CNA Staff, Jul 3, 2024 / 15:05 pm (CNA).
Israel’s embassy to the Holy See is criticizing a recent statement by Catholic leaders in the Holy Land that suggested Israel’s ongoing campaign in Gaza is not a “just war.”
In a statement June 30, the Justice and Peace Commission of the Holy Land implied that Israel’s behavior in Gaza goes beyond the “proportionate use of force” necessary for a war to be rooted in justice.
The commission, sponsored by the Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, brings together Latin and Eastern Catholic leaders in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Cyprus. It is led by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem.
The June 30 statement pointed to the high death toll in Gaza as a sign that Israel’s conduct there is not just.
“As Catholics in the Holy Land who share Pope Francis’ vision for a peaceful world, we are outraged that political actors in Israel and abroad are mobilizing the theory of ‘just war’ in order to perpetuate and legitimate the ongoing war in Gaza,” the statement reads.
“This theory is being used in a way in which it was never intended: to justify the death of tens of thousands, our friends and our neighbors.”
The statement argued that in the case of Israel’s war in Gaza, it is clear that negotiations have not been exhausted before the use of force, among other issues.
“There are those pretending that the war follows the rules of ‘proportionality’ by arguing that a war that continues until the bitter end might save the lives of Israelis in the future, therefore balancing the scales of the thousands of Palestinian lives being lost in the present,” they said.
“In doing so, they privilege the security of hypothetical people in the future over the lives of living and breathing human beings who are being killed every day,” the Catholic leaders continued.
“It is in a spirit of hope that we cannot allow words like ‘just’ to be mobilized to justify what is unjust, cruel, and devastating. We must argue for the integrity of language, because we remain convinced that true justice is still possible if we can hold fast to its promise.”
Israel seeks to prevent further ‘atrocities,’ embassy says
In a response posted to social media July 2, the Israeli embassy to the Holy See characterized the statement as “using religious pretext and linguistic stunts” to de facto object to Israel’s “right to defend itself.”
The embassy stated that Israel’s objective from the beginning of the conflict was “to end Hamas rule in the territory and secure that atrocities like the ones committed on Oct. 7 [2023] will not happen again.”
The embassy also took issue with the Catholic leaders’ framing of post-Oct. 7 events as “the war in Gaza” and said criticisms of the disproportionate nature of the fighting create “a false symmetry that reflects bias and one-sidedness.”
They noted that Hamas terrorists have embedded themselves in civilian areas, putting noncombatants at risk.
The Church teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that in order for a war to be justified, in part, “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated” (No. 2309).
Pope Francis himself has questioned the concept of just war, saying “war is essentially a lack of dialogue.” Just this week, a top Vatican official said the concept of just war “is being reviewed.”
This is not the first time the Israeli embassy to the Holy See, led by outgoing ambassador Raphael Schutz, has criticized Catholic leaders’ statements on the war.
In December 2023, Schutz accused Pizzaballa of “blood libel” for saying that two Christian women in Gaza had been intentionally killed “in cold blood” by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Pope Francis had joined the patriarchate in condemning the women’s deaths, going so far as to call it an act of “terrorism” during his Dec. 17 Angelus address.
And in May, the embassy sharply condemned a Yemeni Nobel laureate’s comments on Israel’s alleged “genocide” in Gaza, which she made at a Vatican conference.
Schutz, however, told the Italian news wire ANSA that the remarks “should have no influence on bilateral relations” as the “shameful statement was not made by the Vatican or on behalf of the Vatican.”
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As a back-bleacher observer, yours truly claims no special insights nor credentials on when Gaza or any war remains a “just war,” or not.
It might be also that Just-War theory, itself—which assumes disruption between symmetrically conflicting claims—is not up to our surreal situation? Beginning probably with total mobilization and universal conscription under Napoleon and certainly amplified by technological multiplier in the 20th Century.
There were 78 million deaths in the Second World War. And, two/thirds of these were civilians.
The same ratio as in Gaza when we consider that maybe 12,000 of the 35,000 or so are Hamas militants. And, considering that the stated Hamas endgame is to not only defeat Israel, but to push it into the sea. Annihilation. The invoked “integrity of language” versus terrible power of words (as also in 1941 and the cross-culturally incoherent: “unconditional surrender”?).
How to even begin to weigh proportionality? Or, as in another early instance, the reasonable chance of success?
At the front end of the Second World War an isolated Poland accepted the solitary burden of going to war against Hitler, “…despite the clear inferiority of her military and technological forces. At that moment the Polish authorities judged that this was the only way to defend the future of Europe [!] and the European spirit [!]” (John Paul II, “Memory and Identity,” Rizzoli, 2005, p. 141).
Does a fireman negotiate with a fire?
