Palestinian Christians are condemning a move by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to collaborate with a leading pro-Israel advocacy group on an online tool that aims to define Palestinian resistance as antisemitic.
In a letter sent late last month from Kairos Palestine to the USCCB Committee’s head, Bishop Timothy Broglio, sixteen Palestinian Christian leaders representing Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant denominations and church organizations express their deep disappointment regarding the USCCB’s endorsement of the American Jewish Committee’s online resource, Translate Hate. The bishops’ Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, in partnership with the AJC, added its own annotations to the AJC’s resource, which offers glossary of “antisemitic terms, phrases, conspiracies, cartoons, themes, and memes” and titled it, Translate Hate: The Catholic Edition.
The Kairos Palestine letter charges the bishops’ document was “adopted without any form of consultation with Palestinian Christians, rendering us invisible and nonexistent in a discourse that directly impacts our lives and communities.”
It comes, they write, “at a time of immense suffering for our people, as tens of thousands are being killed, starved, and displaced under Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem—actions condemned by leading international and Israeli human rights organizations.”
