The Israel-Hezbollah conflict & the Church.

The current conflict between the Israeli-USA coalition on the one hand and the Hamas-Lebanon-Hezbollah-Islam connection on the other has many people baffled: which side to defend, which one to condemn? The parties themselves have no doubts.

Hamas, elected as government of Palestine in January, refuses to recognize present-day Israel. Hezbollah has been lobbing rockets into Israel with the same message, while Iran has provided the weapons. Worst of all, Islam has blessed the violence, including that of suicide bombers. This has introduced an element of inhuman fanaticism.

The Israeli-American alliance presents the conflict as one between terrorism and democracy. In this view, Israel is the frontline of Western civilization. The United States provides it with the weapons and the diplomatic clout to hold opponents at bay. After the small--but most violent--Muslim group al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, the United States declared war on terrorism everywhere, leading to the invasions of Afghanistan, and in 2003, that of Iraq, both still theatres of ongoing war. Meanwhile, in the minds of many people in the West the entire Muslim world has now morphed into one vast camp of terrorists.

Nothing inflames the spirit more than war. In time of war, wrote the historian Christopher Dawson in 1937, "rational thought is practically suspended and passion becomes a virtue. The remotest suggestion that there is anything to be said on the other side, or that the enemy is capable of the smallest degree of human behaviour, is regarded as a kind of immoral madness" (Tablet, Mar. 13). We seem to be coming to this state of affairs again.

In Canada, the Jewish owned National Post represents Israel. It holds that the war started when Lebanon's-Hezbollah killed three Israeli soldiers and abducted two on July 12, 2006. This act in turn justified everything that followed, including the killing and wounding of thousands, and the economic and structural obliteration of Lebanon as a functioning state. The newspaper supports the American position that the Israelis should be given more time to eradicate Hezbollah, so as to prepare for Condoleeza Rice's "new lasting order in the Middle East."

Language is deteriorating. One of the Post writers speaks of Hezbollah as "cockroaches" to be crushed and exterminated (C. Black, Aug. 5). Another states: "Anyone arguing that the West should remain neutral looks either a fool or a scoundrel" (Fulford, Aug. 5). The Toronto Star thinks the Catholic Church is "neutral" (July 29); the Church, therefore, would fall under Mr. Fulford's condemnation.

The Catholic Church is not neutral. She never is. But she does have a different perspective from the warring parties, as demonstrated in the past as well as today. She looks at the world "sub aeternitatis." The Christian view of history goes beyond the events of the moment to dwell on good and evil, the mystery of faith, the reality of Jesus Christ, and the divine direction of God.

The Church looks upon terrorism with horror because it is an extreme form of violence. But all violence, beginning with the murder of Abel (Genesis 4), is the consequence of sin, whether of injustice or injury to human dignity. Hence, Pope Benedict throughout July, week after week, called for prayer and an "immediate cessation" of the fighting, to the discomfort of Israel and the United States which called for more time for more war.

While acknowledging Israel's right to defend itself, the Church does not see the conflict in terms of terrorism versus democracy but, rather, as between an Islamic religion deformed by hatred and Western nation states such as Israel and the United States burdened with their own misconceptions. Christianity continues to emphasize friendship and dialogue as the only true way to peace and reconciliation.

Popes, too, are doubtful about states claiming to create a "new order." In 1939, Pius XII noted, "To hope for a decisive change exclusively from the shock of war and its issue is idle, as experience shows" (Summa pontificatus, October 1939).

The Church's stand always annoys the partisans. On August 5, Conrad Black wrote in the National Post: "Pope Benedict XVI is a good deal less woolly about Islam ... than John Paul II, but he still has one Pradaclad foot in the pail of moral relativism" ("Cockroaches of the Middle East"). On August 9, the same paper gave as examples of the 1938 "spirit of appeasement" the "fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier and Pope Plus." The references to Benedict and Pius are untrue, indeed worthless.

FATHER ALPHONSE DE VALK, C.S.B.

EDITOR