Beer Festival Highlights Accomplishments of Palestinian Town

Oct. 6, 2009

TAYBEH - Not everything that shimmers in this West Bank town is golden. In fact, at Oktoberfest one of the brews is amber and another is as dark as Guinness, providing a spectrum of choice for consumers of the only micro-brew beer in the Middle East.

The Taybeh Brewing Company proudly hosted its fifth annual Oktoberfest last weekend. In addition to Taybeh beer on draught, Middle Eastern food, dancing and specialty goods were displayed in a fest

ive celebration of Palestinian culture.

Taybeh, the only 100-percent Christian town in Palestinian territory located about 5 miles from Ramallah, is surrounded by 16 Muslim villages. The population was 12,000 just a decade ago, but has dropped to 2,000. Mayor David Khoury blames Israel’s military presence for the town’s economic hardships, but his town has become an example of producing a good thing in a difficult situation. Khoury and his brother Nadim, the brewery’s founder, after living in Boston for 30 years, returned to their hometown of Taybeh to invest in the economy, create jobs and forge a reputation that Palestine as a nation can create excellent products. Nadim founded the brewery in 1995 after the Oslo Accords were signed.

“Nadim thought, ‘If we have a country, we’d make excellent products,’” explained Maria Khoury, David’s wife. “After the first uprising (in the 1990s), the image was very bad. We came here to change the image.”

Taybeh has been successful despite a second intifada beginning in 2000 that severely curtailed i

ts export ability. The company sold more than 150,000 gallons last year and in 1998 the beer became the first Palestinian product to be produced in Germany under the Taybeh license. It is made from the German formula that uses no preservatives or additives, rendering the beer 100 percent natural with malts from Belgium, hops from Bavaria and yeast from the United Kingdom. Taybeh produces four brews: golden, light and dark and just last year unveiled a nonalcoholic version, a beverage more marketable to the town’s Muslim neighbors.

But because of its natural ingredients and lack of preservatives the beer spoils quickly and long delays at Israeli checkpoints threaten to ruin kegs-full of beer as Taybeh trucks wait to pass into Israel. This challenge to get the beer from Taybeh to Jerusalem--a mere 20 miles away--prompted a new strategy: If the beer can’t get out, the town will bring the outsiders to them. Thus Oktoberfest was born.

“We are trying to find creative ways to boost the economy,” Maria, who has voluntarily taken on promotion for the beer and the town itself, said. “We can’t afford to go three hours to (the) checkpoint and other businesses cannot afford that. So we entice people to come here. The whole theme behind Oktobebrfest is to promote local products. Its a nonviolent way to resist harsh conditions.”

Each year the festival attracts thousands of people, including Palestinians, foreigners and a few Israeli citizens who defy the official warning posted outside the town prohibiting their entrance under Israeli law. The festival also features homegrown products such as honey, olive oil and embroidery. Maria Khoury said some local merchants sell more in these two days than they do the entire year.

Oktoberfest has remained largely unopposed by surrounding Islamic villages and a rising fanaticism in the region, Maria said. But this year the mayor’s car was firebombed during a meeting at the municipality. Maria Khoury said authorities have no idea who did it and whether it was a personal attack against the mayor or related to the beer festival. David Khoury was lightly injured. Relations have been more tense since three years ago when 14 Christian houses were burned down and a Muslim woman was killed in an “honor killing” after residents of the neighboring Muslim town accused a Christian in Taybeh of having an affair with the woman.

Called Ofra in the Old Testament and later Ephraim in John 11:54, the town has been occupied by Christian Arabs for hundreds of years, Khoury said. His own family claims about 12 generations there. The village has kept its unique identity as Christian for 2,000 years. Khoury wants to keep it that way and to improve life for its citizens.

Palestinian Leader Renews Vow to Destroy Israel

By Nicole Jansezian

Article originally published here.

The Palestinian party that the West considers moderate reaffirmed its commitment to a violent struggle against Israel and called for the removal of all Jews from Jerusalem.

It also refused to renew the peace process until all Palestinian prisoners are released form Israeli jails - language that paves the path for another round of violence in the region.

Reiterating its theme of armed struggle, the Fatah platform states: “We believe that all forms of resistance are a legitimate right of the peoples of territories in the face of occupation.”

“The struggle stems from the Palestinian people’s right to oppose the occupation and the settlements, the expulsion and the racist discrimination – and this right is a right guaranteed by international law,” the official wording reads.

In a one-man race, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was re-elected as head of Fatah for another five-year term.

“Although we have chosen peace we reserve the right to return to armed resistance,” Abbas said, setting the tone of the assembly in his keynote address.

The Fatah General Assembly's approval of the radical language could lead to another violent Palestinian uprising against Israel, said Avi Dichter, Israel’s former internal security chief. “Fatah’s statements clear the way to what may eventually be the third intifada,” he said. “Once you say that the fight will go on by all means necessary, anyone in their right mind understands that spells an armed conflict.”

The Palestinian party, which the Obama administration and other Western nations cited as a peace partner for Israel, held its first general assembly in more than 20 years with about 2,260 delegates in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Israel allowed participants from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and the United States to travel to the West Bank while Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza, prevented Fatah members there from leaving the strip.

The assembly, which was scantly reported in mainstream media outlets, ended late last week with militant statements and even a call from one member for the party to forge a strategic alliance with Iran. Fatah ratified a political platform that includes the Palestinians’ right “to resist occupation in all forms;” the continuation of the armed struggle until all Palestinian refugees are repatriated inside Israel; refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; and a call for Palestinian sovereignty over Jerusalem, according to the Arabic language Al Quds newspaper.

“Fatah will continue to sacrifice victims until Jerusalem will be returned [to the Palestinians], clean of settlements and settlers,” language used to refer to Israelis, the platform states. “Fatah is still a liberation movement, and since we have not yet achieved our goals, we have popular resistance,” said Fatah Central Committee member At-Tayyib Abdul-Rahim.

In another step backward for peace, the party endorsed the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as Fatah’s official armed wing despite previous agreements with Israel and the U.S. to dismantle the faction.

“The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are the jewel in Fatah's crown,” said Fahmi Al-Za'arir, a Fatah spokesman. “We must strengthen their status . . . [and] maintain them in a state of alert.”

Tom Gross, an expert on Middle East affairs, said that, instead of proving itself the “responsible Palestinian party that could form an independent Palestinian state that would live in peace with Israel, the extremely hard-line pronouncements and resolutions Fatah adopted during the past week show that it still has not made the transition from a guerrilla movement in exile bent on destroying Israel to a political party charged with establishing Palestinian self-rule.”

The Bethlehem rhetoric ostensibly buries the chance for peace in the near future. Israeli leaders were frustrated with Fatah’s resolutions to support an armed struggle.

