed against Jews as Jews, he put his foot down against it. He knew and employed too many excellent men of Jewish ancestry to be taken in by any stupid and vicious theory of “Nordic” or “Aryan” superiority. It must have been apparent to a man of his shrewd common sense (in most matters) that even those Jews who persisted in the iniquity of attempting to destroy the Church could have accomplished very little without collaboration from within, from unworthy Christians. It always takes a Judas to complete the work of Annas and Caiaphas. (William Thomas Walsh, Philip II, published originally in 1937 by Sheed and Ward and republished by TAN Books and Publishers, 1987, pp. 239-252.)

Having thus planted the seeds for the destruction of Christendom to make possible a place where the Talmudists could experience a “New Zion” of “freedom” to seek to control the destinies of men and their nations, having succeeded beyond their wildest imaginations right here in the United States of America (as documented in the appendix below in an excerpt from William Thomas Walsh’s Characters of the Inquisition), and it was here in the United States of America that Theodore Herzl, the founder of International Zionism, found willing allies within various Protestant sects after having been politely but forcefully rejected by Pope Saint Pius X in his scheme to resettle Jews in Palestine:

POPE: We are unable to favor this movement [of Zionism]. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem—but we could never sanction it. The ground of Jerusalem, if it were not always sacred, has been sanctified by the life of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church I cannot answer you otherwise.The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people.

HERZL: [The conflict between Rome and Jerusalem, represented by the one and the other of us, was once again under way. At the outset I tried to be conciliatory. I said my little piece. . . . It didn’t greatly impress him. Jerusalem was not to be placed in Jewish hands.] And its present status, Holy Father?

POPE: I know, it is disagreeable to see the Turks in possession of our Holy Places. We simply have to put up with it. But to sanction the Jewish wish to occupy these sites, that we cannot do.

HERZL: [I said that we based our movement solely on the sufferings of the Jews, and wished to put aside all religious issues].

POPE: Yes, but we, but I as the head of the Catholic Church, cannot do this. One of two things will likely happen. Either the Jews will retain their ancient faith and continue to await the Messiah whom we believe has already appeared—in which case they are denying the divinity of Jesus and we cannot assist them. Or else they will go there with no religion whatever, and then we can have nothing at all to do with them. The Jewish faith was the foundation of our own, but it has been superceded by the teachings of Christ, and we cannot admit that it still enjoys any validity. The Jews who should have been the first to acknowledge Jesus Christ have not done so to this day.

HERZL: [It was on the tip of my tongue to remark, “It happens in every family: no one believes in his own relative.” But, instead, I said:] Terror and persecution were not precisely the best means for converting the Jews. [His reply had an element of grandeur in its simplicity:]

POPE: Our Lord came without power. He came in peace. He persecuted no one. He was abandoned even by his apostles. It was only later that he attained stature. It took three centuries for the Church to evolve. The Jews therefore had plenty of time in which to accept his divinity without duress or pressure. But they chose not to do so, and they have not done it yet.

HERZL: But, Holy Father, the Jews are in a terrible plight. I do not know if Your Holiness is aware of the full extent of their tragedy. We need a land for these harried people.

POPE: Must it be Jerusalem?

HERZL: We are not asking for Jerusalem, but for Palestine—for only the secular land.

POPE: We cannot be in favor of it.

[Editor Lowenthal interjects here] Here unrelenting replacement theology is plainly upheld as the norm of the Roman Catholic Church. Further, this confession, along with the whole tone of the Pope in his meeting with Herzl, indicates the perpetuation of a doctrinal emphasis that has resulted in centuries of degrading behavior toward the Jews. However, this response has the “grandeur” of total avoidance of that which Herzl had intimated, namely that the abusive reputation of Roman Catholicism toward the Jews was unlikely to foster conversion. Further, if, “It took three centuries for the Church to evolve,” it was that very same period of time that it took for the Church to consolidate and launch its thrust of anti-Semitism through the following centuries.

HERZL: Does Your Holiness know the situation of the Jews?

POPE: Yes, from my days in Mantua, where there are Jews. I have always been in friendly relations with Jews. Only the other evening two Jews were here to see me. There are other bonds than those of religion: social intercourse, for example, and philanthropy. Such bonds we do not refuse to maintain with the Jews. Indeed we also pray for them, that their spirit see the light. This very day the Church is celebrating the feast of an unbeliever who became converted in a miraculous manner—on the road to Damascus. And so if you come to Palestine and settle your people there, we will be ready with churches and priests to baptize all of you. (Marvin Lowenthal, The Diaries of Theodore Herzl.)

