New Pope Elected, Urged to Work for Peace

Local Editor

The cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church elected on Wednesday a new pope, the first non-European to be elected for almost 1,300 years. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, becomes Pope Francis, the first pontiff to take that name. The new pope appeared on the balcony over the entrance to St Peter’s basilica more than an hour after white smoke poured from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, signaling that the cardinals had made their choice. Dressed in his new white robes, the bespectacled Argentinean prelate looked pensive and perhaps a little intimidated, as he looked out at the sea of jubilant humanity in the square. The new pope will face renewed pressure to better handle sex abuse scandals involving pedophile priests, and avoid cover-ups by senior clergymen. Shortly after the election, world leaders and Catholics hailed the move, urging him to work for religious reconciliation and peace. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said the United Nations and the Roman Catholic Church shared the “common goals” of promoting peace, social justice and human rights, and the eradication of poverty and hunger. “We also share the conviction that we can only resolve the interconnected challenges of today’s world through dialogue,” Ban said. US President Barack Obama and Argentine leader Cristina Kirchner led congratulations from across the Americas, where Roman Catholics rejoiced that one of their own will lead the church’s 1.2-billion-strong flock. US Vice President Joe Biden, a Catholic who will lead the US delegation to the new pope’s inauguration mass on Tuesday, said he would extend his prayers as the pontiff “takes on this holy responsibility”. “I am happy to have the chance to personally relay my well wishes, and those of the American people, when I travel to Rome,” Biden said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the “hopes” of “millions of believers in Germany and the world,” now rest “with the new pope,” while EU President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso urged the pontiff to try to bring the “world’s people and religions closer together.” French President Francois Hollande said Paris looked forward to pursuing a “confident dialogue” with the Holy See. In Latin America, the leaders of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico joined the clergy in hailing Bergoglio, who was elected after five rounds of voting in the Vatican — one more than when predecessor Benedict XVI was chosen in 2005. “The faithful eagerly await the arrival of Pope Francis to Rio de Janeiro for World Youth Day in July,” said Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, citing her nation as having “the greatest number of Catholics in the world.” In Africa, where the number of Catholics is steadily growing, the president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference said that, while some had hoped for a younger pontiff, all expect “great things” from Pope Francis. “The symbolism of choosing a pope from Latin America delights and touches us, most particularly in developing countries,” said Archbishop Stephen Breslin.

Source: Agencies 14-03-2013 – 10:25 Last updated 14-03-2013 – 10:25

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Jews against Cardinal Rodriguez for Pope

Posted on February 18, 2013 |

 

Jewish groups have started their smearing campaign against one of the leading contenders, Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga (born 1942) of Honduras as successor to the retiring Pope Benedict XVI. The first shot was fired by no other than the Jewish academic, Dr. Alan Dershowitz, the welknown hate-mongering and truth-twisting anti-Arab, pro-Israel crusader.

Dershowitz has called Cardinal Rodriguez, “an out and out antisemite”.

“The Cardinal has blamed the Jews for the scandal surrounding the sexual misconduct of priests toward young parishioners! He has argued that Jews got even with the Catholic Church for its anti-Israel position by arranging for the media – which they, of course, control, he said – to give disproportionate attention to the Vatican sex scandal. He then compared the Jewish controlled media with Hitler, because they are, protagonists of what I don’t hesitate to define as a persecution against the Church,” wrote Dershowitz.

Dershowitz’s above rant is based on Rodriguez’s 2002 interview with the Italian-Catholic publication “30 Giorni,” – in which he said that Jewish-controlled media was exploiting church sex scandals to divert public attention away from Israeli brutality against Palestinians.

On May 6, 2009, Dershowitz, at the Jewish FrontPage Magazine, blasted Father Angelo Idi, Bishop Richard Williamson, Cardinal Joseph Glemp and Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Meridiaga.

“Anti-Semitism in the Catholic clergy transcends ideological lines. Bishop Williamson and Father Idi are fascists of the hard right. Cardinal Rodriguez is a leftist “liberation” theologist. Cardinal Glemp is just an old fashioned Polish anti-Semite who follows in the footsteps of his predecessors who were also Primates of the Polish Catholic Church,” wrote Dershowitz.

Interestingly, ADL website has claimed that Cardinal Rodriguez apologized for his 2002 comments during a conversation with its director Abraham Foxman.

Dershowitz has claimed that if Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga succeed Pope Benedict XVI, “all of Pope John Paul II’s (born to a Polish Jewish mother) good work in building bridges between the Catholic Church and the Jews would be destroyed. This should not be allowed to happen. The campaign against this bigot must begin now“.

Dershowitz’s beef with Cardinal Rodriguez is that he is against Capitalism and abortion – both establishments being controlled by the Jewish elites. However, Cardinal Rodriguez do has something common with Dershowitz. Both hate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In 2007, the former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, demanded an apology from Chavez for calling Cardinal Rodriguez “a parrot and an imperialist clown”. However, later Zelaya joined Chavez’s Latin American economic cartel – a move which brought his downfall via a US-sponsored military coup.
 

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Vatican Changing of the Guard

by Stephen Lendman

In April 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope Benedict XVI. At the time he said:
“Dear brothers and sisters. After the great Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the lord.”

