On May 1, a significant number of Republicans and Democrats in the US House voted to pass the Anti-semitism Awareness Act by a wide margin of 320-91, in wake of increasing pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses across the country.
Under the bill, H.R.6090, the Department of Education would have to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of anti-semitism when evaluating if Jews had been discriminated against under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The working definition reads:
“Anti-semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
As Newsmax reported, the legislation “discourages the use of other definitions, which may impair ‘enforcement efforts by adding multiple standards and may fail to identify many of the modern manifestations of anti-semitism.’”
Fox News also explained that the Anti-semitism Awareness Act purports to widen the “legal definition of antisemitism used to enforce anti-discrimination laws.”
Although proponents of the Act claim it will tackle “anti-semitism” on college campuses, critics say it undermines free speech.
New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who introduced the legislation, proclaimed that “it’s critical that we crack down on antisemitic hate within our own country.”
Indeed, the passage of this bill is worrying, not only because of the notion of overarching Big Brother censorship and surveillance infringing on citizen rights, but more so because this bill is also a direct attack on the rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ and a denial of the circumstances surrounding His life and death.
“It is long past time that Congress act to protect Jewish Americans from the scourge of antisemitism on campuses around the country,” Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., another supporter of the legislation, also declared.
On the other end of the spectrum, critics, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, have pointed out that if the Act is signed into law, merely indicating that Jesus Christ was killed by Jews could be counted as “anti-semitism”.
Greene, who voted against the bill, posted on her X account (formerly Twitter):
“Anti Semitism is wrong, but I will not be voting for the Anti Semitism Awareness Act of 2023 (H.R. 6090) today that could convict Christians of Anti Semitism for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”
Likewise, Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. criticized the over-reaching impacts of the bill, saying:
“Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination. By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title VI’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.”
Similarly, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged lawmakers to vote against the bill in a letter:
“Federal law already prohibits anti-semitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities. H.R. 6090 is therefore not needed to protect against anti-semitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with anti-semitism.”
“While we wholly support efforts to fight discrimination and harassment through Title VI complaints and investigations, we strongly oppose use of the IHRA definition, or any definition of discrimination that threatens to censor or penalize political speech protected by the First Amendment,” the letter continued.
Indeed, the passage of this bill is worrying, not only because of the notion of overarching Big Brother censorship and surveillance infringing on citizen rights, but more so because this bill is also a direct attack on the rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ and a denial of the circumstances surrounding His life and death.
By citing contemporary instances of anti-semitism, as per a photo on Rep. Greene’s X account, the bill text attempts to deny, or overlook (at the very least), basic historical realities that have been documented since the time of Our Lord.
The next question that comes to mind is, if the Anti-semitism Awareness Act is the right antidote to addressing widespread pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country and worldwide and bring about peace?
The world-famous Jewish convert to Christianity, the great Apostle Saint Paul, acknowledged the truth that the Jews played a part in Our Lord’s crucifixion and death. In 1 Thessalonians 2: 14-15, the great Apostle stated:
“For you, brethren, are become followers of the churches of God which are in Judea, in Christ Jesus: for you also have suffered the same things from your own countrymen, even as they have from the Jews, Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and the prophets, and have persecuted us, and please not God, and are adversaries to all men.”
Further buttressing the Christian case for Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and death has been non-Christian (read: Jewish) historians like Flavius Josephus.
For instance, in Book 18 and Chapter 3 of “The Antiquities of the Jews”, Josephus had this to say about Our Lord:
“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as to receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.”
The next question that comes to mind is, if the Anti-semitism Awareness Act is the right antidote to addressing widespread pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the country and worldwide and bring about peace?
Well, as Remnant readers would likely expect, the answer is “no”.
After all, the US, being a close ally of Israel, recently passed an aid package worth billions to Israel.
With the recent aid package, together with continued US support for Israel, pro-Palestinian supporters are likely not going to be cowed into submission if the Anti-semitism Awareness Act becomes law.