And, yet, four years after the treachery of Pearl Harbor (or, now, after October 7, 2023?), President Truman was horrified at his (non-precision) atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He declared “that there would be no more atomic bombing, that the idea of killing another 100,000 people was too horrible” (notes from the Wallace Diary, August 10, 1945); and “I couldn’t help but think of the necessity of blotting out women, children and noncombatants” (Speech to the Grid Iron Dinner, Dec. 15, 1945).
SUMMARY: The “vision of a peaceful world,” and the boundaries of defensive warfare? Surreal mathematics for at least two centuries?
The way to determine proportionality is according to the test in the English case of Bank Mellat v HM Treasury [2013] UKSC 39, to which no objection can be taken on any ground of divine law:
(1) whether the objective of the measure is sufficiently important to justify the limitation of a protected right, (2) whether the measure is rationally connected to the objective, (3) whether a less intrusive measure could have been used without unacceptably compromising the achievement of the objective, and (4) whether, balancing the severity of the measure’s effects on the rights of the persons to whom it applies against the importance of the objective, to the extent that the measure will contribute to its achievement, the former outweighs the latter…. In essence, the question at step four is whether the impact of the rights infringement is disproportionate to the likely benefit of the impugned measure.
Adapting to the case of war, the test in relation to a claim of jus in bello is: (1) whether the military objective is sufficiently important to justify acts which kill protected persons and destroy protected property, (2) whether the measure is rationally connected to the objective, (3) whether a less lethal and destructive measure could have been used without unacceptably compromising the achievement of the military objective, and (4) whether, balancing the severity of the measure’s effects on protected persons and property against the importance of the objective, to the extent that the measure will contribute to its achievement, the former outweighs the latter. The application of these tests determine that an act is either a war crime or a lawful act of war.
The Holy Land Catholic leaders for statement on “just war”, and that Israel’s use of armed force is disproportionate and therefore unjust is thus wholly indefensible.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation has always maintained in its Charter of 1968, “Article 2: Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit.” This is perfectly consistent with the rule of “uti possidetis juris”, which dictates that the boundaries of a state emergent on the territory hitherto of a Non-Self-Governing Territory, a League of Nations Mandate, a United Nations Trust Territory, or a member of a federation that ceases to exist politically, shall be the pre-existing administrative boundaries.
The State of Israel proclaimed on 14 May 1948 immediately acquired full sovereign title to the whole of what had been Mandate Palestine, such that recognition of its title to any part of the territory entails recognition of its title to the whole.
On 15 May 1948 several armies of Arab states invaded the territory of Israel for the purpose of destroying its political independence together with its Jewish population – this fact discloses the responsibility of Arab states – and of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 1979 – for a war of aggression of the highest degree of gravity, and which has a continuing character to this day save in relation to Egypt and Jordan, which ceased participation in 1979 and 1994 respectively.
The occupation by Egypt and Jordan of territory formerly belonging to Mandate Palestine was illegal and incapable of derogating from its status as integral parts of the State of Israel, and was incombatible with the provision of the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations And Co-Operation Among States in Accordance With the Charter Of The United Nations (GAR 2625) adopted On 24 October 1970: “ No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.”
By the end of 1950, Arabs resident in territories occupied by Jordan were offered and given Jordanian citizenship, and they and their descendants remain Jordanian citizens in law – they thereby ceased to have standing to claim self-determination as Palestinians with respect to any state other than Jordan, or to any territory located to the west of the Jordan.
In general, no person of Palestinian identity may, in pursuing a claim of self-determination, use means amounting to collaboration with a state or states waging aggressive war, let alone for the purpose, pubclicly stated by Hamas, of putting the Jews to genocide both in Israel and elsewhere and of establishing the false and blasphemous religion of Islam as the public religion of the state to the extreme endangerment of the salvation of souls.
The stated purpose of Israel’s resort to war is the destruction of Hamas as a polical and military force and the protection of the population of Israel from genocidal acts which, under the law of Israel of 1950, carry the death penalty. Further legitimate aims are the reintegration of the national territory of Israel and the extirpation of the political and military expression of “the diabolical sect of the reprobate and faithless Mahomet” (cf. Pope Callixtus III).
The means used by Israel in pursuit of these aims are rationally connected to them and amount to lawful acts of war and not to any war crimes provable on the facts that: (1) Hamas combatants disguise themselves as non-combatant civilians thereby placing on the Prosecutor the burden to prove that an apparent civilian was taking no active part in hostilities; and (2) the ratio of civilian to combatant fatalities in the population of Gaza is one to one, far below the norm of nine to one consistent with the lawful use of force in urban warfare – thus, the ratio is not so far in excess of the norm as to enable proof of criminal acts amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity.