Latest from Israel 29-March-2012

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11449#.T3OXvdkkifU
China, Israel and the Jewish People
Interview series: Dr. S. Wald of JPPPI, "They see the Jews as an old people with a long history and view Israel as its center. One often hears from Chinese that theirs and the Jewish civilization are the oldest surviving ones."
From Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld
China is largely uncharted territory for Israel and the Jewish people.
Jews have lived in China since a remote past and there is proof of some Jews having lived or traveled there as much as one thousand years ago. Before the Second World War, there was a Jewish community of Russian refugees Harbin. Twenty thousand European Jews found refuge in Shanghai shortly before the war, fleeing Germany. They left China after the war.
At present, there are thousands of Jewish and Israeli businessmen in various Chinese cities, mainly Shanghai and Beijing.
“Until the early 20th century, the Chinese slate was virtually blank with regard to Jews. There are no holy books where the Jews are condemned for
killing God’s son or rejecting Allah’s prophet. The Chinese word youtai (Jew) has no negative connotation. Besides the Hindu world, this is the only major civilization where the Jewish people can start from a neutral position.”
Dr. Shalom Salomon Wald worked with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris from 1964 to 2001. He joined the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute (JPPPI) in Jerusalem at its founding in 2002. In 2004, he published a book titled China and the Jewish People: Old Civilizations in a New Era.
Wald observes: “How can we know what ‘the Chinese’ think about Israel and Jews? The country has 1.4 billion citizens and offers conflicting experiences. A large number of Chinese know that there is a state called Israel, Islele, in the Middle East.
"During the Second Intifada, Chinese Central Television , which is watched by hundreds of millions of people, sometimes showed Israel in a negative way. Last year, however, CCTV showed a whole series of movies about Jewish culture and history.
“In the cultural field, Amos Oz is currently the most popular Jewish or Israeli writer in China. His book A Tale of Love and Darkness is in its second edition in Chinese. The book is ranked as one of the ten most important translated into Chinese. Tens of Chinese newspapers reviewed it positively, saying they had learned things about Israel they hadn’t known before.
“There are Chinese intellectuals who have studied Israel and the Jewish people as well as Chinese policymakers who are interested in us. For the Chinese, Jews and Israel are the same. They see the Jews as an old people with a long history and view Israel as its center. One often hears from Chinese that theirs and the Jewish civilization are the oldest surviving ones.
"This expresses respect for the continuity of the Jewish people.
“Relations between the countries are increasing and continue to improve. Culture is one aspect. Trade and investment links are increasing fast. In 2011 Ehud Barak, the Minister of Defense was invited to visit China, while China’s Chief of Staff visited Israel – the first such visit, and the only one to a Middle Eastern country. Persistent rumors say that Prime Minister Netanyahu has also been invited to visit China.
“I would venture to say that a substantial portion of the Chinese political and intellectual elites have superficial positive feelings toward the Jewish people and Israel. This could change. The oil-rich Middle Eastern countries have huge sums to spend in China. Far more Chinese know the Arab world than Israel.
“
The oil-rich Middle Eastern countries have huge sums to spend in China. Far more Chinese know the Arab world than Israel.
Those who will rule China twenty years from now are presently studying in elite universities. If someone teaches them about Judaism and Israel, this will be good for the Jewish people. Eventually, when some of these students are in important positions, they are likely to advise their country’s leaders on Jewish and Middle Eastern issues.
“Middle Eastern stability and Israel’s role in it are increasingly important for China. For the first time in history, China will directly influence the fate of
the Jews and particularly Israel. Since this influence will grow very quickly, it is important to keep China’s attitude toward Israel well-informed and
positive.
“Israel and the Jewish people should build bridges of friendship with China and develop a strategic concept on how to strengthen our links. A few Israeli
NGOs are active in this field.
SIGNAL, for example, is organizing academic and other exchange visits and helps funding Israel Study Centers in Chinese Universities. The Jewish people are hampered by the fact that they are not a coherent unit. Major Jewish organizations should however, try to develop a coordinated policy toward China, and Israel should encourage such efforts and cooperate with them.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11447#.T3OYPNkkifU
How Deep is the Christian-Jewish Abyss?
