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1 The Sense of Threat Emerges Pre-Independence Contacts The question of relations with the Christian world, and in particular the Catholic Church, posed an immediate challenge to the newly born State of Israel in 1948. The complexity of the problem had first been recognized during the initial stages of discussion of the Palestine problem at the United Nations a year previously.The pre-state (Yishuv) Jewish authorities were mindful then of the urgent need to establish contact with the Vatican in order to dissuade it from adopting a public (or covert) anti-Zionist stand, which was liable to influence the attitude of various Catholic countries toward the establishment of a Jewish state. Now that the state had come into being, Israel was obliged to devote considerable effort to minimizing the potentially damaging impact of official Catholic policy, which questioned the legitimacy of Israel’s gains in the 1948 war. Last but not least, it needed to resolve a number of problems relating to the Christian Holy Places and the Christian minority. Catholic policy toward the Zionist movement and Israel was fundamentally hostile,and this enmity was grounded on theological considerations,as the leaders of the Zionist movement and the state knew only too well.Theodore Herzl, founder of Zionism, had met with Pope Pius X in Rome in January 1904 to seek his support for the fledgling Zionist movement, and the pope’s comments at that meeting were well known. “The soil of Jerusalem,” he said then, “is sacred in the life of Jesus Christ. As head of the Church, I cannot say otherwise. The Jews did not acknowledge Our Lord and thus we cannot recognize the Jewish people.Hence,if you go to Palestine and if the Jewish people settle there, our churches and our priests will be ready to baptize you all.”1 This statement made it abundantly clear that, as far as the Church was concerned, the Jews would not be acknowledged as Jews in their homeland and had no right to territorial and national sovereignty over the Holy Land (Terra Sancta).The Christian claim to the land was firm and abiding. The pope’s response was undoubtedly rooted in the Christian theological view that the destruction of the Bialer, Cross on the Star 6/9/05 8:43 AM Page 3 ancient Jewish sovereign state had been irrevocable proof of the wrath of God, who had established Christianity as the universal substitute for the Jewish people and for worship in the Temple. The Church was perceived as the True Israel (Verus Israel ).2 Close to half a century later, Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first foreign minister, was to define the Vatican’s attitude toward the Jewish people and the Zionist movement as “a search for revenge for the primeval sin, and the squaring of a nineteen-century-old account.”3 The leaders of the Yishuv received painful reminders of this adamant stand when they tried and failed to recruit the Vatican’s open and public aid for Jews during World War II.4 It is clear that under Pope Pius XII, the Church did take some covert actions to save Jews.However,this was limited to what the Church deemed feasible given the circumstances.No public statement against the Nazi policies was ever pronounced by Pius XII while there was still time to influence them. The Vatican cited a number of excuses for its refusal. One reason, however , which was rarely given frank expression—though it was only too familiar to the Zionists—was that the migration of Jewish refugees to Palestine would undermine the status of the Church in the Holy Land. For example, in May 1943 the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Luigi Maglione, in an internal church document, listed a number of arguments to back up the pope’s refusal to help rescue 2,000 Jewish children from Slovakia.Among the reasons he mentioned were the Vatican’s nonrecognition of the Balfour Declaration and the British scheme for establishment of a National Home for the Jews, fear that the sanctity of the Holy Places would be threatened by an influx of Jews into Palestine, and the view that “Palestine is holier to Christians than to Jews.”5 A year later, in anticipation of Winston Churchill’s official visit, the Vatican State Secretariat prepared background material for the pope, which included the statement that “the Holy See has always been opposed to Jewish control of Palestine. [Pope] Benedict XV took successful action...

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