Herzl’s influence was felt long after his death on May 3, 1904, a little over three months after Pope Saint Pius X told him that the Catholic Church would never sanction the return of the Jews to Palestine and that she would open up churches to baptize them all if they did return, and it was during the needless, unjust and barbaric World War I that Lord Arthur Janes Balfour was convinced of the “need” to resettled Jews in Palestine-Trans-Jordan that had fallen into British hands because of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire:

Foreign Office
November 2nd, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you. on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet:

His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours,
Arthur James Balfour (The Balfour Declaration.)

The England of Protestantism and Judeo-Masonry was a natural ally of Zionism, which gained impetus after the tragic events of World II were exploited as a just cause for imposing a sense of “collective guilt” upon nominal “Christians” so that Jews could move into Palestine without opposition from the leaders of Western nations.

The Zionist State of Israel was entirely invented out of the fantasies of Theodore Herzl, the founder of International Zionism (with the help of the Masons in the United Kingdom such as Lord David Balfour, of course) to relocate the Talmudists in the very land from which the actual descendants of Abraham were expelled by the Romans in 70 A.D. as God used the pagan Romans as the instrument to chastise the Jews for their obstinate refusal to accept the preaching of the Gospel in their midst after He had mercifully permitted them a thirty-seven year period of reprieve following their role in calling down the Most Precious Blood of Our Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, upon them and their children. God expelled the Jews from the Holy Land in 70 A.D., and they were not meant to return, certainly not to found a nation based in a false, blasphemous religion, less yet to do so by violent means and the constant use of raw terror and the murder of countless thousands of innocent Palestinian Arabs, both Christians and Mohammedans.

The State of Israel was created by the shedding the blood of the innocent and by the stealing of the homes and land of the Palestinian Arabs who had been living there for centuries upon centuries as they, the Palestinian Arabs, were rounded up and sent to "detention centers" (concentration camps), all with the support of the government of the United States of America (which has its own interesting history of targeting civilians, including the members of various Indian tribes who simply wanted to retain custody of their own lands and, of course, the horrific fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, on February 13-14, 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, on, respectively, August 6 and 9, 1945, to say nothing of the innocent civilians killed in the moral and geopolitical disasters that were this country’s invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afin Iraq and Afghanistan).

Here, for example, is a summary of some of the brutal methods used by the late Ariel Sharon during his days in the leadership of the Israeli Defense Force:

AS ARIEL SHARON'S career comes to an end, the whitewashing is already underway. Literally overnight he was being hailed as "a man of courage and peace" who had generated "hopes for a far-reaching accord" with an electoral campaign promising "to end conflict with the Palestinians."

But even if end-of-career assessments often stretch the truth, and even if far too many people fall for the old saw about the gruff old warrior miraculously turning into a man of peace, the reality is that miracles don't happen, and only rarely have words and realities been separated by such a yawning abyss.

From the beginning to the end of his career, Sharon was a man of ruthless and often gratuitous violence. The waypoints of his career are all drenched in blood, from the massacre he directed at the village of Qibya in 1953, in which his men destroyed whole houses with their occupants — men, women and children — still inside, to the ruinous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, in which his army laid siege to Beirut, cut off water, electricity and food supplies and subjected the city's hapless residents to weeks of indiscriminate bombardment by land, sea and air.

As a purely gratuitous bonus, Sharon and his army later facilitated the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and in all about 20,000 people — almost all innocent civilians — were killed during his Lebanon adventure.

Sharon's approach to peacemaking in recent years wasn't very different from his approach to war. Extrajudicial assassinations, mass home demolitions, the construction of hideous barriers and walls, population transfers and illegal annexations — these were his stock in trade as "a man of courage and peace."

Some may take comfort in the myth that Sharon was transformed into a peacemaker, but in fact he never deviated from his own 1998 call to "run and grab as many hilltops" in the occupied territories as possible. His plan for peace with the Palestinians involved grabbing large portions of the West Bank, ultimately annexing them to Israel, and turning over the shattered, encircled, isolated, disconnected and barren fragments of territory left behind to what only a fool would call a Palestinian state.

SHARON'S "painful sacrifices" for peace may have involved Israel keeping less, rather than more, of the territory that it captured violently and has clung to illegally for four decades, but few seem to have noticed that it's not really a sacrifice to return something that wasn't yours to begin with.