Denying Christian anti-Judaism will never bring peace between Jews and Christians. Pope Benedict and Protestant leaders must atone for what Christianity has done to the Jewish people by recognizing the unique place of the Jews and Israel.
From Giulio Meotti
As Jews prepare to celebrate Pessah, Christians are ready for Easter.
Tragically, there is no time on the Christian calendar more associated with anti-Semitism than Easter.
In the year 1144, in Norwich, England, 19 Jews were hanged without a trial. This marked the first time that Jews were accused of the blood libel - murdering Christians to use their blood in rituals. Then the libel crossed the channel into France: 32 Jews were burned at the stake in Blois.
Over the next centuries, Easter became a time of fear for the Jewish people. In 1497, Passover coincided with a cruel decree issued by King Manuel of Portugal, who ordered all Jewish children to be forcibly converted to Catholicism. Countless thousands of Jewish youngsters were baptized and then handed over to be raised by Catholic families.
With traumatic memories of deicide charges and pogroms, Easter is the most challenging time of the year for Christian-Jewish discourse.
A few days ago in a special interview with Die Tagespost, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, a “moderate” cleric named by Pope Benedict to represent the Catholic communities in the Jewish State, declared that “Israel’s existence as such has nothing to do with the Bible”.
Twal then compared Christians’ condition in today’s Jerusalem with Jesus’ Passion: “We Christians never forget that even our Lord himself suffered and was mocked in Jerusalem”. The Catholic Archbishop encouraged anti-Semitism by employing deicide imagery.
Denial of Israel’s religious and historical claims to the land is not new in the Catholic hierarchy. In a 2010’s Vatican synod on the Middle East, the most important event in a decade for the Holy See, bishops declared that “we Christians cannot speak about the Promised Land for the Jewish people”.
Elias Chacour, the Catholic Archbishop of Israel, said that “we do not believe anymore that the Jews are the Chosen People”.
“There is no longer a chosen people”, said Archbishop Cyrille Salim Bustros, chosen by the Pope to draft the synod’s conclusions. He resurrected the ancient calumny that the Jews are damned as cosmic exiles. “The concept of the promised land cannot be used as a base for the justification of the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of Palestinians”.
This is the same delusional lexicon of medieval Jew-hatred of Norwich. The Archbishop’s attack on Israel was not a single incident, but was reinforced in the final message of the synod which, under the heading “Cooperation and Dialogue with the Jews”, argued that “recourse to theological and biblical positions, which use the Word of God to wrongly justify injustices, is not acceptable”. 
The malignant use of the expression “chosen Jews” inspired the pogroms, the expulsion of the Spanish Jews and Martin Luther’s anti-Semitism (the founder of Protestantism argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people, but instead “the Devil’s people”).
Orthodox Eastern Christianity is also imbued with theological enmity for the Jews. “Modern-day Jews are not God’s chosen people”, the former head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Shenouda III, recently declared in a meeting with former US President Jimmy Carter. “Do not believe their claims that they are God’s chosen people, because it is not true”.
Today the Christian arena is divided among the mainline Protestant churches, which are prominently anti-Israel; the Vatican, which embraced a new aggressiveness against Israel; the US Evangelicals, which are pro-Israel, and independent Protestant groups based in Europe, like Christians for Israel.
It is true that some Evangelicals did not show a real tendency to curtail their missionary activities among Jews, but the hostility toward Israel and the Jews encouraged by institutionalized global Christians, such as the World Council of Churches and the Vatican, poses a much greater near-term threat to Jews.
Professor Paul Merkley’s wonderful book, “Those That Bless You, I Will Bless” (Mantua Books), sheds light on these anti-Israel Churches. Merkley’s book is the most significant work about the current religious ditch, told from a Christian perspective.
The Church of England reviewed its investments in companies with ties to Israel’s presence in the territories.
The Methodist Church of Britain recently launched a boycott against goods emanating from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
All five of the mainline denominations in the United States – Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran and United Church of Christ – have debated and adopted policies intended to divest or boycott Israel. During the upcoming General Conference of the United Methodist Church scheduled for April 25 in Tampa, Florida, and the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA (June 30 in Pittsburgh), anti-Israel actions in the form of boycott, divestment or sanctions are expected to be brought to the floor for a vote.