“If its program is to be believed, Fatah is just as extremist as Hamas, and that’s worrying because it damages the prospects of reaching a compromise with the leadership of the Palestinian Authority,” said Israel’s Information Minister Yuli Edelstein. “We must not act as if we haven’t heard. We must emerge from the circle of illusions that these are moderates who want peace.”

Caroline Glick, a right-wing columnist for The Jerusalem Post, had harsh language for the West, particularly the White House.

“A central pillar of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy paradigm was shattered at the Fatah conference in Bethlehem — but don't expect the White House to notice,” she writes in her column Friday. “Fatah was supposed to be the poster child for moderate terrorists . . . It was supposed to be the group that proved the central contention of the Obama White House's strategy for dealing with terror, namely, that all terrorists want is to be appeased.”

“But over the past week in Bethlehem, Fatah's leaders said they will not be appeased,” Glick writes. “They remain an implacable terror group devoted to the physical annihilation of Israel."

Rep. Hoyer: Obama Israel Stance Misperceived

By Nicole Jansezian

Aug. 14, 2009

Article originally printed here.

JERUSALEM - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said President Barack Obama’s forceful stance on stopping construction in Israeli neighborhoods and settlements has been “blown out of proportion” and misperceived both by Israelis and American supporters of the Jewish state.

“The Obama administration shares ... strong, unwavering support of Israel as a Jewish state,” Hoyer told Newsmax. “The settlements has become such a focus, but there are more important issues. The settlement issue has been blown out of proportion and is not what he is articulating.”

While a GOP delegation to Israel last week criticized the president’s policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iranian nuclear weapons, a group of 29 Democrats this week sought to reaffirm “that the relationship between the U.S. and Israel remains as strong as ever,” Hoyer said during a news conference in Jerusalem on Thursday. Obama has been pressuring Israel to freeze all settlement construction, including “natural growth” in existing settlements.

But Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said while he will not approve the building of new settlements, he will allow construction in existing ones. Hoyer defended the White House, saying that U.S policy hasn’t actually changed since the implementation of the Roadmap. But Hoyer’s own position that Jewish building in East Jerusalem is acceptable is at odds with the State Department.

The State Department last month summoned Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren to press Israel to stop construction by an American Jewish millionaire in East Jerusalem, according to Israeli media reports. In the midst of dubious directives coming from the White House that have set relations between Jerusalem and Washington on edge, this summer saw the largest delegation of U.S. congressmen ever to visit the Holy Land.

Last week, 25 Republicans, led by Minority Whip Eric Cantor, took the same tour and met with the same leaders as their Democratic peers. Both trips were sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the largest pro-Israel lobbyist in Washington. Earlier in the week, the Democrats met with Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who said the chance for peace in the near future had been obliterated by the political situation in Palestinian territories.

“The current situation in which no one authority represents all of the Palestinians, in which there is ‘Hamastan’ in Gaza and ‘Fatahland’ in Judea and Samaria ... buries any possibility to reach a comprehensive settlement with the Palestinians in the next few years,” he said. “The uncompromising, extremist positions of the Palestinians concerning Jerusalem, the right of return (of refugees) and the Jewish settlements create an unbridgeable gap between us.” Hoyer on Thursday blamed the Palestinians for stalled peace talks with Israel.

“The largest thing impeding negotiations at this time is the unwillingness of (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas to sit down now,” Hoyer said. “He had no preconditions with (former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert.” The delegation met with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad who denounced terrorism and said Israel has a right to exist, but did not specify whether he supported Israel as a Jewish state, a requirement laid out by Netanyahu.

Fayyad has been touted by the West as a moderate Palestinian official untainted by corruption, however, he is unpopular among Palestinians. At the news conference, Hoyer was presented with a report on Palestinian school books, some of which teach jihad and martyrdom, and was handed a map issued this week by the Palestinian Authority Tourism Ministry that labels the land stretching from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea as Palestine with no mention of Israel.

“If we teach our children hate we cannot be surprised that they grow up to hate,” he said. “The teaching of hate and prejudice is unacceptable any place in the world and particularly here.” In response to reporters’ questions concerning reports that the United Nations in the Gaza Strip is subject to the whims of Hamas, Gene Green, D-Texas, said he was going to make sure the UN does not “continue to prop up a terrorist organization like Hamas.”

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

In Israel, GOP's Cantor Slams Obama's Iran Policy

By Nicole Jansezian

Aug. 6, 2009

Article originally printed here.

JERUSALEM - Republican congressmen visiting Israel criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a disproportionate emphasis on stopping construction in Israeli settlements and its lack of vigilance in preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.

“We’re concerned with what the White House is signaling of late,” Eric Cantor, R-Va, told reporters on the fifth day of the visit. The minority whip in the House of Representatives emphasized the “existential threat that Iran poses” to the region and to the United States. Cantor said he was troubled by an unbalanced emphasis of the American administration on freezing Jewish settlement construction rather than attempting to extract meaningful commitments from the Palestinians and Arab states.

Cantor led a delegation of 25 Republican congressmen and women on the weeklong trip, sponsored by the American Israel Education Foundation, an organization affiliated with the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Next week, some 30 Democrats from Congress will make a similar visit to the region.

The delegation stressed their own unmitigated support for Israel and the danger of any acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons, an issue strongly echoed by Israeli leaders.

“I don’t believe the president of the United States fully comprehends this threat of Iran (acquiring) nuclear weapons and the threat to the stability of this region,” said Rep. Mike Coffman of Colorado. Coffman, who has stated in the past that radical Islamic elements are the cause for destabilizing the Middle East, said President Barack Obama’s approach to Middle East peace “is in error in a very big way.” “Many outside the State of Israel see the Arab-Israeli conflict as a centerpiece to the Muslim conflict of the West - that is absolutely wrong,” he said after the news conference. “The broader conflict has nothing to do with Israel.”

The congressional delegation met with Israeli leaders as well as with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who they said wavered when pressed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, one of Israel’s stipulations for a peace agreement. The delegation also expressed outrage that Palestinians named streets in the West Bank and Gaza after terrorists. “If there is an unwillingness on the part of so-called moderate Palestinians ... it makes it very difficult” to reach a peace agreement, Cantor said. Cantor also referred to a 2004 letter by former President George W. Bush to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in which the U.S. condones growth and permanence in major settlement blocs. The Obama camp has said it is not bound to “understandings,” including this letter, between the Israeli governments and prior administrations.

