Welcome Your Holiness the Pope, but !!...

See NYTimes piece In Bethlehem, Pope Laments Israeli Wall
here

JUST IN: Is Netanyahu ready for the two state plan again at long last?
here

See also: here
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Shefar’am, Israel 20200 Friday, May 15, 2009

By: Elias Jabbour Jabbour

Welcome to the sovereign pontiff of the holy see in his holy pilgrimage to the land where Jesus Christ was born, grew up and lived. Welcome as you go in the footsteps of Jesus Christ as his Messianic representative on Earth, We have heard your praises and commend your relationship with the Jewish faith and the Jewish people who suffered from oppression and persecution in Christian Europe during the dark days of the second world war and particularly in Nazi Germany. But we did not hear you praise and pay tribute to those of other faiths.

We understand clearly the religious and humanitarian duty, which has led you to denounce the injustice done to the innocents of the Jewish people symbolically on behalf of Christians throughout the world, but we can not understand how or why you ignore the millions of other innocent peoples that have suffered under the same regime and those who suffer to this very day, from injustice, oppression and occupation, who are in dire need of sympathy and condemnation of what has happened to them. Surely as we do not accept any hurt to those of the Jewish faith or ethnicity, at the same time, we cannot remain silent and accept the hurt and the feeling of those of other faiths.

We understand your sympathy with the some six million innocent Jewish victims of the Holocaust, but we can not understand your silence for the more than ten million innocent victims of the same Holocaust, those of other peoples, including the sons of your own German people as well as Poles, Russians, Gypsies and disabled men, women and children. This you know very well without the need to name and count them.

Nor can we understand your silence on the victims of other Holocausts involving Armenians, Cambodians, Rwandans, and Algerians and others from the recent past, and Iraqis, Sri-Lankans, Palestinians, and Lebanese in recent years and into the present time

We will follow and keep track of you, Sir as you go along the path of Jesus Christ, the Messenger of love, justice and peace. And we will believe that you come bearing his great message of love, justice and peace for all the world as Jesus carried it when the angels proclaimed: "Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, good will to all people."

We, sir, are simple believers. we understand the message of Jesus Christ, in simple words bearing deep meaning, clearly and without ambiguity, words that mean peace on earth for all the inhabitants of the earth and peace for all, without discrimination, for all the people of the world, including the Palestinian people under occupation and siege in their own homeland and in the refugee camps in the Diaspora. This is the all-inclusive greatness of Jesus Christ!

While you walk and follow the path walked by Jesus, you chose to favor those you wanted to favor, and ignored the indigenous people of this land, who have lived here for centuries and generations, long before Europe was Christianized. In fact, Europe may never have been Christianized and America afterwards apart from them. We Christians believe deep in our hearts, sir, that Jesus came to this earth to save us from our sins –from ourselves, but also to alleviate pain and human suffering. “Come unto me all you who have heavy burdens…” He came to stand with those who are oppressed and not with their oppressors. He came to take the hands of the victims of persecution --not the hands of their persecutors. How much I wish for you to do likewise because there are many who need one such as yourself to hold their hands.

How hurtful it is to our people and myself when the message of Christ is incomplete and lacks integrity. How damaging to that message when you turn your head and close your eyes to the suffering and pain of others. Although I do not expect you to bear the whips to expel the sellers and the thieves from the temple as Jesus did, but I cannot accept holding firm the feet of those who oppress others.

While we believe that the single kidnapped Israeli soldier should be released and returned to his family neither should he ever return to Gaza as an occupying soldier but only as a guest visitor. At the same time we firmly believe that the overwhelming number of abducted Palestinian prisoners, who are waiting to be returned to their mothers, their spouses and children, just as Gilad Shalit's mother is waiting for the return of her son, should be released because justice for the one is the same for all and must be done.

And if you cannot visit the war torn Gaza Strip, --and maybe you were denied access to that possibility, still, I find your silence with regard to the children of Gaza, the victims of another Holocaust, very odd. Children of young age seen in the media with torn apart bodies, as a result of terrible aggression, carried by their grieving parents… The bloody images are still imprinted in our minds and stand before our eyes. I did not hear from you, even one word, of explicit bold condemnation. We were expecting at least to hear your cry of pain, a human pain, first of all as a human being and secondly as a person of high rank who claims faith in God.

The lives of the innocent children of the Holocaust of the 20th century deserve your prayers for sure, but so also do the lives of the innocent children of Gaza. These are no less deserving of them. We neither ask for some great thing nor do we expect anything from you other than to ask you to lift up your prayers to the Lord of heaven for these as a God fearing man of faith and to say a word of justice without fear in the face of their killers.

You may, of course, choose not do this for reasons we well know but we can not understand how you can ignore the suffering of believers, many of whom are your followers, who have lived in this holy land with their parents and grandparents for generations and who have carried the message of Christ with all patience and faith for over two thousand years. I hope that these faithful ones will not lose this message in your Holiness’ reign while they suffer through many more long years while you know very well the things from which they suffer.

The ruins of the villages of Kafr-Bira'm and Ikrit and its displaced people bear witness to the devastation of human lives. These and many other "destroyed" villages form a "living Museum," which attests to the historic injustice perpetrated on the Arab Palestinian people. These destroyed "Christian" villages along with sister Moslem and Druzes Palestinian villages wait impatiently, for you to visit them as you have visited other places. They ought to be given priority over the other places on your itinerary.

I hope that while you do your pilgrimage to the Holy Land and visit Jerusalem you will acknowledge that it is the holy city to many religious traditions and not only to one. And when you pass through the empty streets of Bethlehem now bereft of many of its people, look around you to see how your lost sheep have gone astray and have been scattered in every direction. You are the sheepherder. These must be brought back to the fold, as befits the calling of a Good Shepherd, before it is too late and before these holy places become empty of their inhabitants and before you come for your next visit and find no one to receive you except the dead stones of the empty Holy Sepulcher!

Copyright 2009 House of Hope International Peace Center Israel
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URGENT ACTION: Urge Members of Congress to Join Congressman Baird's Delegation to Israel and Palestine In February, Congressman Brian Baird, our representative from the WA - 3rd District, joined Congressman Keith Ellison from Minnesota, for a visit to Gaza and, also, Sderot in Israel. Since then, he has spoken out strongly about all that he witnessed.

Congressman Baird has planned and organized a late May Congressional delegation to Israel, the West Bank, and hopefully Gaza (with some focus on Israeli/Palestinian groups working together for peace). In visiting with him this week, we learned that for reasons apparently related to schedule demands, not enough members of Congress
have signed on to make the May trip viable. Unless there is a surge in interest, it appears that Congressman Baird will postpone this delegation until later in the year.

We all know how important it is for people to see for themselves what is happening in
Israel/Palestine. Please call and/or write to your Congressional members Representatives and Senators) and urge them to join Congressman Brian Baird's delegation to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza--either in May or later in the
year (should it be postponed).

Tell your representatives in Congress that it is important to you that they go to the West Bank and Gaza (as well as Israel) to see the situation firsthand. Tell them that the financial investment we are making in this region and the relevance of Israel/Palestine to U.S. interests, require that they see the full picture. Tell them you want them to go.

Please share this message with others who will contact their members of Congress, as well.

Thanks!
Cindy and Craig Corrie

To contact the owner of the website where this campaign originated at news@ajpme.org.