The World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of Protestants claiming a membership of 580 million worshippers, produced the “Amman Call”, which denies Israel’s right to continue to exist as a Jewish State.
While the United States is home to millions of Christian supporters of Israel, these are anti-Jewish Churches which are more closely attached to public opinion, the media industry, the United Nations and global legal forums.
The World Council of Churches, an umbrella organization of Protestants claiming a membership of 580 million worshippers, produced the “Amman Call”, which denies Israel’s right to continue to exist as a Jewish State.
Serge Duss, Director of the New Century Evangelicals Project, is one of the Protestant leaders who claim that modern Israelis are not descended from Biblical Jews.
Often identified as strong supporters of Israel, Pentecostal Christians are also being targeted by anti-Israel activists from the Evangelical camp. The Society for Pentecostal Studies just gathered in Virginia, where it screened “Little Town of Bethlehem”, a film with a virulent anti-Israel message.
“World Week for Peace in Palestine”, an initiative of the World Council of Churches, will be observed May 28 to June 3. “Focus this year is on the growing dispossession and displacement of Palestinians”.
It seems that the Churches are breathing new life into that kind of Easter’s demonology which criminalized the Jews for centuries. Denying Christian anti-Judaism will never bring peace between Jews and Christians. It is incumbent upon Pope Benedict and Protestant leaders to atone for what Christianity has done to the Jewish people through the centuries by recognizing the unique role and place of the Jews and Israel in this world. 
There is an urgent Christian necessity to change Jewish-Christian history for the sake of the future by taking few simple steps: don’t proselytize the Jews, don’t slander them, don’t preach their conversion, avoid any theological topic, proclaim the uniqueness of the Jewish covenant, fight the apocalyptic cults, recognize Jews’ right to Judea and Samaria, defend a united Jewish Jerusalem, support Israel’s right to defend itself, and stop spiritualize the Bible, as if the promises to Abraham were not about a specific land for a specific people but about some heavenly domain.
Unless these steps are taken, any Jewish-Christian reapproachment would be not only futile, but dangerous.
Or to use old iniquities’ words, Jews will remain “odium humani generis”. Hated by humanity.

Who Really deserve a State, the Kurds or Palestinians?

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11363#.T1kkwHkkifU

There has never been an independent nation called Palestine, certainly not an Arab one. But there is a people who, like the Jews, deserves a homeland and can trace their ancestry back thousands of years.
From Victor Sharpe
There are over twenty Arab states throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but the world demands, in a chorus of barely disguised animosity towards Israel, that yet another Arab state be created within the mere forty miles separating the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan.
Israel, a territory no larger than the tiny principality of Wales or the state of New Jersey, would be forced to share this sliver of land with a new and hostile Arab entity to be called Palestine, while seeing its present narrow waist reduced to a mere and suicidal nine miles in width — what an earlier Israeli statesman, Abba Eban, described as the Auschwitz borders.

