...Vatican reserve toward the State of Israel was overcome only in 1994, with Pope John Paul II's formal diplomatic recognition. His journey to Jerusalem in 2000 was very different from Pope Paul VI's insultingly brief pilgrimage to the Via Dolorosa in 1964. John Paul II's visit, lasting several days, was expressly an honoring of Jews at home in Israel, a culminating repudiation of the Christian theology that depended on Jewish exile. The establishment of the Jewish state was a triumph for Christians, too.

Remarkable as was John Paul II's achievement, and welcome as it was in Israel, what astounds is how overdue it was. Antagonism toward Jewish presence in Palestine dominated the Western imagination for 1,500 years. It should be no surprise, therefore, that contemporary suspicion of that presence, even when attached to reasonable objections to Israeli policies, shows itself with a visceral edge. Now the dark energy of this tradition has been efficiently tapped by many Muslims, even though its underlying theology is irrelevant to Islam. Any appropriation, including by Palestinians, of what has proven across centuries to be perhaps the most lethal impulse to which humans have ever succumbed must be roundly condemned.

Anti-Semitism, with its racial overtones, is a modern phenomenon. Contempt for Jews and Judaism is ancient. Such impossible threads weave invisibly through attempts to reckon with Israel's dilemma, forming a rope that trips up the well-intentioned and the unaware, even as others use it, as so often before, to fashion a noose.