Luis Argüello and his strangely different ways of talking about Gaza and Ukraine

The president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Luis Argüello, made a surprising statement yesterday about Israel and Gaza.

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Argüello made this statement through his Twitter account, with the following text:

We cannot get used to the war with genocidal features in Gaza. Nor is silence acceptable because among those who oppose it are political adversaries with whom we must never collaborate. The defense of human life and dignity knows no calculations. @PararLaGuerra

Here you can see the message in question:

As you can see, Argüello's message mentioned the Twitter account @PararLaGuerra, presumably as a sign of support. This is the account of a platform that has called for a demonstration this Saturday with a manifesto stating: "Trump and Netanyahu are a threat to world peace." Significantly, this manifesto does not contain any criticism of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists or the Iranian Islamist dictatorship that supports them.

The president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference is a very important figure within the Catholic Church in Spain, and it would be expected that he would not dedicate himself to supporting clearly biased political manifestos. The problem arises when the bias is also observed in Argüello's own account, as can be seen with a simple check.

En los siete años que lleva en Twitter, Argüello sólo ha mencionado a Israel una vez: fue el pasado 21 de mayo y lo hizo para acusar al Gobierno de Israel de causar el "drama humanitario que ocurre en Gaza". Aquí se puede leer su mensaje:

In the seven years he's been on Twitter, Argüello has only mentioned Israel once: on May 21, he accused the Israeli government of causing the "humanitarian tragedy taking place in Gaza." You can read his message here:

We must remember that Hamas is dedicated to stealing humanitarian aid that reaches Gaza, but the president of the EEC has said absolutely nothing about it. In fact, Argüello has never mentioned Hamas on his Twitter account, not even when it perpetrated its brutal terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, an attack in which entire families were murdered, including children and babies. In the entire month following that attack, Argüello only published one message about current events in Spain, specifically about the amnesty.

Let us remember that this clearly anti-Semitic attack was the largest massacre suffered by the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Regarding this savage atrocity, hundreds of jurists from 22 nations accused Hamas of crimes of genocide. The president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference didn't have time to publish even a simple message on Twitter about it, but now he does have the time and the desire to accuse the country attacked by Hamas of genocide, aligning himself with Pedro Sánchez's government, which has accused Israel of "genocide" but not Hamas, Russia, or China. Surprisingly, the president of the Spanish bishops exhibits the same bias.

In fact, in these more than three years that Putin's dictatorship has been massacring Ukrainian civilians, with constant attacks against residential buildings, schools, hospitals, temples and other civilian targets, Argüello has not mentioned Russia even once on his Twitter account. This is surprising. Argüello's posts in the first month of the Russian invasion can be read here. Three days after the start of that full-scale Russian invasion, Argüello wrote this:

Not a single mention of Ukraine (the invaded country) or Russia (the invading country). A very different way of approaching a war than we could see in his message yesterday. But there is more. In these three years of war, Argüello has only mentioned Ukraine once on his Twitter account, and he did so to publish this regrettable message:

Pay attention to the latest: "A war is being waged between geostrategic and economic powers that we don't know well and that, we sense, are manipulating us." I expected this phrase to come from some pro-Russian commentators who are always appealing to geostrategy to make Russia's perverse actions seem less odious, but I didn't expect to see a bishop writing something like that. Of course, in these three years Argüello has not once accused Russia or Putin of perpetrating a "war with genocidal features," and that is despite the fact that, unlike Israel, which uses precision weapons and warns the population before attacking, Russia systematically launches its attacks against civilian targets without any warning.

That said, I return to this phrase written yesterday by Argüello: "The defense of human life and dignity knows no calculations." It is a very apt phrase, about which I dare to ask the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference: Does that also apply to the calculations of those who use a softer standard with Russia, the aggressor nation, than with Israel, the attacked nation? Does it also apply to those who remain silent in the face of the greatest massacre suffered by the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and then demonize the country that suffered that massacre firsthand?

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Photo: Conferencia Episcopal Española.