Remember, there has never existed in all of recorded history an independent sovereign nation called Palestine — and certainly not an Arab one. The term “Palestine” has always been the name of a geographical territory, such as Siberia or Patagonia. It has never been a state.
But there is a people who, like the Jews, deserves a homeland and truly can trace their ancestry back thousands of years. They are the Kurds, and it is highly instructive to review their remarkable history in conjunction with that of the Jews. It is also necessary to review the historical injustice imposed upon them over the centuries by hostile neighbors and empires.
Let us go back to the captivity of the Ten Tribes of Israel, who were taken from their land by the Assyrians in 721-715 BC. Biblical Israel was depopulated, its Jewish inhabitants deported to an area in the region of ancient Media and Assyria — a territory roughly corresponding to that of modern-day Kurdistan.
Assyria was, in turn, conquered by Babylonia, which led to the eventual destruction of the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah in 586 BC. The remaining two Jewish tribes were sent to the same area as that of their brethren from the northern kingdom.
When the Persian conqueror of Babylonia, Cyrus the Great, allowed the Jews to return to their ancestral lands, many Jews remained (and continued to live) with their neighbors in Babylon — an area which, again, included modern-day Kurdistan.
The Babylonian Talmud refers in one section to the Jewish deportees from Judah receiving rabbinical permission to offer Judaism to the local population. The Kurdish royal house and a large segment of the general population in later years accepted the Jewish faith. Indeed, when the Jews rose up against Roman occupation in the 1st century AD, the Kurdish queen sent troops and provisions to support the embattled Jews.
By the beginning of the 2nd century AD, Judaism was firmly established in Kurdistan, and Kurdish Jews in Israel today speak an ancient form of Aramaic in their homes and synagogues. Kurdish and Jewish life became interwoven to such a remarkable degree that many Kurdish folk tales are connected with Jews’.
It is interesting to note that several tombs of biblical Jewish prophets are to be found in or near Kurdistan. For example, the prophet Nachum is in Alikush, while Jonah’s tomb can be found in Nabi Yunis, which is ancient Nineveh. Daniel’s tomb is in the oil-rich Kurdistan province of Kirkuk; Habbabuk is in Tuisirkan; and Queen Hadassah, or Esther, along with her uncle Mordechai, is in Hamadan.
After the failed revolt against Rome, many rabbis found refuge in what is now Kurdistan. The rabbis joined with their fellow scholars, and by the 3rd century AD, Jewish academies were flourishing. But the later Sassanid and Persian occupations of the region ushered in a time of persecution for the Jews and Kurds, which lasted until the Muslim Arab invasion in the 7th century. Indeed, the Jews and Kurds joined with the invading Arabs in the hope that their action would bring relief from the Sassanid depredations they had suffered.
Shortly after the Arab conquest, Jews from the autonomous Jewish state of Himyar in what is today’s Saudi Arabia joined the Jews in the Kurdish regions. However, under the now-Muslim Arab occupation, matters worsened, and the Jews suffered as dhimmis in the Muslim-controlled territory. The Jews found themselves driven from their agricultural lands because of onerous taxation by their Muslim overlords. They thus left the land to become traders and craftsmen in the cities. Many of the Jewish peasants were converted to Islam by force or by dire circumstances and intermarried with their neighbors.
From out of this population arose a great historical figure. In 1138, a boy was born into a family of Kurdish warriors and adventurers. His name was Salah-al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub — better known in the West as Saladin. He drove the Christian crusaders out of Jerusalem even though he was distrusted by the Muslim Arabs because he was a Kurd. Even then, the Arabs were aware of the close relationship that existed between the Kurdish people and the Jews.
Saladin employed justice and humane measures in both war and peace. This was in contrast to the methods employed by the Arabs. Indeed, it is believed that Saladin not only was just to the Christians, but he allowed the Jews to flourish in Jerusalem and is credited with finding the Western Wall, an outer wall of the Jewish Temple area, which had been buried under tons of rubbish during the Christian Byzantine occupation. The great Jewish rabbi, philosopher, and doctor Maimonides was for a time Saladin’s personal physician.
According to a team of international scientists, a remarkable discovery was made in 2001. Doing DNA research, a team of Israeli, German, and Indian scientists found that many modern Jews have a closer genetic relationship to populations in the northern Mediterranean area (Kurds and Armenians) than to the Arabs and Bedouins of the southern Mediterranean region.
But let us return to the present day and to why the world clamors for a Palestinian Arab state but strangely turns its back upon Kurdish national independence and statehood. The universally accepted principle of self-determination seems not to apply to the Kurds.