“The Bush letter indicates we could never see Israel turn back to 1967 lines,” said Cantor, who supports the letter. “Those communities (the settlements) will never be separated from Israel.” Meanwhile, the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported today that American Middle East envoy George Mitchell has asked Israel for a one-year freeze on West Bank settlement construction in order to elicit concessions from Arab countries. Israel has already agreed to suspend building in settlements for six months. The congressmen’s tour has involved meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials, briefings and visits to settlements and Sderot, the city on the Gaza border bombarded in the last eight years by Palestinians rocket attacks.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Netanyahu Corrects Obama in his own Speech

It was sort of a "Elder-statesman-schools-'man-child'-in-history" speech

June 17, 2009

First published here on ForcedExile.com

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday night was directed at the Obama administration and addressed historical errors and key omissions in President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, including the history of the Jewish state and the reasons a Palestinian state has yet to be established, analysts say.

“Netanyahu responded to his main aversary and it is not the president of Iran. (Obama) made mistakes that were historically incorrect; Netanyahu corrected him,” Gil Hoffman, a political analyst from The Jerusalem Post, said in an interview with reporters.

Netanyahu stressed several times in his foreign policy address that he was speaking on behalf of a “consensus of Israelis,” which Hoffman says was an implication that Obama’s policies are not merely coming down against the Likud leader and right wing, but against the majority of the nation.

“He said (to Obama) ‘you’re wrong about certain things and these things have major implications,’” said Jonathan Rynhold, senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

One of the issues Netanyahu clarified was the establishment of a Jewish state. Obama said in Cairo that “the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.” Netanyahu instead went back 3,500 years and pointed to Abraham and continuous Jewish history in the region as the reason Jews claimed this land as home.

“The right of the Jewish people to a state in the land of Israel does not arise from the series of disasters that befell the Jewish people over 2,000 years - persecutions, expulsions, pogroms, blood libels, murders, which reached its climax in the Holocaust, an unprecedented tragedy in the history of nations,” Netanyahu said. “The right to establish our sovereign state here, in the land of Israel, arises from one simple fact: Eretz Israel (the land of Israel) is the birthplace of the Jewish people.” 

Netanyahu also focused on oversight in Obama’s Cairo speech of why a Palestinian state has not been established despite overtures, peace talks and international agreements. Obama asserted that Palestinian suffering stems from dislocation, lack of a homeland and “the daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation.”

Countering that, Netanyahu said the Palestinians had a chance to create a state first in 1947 when the United Nations proposed the Partition Plan for a Jewish state and an Arab state. The plan was rejected by Arab states.

“Whoever thinks that the continued hostility to Israel is a result of our forces in Judea, Samaria and Gaza is confusing cause and effect,” he said. The prime minister outlined attacks in the 1920s, a war in 1948, continued attacks in the 1950s and another war in 1967 on the eve of the Six-Day War that occurred “nearly 50 years before a single Israeli soldier went into Judea and Samaria.” 

“A great many people are telling us that withdrawal is the key to peace with the Palestinians. But the fact is that all our withdrawals were met by huge waves of suicide bombers,” Netanyahu said.

As Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, noted, “What has brought Palestinian suffering is the priority on total victory and Israel’s destruction rather than merely getting a homeland.” 

 

Even Palestinians, while overwhelmingly disappointed with the speech, said it was critical of Obama’s Cairo address. Mustafa Barghouti said  Netanyahu’s address was an indirect swipe at Obama, particularly for clarifying his mention of the Holocaust.

“We were hoping that after Obama’s speech to have some flexibility,” he said. Instead, “this speech was a plan for war and not for peace. He negated all possibilities of negotiations.” 

Mark Regev, spokesman for Netanyahu, said that while the address may have seemed like a response to Obama’s Cairo University speech, it was in fact a reiteration of positions the prime minister has taken before, except for calling for a Palestinian state. “You could have said the same things last month,” he said. 

Nevertheless, Rhynhold said Netanyahu particularly emphasized Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state because of the historic connection to the land. 

“He took Obama to task for not recognizing Jewish ‘peoplehood,’ the link of the people to the land,” he said.

The prime minister recognized the need for the Palestinian population to have a state, but his recognition, as opposed to opposition leader Tzipi Livni’s call for a “two states for two nations,” is based on the pragmatic issue of a displaced population, not on their claims to the land. 

“He accepted Palestinian statehood, but not as a nation,” Rhynhold said. “He was saying ‘I recognize there’s a practical problem here, but I still think the Jewish people’s claim to the land is more significant.’”

Why Running is Fun in Israel

Jogger finds roadside bomb in the Galilee

June 1, 2009

A jogger discovered a roadside bomb, possibly intended to detonate as a car or school bus drove by, at the entrance of the Avtalion neighborhood in the Galilee, police said.

Police released this news two months after the discovery. They believe the device, packed with fireworks in addition to other explosive materials, was planted by an organization of Israeli Arabs.

Ynet reports: 

"It is clear to us that the planting of the bomb was nationalistically-motivated," a source in the police's Northern District told Ynet on Sunday. 

He said the bomb was laid there in an attempt at carrying out a terror attack, and that there was no doubt the attempted attack "could have caused casualties."

...The official added that the explosive device was "amateur, but no different from others that were previously used to cause casualties".

"It included gunpowder among other things, and if it had gone off the damage would have been extensive. Ninety percent of these amateur bombs can maim and kill," he said.

PA official to Lebanon TV: Two-State solution will cause Israel's collapse

Yet another reason Israel doesn't want a two-state solution. Can you blame them?
May 26, 2009

In an interview with Lebanese TV, PLO Ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki aired the Palestinian strategy: Give us two states so we can wear down the Zionist mindset. Once that happens, the Palestinians can take over all of the land, so Zaki told ANB TV on May 7, 2009. He actually lays out the strategy in two separate interviews and, besides rocks and rockets, it includes ideological warfare: "When the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine." 

"With the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made - just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward."

(To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2109.htm) 

Zaki, who is part of the 'moderate' Fatah party, has made other enlightening statements in the past: 

"In light of the blood that is being shed in Gaza, and the crying of the men - not only of the women... The hardest thing is to watch the men crying in Gaza. I now support any operation that will make the women and men in Israel cry. When the Al-Qassam Brigades and all the other forces were told to strike everywhere, I expected things to be carried out quickly. All those who always flex their muscles, and say they want to slaughter Israel - this is their opportunity. Soon, the world will view us as those responsible for the crime. Currently, in light of what is happening to the children of Gaza, any martyrdom operation is permissible, I swear by Allah."

..."Don't forget we're Arabs - we believe in blood vengeance. No one can treat our blood like water. We should have afflicted them with three or four operations, and then their women would have said to those sons of bitches: 'Come home, we are getting killed here.' When Israel focuses on one front, other fronts should be activated.

New TV, January 6, 2009(to view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1980.htm ).

And then he tags the U.S. too, for good measure.

Abbas Zaki: "We consider the U.S. to be an enemy because its only strategic alliance is with Israel."

Interviewer: "How can you consider Israel to be your enemy, if you signed a peace treaty with it?"

Abbas Zaki: "Allow me... This enemy... If I had the capabilities of the U.S. - would I be fighting it or negotiating with it?"

