Liz Wheeler

And we did not, as a society, collectively ask whether we were balancing the safety risks with the fundamental God-given right to worship.

So I think it's totally fine to ask why this happened, but it doesn't seem to me to be evidence of Israel being discriminatory towards Catholics.

It seems more evidence of just sort of government incompetence.

I think those things can be true.

I mean, there was obviously an element of manipulation or propaganda that was happening.

I mean, you see that on X every day.

And like I said, I think you can separate that from good faith Christians being like, hey, we don't think this is right.

I think, by the way, that this all could have been avoided had Cardinal Pizzabala and the Israeli officials just communicated about this ahead of time.

Israel would have been like, oh, sure, you're not trying to have a large gathering.

You know this is –

Incredibly important on Palm Sunday for you to go to the site where Jesus' body was laid after he died on the cross.

I mean, obviously that's going to resonate with people a little bit more deeply, I have to say, than shrapnel hitting the church on a random day.

There is something deep inside of us that is moved by that.

But they could have probably communicated about it just like they resolved it in about two minutes after all this outrage.

They probably should have just communicated this and avoided it, which is why I'm calling it an unforced error.

Because there are people who are in our own country who are obviously very divided on Israel.

You know, Israel good, Israel ally, Israel bad, Israel villain.

And it's exhausting and a lot of it's fake.

And they try to take any incidents –

If there's even a grain of truth, and the grain of truth in this is Israel and Pisa Bala should have worked this out and this could have been avoided, that's all true.