The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

 

…allow the entry of dignified humanitarian aid
and …put an end to the hostilities,
whose heartbreaking price is paid
by the children, elderly, and the sick.
—POPE LEO XIV, May 21, 2025
Vatican News

 

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The fog of war is thick these days — propaganda is non-stop, lies are widespread, and corruption even moreso. Social media is filled with uneducated comments, unbridled emotion, and brimming with nauseous virtue-signalling as people display which side they’re going to “stand with”. How about we stand for all the innocents who are being afflicted?

 

The Situation

The horrific terrorist attack on an Israeli music festival that killed over 360 in October, 2023 has spiralled into what appears increasingly as a genocide of the people of Gaza. Of course, Israel had every right to bring these terrorists to justice and seek to free hostages. But what started as an apparent precision military campaign to root out Hamas soldiers and their leaders has resulted in widescale bombing of entire Palestinian neighbourhoods,^[1]Aside from bombings that have now claimed the lives of over 55,000 people (53,528 Palestinians and 1,706 Israelis) have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the official figures of the Gaza Health Ministry. This includes 166 journalists and media workers, 120 academics, and over 224 humanitarian aid workers. Scholars have estimated 80% of Palestinians killed are civilians. Of course, these statistics published on Wikipedia are open to scrutiny. over 94% of all hospitals in the Gaza Strip being damaged or destroyed,^[2]who.int May 22, 2025 and desperately needed food and aid withheld or barely trickling in. 

Nine months ago, Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage when he said, “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”^[3]The Guardian, August 8, 2024 I guess he wasn’t kidding as Israel’s blockade of necessities has led the IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification of the World Food Programme) to issue a warning that “the entire population [of Gaza] is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, with half a million people (one in five) facing starvation.”^[4]ipcinfo.org 

The entire 2.1 million population of Gaza is facing prolonged food shortages, with nearly half a million people in a catastrophic situation of hunger, acute malnutrition, starvation, illness and death. This is one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time. —World Health Organization, May 12, 2025

Human Rights Watch were already reporting last year the deaths of children from starvation and malnutrition,^[5]hrw.org while U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher issued a stark warning earlier this week that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die within 48 hours if they do not receive urgent nutrition and care. Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said that Israel’s current actions in Gaza are “very close to a war crime.”^[6]May 21, 2025, TIME

 

The Reactions

The reactions worldwide have been as polarizing as the conflict itself, with little common sense in between. And here, one could write a book on the history, underlying tensions, and real problems that both Palestinians and Israelis face in their oft peace-less coexistence. Who exactly the “bad guys” are is not always easy to define, though Hamas leaves little room for interpretation. For instance, Palestinians in Gaza are presently protesting against Hamas who have often used them as human shields and persecuted those who oppose them. Case in point:

The latest protests were provoked by comments by Sami Abu Zuhri, a Qatar-based Hamas official, who referred to the death toll in Gaza as “material calculations” for the terrorist group. “As for the martyr [killed in the war] — the wombs of Gaza’s women will give birth to twice as many. This is a price that must be paid,” Abu Zuhri said. —Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), May 22, 2025, fdd.org 

Well, that obviously hasn’t gone over well with many Palestinians. Joe Truzman, Editor at FDD’s Long War Journal, says, 

Public opposition to Hamas within the Gaza Strip entails considerable personal risk. While criticizing the Islamist group’s actions is already perilous, openly calling for its removal from power crosses a far more dangerous threshold — one that provokes violent suppression. Nevertheless, the emergence of such dissent throughout the war reflects a growing awareness among segments of the Palestinian population that Hamas’s rule has yielded only suffering, destruction, and perpetual conflict. —Ibid.

Israel obviously takes a different view, apparently holding the entire Gaza population responsible for allowing Hamas to exist there in the first place. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel will control ‘all of Gaza’ after its latest military offensive while echoes ring of U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement that Gaza’s real estate should be transformed into the “Riviera of the Middle East”^[7]aljazeera.com (as if the people haven’t suffered enough there.)

Prior to this conflict, Israel has increasingly restricted the freedoms of Palestinians throughout the entire region. Their homes have been bulldozed and Jewish settlements built in their place, often in the most desirable locations; water and power are restricted only with Palestinians; and fences and large walls have been built around their enclaves to restrict people’s movement, turning cities like Bethlehem into veritable ghettoes.

When I visited Israel several years, I was shocked to see enormous walls and armed watchtowers as we passed into Bethlehem. The semblance to Nazi concentration camps was unmistakable, an irony that left us gasping. Our bus driver, a man in his early twenties, said his wife has never been able to leave Bethlehem her entire life. The only meat our decaying hotel served was hot dogs due to food embargoes and poverty. I could go on with what was clearly an oppressive state of being for the Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike. 

And here we come to the “catch 22”, the circular disaster of this entire state of affairs. Islam does not want the Jewish State to exist, and has used terrorism as a chief weapon. Israel has responded by increasing restrictions and military actions that have, in turn, bred resentment and ultimately fostered new terrorists. The latest military actions of Israel, which have all the appearance of an ethnic cleansing, are not only going to breed another generation of terrorists but may very well bring the State into a defining war with surrounding Arab nations. 

The answer, according to many including Benedict XVI, is for a two-state solution. In his 2009 tour of the Middle East, the late Pope made the appeal:

Let it be universally recognised that the state of Israel has the right to exist and to enjoy peace and security within internationally agreed borders. Let it be likewise acknowledged that the Palestinian people have a right to a sovereign independent homeland, to live with dignity and to travel freely. —May 15, 2009, France 24

Admittedly, this is only possible if good will exists on either part — something that seems increasingly impossible, save for a divine intervention. 

