A new headline in the Jerusalem Post reads: “Vatican synod calls for end to Israel’s ‘occupation’: At conference on Christians in the Middle East, US Melkite archbishop says: ‘There is no longer a chosen people.’” The New York Times headline reads: “Bishops at Meeting Urge Israel to End Its Occupation of Palestinian Territories.” The Times reported: “In a final communiqué at the end of a two-week-long meeting at the Vatican on the plight of Christians in the Middle East, the bishops also urged Israel not to use the Bible ‘to wrongly justify injustices,’ apparently referring to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But in a news conference Saturday, the archbishop in charge of the committee that drafted the communiqué, Cyrille Salim Bustros, appeared to go further, saying the Bible did not justify a Jewish presence in Israel. ‘The concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians,” he said. “Sacred scripture should not be used to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestine.’”