His much-ballyhooed withdrawal from Gaza left 1.4 million Palestinians in what is essentially the world's largest prison, cut off from the rest of the world and as subject to Israeli power as before. It also terminated the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict by condemning Palestinians to whiling away their lives in a series of disconnected Bantustans, ghettos, reservations and strategic hamlets, entirely at the mercy of Israel.

That's not peace. As Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull would have recognized at a glance, it's an attempt to pacify an entire people by bludgeoning them into a subhuman irrelevance. Nothing short of actual genocide — for which Sharon's formula was merely a kind of substitute — would persuade the Palestinian people to quietly accept such an arrangement, or negate themselves in some other way. And no matter which Israeli politician now assumes Sharon's bloody mantle, such an approach to peace will always fail. (The Whitewashing of Ariel Sharon, UCLA International Institute; see also Timeline: The Palestinian and Israeli Conflict, Explained.)

This is a very accurate summary of the brutal conditions that have plagued the Palestinians since the creation of the State of Israel on May 1, 1948. Up until now, though, most of the terrorist attacks committed by Hamas resulted in several score or more of Israeli deaths but were met with disproportionate responses by the Israeli Defense Force. Consider the following two reports from 2008 and 2014 concerning Israeli military response to Hamas terror attacks on Israeli settlements in lands that were seized by Israel at various points since 1948 and have thus put those settlers at risk of attacks solely because the hubris of Zionist imperialism and racial superiority:

The Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Convention, both in regard to the obligations of an occupying power and in the requirements of the laws of war.

Those violations include:

Collective punishment – the entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.

Targeting civilians – the air strikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.

Disproportionate military response – the air strikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.

Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.

Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give Israel any right, neither as the occupying power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; on the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.

Israel has also ignored recent Hamas' diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiry on December 26.

The Israeli air strikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they have caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries which have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza, which itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.

I remind all member states of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law – regardless of which country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all member states, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.

Written by Professor Richard Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (RT: News : 'Israeli air strikes represent massive violations.)

As Catholics, of course, we know that there is no such thing as "international humanitarian law." There are the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law that have been entrusted by Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ exclusively to the authority of His Catholic Church for their eternal safekeeping and infallible explication. The Fifth Commandment forbids the direct, intentional targeting of innocent noncombatants in military operations and it also forbids a military response that is disproportionate to and incommensurate with the level of a threat posed by an aggressor. What does this mean to people whose souls are steeped in the ravages of Original Sin? The only thing that matters to the Mohammedans of Hamas and the Zionists of Israel is to display raw power in order to exact revenge on those whom they hate.

Indeed, the leaders of the State of Israel had sealed off the border with the Gaza Strip, imposing as a consequence a de facto embargo upon food and supplies into the Gaza Strip prior to massive air strikes that began a few days ago and are preparing, it appears, for a major ground offensive there is a French-sponsored forty-eight hour cease-fire proposal is rejected. Thus it is that the Mohammedans of Hamas, steeped in the ravages of Original Sin, and the Zionists of Israel, steeped in the ravages of Original Sin, take out their grievances by targeting the innocent, with the more powerful and better-armed Israeli forces able to exact a quite price upon the innocent human beings in the Gaza Strip who bear no responsibility for the rocket attacks by the leaders of Hamas and who suffer disproportionately as the number of civilian casualties amongst their population place demands on hospitals that have no means to of assistance to them. Obviously, the Israelis believe that such suffering will force the leaders of Hamas to back down and to "behave" themselves. It matters not to the leaders of Israel that their bombs and military assaults are destroying homes and wounding and killing innocent human beings who bear no responsibility for the Hamas-sponsored rocket attacks. (From Worthy Successors of Herod the Great.)

TEL AVIV — Even as Israel and Hamas agreed to suspend hostilities briefly on Thursday at the request of the United Nations, a senior Israeli military official said that his government was increasingly likely to order a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip that it had hoped to avoid.

Though Israel initially set limited goals of halting the rocket assaults against it and degrading Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates Gaza, the group’s tenacity and surprisingly deep arsenal have led to widespread calls to expand the mission. The military official said only “boots on the ground” could eradicate terrorism from Gaza and indicated that Israel was even considering a long-term reoccupation of the coastal territory.

