Israel is rebuking Pope Francis for committing a “genocide blood libel against the Jewish state” and reminding the pontiff of the Vatican’s silence during the Nazi Holocaust amid an escalating diplomatic row between the Holy See and Israel.
In a strongly worded letter to the pontiff dated December 18, Amichai Chikli, minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, reprimands Francis for his part in a recent display portraying Jesus as a Palestinian Arab and schools the pope on the Jewishness of Jesus.
“There is no other way to understand the decision to present his image in a cradle, wrapped in a keffiyeh,” Chikli stresses. “Had this been a one-time matter, I would not have written. However, just a few weeks before this strange and false homage, in a more severe expression, you echoed the new blood libel, insinuating that the State of Israel ‘might be’ committing genocide in Gaza.
“It is a well-known fact that Jesus was born to a Jewish mother, lived as a Jew, and died as a Jew,” Chikli writes in his three-page missive. He cites Matthew’s gospel, reminding Francis of the “well-known fact” that “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”
Chikli quotes other biblical texts reiterating to Francis the significance of “Bethlehem” and “Judah” in Jewish history. He notes that Bethlehem is both the city of Rachel’s death and David’s birth, explaining that Rachel is Israel’s matriach and David is Israel’s archetypal king.
“It is also a well-known fact that the term ‘Jew’ originates from Judah, the fourth son of Leah, from whom the Tribe of Judah descended,” the minister points out.
Chikli proceeds to give the pope a lesson in Roman history and the empire’s attempts “to eradicate the connection between the Jews and Judah; one of the most prominent of these was Emperor Hadrian.” He records details of Titus’s destruction of the Second Temple and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, which resulted in the massacre of 580,000 Jews.
“Hadrian was not satisfied with the physical destruction of the Jewish settlement; he anticipated the future, to the day when the Jews would seek to return to Judea. Therefore, he renamed the province of Judea ‘Syria Palestina,’ after the Philistines, the arch-enemy of Israel,” he writes, explaining the origin of the name “Palestine.”
In a dig at Francis, Chikli also notes that the pope can verify the evidence for himself by driving just “13 minutes by car from St. Peter’s Basilica” and examining the Arch of Titus with its depiction of Israel’s conquest and humiliation by the Romans.
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