The analysis of the current demonization of Israel by Christian organizations, preachers, and individuals is a complex issue. Various factors contribute to this complexity. One is the lengthy history of Christian anti-Semitism. A second is the huge number of Christians, with Christianity fragmented into many denominations. A third is the absence of systematic monitoring of Christian anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. One cannot do justice to the subject in this chapter and the next; it requires an entire book. Hence, only a number of important issues will be discussed.

For many centuries, Christian demonization of the Jews was the main thrust of European anti-Semitism. Even today the hate motif of the Jews being responsible for the killing of Jesus is widespread, as earlier-cited statistics have shown. Multiple remnants of Christian anti-Semitism are found in many denominations of that religion to which new elements of anti-Israeli hate- mongering are added.

Christianity permeated European society with anti-Semitism for many centuries. Numerous leading figures and others within church movements were promoters of Jew-hatred. The main hate message, among many others, was the deicide accusation. Its means of dissemination were preaching and religious education. Christian intellectuals also brought European types of anti-Semitism to the Middle East while teaching in churches and European schools there.1

Meir Litvak, an expert on Arab anti-Semitism, said:

European anti-Semitism was brought to the Middle East by Christian intellectuals who taught in Church and European schools. Christians initiated the 1840 blood libel in Damascus by accusing Jews of murdering a Capucine monk and using his blood for ritual purposes. The local government under Mohammed Ali—Egypt’s ruler on behalf of the Turks—arrested several Jewish community leaders. When they were tortured, two of them confessed to a crime they had not committed. However, they were freed under pressure from the European powers.2

The severity of anti-Semitic propaganda differed historically between various Christian societies. Catholicism played a major role in the massive demonization of Jews over the centuries. Yet there are also deep roots in segments of Protestant anti-Semitism. A major role was played here by the reformer Martin Luther. Disappointed by the fact that the Jews did not want to convert, he wrote an extreme anti-Semitic book about the “Jews and their lies.” Luther called them “live devils” and recommended burning synagogues in honor of God and Christianity.3

The longtime diffusion of this extreme loathing of Jews by many Christian churches made the hatred not only very powerful, but also persistent. These churches kept defining absolute evil in theological terms, suggesting that because many tens of generations ago some forefathers of Jews had allegedly killed God’s son—a false accusation—Jews were capable of all imaginable evil. Nor did they explain how Jesus, if he were God’s son, could be killed against his own will. Once one falsely accused people of being Satan’s representatives on earth, it was easy to scapegoat them as being responsible for many disasters they had nothing to do with.

The infrastructure laid by Catholicism, Lutheranism, and so on fostered a large part of the European mindset that later on made the Holocaust possible. Nineteenth-century European nationalist movements adopted the same core motif of the Jew’s ultimate wickedness. Hand in hand with the religious variant, ethnic anti-Semitism developed as a second major form of extreme Jew-hatred. German and Austrian Nazism, along with its many supporters elsewhere, took this anti-Semitic worldview to its genocidal consequence.

More Reasons for Jews to Hate Christians?

As powerful institutions and elites promoted ideas of hatred over a very long period, they became an integral part of cultures. In the 1960s, James Parkes analyzed the conflict between Christians and Jews during the first eight centuries of the Christian era. Concerning that period he concluded, “There was far more reason for the Jew to hate the Christian than for the Christian to hate the Jew—and this on the evidence of Christian sources alone.”

Parkes also came to the conclusion that the Christian theological concept of the first three centuries created the foundations for the hatred, on which an “awful superstructure” was built. The first stones for this were laid at “the very moment the Church had the power to do so, in the legislation of Constantine and his successors.”

Regarding modern anti-Semitism, Parkes asserted, “If on the ground so carefully prepared, modern anti-Semites have reared a structure of racial and economic propaganda, the full responsibility still rests with those who prepared the soil, created the deformation of the people and so made these ineptitudes credible.”4

Change in the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church changed its attitude toward the Jews with the Nostra Aetate declaration by Pope Paul VI at the Second Vatican Council in 1965.5 Wistrich commented:

At the Vatican II Council (1962-1965), the charge of deicide was removed from the Jewish people as a whole. Nostra Aetate, the document that embodies this, was published in 1965 under the papacy of Paul VI who was much more lukewarm on these issues than his predecessor. The document that John XXIII and Cardinal Bea originally wanted had been significantly diluted by more conservative circles within the Church.

Nostra Aetate was not a complete exculpation of the Jews. It said that the guilt for the death of Jesus belonged to the Jewish leadership of two thousand years ago but did not carry through to the Jewish people of today. It has nonetheless been a crucial instrument in the fight against Catholic anti-Semitism. This type of anti-Semitism, after all, was the most powerful and extensive or pervasive form of hostility toward Jews, at least before the Russian pogroms and the Nazi mass murder of the Jews in the twentieth century.6

Aharon Lopez, former Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, summarized the changes made by Nostra Aetate:

This text eliminated the Jews’ collective guilt for Jesus’ crucifixion and stated that “Jews were most dear to God” and that “the great spiritual patrimony was shared by Christians and Jews.” Hatred of the Jews thus became incompatible with formal Church doctrine.

Until then Church doctrine had asserted that, due to Jesus’ execution, God had removed the covenant from the people of Israel and transferred it to the Church, the “true Israel” (Verus Israel). Now the Church accepted the existence of an ongoing covenant between God and the Jewish people, which constituted a major theological breakthrough in its relationship with it.

Yet changes are slow in a huge organization such as the Catholic Church. Lopez observed: “The major turnaround at the highest levels has yet to permeate the entire Church, which is quite extensive . . . It remains, however, difficult for the Church to reverse its 2,000 year-old position. This may take another generation or two.”7

Almost fifty years after the Nostra Aetate declaration, Catholic anti-Semitism continues in many places. The Vatican and many senior Catholic leaders make efforts to fight it, but these do not necessarily focus on the most severe cases.

Prejudices Reemerge

From time to time, even at Vatican-sponsored events, the old prejudices re- emerge in various forms. In October 2010, a Synod of Bishops for the Middle East took place at the Vatican. One hundred and eighty-five bishops and patriarchs who had full voting rights participated, representing mainly the declining number of Catholics in the Middle East. Under the sections dedicated to relations with Jews, the synod said in its final statement that “recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable.”

Thereafter, the Melkite Bishop Cyrille S. Bustros of the United States, who had attended the conference, said, “For us Christians, you can no longer speak of a land promised to the Jewish people.” He added that the coming of Christ shows that Jews “are no longer the chosen people; all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.” He further remarked that the theme of the Promised Land cannot be used “to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the expatriation of Palestinians.”8

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon was quoted as saying that the synod had become “a forum for political attacks against Israel in the best tradition of Arab propaganda.” He added that the synod had been hijacked by an anti-Israeli majority.

Rabbi David Rosen, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee, was the only Jewish representative to address the synod. He said that it was “appalling that in their final statement . . . the bishops did not have the courage to address challenges of intolerance and extremism in the Muslim countries in which they reside and rather chose to make the Israeli- Palestinian conflict their first focus.” He added that Bishop Bustros’s statement refl cted “either shocking ignorance or insubordination in relation to the Catholic Church’s teaching on Jews and Judaism flowing from the Vatican II Declaration ‘Nostra Aetate.’”

Mordechai Lewy, Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, said about Bishop Bustros’s remarks, “The Vatican should take a clear distance from them be- cause it will give every Jew a reason to be suspicious of rapprochement with the Catholic Church.” He added that he disagreed with several points in the synod’s final message and observed, “The Israeli government doesn’t use the Bible to determine our political borders.”9

The Vatican spokesman, Father Lombardi, reacted to the Jewish criticism rather opaquely: “There is a great richness and variety of contributions offered by the Synod fathers, however, that should not be considered the voice of the Synod in its entirety.” He then added that the overall assessment of the synod was largely positive according to Pope Benedict XVI.10

The Failed Historical Commission

Pope Pius XII’s attitude toward the Holocaust has been a subject of much debate. Wistrich was a member of the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission, which was supposed to scrutinize the documents in the Vatican’s archives relevant to this subject. The commission suspended its work after two years. Wistrich remarked:

The stark truth is that in two years we received no material assistance, no real encouragement, and above all, not one single new document from the Vatican. On the other hand, we did receive our fair measure of denigration, insinuation, and false rumors from persons attached to, or even speaking in the name of, that powerful and august institution. This negative response to its own initiative stands in striking contrast to the positive reception that the Commission’s work received from most enlightened opinion in the world, from many liberal and lay Catholics, and from much of the scholarly community, which sincerely hoped that we would succeed in our efforts to open up the archives.11

Wistrich also observed:

A judgment on Pius XII’s attitude during and after the war should not be limited to his silence on the genocide of the Jews. The pope remained largely neutral about the German atrocities against the Polish people. Nor did he condemn the genocidal Catholic Croatian fascist state and its leader Ante Pavelić. This state massacred 350,000 non-Catholics, including thirty thousand Croatian Jews. There is compelling evidence that the Vatican was instrumental in permitting Pavelić to escape from Italy to Argentina in 1947.12

The yet unadmitted links between the Holy See and the Ustasha-led Croatian regime have never been clarified. These mass murderers of Serbs, Jews, and others were one of the cruelest Nazi allies in World War II. There is proof that the Vatican has assisted Croatian Nazis in hiding funds and helped them escape Europe.13

Another issue that merits a detailed investigation is how much attention the Vatican’s paper Osservatore Romano gives to Israeli actions in the Middle East compared to the widespread persecution of Christians in Muslim lands.

Contemporary Catholic Inciters

In the margins of the official Catholic Church, the traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) often adheres to ancient dogmas. One of its bishops, Richard Williamson, who is British, is a Holocaust denier but was only expelled from the society in 2012. According to the Anti-Defamation League, “In sermons, writings, Web sites and publications, SSPX representatives have charged contemporary Jews with deicide, have endorsed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and have claimed that there is factual basis for the Blood Libel. One of its bishops has also denied the Holocaust.”14

There are also new elements of anti-Israeli hate-mongering in Catholic environments. In October 2003 the Jewish Telegraphic Agency published a series of articles, called “Funding Hate,” about the Ford Foundation’s contribution to anti-Israeli hate groups. As a side note, the article mentioned that there was an even bigger donor to the leading Palestinian hate group behind the Durban anti-Israeli hate campaign: the Dutch Catholic charitable NGO Cordaid, which had contributed $1.5 million.15

In 2007 Cordaid together with another pro-Palestinian Roman Catholic group, Pax Christi, initiated a pro-Palestinian public statement in the Netherlands calling on the Dutch government to break the stalemate in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The statement complained about forty years of “occupation” but remained silent about seventy-five years of genocidal intent and murderous attacks by the Palestinian Arabs.16

Yitzhak Santis of NGO Monitor says:

Cordaid’s biased activities are illustrated by their funding decisions, publications and political positions. It is a joint member with other Dutch-based organizations of the United Civilians for Peace organization, which advocates Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Cordaid Director René Grotenhuis, argued during a 2011 panel in the Dutch parliament, that BDS is a defensible tactic because, “it is important that people in Palestine look for ways to resist occupation, and this is a non-violent way to do so.”

In 2012, Cordaid joined a coalition of 22 European NGOs in producing a report titled Trading Away Peace: How Europe Helps Sustain Illegal Israeli Settlements. It promotes the BDS agenda, calling on the EU and national governments to wage political warfare through economic sanctions against Israel. Cordaid also joined in a 2009 report titled Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more

excuses. The report falsely claims that Gaza remains occupied. The organization also funds various anti-Israel NGOs in Israel and the Palestinian Arab territories. Cordaid is regularly subsidized by the Dutch government. Funding amounts vary. From 2007 to 2010, Cordaid received 422 million Euros. Due to a reduction in government subsidies, it received 69 million Euros in 2011.17

There are also Catholic politicians who incite against Israel. Former Dutch parliamentarian Wim Kortenoeven says:

The major Dutch agitator against Israel is former Prime Minister Dries van Agt, a Catholic Christian Democrat. Initially, Van Agt’s organization for his personal crusade against the Jewish State was the “International Forum for Justice and Peace” (IFJP).

It included Swedish anti-Semite Jöran Jermas, who posed as a Jew using the alias Israel Shamir. I was involved in unmasking this “Swedish connection” when I worked for [the Dutch pro-Israeli defense organization] CIDI. After the ensuing scandal, Van Agt terminated the IFJP. He then established a new crusade medium—The Rights Forum.

