What can humanity expect after the attack on Israel?

Newsroom (18/10/2023 09:00, Gaudium Press) Last week was marked by the barbarity of the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, causing more than a thousand deaths, and then by the Jewish response with attacks in Lebanon and Syria, indicating the possibility of a conflict of much greater proportions.

As the details of the Hamas attack become known, the viewer never ceases to be amazed by the cruelty: children beheaded, grenades thrown into civilian shelters, families searched and massacred in their homes. There are even reports that the order was to kill as many civilians as possible: a cruelty with satanic overtones, reminiscent of the barbaric acts of the communists in 1936 in Spain, Pol Pot in Cambodia and others of the same kind.

In recent statements, the Vatican’s Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, acknowledged Israel’s right to defend itself, but also recalled that self-defence requires proportionality, especially when civilians are involved. In other words, Israel’s response cannot be something like a nuclear bomb, however much some would like it to be. However, the cruelty of the Hamas attack seems designed precisely to generate a brutal response, which to many may seem disproportionate, like the reality of the transfer of a million civilians from northern to southern Gaza, while the Israeli ground operation is ongoing.

The observer wonders: What were Hamas leaders thinking? That it would not trigger an equally brutal response from Israel with the consequent indignation of many sectors of world public opinion? It is very difficult that they did not think so. So one wonders if what they wanted was exactly what is happening, that is, the rekindling of a conflict with global repercussions, with conflicting pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli manifestations practically everywhere in the world, positions that are likely to intensify in animosity as the Israeli offensive progresses.

And from there, the fragmentation of the world into two large blocs – veiled or declared – pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli, with the particularity that in several pro-Israeli countries we are already seeing large demonstrations in favour of Palestine. And it’s only natural, because anyone who thinks of the millions of Muslim inhabitants in countries like France, Germany, England or Spain, would never imagine that they have any sympathy for Israel.

In other words, what happened in a very small area of the globe (exactly where Christ lived, died and rose again), in one week, has already engulfed the entire Earth, and is one step away from a conflict of apocalyptic proportions – as was becoming feasible with the war in Ukraine – but with the difference that the pro-Israel side does not have everyone’s support, since a significant part of public opinion looks favourably on the Palestinian cause, unlike the almost compact support that exists for the Ukrainian cause.

Some analysts even wonder whether the US and the other Western powers – already involved in supporting Ukraine – would be in a position to offer effective support to Israel, which is fighting not just Hamas or Hezbollah, but a broad unified Muslim bloc. And some of them are already saying no.

For this reason, it would be in Israel’s (and the West’s) interest to avoid at all costs the formation of such a bloc, which could happen if its intervention in Gaza acquired the characteristics of a disproportionate response, with the appearance of racial or religious hatred, serving as a justification for large-scale terrorism precisely within the Western powers. We will see how this unfolds.

In the midst of this panorama, what happened last 12 October at the Shrine of Fatima, during the vigil commemorating the Miracle of the Sun on 13 October 1917, is very significant: more than 180,000 pilgrims gathered at the shrine to pray for peace in Ukraine and the Holy Land. In other words, at a time of great tension, the Catholic world remembers Our Lady of Fatima and, therefore, the message of Fatima…

It is understandable.

Our Lady, in the Cova da Iria, spoke of wars, of persecution of the Church, of the Holy Father. And when a large-scale conflict arises, the Catholic world remembers Fatima.

In fact, we people of faith have no choice but to turn to Our Lady for protection, knowing that this is the most important thing, because it is She who governs history with her grace, She is the administrator of divine grace and it is grace that directs history.

Grace built the greatest civilisation of all time, which is not Roman, but Western and Christian civilisation. Grace prevented this civilisation from collapsing with Charles Martel at Poitiers, at Navas de Tolosa, at Lepanto and at so many other times.

The action of Our Lady’s grace is so strong that even at Fatima She announced her triumph: “In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph”.

It will not be the triumph of the West’s moral decadence, but her triumph. This will infallibly happen, even if in order to reach that moment we have to go through the reparative and purifying chastisements that she also announced at Fatima.

For our part, we have no choice but to cling to Our Lady.

By Saúl Castiblanco

Compiled by Sandra Chisholm