The RC church has a total and "essential" fetish with Israel as the "Holy Land", with the Jewish people as "the Chosen people", and with the Virgin Mary, in no particular order. The Old Testament is used as source for stories regarding Christian morality. When an Old Testament prophet says he speaks with the voice of God, that's proof enough for the Catholic Church that what is said is divinely inspired. The Catholic Church reads through the whole thing, the taking of "The Promised Land", without a voice of dissent and in fact as a positive thing just because the Old Testament says that the entire conquest, each and every last act of it, was divinely ordered.
Gullible - yah, you could say that.
Having recently listened through several such sermons (after a pleasantly long hiatus) I can say flat out that the level of obliviousness couldn't get higher. It isn't a studied or conscious obliviousness, it's an obliviousness culturally imprinted over hundreds of years and personally imprinted over a lifetime of uncritical repetition, reinforced by a closed community dedicated 100% to that repetition. It takes a considerable shock and considerable recuperation time to break such a shell.
Palestinians, esp mostly Islamic Palestinians, don't enter that picture except as walk-ons, a backdrop of Philistines, Samaritans, Pagans.
There's self-interest:
"Some one-third of the land is Vatican-owned, with a monastery surrounded by pines, playground and vineyard that monks have used to make wine since 1882. Nearby is a convent where nuns run a school for 600 Palestinian students. Some 60 families own the rest, a series of terraced olive and apricot orchards plunging into the valley. Residents go there to relax, barbecue and pray.
If the route goes as planned, the monastery and orchards will be on Israel’s side of the barrier. The convent and school will be on the Palestinian side, surrounded by high concrete walls, lawyers said."
I hate to be so cynical, but my thinking is that any agreement the Vatican comes to with Israel will be more in line with extending the wall to enclose the convent and school as well, so the entirety of the Vatican owned land is annexed to Israel. The school will then serve Israeli students.
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