Interviewer: "Israel ceased being an enemy once you signed a peace treaty with it. I don’t know how it could be your enemy. Do you talk to the Israelis as if they were your enemies? Do you talk to Israel as a friendly or enemy country?"

Abbas Zaki: "An enemy country, which owes us certain things. The heroic Vietnamese used to negotiate with the French, while they were slaughtering them."

Interviewer: "I can assure you that in his speeches, Abu Mazen says the U.S. is a friendly country."

Abbas Zaki: "Well, this isn’t true. Perhaps Abu Mazen, in his position, needs to use diplomatic language, but he is the greatest critic of the U.S."

OTV, November 7, 2008 (to view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1933.htm ).

And lastly, some more thoughts:

"The use of weapons alone will not bring results, and the use of politics without weapons will not bring results. We act on the basis of our extensive experience. We analyze our situation carefully. We know what climate leads to victory and what climate leads to suicide. We talk politics, but our principles are clear. It was our pioneering leader, Yasser Arafat, who persevered with this revolution, when empires collapsed. Our armed struggle has been going on for 43 years, and the political struggle, on all levels, has been going on for 50 years. We harvest U.N. resolutions, and we shame the world so that it doesn't gang up on us, because the world is led by people who have given their brains a vacation - the American administration and the neocons."[...]

..."The P.L.O. is the sole legitimate representative [of the Palestinian people], and it has not changed its platform even one iota. In light of the weakness of the Arab nation and the lack of values, and in light of the American control over the world, the P.L.O. proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine."

NBN TV, April 9, 2008(to view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1738.htm)

Israeli Newspaper: Two states based on false assumptions

May 26, 2009

Most Israeli newspapers are liberal, more left wing than the American media, if you can believe it. So when a newspaper publishes an editorial saying the two-state solution is based on erroneous assumptions, its time to take note. 

Here is Monday's editorial from Yediot Ahronot, which outlines these false assumptions which has become the basis for the "two states for two peoples" principle and American faith in it: 

1. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders is the substance of the Palestinians' national aspirations. A small, truncated state, the establishment of which would require them to agree to the end of the conflict and its claims is the Palestinians' nightmare, not their national dream.  Three times they could have had such a state (1937, 1947 and 2000), and three times they rejected it. 

2. The gap between the Israeli and Palestinian position is bridgeable.  The reality is otherwise.  The maximum that the Israeli Government – any government – will be able to offer the Palestinians and still survive politically is far from the minimum that the Palestinian administration – any administration – will be able to agree to and survive politically. 

3. Egypt and Jordan want to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will, therefore, render assistance. The reality is opposite: Both Egypt and Jordan prefer the continuation of the existing situation in which the conflict continues and they can continue blaming Israel.  As long as the conflict goes on, the Egyptians have the ultimate excuse to all of their troubles in the region.  For the Jordanians, a Palestinian state on their border, under (it is reasonable to assume) a Hamas administration, would be the end of the Hashemite monarchy.  

4. A permanent settlement would bring stability and security to the region. The exact opposite.  There is no chance that a small, truncated Palestinian state would be viable.  The frustration that would be created in such a situation, certainly in Gaza, with Israel lacking defensible borders is a clear foundation for instability.  

5. There is a chance now that we cannot miss.  If we compare the current situation to that which prevailed in 2000, the clear conclusion is that the chance to reach an agreement then was far greater than it is now – and it did not happen.  Is it possible today to reach an agreement in Judea and Samaria, to say nothing of Gaza, when Hamas is the dominant Palestinian movement?  

6. Progress on the Palestinian issue is essential in order to aid the Arab countries against Iran. What does one have to do with the other?  The Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt) have a supreme interest in blocking Iran, with or without the Palestinian issue.  

7. There is only one solution to the conflict. Says who? When, either here or in the US, was a deep study ever done on all the possibilities?  One can easily point to alternative solutions that would also free the Palestinians from Israeli control."  The author believes that the chances to conclude a permanent agreement, now, based on the "two state" solution are no greater than they were at Oslo, Camp David or Annapolis and declares, "One hopes that the almost assured failure will not have negative repercussions in other areas, such as stopping Iran or US-Israeli relations."

Christian gravestones vandalized by Muslims in West Bank

May 25, 2009

Reuters reports: 

Vandals desecrated some 70 graves in two Palestinian Christian cemeteries on Sunday in what a Palestinian Authority official said was a rare attack on the Christian minority in the occupied West Bank.

Watch how everyone interviewed goes out of their way to stress that this was a rare or isolated incident.

A church official in the village of Jiffna near Ramallah where the attack took place called in Palestinian security officials to investigate, but neither he nor the investigators said they had any initial clues who was responsible.

"This unfortunate incident has brought Muslims and Christians closer and many from the Muslim community have shown solidarity with us and have condemned this action," said Greek Orthodox Church official George Abdo.

Abdo said it was the first time such an incident had occurred in the village.

Issa Kassissieh, a Palestinian Authority official and adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas on Christian affairs, said he believed it was "an isolated act against Christian symbols".

"Palestinian Christians and Muslims have always lived in harmony in the Holy Land," Kassissieh said.

Jiffna, northeast of Ramallah, is home to some 1,600 inhabitants, about two thirds of whom are Christians from the Greek Orthodox and Catholic communities. The Palestinian Authority says 50,000 of the West Bank's 2.5 million Arab population are Christians.

Christians have emigrated from Palestinian territories en masse in the past three decades. The official line is that the Israeli occupation is causing dire economic conditions is forcing them to leave. No mention of Muslim persecution of Christians. They've always lived in harmony. Right.

But the decline of Christian numbers in Bethlehem long pre-dated the building of the security barrier. Scholars note that it even pre-dated Israel’s capture of the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War. 

Greater Bethlehem, which includes the linked towns of Beit Sahour and Beit Jala, was part of the British mandate of Palestine until 1948, then fell under Jordanian control until June 1967. Israel administered the area until it handed authority to Yasser Arafat’s P.A. in 1995 as a result of the Oslo peace accords.

Israeli political analyst Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli government liaison to the U.S. Congress, revealed several years ago that in the run-up to the handover to Arafat, former Bethlehem mayor Elias Freij, an Orthodox Christian, lobbied the Israeli government not to transfer Bethlehem, saying it would become a town with churches but empty of Christians. Freij later became a P.A. minister, and died in 1998.

Read more here (http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=48189) and here (http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/pope-in-bethlehem-a-missed-opportunity-aaron-klein-argues-benedict-ignored-murder-persecution-of-christians/).

Israeli Defense Minister: Talk unlikely to halt Iranian nukes

May 25, 2009

Talking to Iran would most likely fail to halt the Islamic regime's nuclear program, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio on Monday. 

