Israel blasts Pope; Vatican responds

The Vatican has reacted sharply to a verbal attack on Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) launched by the Israeli foreign ministry.

In a harsh public statement released on July 25, the Israeli government expressed outrage that the Pope had not explicitly included Israel among the countries he listed as recent victims of terrorism. The Pope, during his public audience the previous day, had condemned all terrorism, but particularly mentioned the "execrable terrorist attacks" that had occurred in recent days in England, Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq.

The Israeli government statement charged that the Pontiff had deliberately failed to mention a suicide bombing in Israel on July 12-- an omission which, the foreign ministry said, "cries out to the heavens." The Pope's statement, the Israeli ministry continued, placed a "moral stain" on Church leadership, by "granting legitimacy to terrorist attacks on Jews."

(An analysis by the AsiaNews service characterized the Israeli government statement as an "unprecedentedly crude and violent" personal attack on the Pontiff. The AsiaNews report said that the foreign ministry appeared to have issued the statement in haste, and the Hebrew text was marred by errors in spelling and punctuation.)

Responding to the Israeli complaint later in the day on Monday, papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls emphasized that the Pope condemned all forms of terrorism, and the suicide bombing that killed 5 Israelis in the town of Netanya on July 12 would certainly be included in that "general and unreserved" condemnation. Navarro-Valls noted that the Pope, during his Angelus remarks, had "referred expressly to the attacks "of these days," and listed only the most recent incidents. The bombing in Netanya took place 12 days before the Pope's audience, whereas the terrorist attacks on England, Egypt, Turkey, and Iraq has occurred within the past 72 hours.

"It is surprising that someone would have wanted to distort the Pope's intention," the director of the Vatican press office observed.

Navarro-Valls told reporters that the apostolic nuncio had already spoken with officials at the Israeli foreign ministry about the Pope's remarks. In its public statement released earlier in the day, the Israeli government said that it had summoned the nuncio to lodge a formal protest of the papal statement.

Later in the day, the Israeli foreign minister adopted a more conciliatory statement, saying that he thought the Pope's failure to include Israel on his list of recent terror victims was "mistake and not a deliberate omission."

Maybe the oversight had something to do with the fact that he's spent at least part of his vacation practicing reciting the Psalms in Hebrew so that when he is in Cologne for World Youth Day, next month, and visits the synagogue there (infuriating a certain wing of Catholicism), he can pray the Psalms with his Jewish hosts in Hebrew.

The first letter of his Pontificate was a birthday greeting to the elderly Chief Rabbi of Rome, together with a personal invitation to the Rabbi to be a guest of honor at the papal installation (which the Rabbi could not do because of the Holy Days).

Oh yes, the Jerusalem Post has every right to say that "so far Benedictus XVI falls short".

Stick a sock in it.

So, what was the Pope's response?

Wasn't one that I saw. Did you catch that.

Someone else at the Vatican spoke, and first reports in AP and other Islamofascist press organs suggested that the Pope was concerned that Israel regularly violates international law by resisting foreign attacks ~ something like that.

I suspect there is a group at the Vatican who would like nothing better than to lead folks into believing the Pope is an "hereditary Nazi". This is something to be watched closely in the future.

There are two principal points about this.

First, is that the Catholic Church and Pope Pius in particular have been viciously and unfairly maligned as pro-Hitler/Nazi. To the extent Jews have joined in that slander, or passed it by with indifference, it is understandibly resented bitterly. The pope and Catholics assisted Jews at great risk, and from great love. It is perceived that Jews spit in the face of the Church for the cheap thrill of victimhood, regardless of the truth.

Second, the Church has appeared phoney and juvenile in its lack of condemnation of the brutal killing of Jews in Israel. There is zero reason why the Church should not be in the forefront of the defense of Jews in the mid-east. But the Church is not, and gives any rational person the impression that the Church doesnt care if Jews are brutally murdered in Israel.

The two are connected.

Christians and Jews should love one another and cut out the baloney.

I have seen this on Catholic websites. Seems Israel had a hidden agenda. ah politics is a messy thing. It seems very foolish for the israelis to get the Vatican and the Pope offside after all the hard work that the Catholic church has done in recent years to change the antisemitic attitudes of some of their faithful. This kind of behaviour only gives fuel to the anti-semites. It seems to many that it is all one way, the church has made all the apologies and changes and the Jews are strident and demanding and not compromising one inch themselves.

"But perhaps, Israel’s hastily prepared screed was just an opportunity to use the Pope’s statement as a smokescreen. AsiaNews reports that Israel’s out-of-proportion complaint was meant to justify their decision to break off talks with the Vatican planned for Monday.

These negotiations, explicitly mandated by Israel’s 1993 Fundamental Agreement with the Holy See - the international treaty that is the “magna charta” of all relations between the Jewish State and the Catholic Church - have the purpose of achieving a new treaty to confirm the Church’s centuries’ old tax exemptions and property rights, which have been eroded by the State since its establishment. The negotiations began officially on 11 March 1999. However, in recent years Israel has been reluctant even to meet the Holy See to negotiate, and on 28 August 2003, the Israeli delegation abandoned the negotiations altogether, and only came back to the table a year later in response to pressure from the Church and the Government of the United States. After agreeing to very few meetings in 2005, Israel agreed to meet on 19 July, only to cancel the meeting at the last moment, and have it transferred to 25 July. Apparently Israeli officials feared the consequences of cancelling this meeting too at the very last moment, so they contrived to find fault with the papal Angelus address to cover up their non-compliance with their treaty obligation to negotiate with the Holy See.
The crux of the negotiations is a desire by the Church to set up a legally binding covenant regarding the work of the Church in Holy Land, including standards for the rights of religious workers, property rights, and the legal rights for the Church as a whole. I think part of the problem here is that Israel sees the Catholic Church as being too sympathetic to Palestinians, who make up a large part of the Church’s flock in the Holy Land. "

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