Editor’s note: The following guest column raises issues that might draw applause from some readers and cause serious concerns for others.

The Catholic Register welcomes civilly argued responses for all perspectives. We will publish as many as possible in the weeks ahead.

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Never has this generation been subjected to such a barrage of disinformation and misinformation as has been generated surrounding the current Israeli military assault on the people of Gaza. Catholics have been equally subjected to this, along with the population at large, but do have an obligation to sort through the cacophony in arriving at an ethical position rooted in justice, so that through our prayer and activism we as Catholics can make an impact to alleviate the suffering.

Catholics are called to be peacemakers and to act to bring about peace and reconciliation, in the full recognition that justice is a prerequisite to any resolution. 

First, we need to acknowledge some fundamental facts:

• The violence did not begin on October 7, 2023, but is the latest eruption in an ongoing assault on Palestinians that began in 1948 and was exacerbated by the Israeli blockade of Gaza beginning in 2007.
• The number of Palestinian dead is often stated as over 44,000 by the Ministry of Health in Gaza. However, according to the respected British medical journal The Lancet, the overall toll due to the impacts of the destruction of infrastructure and medical facilities has exceeded 180,000, mostly women and children.
• This is not a “conflict” between two military powers, but an assault on a civilian population with no army by one of the world’s most advanced and heavily equipped armed forces.
• The International Court of Justice has ruled that the actions of Israel against the population of Gaza constitutes probable genocide and instructed Israel to exercise more control over its military to prevent acts which could be seen as contributing to genocide and to ensure humanitarian aid could reach Gaza.
• Israel has defied the international court and continues to prevent aid from reaching the suffering population.
• A United Nations Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories said it had “serious concerns of breaches of international humanitarian and human rights laws in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including starvation as a weapon of war, the possibility of genocide in Gaza and an apartheid system in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
• The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the months of devastation in Gaza and Lebanon. 

This peace we strive for stretches into all aspects of the global community. Jewish people around the world report being increasingly confronted with rising anti-Semitism over the past year. It needs repeating however that Palestinians are not responsible for historic and current Western antisemitism, but they are paying the brunt of the price.

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The Palestinian people’s cause is rooted in human and collective rights. The failures of some Palestinian political actors to serve their cause wisely, and the damage done to it through the crimes of some does not negate the Palestinians’ rights to live freely with full rights in their homeland. Although the expression “Israel has a right to defend itself” has been repeated time and again by Israeli apologists and Canadian politicians, the right to self-defence cannot be invoked by an occupier and aggressor. If the total destruction of infrastructure in Gaza and massive killing is subjected to the limitations of the Just War Theory, it fails in its excessive violation of the requirement of proportionality.

Some people argue that the lessons from the Holocaust necessitate Israel’s aggressive self-defence. Many Jewish leaders who survived the Holocaust are appalled by this line of argument. The Dutch Holocaust survivor Abel Herzberg, a Zionist, was asked shortly after the war by a fellow survivor what should be done to prevent their children from being victimized again. His answer was, “Madam, that is not the true problem. The problem is how we can avoid our children becoming henchmen.”

Together with Palestinian and Israeli partners and Canadian Jewish and solidarity groups, we believe the violence unleashed by Israel on mostly innocent Palestinians is of genocidal proportions and thus criminal. They are war crimes primarily motivated by ethno-religious nationalism as well-documented by Israeli historians and not grounded in security concerns. They are international crimes that threaten the whole edifice of international law and democracy that has been built after the destruction of World War II. 

Throughout the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israel is emptying the most fertile land of its Christian and Muslim inhabitants and using their property to build and expand segregated settlements, which are forbidden on occupied territory under international law.

The International Court of Justice has made it clear that the Occupied Palestinian Territories — Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank — are territories illegally occupied by Israel. Israel has no right to them, nor to move its population into them. As the occupying power, Israel has an obligation to demonstrate genuine intentions to abide by international law and a commitment to just reconciliation and peace before the principle of self-defence can be invoked in this context. 

That is what should have happened. Instead, Israel has done and said everything conceivable to make clear to Palestinians that they and their children have no future in their own land, including through stated declarations by its leaders. This policy directly affects our Palestinian Christian siblings in the Holy Land as much as it does our Palestinian Muslim siblings. Their forced displacement from and the dispossession of their land is resulting in the emptying of the Christian holy sites in Nazareth, Bethlehem, Jericho, Gaza, Jerusalem and so many other places of Indigenous Christian believers. Our partners ask us in desperation, where are the Western churches? 

The Pope has called the attention of all Catholics to the suffering of the Palestinians. In his recently released book, Hope Never Disappoints: Pilgrims Toward a Better World, he addresses the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, saying that what has happened must be investigated. The Pope states: “According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. This should be studied carefully to determine whether it fits the technical definition as formulated by jurists and international bodies.”

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Canadian Catholics have the moral duty to support the suffering people of Palestine and call on their government to press for an immediate end to the genocide in Gaza, in accord with their recent votes at the United Nations. Canada must also seek guaranteed provision of humanitarian aid to stop the suffering and death. Canadians can no longer tolerate their government sanctioning the shipment of military equipment to support the assault on Gaza, such as components for the F-35 fighter jets used to bomb Gaza. We must have a complete arms embargo on Israel.

As the Synod of Bishops stated in 1971, “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world fully appear to us as a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel, or, in other words, of the Church’s mission for the redemption of the human race and its liberation from every oppressive situation.”  We are confident that Canadian Catholics agree.