The brilliant young(ish) Catholic intellectual Michael Sean Winters has alerted us in the National Catholic Reporter to a venomous streak among “progressives” of the faith. The particularly repulsive iteration of this streak appeared in The American Catholic. Here is its essence:
Is the ultimate plan of the Israeli braintrust to find a rationale for one big war to ethnically cleanse most of the rest of the Palestinians into Jordan/Egypt/Lebanon et al?
Catholics have too much collective experience themselves in the ethnic cleansing of Jews to ever speculate on their intentions in this regard. Especially when the true historical record points, as it does, to the Arab abortion of the Arab state in Palestine envisioned in the United National Partition Plan resolution of November 29, 1947. This is once again but freshly documented by Efraim Karsh in Palestine Betrayed, published last year. Another indispensable source is Benny Morris who in 1988 published The Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem and then in 2004 examined new evidence and fresh perspectives in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited.
Both Karsh and Morris examine the details of the Arab abandonment of and expulsion from Palestine. The true story is simply too intricate to be call the Palestinian nakhba, a sleazy rip-off of the Holocaust.
Winters also has an interesting postscript about Jewish sensitivity to the dispossession of Muslims in Kosovo. It’s well worth reading.