Michael Freund wrote:
“Pope Francis is aligning himself against Israel. In a treaty that was
finalized in Rome last week, the Catholic Church fired the latest salvo
in its 2,000-year-old struggle to disenfranchise the Jewish people.
Meeting with Palestinian officials at the Vatican, church officials
agreed to formally recognize the “State of Palestine” as part of a deal
concerning Catholic activities in the Palestinian-controlled areas… And
just in case anyone failed to get the memo, Vatican spokesman Rev.
Federico Lombardi went to the trouble of going on record as saying,
“Yes, it’s a recognition that the state exists.”
“In
biblical terms, by recognizing a Palestinian state in Judea and
Samaria, the Vatican is effectively seeking to deny the eternal covenant
between God and the Jewish people, to whom this land was promised long
ago. This is not only offensive and disrespectful, but disingenuous too.
Indeed, one cannot help but wonder: what Bible is the Vatican reading?
Whichever one it is, it must be missing some pages, as even a cursory
glance at the Scriptures makes clear that God promised to give the Land
of Israel to the Jewish people and nobody else. In fact, there are over
150 biblical verses ranging from Genesis to Joshua to Chronicles which
state this and reaffirm that Israel would return from Exile to this holy
soil.”…
“So
would the Catholic Church now deem Jesus to have been a “settler” or
“occupier” of Palestinian land? For an institution that bills itself as
“the Holy See” and which claims to uphold sacred values, the Vatican’s
profane involvement in Middle Eastern politics is simply unbecoming.
God says: “I
will bring my people Israel back from exile. They will rebuild the
ruined cities and live in them. They will plant vineyards and drink
their wine; they will make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant
Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I
have given them,” says Yahweh your God.”…“For the Israelites will live
many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones,
without ephod or household gods. Afterward the Israelites will return
and seek Yahweh their God and David their king. They will come trembling
to Yahweh and to his blessings in the last days.” (Amos 9:14-15; Hosea 3:4-5)
Joel 3:2 "For behold in those days and at that time, when I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; and I will enter into judgment with them there on account of My people, My heritage, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; they have also divided up My land.
Woe to you, Pope Francis and your Vatican State; woe to you, France, U.K. and New Zealand, for your resolution to establish a Palestinian State, being presented to the U.N. Security Council; and woe to you, America, for being the driving force behind all these proposals that come against God Almighty and Israel, His Heritage!