But with the Palestinian death toll reaching 214 on Wednesday, Israel and the Gaza militants agreed to end the violence for five hours on Thursday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For Israel, it was a move that might help mitigate international criticism of rising civilian casualties, and that carried little cost: The military warned that if Hamas or other groups “exploited” the “humanitarian window” to attack Israel, it would “respond firmly and decisively.”

Hours earlier, Israel called up 8,000 reservists in addition to the 42,000 troops already mobilized. With no progress reported from Cairo, where President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority had gone to discuss terms to end the fighting, Israel’s airstrikes intensified despite what the military official acknowledged were diminishing returns.

“Every day that passes makes the possibility more evident,” the military official said of a ground campaign. The official, who has been briefing Israeli ministers responsible for strategic decisions and spoke on the condition of anonymity under military protocol, said that his assessment was based on “the signals I get” and that the likelihood of an invasion was “very high.”

“We can hurt them very hard from the air but not get rid of them,” he told a handful of international journalists in a briefing at the military’s Tel Aviv headquarters. An Israeli takeover of Gaza would not be “a huge challenge,” he said, estimating that it would take “a matter of days or weeks.” But he added that preventing a more dangerous deterioration in the territory would require a presence “of many months.”

The stark assessment came as Israel bombed scores of targets, many of them homes in northern Gaza, after warning 100,000 residents via leaflets, text messages and automated telephone calls to evacuate by 8 a.m. Palestinian health officials said that more than 1,500 people had been injured since the Israeli operation began July 8, and that several young children, including four boys on a beach, were killed in strikes on Wednesday.

The lone Israeli casualty, a 37-year-old man killed by a mortar round as he distributed food to soldiers Tuesday night near the Erez crossing into Gaza, was eulogized by Israel’s president-elect, Reuven Rivlin, at an afternoon funeral.

In Washington, President Obama called for both sides to exercise restraint, and Secretary of State John Kerry continued making phone calls to the region. “The Israeli people and the Palestinian people don’t want to live like this,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “We will use all of our diplomatic resources and relationships to support efforts of closing a deal on a cease-fire.”

Mr. Obama reiterated his support for Israel while expressing sorrow over civilian casualties. “Israel has a right to defend itself from rocket attacks,” he said. “But over the past two weeks, we’ve all been heartbroken by the violence, especially the death and injury of so many innocent civilians in Gaza.”

The monstrous, murderous occupation of the Holy Land by the Zionists has been enabled by one American presidential administration after another ever since the Six Day War fifty-seven years ago now even the government of Israel has spied on the government of the United States of America and even deliberately bombed the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean Sea during the Six Day Way in June of 1967 (a video describing this deliberate can be found here).

All the Israeli bombs and invasions and all the Mohammedan attacks upon innocent Israeli civilians will nithever produce “peace” in the Middle East. We must pray for the conversion of all those who live in this war-torn area of misery, orphanage, displacement, terror, and torture to the Catholic Faith. There can be no peace between and among men unless their immortal souls are in states of Sanctifying Grace as this is the necessary precondition, although, because of the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin (darkened intellect, weakened will, disordered passions—concupiscence), never a guarantor, of a just social order wherein men of truly good will can see in each other the Divine impress and treat them as they would treat Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the very Flesh.

We must also remember that to criticize the policies of the Israeli government and the falsity of Judaism and/or Mohammedanism in all of their manifestations at this time is not in any way an act of “hatred” towards those who adhere to any kind of falsehood. We must bear ourselves kindly towards all others at all times and, as mentioned just above, treat all others as we would treat Our Lord Himself.

Lost in all the violence and the agitation that exists in the world today is the absolute necessity of forgiving all others as we ourselves are forgiven. This does not mean that we cannot pursue redress when aggrieved, but we must do so without malice and without any spirit of vindictiveness or vengeance and remembering always to pray for a reconciliation with those who have aggrieved us and those whom we have aggrieved as the Act of Charity we must pray each day demands:

O my God, I love Thee above all things, with my whole heart and soul, because Thou are all-good and worthy of all love. I love my neighbor as myself for the love of Thee. I forgive all who have injured me, and ask pardon of all whom I have injured. Amen.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’s injunction to forgive each other as He has forgiven us is not optional, and it is because both Mohammedans and Jews, no matter which camp they belong within the particular iteration of their respective false religions, that there will never be peace in the Middle East or anywhere else in the world unless everyone exclaims:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dominus, Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis. Benedíctus, qui venit in nomine Domini. Hosanna in excelsis.