He hid his dark past. More on that below.
On February 11, he announced he’ll step down. He’s the first pope to do so since Gregory XII in 1415. Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, said he “took us by surprise.”

He’s 85. His energy and health deteriorated. It did so “to the extent that (he) had to recognize (his) incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to (him),” he said.

“For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom (he) declare(d) that (he’ll) renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter.”
At 7PM on February 28, it’s official. His office will remain open until a successor is chosen.
He was born on April 16, 1927 in Bavaria. It was six years before Hitler took power. At age 14, he joined his youth movement. Doing so influenced his authoritarian character.
Post-WW II, he studied theology and philosophy. In 1951, he was appointed to the priesthood. In 1953, he earned a doctor of theology.

In 1957, he qualified as a University of Munich theology lecturer. He taught Church dogma until 1981. He rose in its hierarchy.

From 1962 – 1965, he participated in the Second Vatican Council. He served as council theologian. In 1977, he was appointed Munich archbishop and Freising.
Three months later, he was named cardinal. In 1981, John Paul II asked him to become supreme guardian of the faith in Rome.

As Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith head, he was hardline, inflexible, and uncompromising. He served as “grand inquisitor.” He rigidly enforced reactionary positions. He challenged clerics opposing them.

In 2004, the Congregation published a 37-page “Letter on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World.”
It defined women’s role in terms of virginity, marriage, motherhood, and supporting family male heads of households. It cited Genesis 3:16, saying:
“Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
He incurred opposition from many churchgoers. Most bishops objected. He waged war on liberal ideology. He drove left-of-center theologians out of the priesthood.
He rejects modernity, enlightenment, and democratic values. He deplores social struggles. His word view is authoritarian.

In 2000, he prepared a paper titled “Dominus Jesus.” John Paul II approved it. It asserted Roman Catholicism supremacy. Doing so offended Christians and non-Christians alike. It said:
“Just as there is one Christ, so there exists a single body of Christ, a single Bride of Christ, a single Catholic and apostolic Church.”

He was ordained at age 24. He’s ideologically and politically hard-right. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he opposed reform. John Allen’s book “Cardinal Ratzinger: The Vatican’s Enforcer of the Faith” discussed him, saying:

“Ratzinger today believes that the best antidote to political totalitarianism is ecclesial totalitarianism.”

“In other words, he believes the Catholic Church serves the cause of human freedom by restricting freedom in its internal life, thereby remaining clear about what it teaches and believes.”

As cardinal and pope, he opposes Marxism, liberation theology, liberal morality, ordaining women, permitting priests to marry, homosexuality, masturbation, birth control, abortion, stem cell research, diluting top-down authority, and Vatican II’s softening of traditional orthodoxy on salvation outside the Church, ecumenical relations, and liturgical rites.

He enforces dogma on papal infallibility. He serves as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It was the Inquisition’s successor institution.

He prohibits liberation theology. He bans, censors and/or excommunicates liberal clerics. Doing so got him nicknamed “grand inquisitor.”

Ahead of his election, he said all religions outside Roman Catholicism are “defective.” He denounced what he called “the dictatorship of relativism.”

He was Pope John Paul II’s closest theological advisor. He helped elect two previous popes. He and other pontiffs exercise dictatorial powers.

Their decrees have final say. They’re considered infallible. Pontiffs govern any way they wish. They appoint major Church hierarchy officials they prefer. They consider themselves above reproach. Others disagree for good reason.

Pedophelia scandals occasionally erupt. Times never change. Misconduct is longstanding. In 2004, John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s (JJCCJ) Professor Karen Terry et al published a report commissioned by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

It was based on Catholic diocese surveys. They covered the period 1950 – 2002. They showed under age 18 molestation occurs in:
“more than 95% of dioceses and approximately 60% of religious communities.”
“Of the 195 dioceses and eparchies that participated in the study, all but seven have reported” at least one offending priest.

“Of the 140 religious communities” surveyed, “only 30 reported” no abuses. Doing so doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Given the reluctance of victims to come forward, it’s virtually certain many other incidences took place.

Thousands of children were harmed. Most were 11 – 17 aged boys. Hundreds of priests were involved.

The problem is global. In 2010, widespread child sexual abuse surfaced. It’s especially common in Europe, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
Coverup is commonplace. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was involved. As Benedict XVI, he swept abuse under the rug. He wanted wrongdoing suppressed.

On March 28, 2010, Marquette University Professor of Moral Theology Daniel C. Maguire headlined “Why Pope Benedict Must Resign,” saying:

“Pope Benedict XVI now faces a major hypocrisy test. He has been accepting resignations from bishops around the world who failed to take action against priest rapists.”

“It is now no longer in dispute that he himself is guilty of the same criminal negligence….”

“He has no moral right to hide behind Vatican walls.” Today’s “perfect storm” includes the pope, “a Vatican cardinal, two members of the Papal Apostolic Delagature, three Milwaukee archbishops, and (what’s usually overlooked) the collusion of the local police and District Attorney.”

Benedict VXI prioritized “protecting the church from scandal.” It doesn’t matter how many boys are harmed. Better them than the Church. It’s been that way for centuries.

Pedophelia is a crime against humanity. Benedict and other top Vatican officials are complicit. Putting them in the dock is warranted. Legal immunity doesn’t wash.