 

The Problem of Zionism

College campuses have become home to bitter and divided protests — an effort to “globalize the intifada [uprising]” against Israeli occupation – while city streets have seen growing antisemitic violence, such as the slaying of that young couple from the Israeli Embassy who were about to be engaged.^[8]nationalpost.com Here again, the repeated warnings of pope after pope continue to go unheeded, including that of the newly elected pontiff:

We must all insist on the pursuit of peace and laying down of arms. We cannot solve problems through violence. —POPE LEO XIV, interview with Semanario Expresión; May 11, 2025, united24media.com

Yet, many Christians are justifying Israel’s right to level Gaza, citing their scriptural belief that the Jewish people are promised the lands of Palestine, and therefore, have every right to establish a national state, even using force. This belief is known as Zionism, and it is rampant among American Evangelical Christians.^[9]Though not even all Jews accept the idea: cf. here If you don’t “stand with” Israel, so they say, then you are “opposing God.”

The problem with that argument is that it was God Himself who issued the commandment to the Israelites: “Thou shalt not kill.”^[10]Exodus 20:13 When did that cease to apply to the Jewish people? Well, it hasn’t. Self-defence is one thing; the cruel starvation of an entire population is another. Hence, the “rights” of the Israelites are limited by the moral law handed to them (literally) by God Himself.  

Zionism is not a teaching in Sacred Tradition. At best, the Catholic Church recognizes that the Jewish people have a central role in salvation history, one that is not yet complete. As St. Paul wrote:

…a hardening has come upon Israel in part, until the full number of the Gentiles comes in, and thus all Israel will be saved… (Romans 11:25-26) ^[11]The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles”, will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ”, in which “God may be all in all.” —Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 674

In his commentary “Grace and Vocation Without Remorse”, Pope Benedict XVI gives probably the clearest understanding of modern Israel’s “rights” in terms of current Catholic theology:

The question of what to make of the Zionist project was also controversial for the Catholic Church. From the beginning, however, the dominant position was that a theologically-understood acquisition of land (in the sense of a new political messianism) was unacceptable. After the establishment of Israel as a country in 1948, a theological doctrine emerged that eventually enabled the political recognition of the State of Israel by the Vatican. At its core is the conviction that a strictly theologically understood state — a Jewish faith-state [Glaubenstaat] that would view itself as the theological and political fulfillment of the promises — is unthinkable within history according to Christian faith and contrary to the Christian understanding of the promises. At the same time, however, it was made clear that the Jewish people, like every people, had a natural right to their own land. As already indicated, it made sense to find the place for it in the historical dwelling place of the Jewish people. —Communio, pg. 178

In other words, the Jewish people have a right to a State — as do the Palestinians. “So far, the Vatican has rejected a religious justification for the State of Israel,” concludes Helmut Hoping of The Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations.^[12]ccjr.us While St. Paul affirmed that “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable,”^[13]Romans 11:29 the author of the Letter to the Hebrews speaks of a “heavenly Jerusalem… the city of the living God” (Heb. 12:22): “For here we have no lasting city,” he says, “but we seek the one that is to come.”^[14]Hebrews 13:14 So, while Scripture does speak of a restoration of Jerusalem to the Chosen People,^[15]eg. Zech 8:8, Jeremiah 31:10, 12; Ezekiel 37:24, 27 it is not referring to a political restoration. Still, some Church Fathers taught, on the word of the Apostle St. John, that Jerusalem would become the religious center of Christianity after the death of the Antichrist:

I and every other orthodox Christian feel certain that there will be a resurrection of the flesh followed by a thousand years in a rebuilt, embellished, and enlarged city of Jerusalem, as was announced by the Prophets Ezekiel, Isaias and others… A man among us named John, one of Christ’s Apostles, received and foretold that the followers of Christ would dwell in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and that afterwards the universal and, in short, everlasting resurrection and judgment would take place. —St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, Ch. 81, The Fathers of the Church, Christian Heritage (read why this is not a heresy: Millenarianism – What is and is Not)

It’s worth noting that the Church has also rejected so-called “replacement theology” — the belief that Catholicism supplanted the Old Covenant and that the Church has entirely replaced Israel. Rather, the Church believes she is the fulfillment of the Old Testament and that the Jewish people continue to play a mysterious role in salvation history.  

For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated one, how much more will they [the Jewish people] who belong to it by nature be grafted back into their own olive tree. (Romans 11:24)

Hence, the duty of the Catholic Church today is to continue to echo the proclamation of the angels who announced the birth of the Savior:

Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will. (Luke 2:14; other translations say “peace among men with whom He is pleased!” or “on whom His favor rests”)

Jesus affirms that “there shall be one flock and one shepherd.” Church and Judaism cannot then be seen as two parallel ways of salvation, and the Church must witness to Christ as the Redeemer for all… —Commission for Religious Relation with the Jews, “On the correct way to present the Jews and Judaism”; n. 7; christianunity.va

The peace the angels announced is one only the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, can bring. But there is no peace without justice. Thus, Christians must never turn a blind eye to the “least of the brethren” who are hungry, sick, cold, or imprisoned^[16]cf. Matt 25:31-46 — whether they are those suffering in Israel or in Gaza, in Russia or in Ukraine, and whether they are believers or unbelievers.

For Love does not discriminate. 

 

Related Reading

The Return of the Jews

 

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