To this end, of course, we must commend ourselves, our family members, friends, acquaintances, our fellow Catholics and all non-Catholics in the world to the tender mercies of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary as we remember to pray as many Rosaries this day and every day as our state-in-life permits.

Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Appendix

Reflecting on the 2002 Israeli Siege of the Church of the Nativity Ten Years Later (National Catholic Register)

BETHLEHEM - Ten years ago, for 40 days in April and May 2002, the Church of the Nativity was occupied by armed gunmen. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were outside, the Palestinian armed forces inside, and the Christian world fervently tried not to take offence.

It was a shameful episode, both in its substance and in the reaction to it, a sad signal at the beginning of this century that the persecution of Christians would proceed apace.

I wrote 10 years ago this week: “The Church of the Nativity was desecrated. The Christian response was a disgrace.” Ten years later, most have seemed to forget that the crisis ever took place. The Christians in this region cannot so easily forget its consequences.

The second intifada was well under way in the spring of 2002, this one marked by suicide bombs. The first intifada in the late 1980s was marked by street protests and Palestinian boys throwing rocks at Israeli security forces. The second intifada brought the terrorist brigades of Yasser Arafat blowing up Jews in cafes, restaurants and buses.

On April 1, 2002 a gun battle broke out in Bethlehem between the IDF and Palestinians. Several dozen armed Palestinians then fled the IDF and stormed into the Church of the Nativity, knowing that the IDF would not enter the holy place to pursue them. A stand-off set in, with the Palestinians refusing to leave and the IDF demanding the right to arrest the terrorists they were seeking. It lasted until May 12, when an agreement was reached to allow some of the Palestinians to go to Cyprus and Italy, while the majority were transferred to the Palestinian Authority in Gaza.

Language was an early battleground. The IDF spoke of those who violently entered the basilica as “terrorists.” The Franciscans who were responsible for the Catholic part of the complex, along with the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, preferred any other term — “gunmen” or “combatant” were the neutral terms preferred. The Israelis spoke of the “occupation” of the basilica, while the Palestinian Catholics opted to speak of a “siege.” The Holy See adopted the awkward but exquisitely non-committal “occupation-siege.”

There was a vigourous effort on the part of the local Catholic diocese and the Franciscan custodians to frame the whole matter as part of the tradition of those seeking sanctuary from injustice in holy places. Yet with armed Islamists entering the church as a tactical maneuver during a shooting battle, and maintaining their weapons while inside, that was always implausible. Indeed, sanctuary does not involve shooting from within the church, which took place and resulted in return fire, killing a Palestinian young man.

As to the moral status of the occupying forces, the reluctance of European countries to take them gave a good indication that this was not a noble example of civil disobedience. With Israel refusing to allow those it judged responsible for terrorism back into Israel proper or the West Bank, the eventual compromise was for the majority to be moved to Gaza, with a few granted exile elsewhere.

I argued at the time that the proper response to the occupation by force of arms of the basilica ought to have been outrage, and preferably holy indignation. The local Catholic patriarch used the occasion instead to ratchet up anti-Israeli rhetoric and remarkably characterized the whole event as “strengthening” Christian-Muslim relations.

Very little was said, then or now, about how the presence of armed Islamist militants in a Christian shrine was a gravely sacrilegious act. The basilica was desecrated by both the presence of armaments and the conduct of the occupiers. And when the global Christian response was muted, and the local Christian response took the side of the Islamists, the lesson was learned well.

In the decade since, we have learned how rumours — false or otherwise — of a Koran being manhandled somewhere is enough to inflame the Islamic world. The actual armed occupation of one of Christianity’s holiest places produced apologies, not apoplexy. Is it any wonder that Islamist violence against Christians continues apace, especially in the Arab world? The terrorists in Egypt who kill Christians after Christmas Mass likely took note of the weak response from the Christian world when the Church of the Nativity was desecrated.

The Palestinians of Bethlehem took notice too. If their own ancient sanctuary was not safe, could they be confident in their future? The pace of emigration continued, so that Christians are a diminishing minority, and those that remain are largely mute on questions of persecution, except to inveigh against the Israelis.

The 21st century will witness the disappearance of Christians from Bethlehem and many other historic communities in the Islamic world. Much handwringing is done about that, including the recent special synod in Rome on the Church in the Middle East. Yet the timid response in 2002 accelerated the very process that so many now wish would stop. (Ten years after the occupation of the Church of the Nativity.)

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Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomine Domini, Hosanna in Excelsis, part eight

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