Wrongdoing is indefensible. So is coverup. The Vatican has centuries of skeletons in its closet. Benedict has plenty of his own.

In January 2012, Vatileaks exposed high-level corruption. Documents were leaked to Italian journalists.

In May 2012, Gianluigi Nuzzi’s book titled “His Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI” revealed confidential letters and memos between him and his personal secretary, Paolo Gabriele.
Papal finances, bribes, other corruption, and abuse of power were disclosed. Benedict called accusations “exaggerated” and “gratuitous.”

Gabriele was hung out to dry. He was arrested, tried and convicted. He got 18 months in prison. He was ordered to pay legal expenses. On December 22, 2012, Benedict pardoned him. Perhaps he’d already decided to step down.

In his book “God and His Demons,” Michael Parenti confronted the religious right, saying:

“The god of the Holy Bible – so much adored in the United States and elsewhere – is ferociously vindictive, neurotically jealous, intolerant, vainglorious, punitive, wrathful, sexist, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, sadistic and homicidal.”

“As they say, it’s all in the Bible. Beware of those who act in the name of such a god.”

“Were we to encounter these vicious traits in an ordinary man, we would judge him to be in need of lifelong incarceration at a maximum-security facility.”

“At the very least, we would not prattle on about how he works his wonders in mysterious ways. In fact, ‘biblical Jesus qualifies quite well as founder and forerunner of an intolerant Christianity.”

“That ‘old-time religion’ is still very much with us and having a considerable impact on U.S. political life.”

Parenti was unforgiving. He challenged iconic religious figures. He exposed their dark sides. He included Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II, and Tibetan Buddhism.

John Paul II “remained up to his ears in counter-revolutionary politics in Latin America and elsewhere,” he said. He “directed no critical attacks against right-wing dictatorships.” He called them “bulwarks against communist revolution.”

He intervened on behalf of Chilean despot Augusto Pinochet. At the time, he was under house arrest in London.

Mother Teresa jetted around the world “against divorce, abortion, and birth control.”

Her so-called clinics and hospitals were poorly run hospices. Medical care was lacking. Hunger and malnutrition were widespread. She could have done plenty to help but abstained.

Tibetan Buddhism’s reputed beneficence was exposed. “Religions have an age-long relationship not only with violence but also with economic exploitation,” said Parenti.

It “necessitates” violence, he added. Roman Catholicism is rife with it. It predates the Inquisition and Crusades. It’s commonplace today. So is “cashing in on heaven.”

Greed isn’t just good on Wall Street. Holy See self-enrichment comes at the expense of followers.
Religion serves reactionary political goals. “Backed by moneyed interests, the right-wing Christian media propagate free-market corporatism, militarism, and super-patriotism.”

Religion and politics mix. Roman Catholicism and other hard-right religions spread ideological extremism to mass audiences. Media scoundrels give right-of-center views air time. Liberal theologians are shut out. Fundamentalism is triumphant.

“In the mind of theocrats,” said Parenti, ” ‘religious freedom’ means the right to roll back secular culture and impose a monochromatic belief system upon everyone.”
Parenti urges fighting back, saying:

We need to “roll back the theocratic aggrandizement while strengthening our right to entertain our beliefs and disbeliefs openly and with impunity.”

“Only secular strength and organized democratic activism on our part will counter the sectarian intolerance and state-assisted tyranny of reactionary theocrats.”

Benedict XVI represents the worst of them. Expect more of the same from his successor. It’s longstanding policy. It’s the Vatican way.

About the Author: Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net 
His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

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The Vatican: ‘Syrian wheat is looted & sold to Turkey!’

‘Eat, Your most adorable Royal Custodian Magnificence, eat …

This is made with looted Syrian wheat!’

“..Archbishop Jacques Behnan Hindo, titular of the Syrian Catholic archeparchy of Hassaké-Nisibis, placed the attention on one of the many sides obscured by the Syrian drama: things are getting worse quickly, and the situation – warns the Syrian Archbishop – “could soon become catastrophic.”. … . In the appeal to FAO, also sent to Fides Agency, the deterioration of the conditions of survival of the population of the area is outlined in detail. At the beginning of winter, every economic activity appears paralyzed. The supply routes to the west have been interrupted for more than a month, and this causes the depletion of essential goods and soaring prices of all commodities. The lack of fuel prevents heating homes and leads to the complete closure of all agricultural activities, just as the planting season begins. “The grain silos – refers in particular Archbishop Hindo – were looted and wheat was sold to Turkish traders who conveyed it in Turkey, under the gaze of the Turkish customs officers. Our wheat was sold at a very low price.” The region of Jazira was renowned for the production of high quality wheat. …”

Posted by G, M, Z, or B at 9:27 PM

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Behind the Scenes: US Proposes Meeting with Iranian Officials

Local Editor

Hezbollah delegation to the Vatican received a warm welcome from the Vatican circles and the Pope assistants.

The delegation’s visit scored high success which caused uneasiness and bitterness among the March 14 coalition, who is trying to tarnish Hezbollah’s image inside and outside Lebanon.

March 14 coalition’s visit to Gaza has yielded counter results to what its organizers have aspired.

The presence of Lebanese Forces party MP Antoine Zahraa among the visitors made the Gazans very upset, some of them wanted to boycott the occasion and others leveled heavy criticism for receiving who they dubbed them ‘the disbelievers in Lebanese resistance.’ Other Palestinian sources dismissed the visit as “opportunistic” and “hypocritical.”

According to well-informed sources, the Americans have recently renewed their proposal to meet with the Iranian officials to discuss a bunch of different strategic regional issues. The Iranian side, insists to include all important and sensitive issues as full package, a thing which according to the same sources had received a positive answer from the Americans this time.

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The Vatican says it the way it is

The Vatican says it the way it is, prompting wails about “anti-Semitism” and “blood libel” as if that makes it all OK

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Vatican Council for Culture, commenting on the war between Israel and Hamas, delivered a severe attack on the Jewish people:

“I think of the ‘massacre of the innocents’. Children are dying in Gaza, their mothers’ shouts is a perennial cry, a universal cry”.

The Catholic Church high official equated Israel’s operation in Gaza against terror groups with the New Testament story of Herod’s slaughter of Jewish babies in his effort to kill Jesus.

Ravasi, who is one of the most popular Catholic cardinals and the director of the Church’s policy on culture, called Israelis baby-killers in a shameless form of anti-Semitism which subtly accuses the Jewish State of trying to murder the new Jesus, symbolized by the Palestinian people.

The Vatican official’s modern blood libel against Israel was delivered during the presentation of Pope Benedict’s new book about the life of Jesus. However, Ravasi’s theme – the Jews as Herod, who killed all the innocent babies because his heart was set on killing Jesus – was much beloved by Medieval organizers of pogroms.

The vicar-general of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, William Shomali, said on Vatican Radio that “what is happening in Gaza now is a vicious circle of violence”. The auxiliary bishop then declared that “it’s difficult to know who started it”. How difficult?

A few weeks ago, in an interview with the Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Shomali claimed that “hatred of Christians” is the Talmud itself.

“The Talmud, the holy book studied by the ultra-orthodox, more highly venerated than the Bible itself, invites religious hatred, speaks badly of Jesus, and even worse of Mary and, in general, of Christians,” the bishop said, adding that “in Israeli schools, love for the other is not taught, but rather the destruction of the other”.

Talking to the Vatican News Agency, Michel Sabbah, Patriarch Emeritus of Jerusalem, said that the Gaza Strip for many years “has been living under the weight of an absurd embargo, which makes the daily lives of a million and a half of people inumane”.

Sabbah signed the recent appeal by more than one hundred Christian leaders who have asked the international community to support the recognition of the Palestinian State as a full member of the United Nations. Among the signers is the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna, a self professed anti-Semite who blessed the suicide attacks against Israeli civilians.

As yet, no condemnation has come from the Pope of the barrages of rockets fired by terror groups on southern Israeli cities before Operation Pillar of Defense. The Church authorities, and Benedict XVI himself, raised their voices in condemnation of the violence that has broken out in the Gaza Strip only after Israel began bombing the installations of the terrorist movements in that territory. Not a word was heard before that.

During the Cast Lead operation in 2009, the Vatican officials called Gaza “a concentration camp”. After the Nazi comparison did its work, the Jesus-killer motif has now returned to the Catholic Church.
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Pope Knighted the ‘most Jewish Catholic’ paedophile

Posted on October 30, 2012 |

 

Last week, the head of Catholic Church in Britain requested the Vatican’s permission to remove posthmously Papal Knighthood awarded to the Zionist-controlled BBC television presenter, Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile (1926-2011), by Pope John Paul II in 1990 for charity work. It’s reported that he raised $60 million for Christian and Jewish charities.

 

The new revelations claim that Jimmy Savile may had sexually abused 400 young people and children, sometimes on BBC premises, over a 40 year period.

 

Vatican spokesperson, Father Federico Lombardi, said Pope Benedict XVI firmly condemn the horrible crimes of sexual abuse of minors and considers the Savile revelations as “very grave”. American Catholic writer and women’s rights activist, Joanna Francis, had called Pope Benedict XVI, a ‘Zionist double agent‘ in September 2006.

 

“It’s deeply saddened that a person who had been soiled in this way could in his life time have been proposed for an honor by the Holy Sea, which in the light of recent information should certainly not have been bestowed,” said Lombardi.

 

Jimmy was a staunch supporter of the Zionist entity. During his 10-day aliya to Israel in 1975, he boasted:

“I’m the most Jewish Catholoc you will ever meet,” The Jewish Chronicle, November 3, 2011. During his stay, Jimmy also met Israeli president Ephraim Katzir and Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek. The trip was fully paid by Lord John Levy of the Friends of Israel Educational Trust. Levy maintains family residence in both London and Tel Aviv. His two sons live in Israel. Levy is a close friend of Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak. 

Jimmy had berated the Zionist regime for being too soft after the 1967 Six Day War. British columnist and author Alan Hart has called it a “big fat Israel lie”. He claimed that the Zionist entity was never threatened by its Arab neighbors. Israeli invasion on June 5, 1967 “was not a pre-emptive strike or an act of self-defence. It was a war of aggression“. Read the article here.

 

Last week, after the news of Jimmy’s child sex abuses – Leeds Jewish Welfare Board removed a gold plaque in Savile’s honour from its Tree of Life at the Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Community Centre.

British Jewish businessman, Stuart Levin, bought Jimmy’s famous gold track suit at a recent auction sale for £550.

Vatican Accepts Patriarch Sfeir’s Resignation: Report

Author: WebsiteTeam Network

Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar said on Tuesday that the Vatican has reportedly accepted the resignation of Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir.

According to the daily, March 8 has been set as a date to elect a new patriarch for the Maronite church.

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Christian Arabs’ Plight: No to Foreign ‘Protection’

By Nicola Nasser – Bir Zeit, West Bank

 

Suddenly, the U. S.-European alliance is acting to protect the ‘existence’ of the Christian Arab minority against the Muslim Arab majority whose very existence is besieged and threatened by this same alliance, drawing on a wide spread Islamophobia while at the same time exacerbating Islamophobia among western audiences whom the international financial crisis is now crushing to the extent that it does not spare them time or resources to question the real political motives of their governments, which have been preoccupied for decades now with restructuring the Arab world geographically, demographically, politically and culturally against the will of its peoples with a pronounced aim of creating a “new Middle East.”

Muslims with christians , hand with hand

Ironically this sudden western awakening to the plight of Christian Arabs comes at a time when all Arabs, both Muslims and Christians, are crushed by U.S. and Israeli military occupation or foreign political hegemony, but worse still when they are in the grip of a social upheaval in the very states that are by will or by coercion loyal to this alliance, where unbalanced development and an unemployment rate more than double the world average are pushing masses onto the streets to challenge the legitimacy of their own pro – west governments. Exactly at this time, when Arab masses need their “social” unity for national liberation, sovereignty, liberty and freedom, a European campaign is being waged to divide them along religious and sectarian lines.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy — who on Dec. 9, 2009 wrote in Le Monde defending a Switzerland vote banning Muslim mosques from building minarets and made a national fuss on banning less than two thousand French citizens from wearing Niqab — said on Jan. 6 that he “cannot accept” what he described as “religious cleansing” of Arab Christians. His Foreign Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, wrote to the EU’s foreign affairs baroness, Catherine Ashton, asking for the union to draw up a plan of action in response. France took the initiative to call a meeting of the UN Security Council last Nov. 9 to discuss international protection of Iraqi Christians. On Dec. 22, Italy’s foreign Minister Franco Frattini said his country was presenting a resolution to the UN to condemn their “persecution.” Together with his French, Polish and Hungarian counterparts, Frattini wrote a joint letter to Ashton asking her to table the issue at the foreign ministers meeting on January 31 and to consider taking “concrete measures” to protect them. On Dec. 17, the German Bundestag passed a resolution defending the freedom of religion around tee world, but viewed with “great concern” the resolution of the UN Human Rights Council on March 25 last year against the “defamation of religions” because it “undermines the existing human rights understanding.”

The European political reaction sounds excessively selective in its concern over an allegedly missing right of the freedom of religion of the Christian minority in a region where civil and human rights for the Muslim majority are missing thanks in the first place for the support the regional governing regimes, which confiscate these same rights, receive from the U.S. – European alliance, and the European selectivity allegedly in defense of the “threatened” existence of the Christian Arab minorities speaks louder when it is compared with the deafening European silence over the threatened existence of the Arab and Islamic cultural identities of the majority, let alone the European incitement against both identities, a double standard that explicitly invokes suspicious questions about the credibility and sincerity of the European “rights” concerns and about the real political goals behind these pronounced concerns. For example, more than 300 mosques were attacked, some of them of a UNESCO World Heritage Center standards, hundreds of Muslim clerics were murdered, millions of Muslims were forced either to migrate internally or immigrate externally in the U.S. – occupied Iraq, and the plight of Iraqi Christians has been and still is merely a side show of the overall destruction of the whole state there, but the European rights consciousness did not and still does not find it worth a similar call for defense and protection.

Unfortunately, this traditional European divide – and – rule policy in the Arab world, as it was the case for centuries, is today finding ample papal blessing from the Vatican to justify itself, not in the eyes of Arabs, but in the eyes of its own audiences. President Sarkozy’s whistle blower cry this January 6 that Christians in the Arab – Islamic world are victims of a planned ‘religious cleansing,” came on the backdrop of the Vatican’s Pope Benedict XVI repeated call on the world leaders to rise up for the protection and “defense of the Christians in the Middle East.” It is a cry fraught with the connotations of the historical precedent of the Vatican – blessed Fourth Crusade, which consisted mainly of a crusading army originating from areas within France and which was diverted from invading Egypt by sea to the sacking of Constantinople, the capital of the political and spiritual rival, the Orthodox Church, to which the overwhelming majority of Christians in the Arab – Muslim world belong, instead of “liberating” Jerusalem from Muslims.

Pope Benedict XVI’s wilful or careless indifference towards exploiting his church concerns by “secular” politicians like Sarkozy to serve their down to earth goals, or towards exacerbating Islamophobia, which in turn fuels Christianphobia, is reminiscent of how the older Sarkozy –type “Christ – abiding” and non – secular politicians concealed from the bulk of the crusading army a letter from Pope Innocent III, who made the new Fourth Crusade the goal of his pontificate, warning against the diversion of the crusade, forbidding any atrocities against “Christian neighbors” and threatening excommunication. In as much as the indifference of the crusader pope to carry out his threat had led to the demise of the Byzantine Empire, the fall of Constantinople in the hands of the Muslims less than three hundred years later and turning the crusades into a war against the rival church more than against the Muslims, the indifference of the present day Pope Benedict XVI is threatening to counterproductively achieve the demise of Christian existence in the “East,” which he has made, it seems, the goal of his pontificate.

Ever since the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, Arab Christians in the Muslim world have been wary of the messages and emissaries of Rome as a cultural spearhead of foreign invasion and hegemony. Even a Catholic loyal to the Vatican like the incumbent Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, had this to tell the Israeli Haaretz exclusively four days before Benedict XVI’s “pilgrimage” to the Holy Land in September 2009: “The thing that worries me most is the speech that the pope will deliver here. One word for the Muslims and I’m in trouble; one word for the Jews and I’m in trouble. At the end of the visit the pope goes back to Rome and I stay here with the consequences.” Patriarch Twal’s fears were vindicated last week when Egypt recalled its Vatican envoy for consultations over the Pope’s remarks on Egyptian Copts: The “new statements from the Vatican” are “unacceptable interference” in Egypt’s “internal affairs,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement. Syrian analyst Sami Moubayed recently wrote that similar papal remarks were to the “fundamentalists .. a blessing in disguise.”

Pope Benedict XVI since he occupied the papacy seat seems totally insensitive to the worries of his representative in Jerusalem; he doesn’t seem short of words and seems careful not to miss an opportunity to utter provocative anti-Muslim pronouncements that place both his church clergy and followers on the defensive among both their Christian as well as Muslim compatriots. However, he places them in a more critical position by his helplessness to find any words or an opportunity in his latest torrential rhetoric about the protection of Christians and their plight in Holy Land itself, where they have been victims of actual ethnic and religious cleansing for more than sixty years now since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948, when the state of Israel was declared independent on the ruins of their homes.

From a regional perspective, both Christian and Muslim, the very existence of Christians is threatened, besieged and gradually cleansed by the Israeli military occupation in the Palestinian cradle of Christianity – – where Christ was born, spread the word of God, love and peace and crucified. The papal silence on this simple fact of life is much louder in the region than Pope’s pronounced appeals for the defense and protection of Christians on the peripheries of the birthplace of Christianity, in Iraq, Egypt or Lebanon for example, because when the center of Christian gravity crumbles in Jerusalem, the periphery supports would not hold for long and even the important St, Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican would be a pale substitute, and the center of Christian gravity in Jerusalem is almost totally Judaized, and is off limits to the Christians both in the Palestinian cradle of Christianity as well as to their brethren on the Arab and Muslim periphery, unless they are granted an Israeli military permit to visit, which is rare and very tightly selective.

Viewed from Christian regional perspective, the papal appeals for their protection could hardly be described other than contradictory, if not hypocrite, particularly in view of a Vatican’s document in July 2007, approved by Benedict XVI, which declared Catholicism as “the only true church of Christ” and “other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches.” So, “what” Christians Pope Benedict is appealing to defend and protect? A year earlier, Coptic Pope Shenouda III denied there was any dialogue or contacts with the Vatican although thirty three years before both sides agreed to form joint committees for bilateral dialogue. With the exception of Armenian church as a late newcomer but nonetheless an independent church, the Coptic, Orthodox, Chaldean, Assyrian, Syriac, Melkite and other Eastern communions have existed and coexisted among and with Arabs since the earliest days of Christianity, because they are Arabs either by ethnicity or by culture and they are the overwhelming majority of Christians in the Middle East and an integral part of the Arab society.

Islamophobia is warning that Muslims are “returning” to Islam, but is it not top on the agenda of Pope Benedict XVI to return Europe to Christianity? “We must reject both secularism and fundamentalism,” the Pope said in his annual address on Christmas Day, but is it not secularism that the Pope, Europe and the U.S. are preaching now to de-Arabise and de-Islamise Arabs? This double standard ironical western contradiction deprives their calls for the protection of Arab Christians of whatever credibility it might still have in the Arab eyes. Their “protection” will prove counterproductive sooner or later. Christianphobia that fuels anti – Christian blind terror is an already active byproduct.

The ‘Church of Islam’

Commenting on the Synod of Middle East Christian leaders that convened in the Vatican last October, the spiritual leader of the Melkite “Catholics,” Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, Gregorios III, had this to say, quoted by the Lebanese Daily Star last December: “The Synod for the Middle East is a Synod for Arab countries, for Arabs, a Synod for Arab Christians in symbiosis with their Arab society. It is a Synod for the ‘Church of the Arabs’ and ‘Church of Islam’.” The adviser to the Muslim Sunni Mufti of Lebanon, Dr. Mohammad Al-Sammak, who was invited to the Synod, recognized the Arab identity of Christians in the Middle East: “I cannot live my being Arabic without the Middle Eastern Christian Arab .. They are an integral part of the .. formation of Islamic civilization,” he told the Synod.

Politically and religiously these Christians have been on the other side of the Vatican – blessed old or modern western conquests, and politically and religiously they have been all along protected by Arabs and Muslims, otherwise they would not have survived. Their existence is now under threat because the existence of their Arab – Islamic incubator is on the line, besieged either by direct military occupation in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan or by economic sanctions and political hegemony; their existence was not threatened when the Arab – Islamic state was an empire and a world power, nor was it threatened during the crusades despite the atrocities committed by their western co-religious crusaders, which would have invited a reprisal had it not been for the teachings of Islam itself.

The U.S. – led world war on terror targeting mainly Arabs and Muslims is perplexing western pro – law, peace and human rights audiences by smoke –screening their governments’ military adventures and modern crusades, which is the real action that created terrorism as the only possible reaction expected by the overpowered nations. However the invading creator and the created terrorists in their bloody divide are smoke – screening also any possible resurface of the forgotten Islamic covenants that protected the indigenous two thousand – year old Arab Christians since the advent of Islam in the seventh century. In the year 628 AD, a Christian delegation from St. Catherine’s Monastery, in Egypt’s Sinai, met Prophet Mohammad and requested his protection. The Prophet granted them a protection charter.

Dr. Muqtedar Khan, Director of Islamic Studies at the University of Delaware and a fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, wrote this about the charter: “The document is not a modern human rights treaty but even though it was penned in 628 A.D., it clearly protects the right to property, freedom of religion, freedom of work, and security of the person. A remarkable aspect of the charter is that it imposes no conditions on Christians for enjoying its privileges. It is enough that they are Christians. They are not required to alter their beliefs, they do not have to make any payments and they do not have any obligations. This is a charter of rights without any duties! The first and the final sentence of the charter are critical. They make the promise eternal and universal. By ordering Muslims to obey it until the Day of Judgment the charter again undermines any future attempts to revoke the privileges. These rights are inalienable.” In the year 631, Prophet Muhammad received a delegation of sixty Christians from Najran in the Prophet’s mosque in Medinah, allowed them to pray in the mosque, and concluded the “covenant to the Christians of Najran” treaty which granted them religious and administrative autonomy as citizens of the Islamic State. In 637, Islamic Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab granted the similar “Covenant of Omar” to the Patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius.

However, neither Islamophobians nor their terrorist Islamists have any interest but to dump these Islamic ideological covenants for the protection of Arab Christians. No Arab Christian fears for his life form his Muslim neighbor or his government, but he or she definitely fears these two protagonists, who are both foreign to his history and culture. No foreign protection of Arab Christians could match the protection and solidarity they received from their Muslim compatriots both in Iraq and Egypt following the bombings of a church in Baghdad on October 31 and a church in Alexandria on New Year Eve. In the latter case there were reports of Muslim human shields to protect the Christmas religious celebrations of Egyptian Christians, let alone the solidarity statements by both outlawed Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya and the Muslim Brotherhood and the thousands of police deployed for the same purpose, in a remarkable show of national unity and historic coexistence.

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), scheduled to meet in the UAE on January 19, will discuss the situation of Christians in member states, according to Lebanon parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri. On this background, there are also reports that Egypt will ask the Arab League economic summit this month, to discuss foreign, and in particular western, interference in Arab Affairs. European offers of protection are already backlashing.

The only real threat to the existence of Arab Christians showed for the first time when the European colonialism first, then the U.S. imperialism, self – appointed western powers as their protectors. It is noteworthy that in both the Iraqi and Egyptian cases the native Christian Arabs are now paying the heavy price of the U.S. anti – Pan –Arabism of both late Jamal Abdul Nasser and Saddam Hussein. Their plight started with the forcing of pro – U.S. regimes in both countries.

To describe the latest attacks against Christians as a plan of “religious cleansing,” as President Sarkozy has done, suggests a persecution that doesn’t exist; this is “not the case in the Middle East at the moment,” it is “not supported by the wider community,” said Fiona McCallum of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, who is a specialist on the Christian communities in the Middle East, adding: “It’s important to also note that immigration takes place from the region from both Christians and Muslims as well.”

– Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.


River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Is the Vatican willing to give legitimacy to Jewish Nazism?

[ 11/12/2010 – 11:47 PM ]

  

By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem

I understand that the term “Jewish Nazism” is harsh, shocking and might well be provocative and offensive to many, especially those adhering to the Jewish faith. I have nothing against the Jewish faith per se, but I do detest the absurd but widespread use of Judaism to justify decidedly racist and criminal conduct as is happening in occupied Palestine these days.

I am not going to argue why the use of the above-mentioned term is justified. In the final analysis, when Jews, or anyone else for that matter, think, behave and act in a Nazi way, we should have no compunctions or hesitation comparing them to Nazis.

Today, Zionist circles are waging a rabid campaign aimed at convincing as many Western institutions to deal with and treat Israel as above the laws of mankind on the ground that Jews are intrinsically superior to the rest of mankind.

Proponents of this evil racism may not use the same words mentioned, probably for fear of a public backlash, but this is exactly what they mean.

Two years ago, for example, Israel urged the United States and a number of other western countries to see to it that international laws, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention, be amended in a way that would allow Israeli soldiers to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with impunity.

In other words, Israel wants to be accorded a special treatment by the community of nations in order to be able to murder, incinerate, and maim innocent civilians, even on a large, e.g. genocidal, scale, without being held accountable, prosecuted or even criticized.

