In recent weeks, Palestinians in the West Bank have experienced a massive increase in violent attacks by armed Israeli settlers, who are driving them off their land and destroying houses and crops in an effort to displace them and seize their lands. There is clear Israeli government support for these “invasions.”
United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, who supports Israeli settlements, called the attacks on the Palestinians a “horrific act of terror” and called the settlers “Israeli terrorists.”
In the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV has called for an end “to the repeated acts of violence against the Palestinian population of the West Bank.” He urged the international community “to ensure that progress is made toward a two-state solution, for a just and lasting peace.”
The recent attacks and land grabbing are furthering Israel’s expansion and takeover of the entire West Bank. Israel’s plan to build 3,400 homes on a strategic tract of land between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement will effectively cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the Palestinian territories, making a viable, independent Palestinian state almost impossible.
A broad coalition of 21 countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia and Japan, has fiercely rejected Israel’s move. The European Union and individual nations are planning to impose strict industry sanctions on Israel if the construction of settlements continues. Bidders on the construction project will be included in the sanctions, and the individuals involved will face visa restrictions in the EU.
This land grabbing and housing construction are Israel’s tactics to block any possibility of a “two-state solution,” which Pope Leo and 142 nations strongly support, following a vote at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025. Some nations, such as France, Spain, Ireland, Norway and Belgium, have even formally recognized Palestine as a sovereign state.
The pope’s position is clear and definitive: “Israel and Palestine” must make peace and one day be able to “live side by side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.”
The use of force extends far beyond the attacks on West Bank Palestinians. Continuous Israeli rocket strikes in another Palestinian territory, Gaza, have claimed additional lives since the October 2025 ceasefire agreement.
Since the start of the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, UN Women, the UN Children’s Fund and the Gaza Ministry of Health have said over 38,000 women and girls and over 21,000 children have been killed. Many more are buried under bombed apartment blocks, yet to be found. Overall, women and children — 70 percent — make up the total recorded casualties in Gaza.
In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that at least 1,122 Palestinians had been killed, including at least 246 children, since the start of the conflict.
The root of this violence today lies in Europe, where antisemitism has deep roots in the long history of Christian theological anti-Judaism, with the accusation that the Jewish people were collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth at its core. For nearly two millennia, this narrative was used by various Christian figures and institutions to justify the marginalization, persecution and displacement of Jewish communities across Europe.
Taking the blame
Adolf Hitler’s hatred for Jews was rooted in a fanatical, race-based ideology that blamed them for all of Germany’s historical, social and economic failures. That, in turn, had roots in social injustice and inequality.
Hitler’s antisemitism came from centuries of existing European prejudices against Jewish people. Hitler, an Austrian, weaponized this historical bias to climb the political ladder in Germany, took power as chancellor and began to demonize Jews, leading to his “Final Solution”: the extermination of all Jewish people in what is now known as the Holocaust.
He ordered the murder of more than 6 million Jewish people — men, women and children — in gas chambers. That horrific genocide accelerated the migration of European Jews to Palestine, which had begun in 1882 in Eastern Europe, especially Russia, amid persecution of Jewish communities there.
The mass migration of Jewish people to Palestine after World War II created conflict with Palestinians, and a civil war broke out with the Arab Palestinians on Nov. 29, 1947.
Britain, which controlled Palestine after the war, eventually gave up its mandate and left Palestine. The UN General Assembly devised a partition plan through Resolution 181 that allocated about 55 percent of the territory to the proposed Jewish state and 42 percent to the Palestinian Arab state. This was the first “two-state solution.”
At that time, the Jews in Palestine, mostly migrants, made up about 33 percent of the population and owned roughly 7 percent of the land. David Ben-Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency in Palestine, later read a declaration establishing the State of Israel as the conflict continued.
The partition deal gave Israel a green light to occupy more of Palestine. World powers recognized the new Jewish state. Thousands of Palestinians lost their lands and homes and were displaced and forced to flee to Lebanon.
Some years later, Arab states, mostly Egypt and Syria, attacked Israel, but Israel won the Six-Day War. Israel has occupied the West Bank since June 1967 and maintained control over Gaza for decades afterward.
Palestinian militants, led by Hamas, attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, leading to the near-total destruction of Gaza. The ongoing bombings there are killing Palestinian civilians almost daily despite the ceasefire.
Israel is now a major power in the region, backed by U.S. financial and military aid and by influential pro-Israel advocacy groups in Washington.
Now, we see how history has tragically reversed itself. On Sept. 16, 2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry issued its declaration that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir recently advocated for killing 30 to 40 people in Gaza every night, saying: “There are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”
This statement is something a Nazi in power would say about Jews decades ago.
Additionally, Israel has jailed 9,200 Palestinians in detention centers described as “torture camps” by an Israeli nongovernmental organization. The group is documenting routine severe physical and psychological violence, starvation, sexual assault and medical neglect against Palestinians. At least 94 Palestinians have died in Israeli custody under such conditions, it says.
The number of Palestinian deaths from Israel’s retaliatory offensive over the Oct. 7 attacks has exceeded 74,000 across the Palestinian territories. Over 1,090 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli security forces or settlers.
These include small children, including a 6-year-old killed while sheltering in a burnt-out car; aid workers saving people; and day care workers helping children.
There has been no mercy and no accountability by the Israeli military. The UN reports that about 200,000 buildings have been severely damaged or demolished.
History has reversed itself. In the past, Jewish people were victims of genocide, displacement, torture and extermination. Now, Israel is doing the same to the Palestinians.
Note: Any original information, stories, or news articles posted on this site that are authored by the Preda Foundation and Father Shay Cullen may be shared, copied, or reproduced without further permission, in support of truth, freedom of expression, and the public’s right to know.
LiCAS News was granted permission to republish and adapt this article by Father Shay Cullen in the spirit of truth-telling and the pursuit of justice.
Irish missionary Father Shay Cullen, SSC, founded the Preda Foundation in Olongapo City in 1974 to promote human rights and the rights of children, especially victims of sexual abuse.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of LiCAS News.