"I believe that the chance the dialogue has of stopping Iran's nuclear efforts is very low," Barak told Israel Radio. "I also believe the Americans understand this. They only think that there is logic to this, even if the chance is low... in order to contend with what needs to, or is likely to happen in the future." 

President Barack Obama's early diplomatic overtures to Iran have been rebuffed so far. Iran posed one of the most "serious potential threats" to Israel, Barak said, stressing that Israel would not take any options off the table to defend itself.

Bibi to U.S.: Whatever on the settlements

I wonder if he'll take that tack on Iran as well

May 25, 2009

At least one person is willing to stand up to President Boy Wonder Obama. The two-time prime minister of Israel Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu isn't taking orders from the White House despite behaving himself during meetings in D.C. last week.

Netanyahu on Sunday rebuffed U.S. calls for a full settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank and vowed not to accept limits on building of Jewish enclaves within Jerusalem.

The note of defiance set the stage for a possible showdown with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, which, in talks with Netanyahu in Washington last week, pressed for a halt to all settlement activity, including natural growth, as called for under a long-stalled peace “road map.”

“The demand for a total stop to building is not something that can be justified and I don’t think that anyone here at this table accepts it,” Netanyahu told his cabinet, referring to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, according to an official.

Netanyahu said Israel had no plans to set up any new West Bank settlements. But he told Obama, according to the official, that his government “does not accept limitations on building” within what Israel defines as its capital, the Jerusalem municipality, an area that includes Arab East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank captured in a 1967 Middle East war.

Commentary from Ed Morrissey of Hot Air:

One can cheer this in at least one aspect. It sends notice to Obama that Israel will not allow itself to become a doormat to Obama’s ambitions in the Middle East. Israel has no reason to have any confidence in the road map, and Obama’s insistence on unilateral compliance is laughable just a few weeks after Hamas provoked a war in Gaza. The Palestinians have done nothing to comply with the road map requirements, and Israel rightly objects to being held accountable alone for its responsibilities.

National Health Care, America? Don't Do It!

May 24, 2009

If you need any more reason to not nationalize health care in the U.S., let this be a shining example of why not (from the Jerusalem Post):

Former prime minister Ehud Olmert will undergo prostate cancer surgery at a New York hospital next month. Spokesman Amir Dan said Olmert would leave for New York on June 4. He would not name the hospital, to protect the former premier's privacy. Last month Olmert's office said tests showed that his prostate tumor had grown and immediate treatment was required. Dan said Israeli doctors recommended Olmert be treated by experts in the US. Olmert,63, made his condition public in October 2007. A year later he announced his resignation over multiple corruption allegations.

Israel has national health care. The U.S. still has private health care, at least until the Dems can get their hands on it. But where does Israel's highest elected official go for his surgery? Answer: Not his own country. No, he goes to a place where health care is still private and perhaps still good. His own doctors recommend it.

40% of Israeli Arabs don't believe Holocaust happened

Startling numbers are not just in Iran

May 24, 2009

A new poll shows that 40 percent of Israeli Arabs, those who live in Israel with Israeli passports next door to Jewish neighbors, don't believe the Holocaust ever happened. The disturbing poll results mark a significant increase in Holocaust deniers and those who refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist as Jewish democratic state.

Professor Sami Samocha, who conducted the survey, said the poll results are usually related to current affairs. Ynet reports:

"The most moderate year was 1995 – the golden era of the Rabin government, the Oslo Accord, and the attitude to the Palestinian people," he said. "Four years later, the great disappointment with the Netanyahu government and the October events worsened the situation."

 

In 1995, only 7 percent of Arab-Israelis said the State had no right to exist. Meanwhile, the figure rose to 22 percent last year. Samocha said the Gaza blockade, the Second Lebanon War, and the aftermath of the October 2000 Riots are exacerbating factors in this poll.

The Associated Press jumped on that statement, qualifying in the first paragraph the news service's article that "the results were likely more statements of protest than belief." Using Samocha's own words, the AP downplays the startling rise in Holocaust denial among Israeli Arabs, blaming a rising frustration among the minority group. Recognizing the Holocaust justifies Israeli policies, Samochoa says.

"When they say 'there was no Holocaust,' they are protesting. They are saying 'I am not giving legitimacy to the Jewish state,'" he said. "It's an index of despair, frustration and protest."

Palestinians and Arabs in Middle Eastern countries deny the Holocaust occurred, usually blaming Jews for making it up to gain sympathy. The Holocaust is not taught to all Arabs in Israel. One student I met here said he didn't believe the Holocaust occurred until a German was able to convince him otherwise. Education is a major factor in this issue - whether it is taught at all that a genocide of 6 million Jews occurred, or whether it is taught that this is a lie. This young man only believed what he was taught until someone explained to him the truth.

A Two-State Inconvenience for the US and Arab Nations

May 21, 2009

Some analysts writing after the Obama-Netanyahu meet and greet in DC claim that despite their pleas for a Palestinian state, subsequently reported by a breathless drive-by media, American officials and Arab nations are quite happy with the status quo. And one even calls it a "fiction."

STRATFOR explains why many don't expect two states to emerge any time soon: 

First, at present there are two Palestinian entities, Gaza and the West Bank, which are hostile to each other. Second, the geography and economy of any Palestinian state would be so reliant on Israel that independence would be meaningless; geography simply makes the two-state proposal almost impossible to implement. Third, no Palestinian government would have the power to guarantee that rogue elements would not launch rockets at Israel, potentially striking at the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem corridor, Israel’s heartland. And fourth, neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have the domestic political coherence to allow any negotiator to operate from a position of confidence. Whatever the two sides negotiated would be revised and destroyed by their political opponents, and even their friends.

For this reason, the entire peace process — including the two-state solution — is a chimera. Neither side can live with what the other can offer. But if it is a fiction, it is a fiction that serves U.S. purposes. The United States has interests that go well beyond Israeli interests and sometimes go in a different direction altogether. Like Israel, the United States understands that one of the major obstacles to any serious evolution toward a two-state solution is Arab hostility to such an outcome.

Click to read the full article. He concludes 

Netanyahu has promised that the endless stalemate with the Palestinians will not be allowed to continue. He also knows that whatever happens, Israel cannot threaten the stability of Arab states that are by and large uninterested in the Palestinians. He also understands that in the long run, Israel’s freedom of action is defined by the United States, not by Israel. His electoral platform and his strategic realities have never aligned. Arguably, it might be in the Israeli interest that the status quo be disrupted, but it is not in the American interest. 

Another major topic discussed in DC was Iran as a nuclear power. Israel's general view is to strike offensively. But Obama wants to talk for the rest of the year before he has to take any harsher action beyond mean words.

From the Wall Street Journal: 

Yet as Thérèse Delpech, a leading nonproliferation expert at France's Atomic Energy Commission, warned last October at a Brookings Institution lecture, "We [the Europeans] have negotiated during five years with the Iranians . . . and we came to the conclusion that they are not interested at all in negotiating, but . . . [only] in buying time for their military program." In those five years, she also noted, Tehran never implied that if only the Americans were at the table the clerical regime would be amenable to compromise.

...Americans and Europeans don't like to dwell on the problem of anti-Semitism in the region, preferring to see it as tangential to geopolitics and economics and treatable by the creation of a Palestinian state. But Israelis are acutely conscious that unrelenting anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are important factors in the Shiite Islamic Republic's increasing popularity among Arab Sunni fundamentalists -- especially in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood would probably triumph in a free election. In Iran, the anti-Jewish passion among the revolutionary elite appears to have actually increased as ordinary Iranians have soured on theocracy and state-sanctioned ideology.

For the full article, click here.

Pope Ends Rancorous Israel Trip With Visit to Other Christian Communities

May 15, 2009

Article originally printed here.

Pope Benedict XVI ended his five-day visit to Israel on a positive note visiting Christian churches of other denominations and solidifying his stance on anti-Semitism after a rancorous week laden with comparisons to his predecessor and disappointment among Israelis.

In his farewell address, the Pontiff emphasized the “solemn” occasion of visiting the Holocaust Memorial and hoped to shed some of the aspersion cast on his statements, which appeared to be rote and lacked enough remorse for the majority of the Israeli public. Local media was awash with criticism for the Pope’s statements since his first day in the country.

“I wish to put on record that I came to visit this country as a friend of the Israelis, just as I am a friend of the Palestinian people,” he said at the airport.

Addressing his speech on the Holocaust directly, Benedict said meeting Jewish survivors was a deeply moving encounter that brought back memories of those “brutally exterminated” he said, choosing the word “exterminated” rather than “killed,” a word many Jews felt wasn’t strong enough in his previous speech.

Compared to Pope John Paul II on virtually every leg of his journey, Benedict was accused of failing to follow the lead of his predecessor in expressing remorse for the Catholic church’s historic persecution of Jews. He also omitted his own experience in the German army.

But Rabbi David Rosen, a spokesman for interfaith dialogue in Israel, has said all along that this Pope is an academic, not a diplomat.

“Benedict is shier than his predecessor and not comfortable in public relations, dealing with image,” he said. “There is a big difference in style the way they communicate and the nature of their communication.”

During this papal visit, Palestinians scored a major political boost from the Pope as he called for a Palestinian state in several speeches and sermons and expressed empathy with the suffering of the people. And as he left the country, he again noted the separation wall, something he called “one of the saddest sights for me during my visit to these lands.”

“Let it be universally recognized that the State of Israel has the right to exist, and to enjoy peace and security within internationally agreed borders,” he said. “Let it be likewise acknowledged that the Palestinian people have a right to a sovereign independent homeland, to live with dignity and to travel freely.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres absolved Benedict of his statements on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, saying they carried “substantive weight.”

In a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pope Benedict condemned anti-Semitism and hate against the State of Israel, the prime minister’s office said. Netanyahu asked the Pontiff to sound his moral voice against Iran.

On his last day, Pope Benedict visited the Greek Patriarchate, the Holy Sepulchre Church, the tradition site of Jesus’ death and burial, and St. James Armenian Convent, where he praised progress in relations between Catholics and Orthodox faiths.

Archbishop Nourhan Manougian reminded the Pope that many nations have yet to recognize the Armenian Genocide of 1915 in Turkey. The Pontiff did not address the sticky political situation in his speech, but the 200 Armenians gathered were nevertheless pleased for the recognition of their community as the last stop on the Pope’s tour in the Holy Land.

“The significance is that we are one of the Christian communities in the Old City and for us it is a great honor to be visited by the Pope,” said Michael Zakarian. “It is good for Armenians to be recognized especially being such a small minority”

More than 40,000 Attend Nazareth Mass

May 14, 2009

From an amphitheater built specifically for this mass, Pope Benedict XVI exhorted Christians and Muslims in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth to repair damaged relations between them and to “find the way to a peaceful coexistence.”

The Galilean city, with a 30 percent Christian population, has been marred by tensions in recent years between Christians and the Muslim majority. Muslims tried to build an unauthorized mosque that would have towered over the Basilica of the Annunciation, but the Israeli government put a stop to the construction in 2002 and offered alternative sites for the Islamic house of prayer.

Tensions persist, however. Prior to the visit, the Northern Islamic Movement called on Muslim leaders to boycott interfaith meetings with the Pope. Benedict offended Muslims worldwide when he quoted in September 2006 a medieval description of the religion as “evil and inhuman” and ”spread by sword.” Benedict made it clear that the text did not reflect his own views, but Muslims violently protested in cities around the world and even attacked churches in Palestinian areas. 

Earlier this month, an imam strung up a banner across Nazareth’s main square warning the Pope: “Those who harm Allah and His Messenger – Allah has cursed them in this world and in the hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating punishment.”

Despite these threats though, Muslims, Druze, Jews and Christians participated in the interfaith dialogue in Nazareth and during a song about peace sung in three languages, the Pope and the representatives of different religions on the platform clasped hands and stood together - a far cry from the interfaith meeting in Jerusalem on Monday that ended abruptly after an Islamic judge  used the platform to criticize Israel in unscheduled speech.

The Pontiff also met privately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this afternoon to discuss the peace process and agreements on land and taxes between the Vatican and Israeli government. 

Some 40,000 worshippers attended the mass on the hill surrounding the 7,000-seat amphitheater, the biggest in Israel. The theater was built on Mount Precipice, where a mob tried to throw Jesus off a cliff according to the New Testament.

“This is first-class exposure and will encourage tourism in the future. We are expecting a wave of tourism following this,” said Mayor Ramiz Jaraisy told reporters prior to the mass. “We hope for a specific call from the Pope for people to come and make prilrimage to the Holy Land.”

At the mass, Archbishop of Galilee for the Greek Melkite Church Elias Chacour welcomed the pope and pled for his”moral and spiritual support” to stem the exodus of Christians from the Holy Land. The flight of Christians “fills me with pain” and that the future is not encouraging.

But while exhorting local Christians to stay in the Holy Land and calling on several occasions for a Palestinian state, the Pontiff failed to address Muslim persecution of Christians. He blamed the economy, limited movement and Israeli policies as the reasons Christians are leaving the Holy Land.

Tomorrow, the Pontiff will visit the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus is believed to have been crucified and buried, and Saint James Armenian Church before he returns to the Vatican.

Palestinians Boosted by Pope’s Call for Statehood

May 13, 2009

BETHLEHEM - Palestinians scored a major political boost from Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to the Holy Land as he called for a Palestinian state in several speeches and sermons and expressed empathy with the suffering of Palestinians on Wednesday. 

“It is understandable that you often feel frustrated,” the Pontiff told residents living in the Aida refugee camp. “Your legitimate aspirations for permanent homes, for an independent Palestinian State, remain unfulfilled. Instead you find yourselves trapped, as so many in this region and throughout the world are trapped, in a spiral of violence, of attack and counter-attack, retaliation, and continual destruction.”

Earlier addressing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the Pope said: “the Holy See supports the right of your people to a sovereign Palestinian homeland in the land of your forefathers, secure and at peace with its neighbors, within internationally recognized borders.”

Speaking in the shadow of the concrete barrier erected by Israel in response to terror attacks, the Pope appealed for an easing of Israeli security restrictions on Palestinians.

“Towering over us, as we gather here this afternoon, is a stark reminder of the stalemate that relations between Israelis and Palestinians seem to have reached – the wall. In a world where more and more borders are being opened up – to trade, to travel, to movement of peoples, to cultural exchanges – it is tragic to see walls still being erected.”

He also called on Palestinian youths to “have the courage to resist any temptation you may feel to resort to acts of violence or terrorism.”

The Palestinian Authority deployed 4,000 police throughout the city and closed several roads. The city was decorated with Vatican and Palestinian flags side by side and posters declaring, “Our Pope is our hope.” 

If any group needed his support, it was the Palestinian Christians, a minority of just 2 percent whose numbers remain under threat by a flagging Palestinian economy, Israeli military control of the borders and Muslim persecution. The Pope personally encouraged Gaza Christians as well, 100 of whom were able to attend the mass in Bethlehem with special permission from the Israeli army. 

“My heart goes out to the pilgrims from war-torn Gaza: I ask you to bring back to your families and your communities my warm embrace, and my sorrow for the loss, the hardship and the suffering you have had to endure,” the Pope said in his sermon at Manger Square. “Please be assured of my solidarity with you in the immense work of rebuilding which now lies ahead, and my prayers that the embargo will soon be lifted.”

Of Gaza’s 1.6 million population, about 3,000 Christians remain. The Pontiff bolstered Christian communities in the West Bank as well asking them to persevere and exhorting them to build up their churches, consolidate their presence and “offer new possibilities to those tempted to leave.”

The Christian population of Bethlehem, once at 80 percent, has gone down to 20 percent now. Many have left for safety, comfort and better opportunities in other countries. Rami El-Araj, a Bethlehem resident, said he attended Pope John Paul II’s mass in 2000 with a group of his friends.

“Now I’m alone - everyone left since then,” he said.

Mass in Jerusalem Gets off to Political Start

May 12, 2009

JERUSALEM - The Pope’s first mass in Israel became a political platform when Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal blamed Israel for the problems facing Christians in the Holy Land.

“Holy Father, you stand before a small flock that is shrinking, that suffers from emigration, largely due to the effects of the unjust occupation and all its humiliation, violence and hatred,” he said referring to Israeli authority in some Palestinian areas and at checkpoints. “Jesus wept in vain over Jerusalem and continues to do so.”

Most Christians in Israel and the Palestinian Authority are Arab, and many relate nationalistically as Palestinians, not Israelis. Palestinian flags flew in the crowd and the traditional mass songs were sung in Arabic by local congregants at the mass site, an outdoor area in the Kidron Valley built specifically for the mass.

“Around us, we have the agony of the Palestinian people, who dream of living in a free and independent Palestinian State, but have not found its realization; and the agony of the Israeli people, who dream of a normal life in peace and security and, despite all their military and mass media might, have not found its realization,” Twal continued.

An Israeli official rejected the accusation and said Israel views her Christian residents as allies. 

 

“Don’t blame us for the decreasing numbers of Christians in the Holy Land. It has to do directly with Palestinians themselves,” Raphael Ben-Hur, senior deputy director-general of the Tourism Ministry told Newsmax. “There is a diminishing number of Christians in Bethlehem and it has nothing to with Israel and nothing to do with occupied territories. It has to do with the Muslims. 

Without addressing the politics of the situation, Pope Benedict XVI empathized with the local Christians and called on local authorities to take care of the minority group.

“I wish to acknowledge the difficulties, the frustration, and the pain and suffering which so many of you have endured as a result of the conflicts which have afflicted these lands, and the bitter experiences of displacement which so many of your families have known and – God forbid – may yet know,” he said in his homily at the foot of the Mount of Olives. “I hope my presence here is a sign that you are not forgotten, that your persevering presence and witness are indeed precious in God’s eyes and integral to the future of these lands.” 

The head of the Catholic Church also addressed the “tragic reality” of Christian emigration from the Holy Land that leaves a “great cultural and spiritual impoverishment to the city.”  

“As I urge the authorities to respect, to support and to value the Christian presence here, I also wish to assure you of the solidarity, love and support of the whole Church and of the Holy See,” he exhorted.

Following the Pope’s statements, Jerusalem’s Mayor Nir Barkat told Newsmax he accepts the challenge to care for the Christian flock in his city.

“I accept the urging. I think we should make the Christians that live in Jerusalem feel more comfortable as residents of the city and I’m committed to serve them as much as I am any other resident of the city,” he said. “I accept the challenge and I hope Christians around the world also accept the challenge that I am giving them to see all the Christians in the world come here at least once in a lifetime.”

Barkat, who was elected in November, has a goal to attract 10 million tourists, of all religions, each year to Jerusalem. 

To shouts of “Viva il Pappa” (long live the Pope), strains of bagpipes, organ choruses and cries from emotional worshipers, the Pope rode in on the “Popemobile,” his trademark vehicle, which Israeli security deemed unsafe for most locations on this visit. 

Meanwhile the Vatican sought to clarify issues its spokesman said were misreported.

“The pope was never in the Hitler Youth, never, never, never,” the Rev. Federico Lombardi told reporters in Jerusalem.

He said that the Pope, like all other youths in Germany, was forcibly drafted into the Wehrmacht for a short time till his capture by the Allied forces. However, in “Salt of the Earth,” then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said that he was automatically enrolled into the Hitler Youth: “At first we weren’t, but when the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young, but later, as a seminarian, I was registered in the HY. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back.” 

Lombardi did not explain the discrepancy. 

“It was not his choice,” Lombardi said. “If you know the Pope you now he is absolutely not a militaristic person. He was compelled to be in this group.”

Controversial Headlines Greet Day Two of Pope Visit to Israel

May 12, 2 009

JERUSALEM - Israeli papers were awash with disappointment in the Pope’s speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, while several Muslims were arrested Tuesday morning for distributing fliers condemning the Pontiff’s visit.

