under its current editor, Fr. Matt Malone, S.J., America Magazine relies extensively on reporting from the Catholic News Service, which has been a persistent source of anti-Israel bias over the years. This is a problem.
Despite Mitri Raheb's assertions to the contrary, Jesus was not a Palestinian. Jesus was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth, two towns in Judea, preached in Galilee (an area inhabited by the Israelite tribe of Naphtali), and taught in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. None of these areas were called Palestine until long after Jesus’s crucifixion.
Books that IVP in the U.S. and the U.K. have published about the Holy Land have been marred by errors, omissions, and historical distortions that invariably portray Israel in an unfairly harsh light. Problems in Palestinian society that hinder the prospects of peace in the Holy Land are, for the most part, taboo subjects in IVP books.
Foreign Policy published a piece by Palestinian activist Zena Agha titled “Israel Can’t Hide Evidence of Its Occupation Anymore.” The entire premise of the article — which accuses the United States of denying human rights activists access to satellite images they can use to document alleged Israeli misdeeds against the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — is destroyed by information in the article itself.
In Isaac’s sorrowful and self-pitying narrative, Palestinian suffering is the fault of pro-Israel Christians in the United States and the Jewish state. Nothing is ever the fault of the Palestinians themselves.
Mae Elise Cannon’s book promotes two Muslim organizations, one of which has ties to Palestinian terrorism and another of which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist organization that has promoted Islamic extremism and anti-Israel bias throughout the world including the United States. The text also obscures the supersessionist hostility of Naim Ateek, one of the founding fathers of Palestinian Christian Liberation Theology (PCLT).
On one hand, Iran wants its own citizens (and enemies) to believe that it has COVD-19 under control, and yet on the other hand, it wants gullible and kind-hearted westerners to believe that its people are dying in droves because of the evil Americans.
In addition to omitting the role the Assad regime has played in aggravating the pandemic in Syria, Rev. Dr. Peter Makari ignored altogether the role that the Iranian government has played in ensuring the mass infection of the COVID-19 virus in its own citizens and its spread to other countries in the region.
By condemning Gasparro’s lurid and pornographic painting in such an explicit manner, Bishop Spreafico removed the controversy out of the realm of Christian-Jewish relations and placed it where it belongs –into the realm of Christian doctrine. Gasparro is not speaking on behalf of the Catholic church, but merely revealing his personal bigotry toward Jews in a manner that violates the tenets of the Church.
The main challenge to Churches for Middle East Peace and other Christian peacemakers is this: Can Christian peacemakers work in good conscience to achieve the rights of self-determination of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza when their leaders have refused to acknowledge the same right of Jews living in Israel?