To put it brashly frank, Israel wants to act the Nazi way, e.g. commit genocidal crimes as it did in the Gaza Strip around this time two years ago, but without being called Nazi or any other similar epithet.

I realize there are numerous followers of the Jewish faith, or people who call themselves Jews, who condemn in the strongest terms the utter fascism that is being practiced in Israel in their collective name.

I also understand that many Jews are embarrassed and pained whenever they hear some fellow Jews claim openly and publicly that non-Jews are infra-human beings or outright animals in human shape whose lives have no sanctity whatsoever.

None the less, this issue can’t and must not be dismissed or allowed to go into oblivion.

After all, those who don’t learn from the “mistakes of history” are bound to repeat them. More to the point, of all people, Jews should know better.

The reason I am penning this piece is because Zionist Congress leadership are trying to bully the Vatican to condone and accept policies and practices in the Holy Land (Occupied Palestine) that are decidedly and inherently antithetical to basic Christian teachings and values.

The Zionists have apparently succeeded in getting the Italian government to embrace the Nazism of Israeli settlers who say openly that millions of Palestinians Muslims and Christians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, would have to accept one of three choices offered to them: Enslavement to the Chosen People, e.g. the Master Race, deportation or expulsion, or physical extermination.

Don’t think I am indulging in wild imagination, propaganda, or exuding certain phobic reactions or paranoia.

We live here under Israel’s military occupation and we see the Nazi-like behavior of Jewish settlers who say openly that Israel ought to deal with millions of non-Jews in Palestine the same way Joshua, the famous Biblical figure, dealt with the Canaanites.

In other words, genocide.

And when people like this writer object, as any conscientious person must, he is berated for not believing in the Bible. And in a matter of seconds, he is overwhelmed with a torrent of Biblical quotations that ostensibly justify genocide.

Today, Israel and her supporters are trying rather frantically to desensitize western especially Christian public opinion to accept the eventuality of genocide for Palestinian Christians and Muslims, employing satanic insinuations, selective Biblical rationalizations, and outright lies.

The Christian world, especially the Holy See, must not succumb or be cajoled into accepting or tolerating Israeli fascism under the rubric of friendship with the Jews or atoning for Christianity’s sins against Jews.


Certainly, I am not suggesting in any way that the Vatican or Christians in general should alienate Jews or adopt a hostile approach towards them. However, not alienating Jews must never ever mean or imply keeping silent in the face of Israel’s crimes against the helpless Palestinian community.

A few days ago, dozens of rabbis in Israel issued another poisoned edict forbidding Jews from renting or selling property to non-Jews. This is not an innocuous or anecdotal measure as some pro-Israeli apologists would argue. This is actually how the holocaust started in the first place: First we had Mein Kampf, then the boycott of Jews, then the Nuremberg laws (the Nazi edicts), then the Hitler Youth, then Kristallnacht, then, well, we know the rest of the story.

A few weeks earlier, Israel’s chief Haredi rabbi, Ovadia Yosef, who commands the allegiance and loyalty, of hundreds of thousands of Jews, was quoted as saying that non-Jews are effectively animals of burden, such as donkeys, whose main raison d’etre in this life is to serve Jews.

Many of these manifestly racist rabbis, even those who call for killing non-Jewish babies, receive generous subsidies from the Israeli government.

Just imagine if such racist nonsense were uttered by a high-ranking Muslim or Christian leader, or if a Muslim or Christian religious leader called for killing of Jewish babies if they posed any conceivable danger, real or potential.

According to one Israeli writer, Sefi Rachelevsky, quoted recently by journalist Jonathan Cook, tens of thousands of Israeli pupils attending religious schools or Yishivot, are taught that Jews sit above nature, which comprises four categories: “inanimate”, “vegetable”, “animal” and “speakers” – or non-Jews, who are considered no more than talking animals.

Unfortunately, one can go on and on and on elucidating and exposing the racist venom spewed nearly on a daily bases by those who call themselves rabbis.

Which makes it incumbent upon religious leaders of all confessions, including the Chief Rabbinate in Israel, which has lamentably remained silent, to call the spade a spade.

Indeed, the last thing our fragile world needs is genocidal wars in the name of religion.

A final word. Zionist leaders are pressing the Vatican to work against the “de-legitimization of Israel.”

Well, the Vatican must not allow these pathological liars to put words into its mouth. Because ultimately, Israel’s nefarious practices and crimes are what de-legitimize Israel.

Moreover, Israel can’t steal Arab property, destroy Arab homes, build settler units on stolen land, banish East Jerusalemites from their homes because of their views, and indeed arrest thousands of non-Jews either on concocted charges or without charge or trial, and then childishly ask other nations to “denounce the de-legitimization of Israel.”

The essence of Jesus’ message lied in his efforts to establish equality and justice between Jews and Gentiles. This is basically why he was so vehemently rejected, on the ground that he sought to rob Jews of their Chosen-People Status.

Hence, the Vatican and the entire Christian world would effectively be adopting the position of the Pharisees and the Sadducees by agreeing to accord Israel a special privilege to oppress, steal and murder.

Don’t do that. It would render Christianity sterile from within.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian