Caritas Internationalis

Activities

• Caritas Internationalis consists of over 160 Catholic organizations in seven regions  “working in humanitarian emergencies and international development.”
• Headquartered in Rome, with offices in Geneva and New York, Caritas Internationalis serves as an umbrella organization that coordinates and supports member activities, provides a platform for interaction between the Vatican and member organizations, but allows individual Caritas members to implement activities in their areas of interest and influence.
• Caritas has provided funding to a number of highly biased and politicized NGOs active in the Palestinian-Israel conflict including Breaking the Silence, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Yesh Din, Who Profits. (See table below for further funding information.)

Political Advocacy

• In March 2022, Caritas Jerusalem held an “awareness meeting” with Society of St. Yves on “The legal system that applies in the West Bank areas, especially the areas classified as C.”
  • According to Arabic language media, in 2011, Raed Halabi, Society of St. Yves’ “head of the advocacy department,” was convicted and sentenced to 26-months in prison for “organizational activity in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine” (PFLP) – a designated terrorist organization in the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. Electronic Intifada reported that in 2004, Halabi was sentenced to two-years in prison.  In May 2017, Society of St. Yves reported that “the Israeli authorities arrested St. Yves’ advocacy and field officer, Mr. Raed Halabi.”
• In October 2021, Israeli officials banned a cultural festival hosted by Secours Catholique-Caritas France due to the event being held “with sponsorship and funding of the Palestinian Authority.”
• In May 2018, Caritas Jerusalem released a statement condemning the “recent escalation of violence in Gaza” and “support[ing] the right to non-violence protest, as a fundamental right of civilians.” The statement ignored the violent nature of the protests, which included Molotov cocktails, arson, and attempts to breach the border fence with Israel.
• In July 2017, Sister Bridget Tighe, Executive Director of Caritas Jerusalem, was featured in a documentary produced by Trocaire (Ireland) titled “This is Palestine,” on “the impact of ongoing conflict and military occupation on the people who live there.” The documentary makes numerous false and biased claims regarding Palestinian access to water, as well as ignoring the context of terrorism against Israelis.
• In June 2017, Caritas-Jerusalem was a signatory to an “Open Letter” from the National Coalition of Christian Organizations in Palestine to the World Council of Churches, accusing Israel of “Discrimination and inequality, military occupation and systematic oppression.” The letter calls upon the WCC to “recognize Israel as an apartheid state,” and “unequivocally condemn the Balfour declaration as unjust, and that you demand from the UK that it asks forgiveness from the Palestinian people and compensates for the losses” (emphasis added). The letter also defends “our right and duty to resist the occupation creatively and nonviolently,” through “economic measures that pressure Israel to stop the occupation…in response to Israel’s war on BDS. We ask that you intensity those measures.”
• The organization formally supports the annual International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
  • In 2016, Fr. Raed Abusahlia, then General Director of Caritas Jerusalem, stated that they “are witnesses to these humanitarian violations” and purported that “Settlements are in violation of international law” and in Gaza “human rights violations have become the norm.”
  • In 2015, Abusahlia and Caritas Jerusalem “called upon the international community to intervene and end the ongoing worsening situation that is taking lives day in and day out” including the  “collective punishment of the Palestinians” and the “violations of…basic human rights.”
  • In 2014, Abusahlia alleged that “Since 1948, we Palestinians have experienced dispossession and exile. Our diaspora counts today more than 9 million people all over the world.” He further claimed that “Checkpoints, the Separation wall, lack of access to farmlands and violations are part of our daily life…Separation, segregation, violation, demolition, animosity and disrespect for basic human rights are all on the rise.”
• In 2015, Caritas attempted to raise $50,000 to buy gifts for Christian families who live in “the largest open-air prison in the world.”
• In its 2014 Annual Report, Caritas Internationalis described Pope Francis’s visit to Bethlehem where he “reflected at the wall built by Israel to separate Jews from Palestinians…” This distorts the security rationale for the barrier, which is to prevent suicide bombers and other attacks against civilians. (For example, in November 2002 a suicide bomber from Bethlehem blew up a Jerusalem city bus filled with school children, killing 11 passengers.)
• During the 2014 Gaza conflict, then Caritas Internationalis President Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga stated that Palestinians in Gaza “see their children slaughtered, their neighbourhoods razed to the ground and all hopes for a future of peace torn to shreds,” and called for “the lifting of the blockade on Gaza to allow Gazans to protect their lives and livelihoods and so they can have a dignified life.” Here and in other publications, Caritas officials fail to mention the many rocket and other attacks on Israeli civilians emanating from Hamas-controlled Gaza.
• In 2011, the General Secretary of Caritas Jerusalem called for the UN to “Recognise Palestine as step towards peace.”
• Following the 2012 Gaza conflict, Caritas Jerusalem’s Communications Officer Harout Bedrossian wrote an article titled “Post-war Gaza: What have we learned?” suggesting that the war was due to the fact that Israel wanted to use “force” to compel the Palestinians to “give up their rights to the land.”

Caritas Switzerland

• In 2017, total income was CHF 108.4 million; total expenses were CHF 106.7 million.
  • 13.9% of its income came from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).
• As of September 13, 2018, Caritas Switzerland’s page lists one project in “Palestine/West Bank.”
  • Caritas Switzerland’s project titled “Strengthening sustainability of psychosocial healthcare” (2017-2020; CHF 443,598) aimed to “Contribute to the strengthening and increased sustainability of mental and psychosocial health services provided to the Palestinian population in the West Bank.”
  • According to the project description, “there has been a marked increase in mental health and psychosocial disorders” due to the “Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, which is characterized by ongoing blockades, arrests, human rights abuses, repeated military aggressions, illegal settlement building, settler violence, the ongoing construction of the Separation Wall, home destructions, and many other injustices, all having a devastating effect on the physical, psychosocial and mental health of Palestinians.”

