What Do American Catholics Have At Stake In The War In Gaza?

As a war between Israel and terrorists rages in Gaza, it presents the question of what stake American Catholics have in that conflict.

The answer is an obvious one. Our support should be wholly with Israel. Why? Because Israel is a Western nation in a very bad neighborhood and The Church is at the core of the West and Western civilization. Not to mention, we Catholics have carried this very burden before ourselves.

From the Crusades, to the reconquest of Spain, to the defense of Vienna against Turks in 1683, we know the inherent animus Islamists have for the West. Like now, those three events, and there are many more, are cases in point in the traditional Western defense against the attacks of Islam.

To stretch the point, as Greek philosophy means much to Catholicism, we could call the Greek victory at the Battle of Plataea of 479BC a Western defense against the Persians who have transmorgified into modern day Iran. Thermopylae would also fall into this category.

As the mother faith to all Christianity, Judaism and the Jewish people are sacred to us as not only chosen, but as a living exemplar of God's redemption of a nation after over two millenia of statelessness.

What the monsters of Hamas and their allies are trying to do is snuff out that rekindled light of the West in the Holy Land. They would put to the sword the people whom Christ called his own.

Arab Islamists tried this in 1948, at the inception of Israel, and lost. Again in 1967, when Nasser said he would drive the Jews into the sea, and lost. In 1973, as they looked for revenge for their 1967 shellacking, and lost. In between those major wars were terrorist incidents, border clashes, artillery bombardments, and rocket attacks, all designed to break the will of Israel. But Israel has endured. The God of Hosts sees to that.

What would be the effect on Catholics if Israel surrendered or was defeated in battle? Emboldened, Islamists would turn their gaze north to Europe, in their historically usual manner, and West to us. The chants we hear on Ivy/Nazi college campuses of "Death to America" definitely includes American Catholics as well.

Thus it is ironic that a self-professed Catholic POTUS would threaten Israel, a close ally, with strangulation just when the Jewish state needs support to root out the nest of vipers in Rafah.

And so it may come to pass that Israel stands alone for the sake of Michigan's electoral college votes. She has no doubt prepared for this kind of scenario and can operate against Hamas with resources currently available.

When it is over, I'm guessing sooner rather than later, those who left heroic Israel in the lurch should pay a serious political price. It would be meet and just if a major serving of that bitter price comes first and foremost from American Catholics.