JERUSALEM (EJP)---The Anti-Defamation League, a world Jewish organization fighting anti-Semitism, said it was deeply disturbed by a pre-Christmas address from the top Roman Catholic cleric in which he rejected Israel as a Jewish state.

Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, a Palestinian who oversees Catholics in Cyprus, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, told reporters earlier this week: "If there’s a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against."

Sabbah said the Holy Land was universal to Christians, Jews and Muslims, and that any state must recognise those claims.

"This land cannot be excluded for anyone... The land belongs to three religions, without excluding one religion or the other," he said.

"That’s why establishing a religious state, with a Jewish or Muslim religious character, would exclude the other religion and would treat unjustly the believers of other religions."

In response to Sabbah’s declarations, ADL said: "We are deeply disturbed that Father Sabbah would politicize the holy season of Christmas by denying the Jewish people’s right to a Jewish state."

"His comments are particularly ironic considering that he represents a Catholic state and a theocratic monarchy," it added.

"Patriarch Sabbah ignores the fact that the State of Israel was established as a Jewish state out of the nationalist aspiration of the Jewish people and an international recognition of the rights of Jews to a homeland following 2,000 years of persecution."

"It is startling that Sabbah would deny a Jewish state when there are many other sovereign religious states. In contrast, all of Israel’s citizens Jewish and non Jewish enjoy the privileges of modern democracy, freely and openly practice their religions and are afforded equal rights under Israeli law," the ADL said.