According to an article in The Washington Post (December 1, 2023), Pope Francis had a phone call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in late October, following the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, and the IDF responses with bombs and tanks in Gaza. The Pope said, “it is forbidden to respond to terror with terror.”

Before the recent cease-fire to allow for the exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners and detainees, the number of civilians killed in Gaza was at least ten times the number of civilians killed in Israel. That was the apparent basis for the Pope’s statement in St. Peter’s Square on November 22 that the Hamas-Israel conflict has “gone beyond war. This is terrorism.”

Conflicts between Jews and Palestinians go back much further than the founding of the nation of Israel after the Second World War. In the Bible, conflicts between Jews and Palestinians go back thousands of years.

The dramatic increases in antisemitism and islamophobia in this country reflect the ongoing hostilities in the Middle East and around the world with regard to Jews and Arabs. While Pope Francis recognized that those who committed violence against Israelis should be held accountable, attacking and killing civilians is not a part of that accountability.

This moral reckoning includes acknowledging that Jews have been the subject of hatred for thousands of years. Especially since after the time of Jesus, with the rise of the Christian movement, Jews have been labeled and targeted. The Holocaust was the product of such hatred, as are the continued attacks on Israelis.

Jesus clearly stated what God expects of us—to love God, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39).

The book, A New Look at Rabbi Jesus, by Rabbi Albert (Abraham) I. Slomovitz, has the subtitle, “Jews and Christians Finally Reconnected.” Slomovitz writes, “the primary purpose of this book is to solve a two-thousand-year-old puzzle: if Jesus lived a totally Jewish life and became the founder of Christianity, why aren’t Jews and Christians in a respectful, appreciative, and embracing relationship?”

The goal of the book is to reduce “the misunderstanding, stereotyping, and prejudices that have existed between these two faiths.” Slomovitz calls it “discovering our shared spiritual DNA.” The aim is to help Jews and Christians “realize that they are strongly connected by mutual faith, beliefs, and traditions.”

There are also spiritual connections between Islam and Judaism, as well as geographical and historical connections between Palestinians and Jews.

The goal of the current crisis should not be victory, but justice and peace.