Pressure is building on King Charles III to repudiate Kairos II, a theological and political document condemning Israelis as “settlers” in the ancient Jewish homeland. As the Church of England’s supreme governor, the sovereign’s best reason for rejecting the missive may be practical: It relies on the same logic as Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands.
Officially titled “A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide,” Kairos II calls Israel a “colonial, settler, and exclusionary entity” and rejects Jerusalem’s “claim of ‘self-defense.’” It asks, “How can a colonizer defend itself against those it has colonized and expelled?”
The language echoes Argentine rhetoric about the Falklands, which are built on feelings rather than facts. That passion spilled over on Wednesday at the World Cup. Following a victory over England to reach the finals, Argentina’s team unfurled a banner reading “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” meaning the Falklands are Argentine.
The slogan invoked the 1982 Falklands War when Buenos Aires invaded the islands. British forces expelled them, exercising a right to self-defense as the territory’s first inhabitants. But Argentina calls the U.K. colonizers, ignoring the fact that they held the original title to the land and Buenos Aires never has.
Argentina’s foreign minister, Pablo Quirno, called Falklanders “artificially implanted” and the British presence “an illegitimate occupation” in an op-ed on Sunday in La Nación. In April, President Javier Milei said on ArgenData that his country was doing “everything humanly possible” to see “the entire territory return to the hands of Argentina.”
The word “return” is deceptive. Just as Palestine never existed as a country, Buenos Aires never governed the South Atlantic islands. No humans lived there when a British captain, John Strong, planted the Union Jack in 1690. Argentina obtained independence from Spain only in 1816, and its lone attempt to settle there — for a penal colony in 1832 — failed.
Buenos Aires seeks to start history in 1982 just as Kairos II ignores thousands of years prior to the founding of modern Israel in 1948. The missive calls Palestinians the “indigenous people of this land” and makes a false equivalence to South Africa’s apartheid, although Arab Israelis serve in all levels of their country’s government.
Read it all in the New York Sun