In an article in the New York Sun on 6 July 2004 titled “The Kurdish Statehood Exception,” Hillel Halkin exposed the discrimination and double standards employed against Kurdish aspirations of statehood. He wrote, “[T]he historic injustices done to them and their suffering over the years can be adequately redressed within the framework of a federal Iraq, in which they will have to make do — subject to the consent of a central, Arab-dominated government in Baghdad — with mere autonomy. Full Kurdish statehood is unthinkable. This, too, is considered to be self-evident.”
The brutal fact in realpolitik, therefore, is that the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians have many friends in the oil-rich Arab world — oil the world desperately needs for its economies. The Kurds, like the Jews, have few friends, and the Kurds have little or no influence in the international corridors of power.
Mr. Halkin pointed out that “the Kurds have a far better case for statehood than do the Palestinians. They have their own unique language and culture, which the Palestinian Arabs do not have. They have had a sense of themselves as a distinct people for many centuries, which the Palestinian Arabs have not had. They have been betrayed repeatedly in the past 100 years by the international community and its promises, while the Palestinian Arabs have been betrayed only by their fellow Arabs.”
The old nostrum, therefore, that only when the Palestinian Arabs finally have a state will there be peace in the world is a mirage in the desert. Fellow writer Gerald Honigman also writes on the world’s preoccupation with the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians while ignoring the plight of the Kurds, Berbers, and millions of other non-Arab peoples of the Middle East and North Africa. Honigman’s book was part of the LSS exhibit at the prestigious ASMEA Conference of scholars last November (and is now in at least a dozen major universities so far) and has several chapters focusing on the Kurdish issue. It’s no accident that its foreword was written mostly by the President of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria.
During the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds were gassed and slaughtered in large numbers. They suffered ethnic cleansing by the Turks and continue to be oppressed by the present Turkish government, whose foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, had the gall to suggest, at a meeting of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that Turkey supports the oppressed of the world. He ignored his own government’s oppression of the Kurds and predictably named the anti-Semitic thugdom in Gaza “oppressed.” On the basis of pure realpolitik, the legality and morality of the Kurds’ cause is infinitely stronger than that of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.
On the other hand, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds displayed great political and economic wisdom. How different from the example of the Gazan Arabs who, when foolishly given full control over the Gaza Strip by Israel, chose not to build hospitals and schools, but instead bunkers and missile launchers. To this they have added the imposition of sharia law, with its attendant denigration of women and non-Muslims.
The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory’s current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world — and certainly anywhere else in Iraq, which is fast descending into ethnic chaos now that the U.S. military has left.
Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, and all the leaders of the free world should look to Kurdistan, with its huge oil reserves, as the new state that needs to be created in the Middle East. It is simple and natural justice, which is far too long overdue. A Palestinian Arab state, on the other hand, will immediately become a haven for anti-Western terrorism, a base for al-Qaeda and Hamas (the junior partner of the Muslim Brotherhood), and a non-democratic land carved out of the Jewish ancestral and biblical lands of Judea and Samaria upon which the stultifying shroud of sharia law will inevitably descend. In short, it will be established with one purpose: to destroy what is left of embattled Israel.
Finally, it is also natural justice for the Jewish State — with its millennial association of shared history alongside the Kurdish people, who number over 30,000,000, scattered throughout northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, Syria and Turkey — to fight in the world’s forums for the speedy establishment of an independent and proud Kurdistan. An enduring alliance between Israel and Kurdistan would be a vindication of history, a recognition of the shared sufferings of both peoples, and bring closer the advent of a brighter future for both non-Arab nations.
Mahmoud Abbas, Holocaust denier and present president of the Palestinian Authority, has never, and will never, abrogate publicly in English or in Arabic the articles in Fatah’s constitution, which call for the “obliteration of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence” — or, in other words, the destruction of the Jewish State and the genocide of its citizens. So much for the man President Obama and the Europeans shower with money and praise.
It is the Kurds who unreservedly deserve a state. The invented Palestinian Arabs have forfeited that right by their relentless aggression, crimes, and genocidal intentions towards Israel and the Jews.
This article first appeared in the American Thinker.

