Pope Francis, Hezbollah, Argentina and the Proportional Response to Acts of War| National Catholic Register
On his return flight from Belgium on Sunday, Pope Francis was asked specifically about the Israeli bombing raid that killed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah. The Holy Father’s answer was of particular interest, given the Argentinian dimension...
Syndicated News 
On his return flight from Belgium on Sunday, Pope Francis was asked specifically about the Israeli bombing raid that killed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah. The Holy Father’s answer was of particular interest, given the Argentinian dimension of Hezbollah’s terrorist activity against Jews.
“We read this morning that 900-kilogram bombs were used for the targeted assassination of Nasrallah,” said Courtney Walsh of Fox. “There are more than a thousand displaced, many dead. Do you think that Israel has perhaps gone too far?”
“Defense must always be proportionate to the attack,” the Holy Father replied. “When there is something disproportionate, we see a dominating tendency that goes beyond morality. When a country with its forces does these things — whatever country — does these things in such a superlative way, they are immoral actions.”
The usual caveat is in order. When Pope Francis speaks off the cuff aboard a flight, precision does not rule the day. For example, he said “war is immoral” in that same reply. That should not be taken as an abrogation of Paragraph 2309 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which teaches about a “just war.” The Catechism is not amended on the fly, as it were.
What is a proportionate response to Nasrallah’s 32-year reign atop Hezbollah? The issue has particular relevance in Buenos Aires.
In July 1994, when Pope Francis was an auxiliary bishop in Buenos Aires, an explosive-rigged vehicle was driven into the building of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), a Jewish community center. The attack, which killed 85 people, was the deadliest terror attack in Argentinian history. It remains a painful wound for Argentina and its Jewish community, the largest in Latin America. This past July, commemorations of the 30th anniversary were held.
“Until the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th last year, the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center had been the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust,” said U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in a statement for the occasion.
The 1994 AMIA bombing followed an attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, in which 22 people were killed.
Nasrallah began his leadership of Hezbollah with the terror attacks on Jews in Argentina. In 2006, the country’s prosecutors charged top Iranian officials and members of Iran-backed Hezbollah with both bombings.
At the commemorations this past July, the new president of Argentina, Javier Milei, promised to take action on the attacks. Those charged in Iran and Hezbollah have never been arrested or faced trial. Milei raised the possibility of trying them in absentia. Such a trial, if carried out, might obtain a conviction and impose a sentence, but the perpetrators would remain free abroad.
Early in his pontificate, Pope Francis himself sent a message to the 20th anniversary commemorations.
“My prayers for all the victims are accompanied today by my call for justice. Justice must be done!” the Holy Father said in 2014.
While Pope Francis suggested — but did not say explicitly — on the plane that Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah were “immoral actions,” the reaction of the Argentinian government was quite different.
Milei, who is a strong supporter of Israel, reposted on X a message from a member of his council of economic advisers, David Epstein:
“Israel eliminated one of the greatest contemporary murderers. Responsible, among others, for the cowardly attacks in #ARG. Today the world is a little freer.”
The killing of Hezbollah leadership raises the question of what justice and a proportionate response would be.
Hezbollah is a nonstate actor backed by a rogue terror-supporting regime in Iran. Charges brought in Argentina for the mass killing of Jews cannot be enforced upon them abroad; there is no extradition of Hezbollah terror operatives. Does that mean that justice must be abandoned? Does the insistence that justice must be done remain only words without effect?
The bombing of the Israeli embassy in 1992 was arguably an act of war. Is therefore a war response appropriate from Israel against Hezbollah? The Christian tradition on just war does not readily take account of nonstate actors, like the Iranian terror proxies in Gaza and Lebanon. How then to apply it in such cases?
If one state, Iran, uses a proxy to massacre the citizens of another state, Israel, at its embassy, does it follow that Israel can respond in just-war terms? Or do terror states like Iran get effective immunity because they act through shadowy terror groups?
Regarding proportionality, aboard the plane, the Holy Father did not have time for a comprehensive response. By definition, a “disproportionate” act is either insufficient or excessive. It is possible for a state — Israel, in this case — to have an insufficient response. Proportionality works both ways.
Proportionality in war does not mean a rough equivalence in casualties or property damage. War goals generally include the removal of a future threat; hence a proportionate response may include the incapacitation of enemy forces. That is what Israel aims to do in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since last October. Is that aim just, or disproportionate in itself? Pope Francis did not address that specific question on the plane.
Hezbollah selected in the early 1990s the Jews of Argentina to be among its first targets. Argentinians, including Pope Francis, have demanded justice ever since then.
Was Nasrallah’s assassination the only justice that was possible, or is justice not possible in the case of killing Jews in Buenos Aires? Those complex questions were raised in the airborne press conference, but not resolved.