Rather, it is the official refusal by governments (including the Joe Biden administration) and individuals both in the United States and beyond to recognize Our Lord Jesus Christ as King and submit to His rule that remains the primary stumbling block to a true and lasting peace.
As can be seen, the actions of many leftists (like Biden himself), and even neo-conservatives like Ben Shapiro, in either explicitly or implicitly denying the Divinity and Royalty of Jesus Christ remain a cause of concern.
Yet critiquing Biden’s policies or Shapiro’s unflinching support for the State of Israel can spark a flood of toxic backlash by war hawks in D.C. or Zionist zealots.
Contrary to what anti-Catholics and enemies of religion have falsely alleged, ad nauseam, Catholic teaching similarly does not condone anti semitism.
However, before one descends into the rabbit hole of vitriol and name-calling, some essential points have to be made.
Firstly, Rep. Greene is right that it is wrong to hate Jewish people. Loving Jewish people as individuals, or even as a group, does not, however, necessarily mean one has to agree with everything the Israeli state has been doing in the Holy Land, including the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip after October 7 last year.
Contrary to what anti-Catholics and enemies of religion have falsely alleged, ad nauseam, Catholic teaching similarly does not condone anti semitism.
In his 1940 encyclical Summi Pontificatus, Pope Pius XII rebuked anti semitism and racial-ethnic discrimination, with the words, saying:
“The Church of Christ, the faithful depository of the teaching of Divine Wisdom, cannot and does not think of deprecating or disdaining the particular characteristics which each people, with jealous and intelligible pride, cherishes and retains as a precious heritage. Her aim is a supernatural union in all-embracing love, deeply felt and practiced, and not the unity which is exclusively external and superficial and by that very fact weak.”
Subsequently, in a later part of the encyclical, the pontiff added:
“In accordance with these principles of equality, the Church devotes her care to forming cultured native clergy and gradually increasing the number of native Bishops. And in order to give external expression to these, Our intentions, We have chosen the forthcoming Feast of Christ the King to raise to the Episcopal dignity at the Tomb of the Apostles twelve representatives of widely different peoples and races. In the midst of the disruptive contrasts which divide the human family, may this solemn act proclaim to all Our sons, scattered over the world, that the spirit, the teaching and the work of the Church can never be other than that which the Apostle of the Gentiles preached: "putting on the new, (man) him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him. Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all and in all" (Colossians iii. 10, 11).”
Pope Pius XII’s exhortations went beyond mere words. The pontiff’s own actions speak for themselves.
During the horrific Nazi attempts to exterminate Jews, the Catholic Church under his pontificate was assiduous in sheltering Jews fleeing from the racist ideology of National-Socialism and its lethal consequences.
On September 7, 2023, researchers from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Research Institute, as well as Rome's Jewish community uncovered evidence that reinforces the claim that Catholic convents and monasteries in Rome served as places of refuge for persecuted Jews during the Nazi occupation of Rome.
The evidence provided by the aforementioned researchers, found in the archives of the Biblical Institute, which is linked to the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University, shed light on the names and addresses of Roman Jews who were protected in Catholic institutions during the Nazi onslaught, proving that instances of Catholics protecting Jews during Nazi times were not myths.
Moreover, the new materials gave details of over 4,300 people who were shielded in the properties of 100 women's and 55 men's Catholic religious orders. Documents in the archives of Rome's Jewish community “indicates that 3,200 certainly were Jews,” a statement from the researchers released during an academic workshop conducted at the Museum of the Shoah and mentioned by establishment media declared.
In 1944, Chief Rabbi Israel Zolli of Rome told The American Hebrew magazine, acknowledging:
“The Vatican has always helped the Jews and the Jews are very grateful for the charitable work of the Vatican, all done without distinction of race.”
Furthermore, in his book “Antisemitismo”, Zolli contended: “World Jewry owes a great debt of gratitude to Pius XII for his repeated and pressing appeals for justice on behalf of the Jews and, entered the Catholic Church and changed his name to “Eugenio” in honor of Pope Pius XII, whose birth name was Eugenio Pacelli.
The pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted all over the US, including on college campuses, are not entirely justifiable either. After all, many of these pro-Palestinian activists have Marxist ties and connections with many globalist, anti-patriotic, and anarchist groups.
In his autobiographical reflections “Before The Dawn”,[1]Zolli admitted the role of the Vatican in aiding “fugitive Jews to reach safety”. In fact, Zolli even dedicated an entire chapter in his autobiography to Pope Pius XII’s “charity”. One excerpt from this chapter[2] reads:
“There is no place of sorrow where the spirit of love of Pius XII has not reached. Volumes could be written on the multiform works of succor of Pius XII.”
Another excerpt from the same chapter adds:
“No hero in history has commanded such an army; none is more militant, more fought against, none more heroic than that conducted by Pius XII in the name of Christian charity.[3]”
Unfortunately, Pope Pius XII’s attitudes towards Jews were not always reciprocated in the same way.
One can read the following in the New York Jewish paper, Freiheit, dated January 10, 1937:
“According to the Jewish religion, the Pope is the enemy of the Jewish people by the very fact that he is the head of the Catholic Church. The Jewish religion is opposed to Christianity and to the Catholic Church in particular.”
Moreover, it would be extremely disingenuous to accuse Catholics for being “anti semites”, given that the God-Man Whom we worship, was born in Bethlehem to a Jewish mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Rather, it was Our Lord Jesus Christ who fulfilled the Jewish religion in the Old Testament by being the Messiah Whom the Old Testament prophets had foretold.
Conversely, it was the Jewish nation who, in their pride and intransigence, abandoned God’s supernatural mission for them and fell short of their end of their covenant with God, despite being meant to be the “heralds of the divine life of grace to the world”, as Father Denis Fahey stated in his book, “The Kingship of Christ and the Conversion of the Jewish Nation”.
In the same book, Father Fahey highlights how the Ghemara, or the commentary of the Jewish Talmud, reveals shocking blasphemies and calumnies against Our Lord Jesus Christ and his Immaculate Virgin Mother.
To boot, a close examination of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, as well as public reactions towards it, necessitates a deeper assessment of what “anti semitism” means. Sadly, many Jewish zealots have used this term to refer to any type of opposition to themselves.
To boot, a close examination of the Israeli-Hamas conflict, as well as public reactions towards it, necessitates a deeper assessment of what “anti semitism” means.
Sadly, many Jewish zealots have used this term to refer to any type of opposition to themselves, as Father Fahey accurately stated in “The Kingship of Christ and the Conversion of the Jewish Nation”.
Upon closer scrutiny, as Fr Fahey posited, one would realize that the Arab people are also Semites themselves.
However, Father Fahey added, according to the “logic” of some, including the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Arabs, by resisting Jewish domination in Palestine, could be considered as anti-Semites themselves!
Father Fahey goes even further to state that given that the Jews as a nation rejected Our Lord Jesus Christ as the promised Messiah, they forfeited any claim to the land of Palestine by divine right.
After all, Father Fahey posited, the Jews were given “that part of the earth as their inheritance on condition of their being obedient to God” (think of the Covenant between God and his creatures throughout salvation history in the Old and New Testaments).
Thus, it follows that the State of Israel’s claim to Palestine is implicitly a denial that the Jewish nation has “disobeyed God and missed their vocation by the rejection of the supernatural Messias”, who is none other than Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
“Do not think that I have come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For amen I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot, or one tittle shall not pass of the law, till all be fulfilled.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
Just as Jews are human beings, so too, are Palestinians.
The State of Israel’s own track record in perpetuating atrocities against Palestinians, implementing apartheid policies, and even killing Palestinians using AI machines with limited human supervision, does not help the international reputation of Jews either.
On March 1, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem accused the Israel Defense Force (IDF) for a “wanton attack against innocent civilians” who were reportedly trying to obtain humanitarian aid. “Although government spokesmen initially tried to deny the soldiers’ involvement in this incident, later that day Israel’s Minister of National Security not only praised IDF fighters for acting ‘excellently,’ but also attempted to blame the victims for their own demise, charging that they had sought to harm heavily armed soldiers."