Rubin Reports: The New Middle East – Arab Versus Non-Arab Muslims, Sunni Versus Shia

http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/analysis/rubin-reports/rubin-reports-the-new-middle-east-arab-versus-non-arab-muslims-sunni-versus-shia/2012/03/02/

By: Barry Rubin
Published: March 2nd, 2012

The new Middle East strategic battle is heating up and this is only the start. It has nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with two more serious lines of battle: Arabs versus Persians and Sunni versus Shia Muslims.
The Arab-Israeli or Israel-Palestinian is increasingly unimportant, despite the hatred of increasingly powerful Islamist forces for Israel. The real struggle is over who will control each Muslim majority country and who is going to lead the Middle East. Both issues have almost nothing to do with Israel. At the same time, Israel has virtually no role to play in these struggles, except to ensure that Hamas doesn’t take over the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority.
The Sunni Arab position was stated very clearly by Amr Moussa, a veteran Arab nationalist and candidate for Egypt’s presidency: “[The] Arab Middle East will not be run by Iran or Turkey.” Note that he didn’t even mention Israel, in sharp contrast to how the issue would have been defined in previous decades: as a Zionist threat to rule the entire region.
Iran is Persian-ruled (though only about half the population is ethnic Persian) and Shia Muslim. Turkey is ruled by ethnic Turks even though it is predominantly Sunni Muslim.
What we are seeing again, for the first time in three decades—since President Anwar al-Sadat put the priority on a domestic focus, peace with Israel, and alliance with the United States–is an Egyptian bid to lead the Arabic-speaking world and even the whole region. On this point, Egyptian leftists, nationalists, and Islamists are united. And in the first round, the battle over control of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, Egypt won and Iran lost.
Note that this has nothing to do with the current military rulers of Egypt who will be out of power before the end of June. This is a long-term struggle led by the civilian, primarily Islamist, politicians. And it is a program over which the Islamists can unite the country behind them in a wave of patriotic, Arab, and Sunni zeal. Building on this agenda, often used demagogically, also requires Cairo to distance itself from the United States.
Here’s another point to keep in mind. The head of the Egyptian parliament’s foreign affairs committee is now Essam al-Arian, one of the most outspokenly radical Muslim Brotherhood leaders. He’s outspokenly in favor of destroying Israel and U.S. interests in the region. This is one more of an endless amount of evidence about the Brotherhood’s extremism and the coming collision with Washington.
At the same time, al-Arian is strongly anti-Iran, predicting the overthrow of the Tehran regime in an internal revolution. When a Muslim Brotherhood says such a thing that isn’t an example of political analysis but of advocacy.
In another example of Brotherhood, and Egyptian, hostility to the Iran-led bloc, Egypt has pulled Hamas into its orbit. The Brotherhood supports its Syrian brothers in their revolution against the pro-Iran regime in Damascus. It also backs the Bahrain government against Shia oppositionists there and is also hostile to Hizballah in Lebanon.
And so despite the fact that Iran has now offered Egypt financial aid, which that country needs, the Egyptians are ignoring the proposal. They do not want to be beholden to Tehran any more than they would be to the United States.
It has not yet been widely recognized that the last year has been a disaster for Iran’s strategy of gaining regional leadership. Outside of Syria, Bahrain, and Iraq—where Tehran is backing forces which aren’t doing so well at present—only in Lebanon does Iran still have real influence. Its potential appeal is now limited to the largely minority Shia Muslims.
Two years ago, an Iranian nuclear bomb would have sparked a wave of pro-Iran reaction throughout the Middle East, now it will have little effect on (Sunni, Arab) public opinion. Similarly, two years ago threats to wipe Israel off the map made Iran more popular while hostility toward Israel did the same for Turkey. Now such ranting does nothing to promote those two countries’ regional influence.
For Turkey, too, the “Arab Spring” puts the end to that Islamist regime’s regional ambitions. Nobody needs the Turks as regional leaders. Indeed, efforts to claim such a role have created intense resentment in both Egypt and Iran.
In contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood has expanded its influence to a remarkable extent. Aside from probably ruling Egypt, the Brotherhood can now claim the Gaza Strip, Tunisia, and Libya as being within its sphere of influence. And it is also the patron of the Brotherhood branches in Syria and Jordan.
Another result of this process is the orphaning of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has no foreign patron whatsoever. Iran, Egypt, and Syria back Hamas. The PA’s patron should be wealthy Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Yet it has never won back their support after the rupture caused when PA leader Yasir Arafat backed Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait in 1990-1991.
A weakened PA has no maneuvering room except to protect its militant credentials by refusing to negotiate or compromise with Israel while talking in a radical manner. The Israel-Palestinian peace process has in fact been dead since 2000 but only know is most of the world acknowledging the obituary.
This is the new Middle East, quite different from the region as understood for the last sixty years. The battle for predominance among the three strong Arab nationalist regimes—Egypt, Iraq, and Syria—has now given way between Sunni and Shia blocs. Increasingly, Arab assessments of threats from Egypt in the west to the Persian Gulf on the eastern end barely mention Israel at all.

EXPOSE: Jew Haters in the Vatican

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11333#.T1FBMXkkifU
The Vatican has taken off its gloves, and is welcoming the Society of St Pius.
From Giulio Meotti

The controversy began on Jan. 21, 2009, when Pope Benedict revoked the excommunication of four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X.
“I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but that none of them via gas chambers,” one of the Bishops, Richard Williamson, declared a few days later.
Then Williamson raised his voice against the Jews: “The Catholic faith and Jewish power are like two weighing pans on a pair of scales: when the Catholic Faith goes up, Jewish power goes down and vice versa”.
These past weeks the Vatican is working for communion with the Society of Saint Pius X. Cardinal William Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented “the path to full reconciliation with the Church” to Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the fraternity.
European rabbis urged the Pope in vain to suspend talks with the society.
The Vatican is now trying to minimize Williamson’s words against the Jews as a mere isolate case. But this Arutz Sheva expose clearly shows that hatred for Judaism permeates the entire Catholic Brotherhood.
Last month the Italian branch of the Society chose a new head after the retirement of Father Davide Pagliarani. The successor is Pierpaolo Petrucci, whose positions on the Jews are the exact copy of those of Williamson.
Petrucci published an essay in the website of the Society stating: “About the Jews, Joseph Ratzinger calls them ‘Fathers in faith’. What does it mean? Supporting Israel’s policy despite the Palestinian question? Supporting the Jewish religion? If that’s the case, how can the Church approve a false religion which rejects Jesus Christ?”.
Another priest, Don Mauro Tranquillo, calls the Jews “morally responsible for the deicide of Christ”. In 2009 Petrucci calls the Jews “rejecters of Christ”. A year later he stated that “the Church always condemned Judaism as a false religion, praying for the conversion (of the Jews), so that they will reach salvation, seriously compromised by their superstitions”.
When Pope John Paul II made his first visit to Rome’s synagogue in 1986, the Society distributed a placard saying, “Pope, don’t go to Caiaphas,” a reference to the Jewish high priest who organized the plot to kill Jesus, according to the New Testament.
Franz Schmidberger, the right-hand man of Bishop Fellay, also asks for the Jews’ conversion: “St. Peter, the first pope, preached to the Jews and told them that ‘If you want to be saved you must do three things: You must regret your sins and convert, believe in our lord... and, thirdly, be baptized.’ We expect that every pope who claims to be the successor of St. Peter . . . should take the same stand.”
A few days after Mr. Williamson’s tirade about the gas chambers, Mr. Schmidberger wrote to German bishops to remind them of the supposed Jewish original sin. “With the crucifixion of Christ, the curtain of the temple was torn and the old alliance destroyed. The Jews are complicit in deicide, as long as they do not distance themselves from the culpability of their forefathers by acknowledging the divinity of Christ and the baptism”.
Last autumn, Régis de Cacqueray, the head of the French chapter, also accused Jews of deicide: “How can one imagine that God is pleased with the prayers of the Jews, who are faithful to their fathers who crucified his son and deny the Trinitarian God?”.
The society said the speech was published on its website with Fellay’s approval.
According to Ansa news agency, in 1997 Ugo Carandino, the head of the Italian Society of Saint Pius X community, refused the Vatican’s request of forgiveness to the Jewish people: “It’s the Jews which should ask our pardon for their usury,” he said.
Another of the bishops pardoned by Pope Benedict, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, also said that “the Jews are the most active artisans for the coming of Antichrist”.
The Pope’s unity with Lefebvre’s group is a renovation of the “Adversus Judeaos” teachings which spurred pogroms, burnings at the stake and the inquisition. If the Vatican welcomes back these anti-Semites, the Jewish leaders should immediately stop any dialogue with the Catholic authorities.

Jew Haters in the Vatican

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11333#.T1FBMXkkifU
EXPOSE: Jew Haters in the Vatican

The Vatican has taken off its gloves, and is welcoming the Society of St Pius.
From Giulio Meotti

The controversy began on Jan. 21, 2009, when Pope Benedict revoked the excommunication of four bishops of the Society of Saint Pius X.
“I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but that none of them via gas chambers,” one of the Bishops, Richard Williamson, declared a few days later.
Then Williamson raised his voice against the Jews: “The Catholic faith and Jewish power are like two weighing pans on a pair of scales: when the Catholic Faith goes up, Jewish power goes down and vice versa”.
These past weeks the Vatican is working for communion with the Society of Saint Pius X. Cardinal William Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented “the path to full reconciliation with the Church” to Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the fraternity.
European rabbis urged the Pope in vain to suspend talks with the society.
The Vatican is now trying to minimize Williamson’s words against the Jews as a mere isolate case. But this Arutz Sheva expose clearly shows that hatred for Judaism permeates the entire Catholic Brotherhood.
Last month the Italian branch of the Society chose a new head after the retirement of Father Davide Pagliarani. The successor is Pierpaolo Petrucci, whose positions on the Jews are the exact copy of those of Williamson.
Petrucci published an essay in the website of the Society stating: “About the Jews, Joseph Ratzinger calls them ‘Fathers in faith’. What does it mean? Supporting Israel’s policy despite the Palestinian question? Supporting the Jewish religion? If that’s the case, how can the Church approve a false religion which rejects Jesus Christ?”.
Another priest, Don Mauro Tranquillo, calls the Jews “morally responsible for the deicide of Christ”. In 2009 Petrucci calls the Jews “rejecters of Christ”. A year later he stated that “the Church always condemned Judaism as a false religion, praying for the conversion (of the Jews), so that they will reach salvation, seriously compromised by their superstitions”.
When Pope John Paul II made his first visit to Rome’s synagogue in 1986, the Society distributed a placard saying, “Pope, don’t go to Caiaphas,” a reference to the Jewish high priest who organized the plot to kill Jesus, according to the New Testament.
Franz Schmidberger, the right-hand man of Bishop Fellay, also asks for the Jews’ conversion: “St. Peter, the first pope, preached to the Jews and told them that ‘If you want to be saved you must do three things: You must regret your sins and convert, believe in our lord... and, thirdly, be baptized.’ We expect that every pope who claims to be the successor of St. Peter . . . should take the same stand.”
A few days after Mr. Williamson’s tirade about the gas chambers, Mr. Schmidberger wrote to German bishops to remind them of the supposed Jewish original sin. “With the crucifixion of Christ, the curtain of the temple was torn and the old alliance destroyed. The Jews are complicit in deicide, as long as they do not distance themselves from the culpability of their forefathers by acknowledging the divinity of Christ and the baptism”.
Last autumn, Régis de Cacqueray, the head of the French chapter, also accused Jews of deicide: “How can one imagine that God is pleased with the prayers of the Jews, who are faithful to their fathers who crucified his son and deny the Trinitarian God?”.
The society said the speech was published on its website with Fellay’s approval.
According to Ansa news agency, in 1997 Ugo Carandino, the head of the Italian Society of Saint Pius X community, refused the Vatican’s request of forgiveness to the Jewish people: “It’s the Jews which should ask our pardon for their usury,” he said.
Another of the bishops pardoned by Pope Benedict, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, also said that “the Jews are the most active artisans for the coming of Antichrist”.
The Pope’s unity with Lefebvre’s group is a renovation of the “Adversus Judeaos” teachings which spurred pogroms, burnings at the stake and the inquisition. If the Vatican welcomes back these anti-Semites, the Jewish leaders should immediately stop any dialogue with the Catholic authorities.