Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
Posted on 04/02/2004 6:54:36 AM PST by Siobhan
There is hardly a more resolute supporter of Israel in Congress than Rep. Henry Hyde, the venerable chairman of the House International Relations Committee. That is why his March 25 letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell is so important. It is a plea to deflect Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's wall around the Holy Land from its planned position blocking the Scriptural pathway of Jesus Christ.
''I fear that important religious sites will become museums for commercial purposes and will no longer be maintained as places of spiritual worship shared by billions across the world,'' Hyde, a prominent Roman Catholic layman, told Powell. As Holy Week approaches, he asked the secretary's help to ''ensure that the Stations of the Cross are not cut off from each other, preventing the normal celebrations of Easter and the commemoration of the last days of Christ.''
That raises the question of whether the Bush administration will confront Israel on this issue. Sharon's government last year abruptly cut off negotiations with the Vatican. U.S. Catholic clergy and laity, inspecting the deplorable conditions for Christians in the Holy Land, have found the attitude of the Israeli military and bureaucracy ranges from uncooperative to hostile.
When worried Catholics first visited Hyde last year to tell him of the havoc wrought by Sharon's wall, he told them to come back with proof. A delegation headed by the Rev. Donald Rooney of Fredericksburg, Va., and the Rev. John J. Podsiadlo of Baltimore did just that in March.
''If we do not turn the tide of events,'' Reverends Rooney and Podsiadlo wrote after they returned, ''Christian charity, sacred sites and the living Christian community in the Holy Land will be destroyed.'' The wall, the priests said, ''could forever change the Holy Land and the people who live in and visit this cherished historic land.''
With corroborating evidence supplied by his own staffer sent to investigate, Hyde was convinced. In his letter to Powell, he laid out the problems created by the Sharon wall. An 8-meter-high concrete wall will completely enclose the last passage from Bethany to the Mount of Olives, restricting the Palm Sunday procession from Bethpage into Jerusalem. Access will be blocked to the Sisters of Emmanuel Monastery north of Bethlehem. A proposed route of the wall will separate the convent and school of the Rosary Sisters. The process also is certain to accelerate the continuing Israeli expropriation of West Bank land still held by the dwindling Christian community there.
Henry Hyde is no Israeli-basher. ''I would never criticize Israel for building that fence,'' he told me. He said he is just trying to set in motion ''some negotiations'' to protect the Christian holy places.
The problem is that the Sharon government won't negotiate. The Vatican charges that Israel has violated the 1993 agreement between Rome and Israel guaranteeing West Bank land owned by the Catholic Church. Sharon has refused to enforce the concordat. The Rev. David Jaeger, representing the Holy See, is a native-born Israeli citizen who has been working on this problem for 27 years but has run into the Sharon wall. The Israeli government pulled out of negotiations with Jaeger Aug. 28. The response to me from an Israeli embassy spokesman in Washington was ''no comment.''
This state of affairs did not appear on screens of Bush administration policymakers until it was called to Hyde's attention and the congressman wrote his letter. Colin Powell, who clearly has not been enthusiastic about the wall, can be counted on to carefully study the problem in the Holy Land.
But a dilemma faces Powell, Hyde and all official U.S. supporters of Israel. The wall manifests Sharon's policy of blood and iron, with collateral damage. While soldiers from the Israeli Defense Force overrun church properties, the U.S. taxpayer is paying for much of the $8 billion wall. The Christian pilgrim, stopped at IDF checkpoints, sees this graffiti at many places on the barrier: ''The USA is paying for this wall.'' That underscores U.S. responsibility for what is happening in the Holy Land.
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Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list
You should not act on your fears, Senator, but on facts. What past actions of the Israeli government gave you any indication that this is even an issue?
Were you also acting so resolutely when Palestinians blew up a 2000-year-old synagogue in Jerico? when they desecrated Rachel's tomb? Those were facts, specific actions, not "fear" thereof --- where were your resolutions then, senator?
Novak and his anti-Israeli game he's been playing for ever. And it appears to work: you Siobbhan quoted Novak's characterization of Hyde.
Since when in America taking sides is more important that principle. Hyde may be a supporter of Israel -- what does this have to do with his stance on a particular issue? Only for people that lack principle, such as Novak, is this important.
The Rev. David Jaeger, representing the Holy See, is a native-born Israeli citizen who has been working on this problem for 27 years Aha! The problem existed for much, much longer and only now came to the surface! That is the impression he sneaks into the mind of the reader.
but has run into the Sharon wall. And both Sharon and "his" wall existed for all 27 years? Make up your mind Mr. Novak.
Poor Novak: he alone must fight those sinister Joooos.
Anyone who really cares about maintaining Christian holy sites and supporting the Christian community in the Holy Land should have something to say about the ongoing trashing of these sites and the persecution of Christians by the Palestinian Authority.
The only way to safeguard all the sites that are sacred to Christians in the Holy Land is to prevent them from ever coming under the control of the Muslims.
Israel is our ally and vice versa.
We need to see this in perspective, insist as Christians and as Americans that the Via Dolorosa and other sites sacred to Christianity be open and available and protected by the Israeli government, and not be tempted by talk of generalities such as protecting "Christians" which can easily be construed as an argument that Palestinian Christians are somehow to be off limits to Israeli law enforcement.
Palestinian Christians are largely Catholic, as am I, and under the religious leadership of the Roman Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem/Archbishop of Jerusalem one Michael Sabbah who is utterly unashamed in his tolerance of anti-Israeli activity among Palestinians generally and among his own flock specifically. Sabbah is part of the problem and not part of the solution. If I am wrong about Michael Sabbah, I am eager to be corrected.
Presidential advice to Prime Minister Sharon that Christians are the overwhelming majority of Americans and a very important part of Dubya's constituency and that the US insists that the Christian shines be available and protected should suffice.
We should not allow generalized talk about protecting "Christians" to become a mantra to facilitate Palestinian terrorism and create a protected class of terrorists. If I should ever visit the Holyland and visit the shrines and the places important to Gospel accounts, I will be delighted to be examined minutely for bombs or weapons (under the reigning circumstances) and that everyone else be similarly examined lest I an mine be blown to smithereens by Mohammed el Rootie Kazootie and 25 pounds of plastique meant to exterminate infidels such as Israeli citizens (including Arabs), Jews of any nationality, Catholics like me or you or Palestinian Christians or anyone else.
The Sharon policy of blood and iron is, if anything, too modest by far. People who intentionally blow up school buses full of Orthodox Jewish school children as an attack on the peaceful religious zeal of the Orthodox and Chassidic Jews or any school buses full of any school children for any reason, have earned execution in the streets (since Israel does not have judicially ordered executions).
Henry Hyde is a wonderful man and I have every confidence that he will make the appropriate distinctions in his advice to State Department and to Dubya.
To pray for peace is a noble and Christian thing to do but we must practice war as necessary until peace may be achieved. There is absolutely no detectable desire on the part of the Palestinian militants to cooperate in any peace not achieved by the killing of the last Jew and reclaiming Israel for the expansion of the Third World Marxist pigsty that is said by the Arafats to be "Palestine."
Notwithstanding the content of the article, this fact must be kept in mind.
Excuse me, but when have Palestinian Christians ever been a problem for Israeli law enforcement?
As for the Latin Patriarch, and his shamelessness -- there's a lot of shamelessness in that part of the world, and the Israelis take second place to nobody in that competition. Insofar as Sabbah encourages nonviolent civil resistance to the manifest injustices and indignities heaped upon Palestinians by Israeli elements bent on driving them off the land, I am all for him.
Indeed, the President's advice to Sharon about access to holy sites should suffice, but the Administration seems to be too busy writing a legal basis into Iraqi law for an introduction of abortion in that country, leaving no time to deliver advice to our ally, or else delivering it with a wink from our leader who's carefully triangulating his reelection. I call your attention to Zenit's story of March 25 about Israel's systematic denials to grant visas to Christian religious personnel:
Franciscan Father David Jaeger, a spokesman of the Holy Land Custody, told AsiaNews: "We are dealing with a very serious problem indeed, one which is getting worse by the day. Promises made by top-ranking government officials have not been kept so far," he said. "They won't let us know their reasons behind the new policy. There are no official channels of dialogue to bring about a resolution to the situation."
One is left wondering whether the de-Christianisation of Palestine is an explicit policy of Israel. There's nothing Israel could do more likely to radicalise those remaining and provoke a final terrorist offensive so savage that it will be able to claim self-defense in clearing the land altogether. Perhaps this is their endgame in the consolidation of this utopian project. Win or lose, it's a bloody prospect. So far as I can see, neither side wants anything less than total victory. It's a very dangerous game they are playing.
Since the time of the Crusades up to 1948, there had been no issue with access to Christian Holy Sites despite "control by Muslims". Only with the advent of Israel, and in particular with the 1967 war, has this been an issue.
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