ISRAELI POLITICIAN TEACHES POPE FRANCIS ABOUT THE JEWISHNESS OF JESUS Blood libel rears its ugly head again

 COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org 

January 1, 2025

Amichai Chikli, minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, publicly reprimanded Pope Francis for his part in a recent display portraying Jesus as a Palestinian Arab and lectured 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 chided. “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 wrote in a three-page missive. He cited Matthew’s gospel, reminding Francis of the “well-known fact” that “Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea.”

Increasingly Francis is coming across as a liberal Protestant wrapped in papal garb stuck in a literal and theological wheelchair. His comments about other religions of equal standing with Christianity and downplaying the uniqueness of Christ shocked conservative Catholics, while the growing infiltration of homosexuality in the Vatican is equally shocking to millions of orthodox Catholics, especially at a time when sexual abuse is so rampant. Increasingly homosexuality in the Vatican is dominating the headlines.

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 matriarch 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 pointed out.

Chikli proceeded 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.

Perhaps Francis should take a course in Biblical history and theology to freshen up these embarrassing moments.

THE GENOCIDE BLOOD LIBEL

Referring to the pope’s recent comments calling for an investigation into the alleged genocide in Gaza, reported by The Stream, the minister contends: “This is a desperate and disgusting attempt to rewrite history.”

“As a nation that lost six million of its sons and daughters in the Holocaust, we are especially sensitive to the trivialization of the term ‘genocide’ — a trivialization that is dangerously close to Holocaust denial,” he notes.

Chikli details how the term “genocide” can be aptly applied to Nazi Germany, which “for the first time in the history of nations, set as its ultimate goal the complete annihilation of an unarmed people with whom it had no conflict, and most of whom were not even living in its territory.

“Let us recall that between the Jews, who made up less than 1% of the population of Germany in the 1930s, and the Germans, there had been no prior violent, territorial, religious, or political conflict,” he notes. Recalling the “sickening strategy” of the “Final Solution,” the minister cites as one example the Treblinka death camp, where 845,000 Jews from Poland, including children and elderly people, were murdered in gas chambers and then dumped into execution pits, concluding: “This is what genocide looks like.”

 “The Vatican’s silence during those dark days of the Shoah is still deafening,” he writes, asking Francis to “clarify your stand regarding the genocide blood libel against the Jewish state,” a “new blood libel” recently promoted against Israel by the human rights organization Amnesty International.

Chikli concludes by drawing Francis’s attention to the 60th anniversary of the Nostra Aetate Declaration from the Second Vatican Council, which will be celebrated in 2025. The declaration announced that God's eternal covenant with the Jewish people is still in force: "God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues-such is the witness of the Apostle".  This marked a “significant milestone in the relationship between the Jewish people and Christianity,” he maintains, noting that Francis is known to be “a close friend of the Jewish people.”

The Vatican has maintained a diplomatic silence on the minister’s letter, with neither Vatican News nor Avvenire, the Italian bishops’ media, reporting on it.

In response, the pope has doubled down on Israel since Chikli’s letter, twice in public remarks last weekend accusing the Jewish state of massacring children in Gaza.

From this writer’s perspective, the so-called Vicar of Christ on earth is little more than a failed cleric falling for all the prejudiced statements of the UN and its antisemitic secretary-general.

Dr. Jules Gomes of The Stream contributed to this story.