As Pope Francis’ controversial visit to Israel and the West Bank nears—he arrives via helicopter in Bethlehem on May 25th—Israeli authorities are placing occupied East Jerusalem under curfew. A two-kilometre area around the Holy Sepulchre and the Gethsemane garden, at the foot of the Mount of Olives is cordoned off and many Christians are deeply unhappy because they will be prevented from seeing the Pope.
Sami El-Yousef of the Papal Agency for Middle East relief and development told the Middle East Monitor on Thursday:
“My worry and our concern is that we, residents of the old city, will not be allowed to see the pope, let alone the Palestinian Christians in the West Bank having permits or not having permits…We are promised curfew status basically, the roads the Pope goes through will be empty, the streets full of Israeli security.”
A collective group of Christians from East Jerusalem sent a message to the Apostolic Delegate in Jerusalem and Palestine expressing their discontent:
“We are aware that the Holy Mass will be held in Bethlehem for the Palestinian faithful, yet we believe that as the indigenous Jerusalem population and descendants of the first Christians, meeting our Fathers will be hindered in Jerusalem. We see attempts by the Israeli occupation to impose a curfew on the streets including the Christian quarter during the visit. The curfew is yet another attempt by the occupying power to deny our existence. It is unacceptable for the Pope to pass along the narrow streets of the Christian Quarter, yet find devoid of any signs of life and the faithful. According to international law, East Jerusalem is an occupied city, and we, as the local Church communities, are the hosts of the Holy Fathers in our city. We do not want to be excluded from a historic religious event, and want to offer our good will and cooperation towards the visit’s success.”
But not being able to see the pope is just one dimension of the controversy. While the Pope’s visit to the Holy Land is a purely “religious trip”, the political dimension cannot be separated from the religious one.
“The Vatican is an independent state and as its head, the pope is a political man,” said a monk from a long-established religious order in East Jerusalem who declined to be identified for fear Israel would not renew his visa.
“Like many, I am very worried about the implications of the visit. I don’t believe that the Vatican has really understood that Jerusalem is cut in half,” he said, adding that in 1993 when the Vatican agreed to Israel’s request to be recognized, in return Israel was to guarantee the right for Christians to be able to retain their property, an agreement which was signed, but never ratified.
“It is the only time in my life that I wrote to the Pope,” said another monk. “I told him that if he wasn’t going to defend the rights of the Christians in the region then he should not come. There is no veritable religious freedom here.”
The Christians in the area are descendants of the world’s oldest communities. According to Israeli statistics, roughly 154,000 Christians live in Israel. An estimated 50,000 additional Christians live in the Palestinian territories, for the most part in Bethlehem, Ramallah and occupied East Jerusalem, with 3,000 or so in the Gaza Strip.In violation of international law, Israel has been building a ring of settlements around East Jerusalem in order to separate the area from the West Bank, as well a isolating it.
One priest I spoke to said that while he approved of the Pope’s likely decision to open up the Vatican’s Holocaust-era archives, Palestinians find it difficult to accept that Pope Francis will be visiting the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem, built just opposite Deir Yassin, where Palestinian villagers were massacred by the Irgun in 1948, and the depopulated village of Ein Karem, thought to be the birthplace of John the Baptist, where Christian and Muslim Palestinians were evicted in 1948 in the valley just below.
From the calm of the centuries-old monastery, one monk was very clear about the visit: “If this is not to support indigenous and local Christians and obtain recognition for their fundamental freedom of religion, expression, residence, work and construction, then such a visit is seen as a shot in the dark, a deep regret and, more importantly, an abdication of the basic responsibilities of a religious leader who is also a head of state.”
Peace could prevail, he said, “if Jerusalem was indeed managed independently as a true open city for its believers—the three monotheistic religions each of which has its place of prayer…but peace will not come as long as the Israeli and Palestinian governments each claim the Holy City as their capital. The international community has never endorsed such a claim in Jerusalem.”
“There is no veritable religious freedom here”
Thanks to the Occupiers and perfectors of Apartheid. Shameful.
from haaretz:
“Anti-Christian graffiti was sprayed at the entrance to a church in Be’er Sheva’s Old City on Friday, just two days before Pope Francis I is due to begin his tour of the Holy Land.
Police who arrived at the scene immediately began searching for the unknown suspects, who wrote “Jesus is a son of a bitch” on the wall surrounding the church in Rehov Ha’avot.
Brig. Gen. Peretz Amar, head of the Negev District, said that the police regard the incident as very serious and will make every effort to apprehend the perpetrators.
The Be’er Sheva munisipality denounced the vandalism and a team of municipal workers managed to remove the graffiti.”
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/1.592439
They can scrub and scrub, but the stain remains and will not be forgotten.
There is veritable religious freedom in Israel. Christians have more freedom and security in Israel than in any other Middle Eastern country. So if these Christians don’t like Israel, then then can move to Judea & Samaria or Gaza. Sure they are more free under Hamas!
These are descendants of the first Christians — that is, of the original community of Christians in Jerusalem that dates back to the time when Christianity existed as a movement wholly within Judaism, before Paul opened it up to Gentiles. If Israel really were a Jewish state it would treat them with special respect.
Until the occupiers allow the full liberation of the Palestinians, the Pope should not give them one second of propaganda time.
this is a long comment, and slightly off-topic here, but strictly about religion. I promise to shut up again for a while after that.
But I had no change to post two responses on the latest contribution of Marc H. Ellis. The list was closed before before I could respond.
Critics of Marc should consider this:
Collaborators in the War Against the Jews. Marc H. Ellis
Campus Watch: Profile of Marc H. Ellis: Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University
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Stephen Shenfield: I didn’t manage to respond to your justified challenge to my use of “interesting”. In a nutshell: The Kapos too, must have been a a more complex crowd, at least it feels. I know one story where some decided to work for the Nazis to find out more about what was going on around them. Can any of these critics actually imagine how easy that was? Later they started a revolt. … But strictly why I use “interesting” instead of “disgusting”, what it obviously is. I basically wouldn’t want to judge anyone that was forced into this context on superficial knowledge. But that is exactly what happens here. Thus “interesting”.
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W.Jones, feels I am struggling with it less [the Jewish/indigenous prophetic] and less. But yes, basically it may well help to have a better grasp of Judaism, which the Jews among us have. A more solid knowledge of religion may help too. I have to admit that religion caught my attention in connection with the neoconservatives or more precisely the books I read when I stumbled accross the larger discourse.
Could there be a larger struggle in American theology between Liberation theology and its more power friendly representatives, e.g. the religion from the Paleoconservative and the Judeo-Christian economic vision of religion of the neoconservatives:
W.Jones: Ellis has chosen to write in free thought style rather than a scholarly one here that would address it, which would be very interesting, at least for me.
This one does not feel “free thought style” to me, but rather well reflected. I wouldn’t have converted the speech to a Kindle file, if it did not trigger the desire to grasp it better. But its true, Marc has a wide range of styles sometimes he is almost poetic. He no doubt handles language pretty well.
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I just discovered that another American theologian and professor in social ethics may belong to Marc’s support group. I read all of Gary Dorrien’s book on the neoconservatives. But at one point I also read the Catholic neoconservative camp in the US: First Things. Concerning Gary Dorrien, I remember, I was slightly wondering at the time, why an American theologian shifted to writing about politics. On the other hand, I cannot deny that in Marc Gerson’s book about the neoconservatives reviewed above religion drew my attention too. Maybe more than anything else.
Now, I will shut up for a while, but some may wonder, why Marc H. Ellis uses the coinage Constantinian Judaism and Christianity. It feels to me, he has this in mind. Link to Wikipedia