Once again, Israel’s government finds itself in damage-control mode over an unanticipated controversy around its policies toward Christians. On Sunday morning, Israeli police officers kept the top two Catholic clergymen in the Holy Land—Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and Custos of the Holy Land Father Francesco Ielpo—from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate a small Palm Sunday Mass.
Israeli authorities, unbelievably, seemed taken by surprise by the swift international outrage around the incident. The Foreign Ministry, which employs serious diplomats who understand the importance of Israel’s relations with Christian communities, rather languidly referred questions to the police spokesperson. It took almost four hours for the police to put out a statement explaining that they were simply complying with restrictions meant to protect the public from the threat of Iranian missiles.
By then, the storm was already raging. Allies like France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni put out public condemnations, and even US envoy Mike Huckabee—a longtime friend of Israel—called the move “difficult to understand or justify.” And of course, the usual cast of anti-Zionists and figures peddling medieval tropes about an alleged Jewish threat to Christians had a field day with the story.