What is worse, despite claiming that the Israeli-Hamas war is to eradicate the terrorist group Hamas, the Israeli state has murdered both Palestinian Muslim and Christian civilians.
On March 1, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem accused the Israel Defense Force (IDF) for a “wanton attack against innocent civilians” who were reportedly trying to obtain humanitarian aid.
“Although government spokesmen initially tried to deny the soldiers’ involvement in this incident, later that day Israel’s Minister of National Security not only praised IDF fighters for acting ‘excellently,’ but also attempted to blame the victims for their own demise, charging that they had sought to harm heavily armed soldiers,” the letter added. “He went on to assail the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza, arguing that it should cease.”
Perhaps House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Bible-professing Protestant himself, should have a closer look at the reality on the ground in the Holy Land.
Having said that, the pro-Palestinian protests that have erupted all over the US, including on college campuses, are not entirely justifiable either. After all, many of these pro-Palestinian activists have Marxist ties and connections with many globalist, anti-patriotic, and anarchist groups.
For instance, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) under ruthless dictator Mao Zedong strongly supported Palestinian groups like Fatah, a nationalist and social democratic movement as well as Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a communist party with Marxist-Leninist leanings in their efforts to resist the Israeli state.
Alarmingly, according to reports by media outlets like Fox News Digital in April this year, some Palestinian supporters even distributed pamphlets calling for “Death to America” at a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Michigan.
One of the pamphlets, titled “10 anarchist theses on Palestine solidarity in the United States,” featured a page stating, “Freedom for Palestine means Death to America.”
“Freedom for Palestine means Death to America.”
Wow. Seriously? Can leftist hyperbole get any more radical than this?
In face of assaults on the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the truth of his Catholic Church, faithful Catholics have to courageously and unequivocally stand up for the Social Rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
What are Catholics to do?
With the Jewish nation and many Gentiles rejecting Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace (Princeps pacis) it is not surprising then, from a Catholic viewpoint, that the Middle East, as well as other parts of the world, have been plagued by unrest, wars and destruction.
Peace can only be achieved while untold suffering and death can be avoided by accepting Jesus Christ, the Author of Life. Putting “world peace” in the hands of globalist organizations like the United Nations (UN) that constantly undermine Catholic teaching and morals would be a fool’s errand.
In face of assaults on the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the truth of his Catholic Church, faithful Catholics have to courageously and unequivocally, as Father Fahey urged us to, stand up for the Social Rights of Our Lord Jesus Christ. New Catholic convert and political commentator Candace Owens’ recent posts on X are good instances of such fortitude.
Other ways in which we can do so include practicing our Catholic Faith in our lives, such as learning more how Sacred Scripture, the teachings of the Catholic Church, and living out the Message of Our Lady of Fatima in our daily actions. Only when we truly conform ourselves to Our Lord and set good examples for non-Catholics can we testify that Jesus Christ, of the house of the Jewish king David, is really God, just as He is really Man.
The Kingship of Christ Jesus is, in reality, a teaching found in both Old and New Testaments of Sacred Scripture.
Pope Pius XI, in Quas Primas, declared:
“This same doctrine of the Kingship of Christ which we have found in the Old Testament is even more clearly taught and confirmed in the New. The Archangel, announcing to the Virgin that she should bear a Son, says that "the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of David his father, and he shall reign in the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.”
Only by being devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and living our lives as true Catholics, can we hope that God’s grace can eventually touch the souls of Jews and Gentiles alike, bringing them the peace of Our Lord Jesus Christ through his Catholic Church.
As former Jewish agnostic turned Catholic nun, Mother Miriam, stated:
“The worst form of anti-Semitism ever is to deny the Jewish people the knowledge of Christ.”
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[1] Eugenio Zolli, Before The Dawn, (Ignatius Press, 2008), 170.
[2] Eugenio Zolli, Before The Dawn, (Ignatius Press, 2008), 194.
[3] Ibid.