At the 2007 Palestinian-European Conference in Rotterdam, Van Agt said that the three Western demands of Hamas were extremely unreasonable. They are: abandoning violence, recognition of the State of Israel and of Palestinian agreements with the State of Israel.18

Ancient Anti-Semitic Rituals Continue

In several Christian countries as well as elsewhere, anti-Semitic rituals continue. In Greece, that concerns the main church of the country, the Greek Or- thodox Church. In 2004 the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) of Los Angeles wrote to the newly elected Greek prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis of the New Democrat Party, that the country’s National Tourist Organization was promoting the Easter ritual of “burning [the effigy] of Judas” as a tourist at- traction. Hundreds of local ceremonies include this ritual, which is sometimes described as the “Burning of the Jew.”19

As Rabbi Mordechai Frisis of Salonika noted in 2004, “Greece is a very traditional society, and they blame the Jews for killing Jesus. There are still people who believe that Jews drink the blood of Christians on Passover.” Frisis said that when he was a student at a Greek high school, “There were people who said this openly to me.”20

Although the Greek Orthodox Church has in the past officially condemned the “Burning of the Jew” ritual, it has had little influence. The late archbishop of Athens, Christodoulos, made occasional negative statements about the Jews. In 2003, he visited the Majdanek extermination camp in Poland; but his speech made no reference to the Holocaust even though the great majority of the victims there were Jewish. He also did not mention the 1,500 Greek Jews murdered there.21

In 2001, Christodoulos falsely accused the Jews of being behind the Greek government’s decision to abide by EU rules that oppose including one’s religion on state identity cards.22 In 2004 he congratulated George Karatzaferis, leader of the xenophobic anti-Semitic right-wing party Laos, on his “deserving elec- tion” to the European Parliament, and added that Karatzaferis would “bring to the broader European family the other intellectual values that spring out of your Christian and Greek soul.”23

Notes

1. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Meir Litvak, “The Development of Arab
   Anti-Semitism,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 5, February 2, 2003.
2. Ibid.
3. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Hans Jansen, “The Deep Roots of Protestant Anti-Semitism,” in Demonizing Israel and the Jews (New York: RVP Press, 2013), 144-146.
4. James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (Cleveland, New York: Meridian Books, 1961), 375-376.
5. Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate, Proclaimed by His Holiness Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965.
6. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Robert Wistrich, “Reassessing Pope Pius XII’s Attitudes toward the Holocaust,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 89, November 1, 2009.
7. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Aharon Lopez, “Jewish-Vatican Relations: The Possible Beatification of Pius XII and Other Unresolved Issues,” in Europe’s Crumbling Myths (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Yad Vashem, World Jewish Congress, 2003), 137-145.
8. Sarah Delaney, “Israelis not happy with synod statement, angry over bishop’s remarks,” Catholic News Service, October 25, 2010.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Gerstenfeld, interview with Wistrich.
12. Ibid.
13. Arieh Doobov, “The Vatican and the Shoah,” in Avi Beker, ed., The Plunder of Jewish Property during the Holocaust (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2001), 319-321.
14. “The Society of S Pius X: Mired in Anti-Semitism,” Anti-Defamation League, January 26, 2009.
15. Edwin Black, “Funding Hate, Part IV: Audit of Palestinian Group Suggests Lax Funding Controls,” JTA, October 16, 2003.
16. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Misdadigers, slachtoffers, en de rol van Cordaid,” Opinio, July 6, 200 (Dutch)
17. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Yitzhak Santis, “Catholic Aid Societies Promote Hatred of Israel,” Israel National News, December 20, 2013.
18. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Wim Kortenoeven,“The Anti-Israel Lobby in the Netherlands,” Israel National News, September 15, 2013.
19. “Easter Pogrom Hatemongering: Effigies, Desecration, Caricature: Greek Anti- semitism Epidemic Persists,” press release, Simon Wiesenthal Center, April 20, 2004.
20. Michael Freund, “Tackling Assimilation and Anti-Semitism in Salonika,” The Jerusalem Post, February 8, 2004.
21. Centre Simon Wiesenthal—Europe, “25 Months of Anti-Semitic Invective in Greece: Timeline: March 2002-April 2004,” presented at the OSCE Conference on Anti-Semitism, April 28-29, 2004.
22. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Moses Altsech, “Anti-Semitism in Greece: Embedded in Society,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 23, August 1, 2004 (quoting To Vima, March 15, 2001).
23. Press release, Greek Helsinki Monitor, June 27, 2004.