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(LifeSiteNews) — In this special episode of The John Henry Westen Show, LifeSite’s own Patrick Delaney, who has reported extensively on the Israel-Hamas war, joins me to discuss the genocide of Christians in Gaza, what Catholic prelates in the region think of the conflict, the heresy of Zionism, and more.
I began the episode by noting how the ongoing war is one of the most controversial subjects to report on because both sides of the political aisle are staunchly pro-Israel. I asked Delaney about what his research on the conflict has revealed.
Delaney emphasized that he, like many conservative Christians, had been conditioned to support Israel, but what he saw during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land drastically changed his perspective.
The image that stuck in my mind at the time was that the Israelis were prison guards, and the Palestinians were prisoners, and the prisoners were just destitute and just lived in terrible poverty. And of course, in all the Israeli areas, you know, the roads were great and everything looked very much like it does in the West.
But there were also fences everywhere, there was rubble, and what I saw was that the Israelis appeared to be, at the time, the aggressors. And it made me scratch my head like, what’s going on? Because that’s kind of the opposite of what I’ve been led to believe. And so, we see in our media this, certain portrayal… this, sort of deference to Israeli interests.
The journalist then explained that based on his experiences in the Holy Land, he wanted to see the Church’s stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict and found that the statements of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, among clerical writings, confirmed everything he saw during his pilgrimage.
I then asked Delaney about how Palestinian Catholics are affected by the conflict, noting how it’s often framed as a religious war between Jews and Muslims.
He underscored that there was a high percentage of Christians living in the Holy Land before 1948, when Israel was instituted and violently pushed Palestinians off their land, going as far as burning their villages. Delaney noted that this is explained in great detail in the book Blood Brothers by Archbishop Elias Chacour, which describes his experiences in one of these villages.
“He [Chacour] was a boy when this happened in his village. And the Israelis asked them to leave, and they just thought there going camping for a while. The kids, you know, and then the Israelis wouldn’t let their family and the other villagers back to their village. And it set in motion a court case. And even when they won the court case, the Israeli army came with bombers and leveled their village.”
I jumped in to ask Delaney to clarify how high the percentage of Palestinian Christians has dropped since Israel’s occupation.
“At least in Bethlehem in 1940, they had about 70 to 80% Christians in that population. 70 to 80%, they were the majority! And now I think it’s down to about 12%. And so, there’s been a mass exodus of Christians,” the journalist said.
I stressed how stunning this drop in the Christian population is and how this seems to fit the idea of genocide before asking Delaney what the bishops in the region have said on the subject.
“[T]he Christians in the Holy Land are very clear. And in fact, this gives us an insight into why our information is sort of skewed here in the West as well. 60 minutes… did a segment on the Christians in the Holy Land. And while they were filming it, the Christians said that the entire reason they were leaving was because of the Israeli occupation of internationally recognized Palestinian territories and the terrible conditions they have to live under.”
Watch or listen to my full interview to hear more from Patrick Delaney.
The John-Henry Westen Show is available by video on the show’s YouTube channel and right here on my LifeSite blog.
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