Key Members

• Catholic Agency for Overseas Development – CAFOD (Caritas U.K.)
  • While CAFOD has “condemn[ed] violence against civilians by all sides,” it places sole responsibility for the conflict on Israel, omitting Palestinian terror, rejectionism, and legitimate Israeli security concerns. CAFOD states that “the only way out of the cycle of violence is to address the root causes of the conflict: there needs to be an end to the occupation of Palestinian territory, to the building of illegal settlements and to the closure of Gaza.”
  • In April 2021, CAFOD signed a joint statement welcoming the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch a formal investigation into alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the “State of Palestine.” The statement condemned the UK’s opposition to the ICC investigation, stating that “The investigation is the first genuine hope that alleged perpetrators of the most serious crimes will be held to account for their actions…”
  • In January 2017, as a member of the church umbrella organization CIDSE’s Palestine-Israel Working Group, released a document titled “No Place Like Home: A Reader On The Forced Internal Displacement Of Palestinians In The Occupied Palestinian Territory And Israel,” meant “to highlight the causes and impacts of displacement, explain the basic international legal principles relating to displacement and place this within the context of the European Union’s response.”
  • Cordaid (Caritas Netherlands)
    • Joined a coalition of 22 European NGOs in producing a report titled “Trading Away Peace: How Europe Helps Sustain Illegal Israeli Settlements.” The report repeats the BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) agenda, calling on the EU and national governments to wage political warfare through various forms of economic sanctions on Israel.
    • At a 2011 panel at the Dutch Parliament, then Cordaid Director René Grotenhuis argued that BDS is a defensible tactic because “it is important that people in Palestine look for ways to resist occupation, and it is a nonviolent way to do so.”
    • Co-published a report (December 2009) titled “Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more excuses.” The report perpetuates the unsupported legal claim that Gaza remains occupied and the false allegation of “collective punishment” in order to “prove” their central thesis: “primary responsibility [for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza] lies with Israel.”
• Trocaire (Caritas Ireland)
  • In September 2021, Trocaire participated in a campaign titled “Don’t Buy into Occupation Coalition.” As part of the campaign, the coalition of NGOs published a report alleging to “investigate and expose the financial relationships between businesses involved in the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and European Financial Institutions (FIs).” The report called for European governments to “prohibit the import of illegal settlement products and services from entering European markets, and ban trade with and economic support for illegal Israeli settlements.”
  • In May 2021, Trocaire called for the government of Ireland to “become the first EU country to ban trade with illegal Israeli settlements by enacting the Occupied Territories Bill.” Trocaire also called for the government to “Use its voice within the European Union to call for Brussels to support measures to review and downgrade its economic, cultural, military and diplomatic relationships with Israel until the occupation fully ends.”
  • In March 2021, Trocaire was a signatory on a joint statement to the UN Human Rights Council alleging that “Palestinians continue to experience an ongoing-Nakba – an ongoing reality of Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid.” According to the statement, “By systematically designing and implementing policies of displacement and dispossession tailored to forcibly transfer Palestinians, replacing them with Israeli settlers, to maintain Israel’s settler-colonial enterprise and apartheid regime, Israel continues to violate Palestinian rights, including the Palestinian inalienable right to self-determination, and right of return; while continuing to enjoy an unlawful culture of impunity.”
• Development and Peace/Développement et Paix (Caritas Canada)
  • Supported the 2014 production of the documentary Open Bethlehem that claims Bethlehem is an “imprisoned” town.
  • Supports the Society of St. Yves to “address human rights violations suffered by Palestinians, particularly those who have had been displaced from their land for the construction of a separation wall between Israel and the Palestinian Territories.”
    • Michel Sabbah, founder of Society of St. Yves, authored (together with Naim Ateek of Sabeel and Atallah Hanna) the 2009 Kairos Palestine document, which characterizes terrorist acts of “armed resistance” as “Palestinian legal resistance,” denies the Jewish historical connection to Israel in theological terms, calls to mobilize churches worldwide in the call for BDS, and compares Israel with the South African apartheid regime.
  • Member of KAIROS Canada.
    • In January 2017, KAIROS published an article about the “50th year of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, an occupation that causes daily hardship, exacerbates violence, and has also created huge inequities between people who literally live side by side.”
    • In 2009, Kairos Canada lost Canadian government overseas project funding. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney reportedly said that the “Church-based group lost its federal funding because of its position on the Middle East, more particular because of its anti-Israel stand.”
• Secours Catholique (Caritas France)
  • Member of the French NGO Platform for Palestine.
  • Supports the “Made in Illegality” campaign in France, which calls upon France to end its economic relations with Israeli settlements. The campaign’s demands include banning French import of all “settlement products,” discouraging French companies “from investing in settlements,” and preparing information for travelers “to ensure that they avoid supporting companies and tourist sites that are located in the settlements.”
  • In 2013, published “The Challenge of Peace” (Le Défi de la Paix) jointly with three other French NGOs that calls on France and the EU to reduce military trade with Israel, and to condition the Israel-EU Association agreement. The publication advocates only one perspective in this conflict and uses partisan phrasing and language in its descriptions.