Day two of the Pope’s visit to Israel, before the Holy Father even presided over his first mass, and controversy is coming from all sides. Several Jewish officials were expecting specific condemnations and an apology from the Pope for the Holocaust. But the Pope addressed these issues in his first speech at the airport, according to Vatican Spokesman Federico Lombardi.

“He already named at the airport the Shoah (Holocaust) and the 6 million Jews murdered and ... anti-Semitism,” Lombardi said at a news conference. “His meditation was centered on ... the engagement of the Catholic church to engage themselves forever against the crimes against humanity and the right of the peoples.”

After his closely watched speech on Monday, many Israelis expressed disappointment. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau called the speech “a missed opportunity” without personal remorse and mention of 6 million Jews killed. Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said the Pope was detached.

“He came and told us as if he were a historian, someone looking in from the sidelines, about things that should not have happened,” Rivlin told Israel Radio. “He was a part of them.” 

On Tuesday, the Pope headed out on a tour of holy sites in Jerusalem. Removing his red shoes, the Pope entered the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine and part of the compound that comprises Islam's third-holiest site, the Al Aksa Mosque. A rock in the shrine is believed to be the place Abraham nearly sacrificed his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. 

“Here the paths of the world's three great monotheistic religions meet, reminding us what they share in common,” Benedict XVI said while visiting with Muslim leaders.  

“Fidelity to the One God, the Creator, the Most High, leads to the recognition that human beings are fundamentally interrelated, since all owe their very existence to a single source and are pointed towards a common goal,” he said.

The quick tour was followed by a prayer at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, directly adjacent to the mosque area. The Pontiff placed a note in the wall, as is tradition. 

“God of all the ages, on my visit to Jerusalem, the ‘City of Peace,’ spiritual home to Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, I bring before you the joys, the hopes and the aspirations, the trials, the suffering and the pain of all your people throughout the world,” the note read. “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, hear the cry of the afflicted, the fearful, the bereft; send your peace upon this Holy Land, upon the Middle East, upon the entire human family; stir the hearts of all who call upon your name, to walk humbly in the path of justice and compassion.”

At the Heichal Shlomo synagogue, Benedict reaffirmed Christian-Jewish cooperation and “lasting reconciliation” between the two faiths as he met with the two chief rabbis of Israel, Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar.

“Jews and Christians alike are concerned to ensure respect for the sacredness of human life, the centrality of the family, a sound education for the young, and the freedom of religion and conscience for a healthy society,” he said. “An indication of the potential of this series of meetings is readily seen in our shared concern in the face of moral relativism and the offences it spawns against the dignity of the human person."

The Pope noted the Christian population in Israel which also values “opportunities for dialogue with their Jewish neighbors.”

Metzger, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi, thanked the Pope for his visit to “the eternal capital of the Jewish people,” Jerusalem.

Metzger thanked Benedict for preventing the return to the Catholic Church of the Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson to his position as an example to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Had you not done so a message may have been understood by another Holocaust denier, the president of Iran, granting legitimacy to his sinful declarations of his will and intention to destroy our country,” he said.

Despite Talk of Compassion, Pope Speech Failed to Please Some

May 12, 2009

By Nicole Jansezian

JERUSALEM - Two heads of state, symbols of their religion and nation respectively - Pope Benedict XVI, 82, and Israeli President Shimon Peres, 85 - met this afternoon both appearing slightly frail and walking tentatively, a cautious pace that seemed to characterize their mission of peace.

The pair of octogenarians planted an olive tree at the official residence of the president and attended a somber ceremony at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, where the Pope met six Holocaust survivors.

“The Catholic Church feels deep compassion for the victims remembered here,” Benedict said at the memorial service. “As we stand here in silence, their cry still echoes in our hearts. It is a cry raised against every act of injustice and violence. It is a perpetual reproach against the spilling of innocent blood.”

Peres, meanwhile, sought to anoint the Pope as the spiritual leader who would provide the impetus for peace in a conflicted region. 

“In you we see a promoter of peace; a great spiritual leader; a potent bearer of the message of peace to this land and to all others,” he said at the official welcoming ceremony in his garden. “This year, the year of your visit here, may reveal an opportunity for us and our neighbors, to attain peace.” 

Significantly, Peres noted “ties of reconciliation and understanding” emerging between the Holy See and the Jewish people. 

While the Israeli public is generally amiable toward the Pope’s visit, some groups were expecting specific statements. Ha’aretz newspaper noted that the Pope has a dangerous balancing act, especially at Yad Vashem where he will “make do with the adjacent memorial hall.”

“Many Jews will feel that this is not enough, and will expect the German Pope, with his own Hitler Youth past, to make a further gesture, perhaps an apology for the Holy See's conduct during the war years,” the newspaper continued. “Whatever he says, there are too many people to run afoul of.” 

Indeed, the offense began with one of the attendees at the ceremony. Buchenwald survivor and Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau called the speech “a missed opportunity” without personal remorse and mention of 6 million Jews killed.

“A few points were missing in the pope's address,” Lau told Israel’s channel 1. “There was no mention of the Germans, or Nazis, who conducted the massacre. ... Instead of the word ‘murdered’ as the previous pope John Paul II used, Benedict XVI used the word ‘killed.’ There is a very clear difference between the two verbs.”

At the President’s House, Pope Benedict said his pilgrimage to the holy places “is one of prayer”  for peace for the Middle East. The Pope empathized with “ordinary” Israelis as in his speech. 

“What parents would ever want violence, insecurity, or disunity for their son or daughter? What humane political end can ever be served through conflict and violence?” he asked. “I hear the cry of those who live in this land for justice, for peace, for respect for their dignity, for lasting security, a daily life free from the fear of outside threats and senseless violence.”

 

The Ministry of Tourism is expecting between 10,000 to 15,000 additional tourists in conjunction with the Holy See’s tour of the Holy Land. At the Nazareth mass, an outdoor arena will hold 40,000 people, while the Jerusalem mass will accommodate 5,000 to 6,000. The State of Israel has alloted about $10 million for this visit. 

This is Benedict’s first visit to Israel as Pope, but not his first visit. The Pope was friends with the late Teddy Kolleck, Jerusalem’s legendary mayor. As Pope he is literally following in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, according to Rabbi David Rosen, an Israeli expert in Jewish-Christian relations.

Rosen warned that while political leaders, religious officials and journalists would be analyzing all of the Pope’s words, the truth is “Benedict is shyer than his predecessor and not comfortable in public relations.”

With a placid demeanor, the Pope appeared drained from days of travel and showed little reaction at the events he attended on Monday. 

“John Paul II had to work on relations before he came,” he said. “Now Benedict is walking in his footsteps, literally, the same agenda.”

Rosen said the order of Benedict’s agenda is symbolic. He first visited the President’s house showing the importance of office, then headed to Yad Vashem empathizing with the Holocaust and lastly to Notre Dame for an inter-faith dialogue to stress the importance of building bridges between the faiths.