Painful going. There is no respite.
Yesterday afternoon, there was an anti-Semitic terrorist shooting in the
Jewish Museum in Belgium.
Credit: Getty
Three people were killed on the spot inside the museum. They were an
Israeli couple - Emanuel and Miriam Riba, 54 and 53, of
Tel Aviv, who have left behind two teenage daughters – and an unidentified
volunteer at the museum, reported to be French. A fourth – an employee of
the museum, also unidentified, but said to be Belgian - was critically
wounded, and has since died.
The terrorist ran into the museum from a car, opened fire, and ran back out
to the car. It is being reported that the driver of that car was picked
up, and subsequently a suspect.
Some details are provided here:
http://www.timesofisrael.com/3-dead-in-shootout-near-brussels-jewish-museum/
Further details will emerge in the coming hours and days.
Although the identity of the shooter is not yet known this attack was very
quickly compared to the terrorist murders in Toulouse, France, two years ago,
because of certain similarities in how the terrorists behaved.
And speaking of France...mere hours after the Belgian attack, Jews in Paris
were stabbed coming out of synagogue. They have been identified by Israel
National News as the synagogue’s treasurer and his two sons, all of whom have
been hospitalized.
~~~~~~~~~~
Then we have this, which occurred before the Belgian attack, but came to
light after (emphasis added):
Masked Muslims, shouting “the national of Mohammed is coming back to take
revenge,” entered the main market in Djerba, Tunisia, on Thursday and stabbed
Gabriel Ozen, 38, a Jewish jeweler.
In spite of his attempts to fight off the attackers, Ozen was stabbed in
the chest, and then rushed to a local hospital, where he is in serious, but
stable, condition.
“According to local media reports, merchants on the scene were able
to apprehend the perpetrator and turn him in to local police. Justice will
not be served, however; more than a hundred masked men surrounded the police
station and threatened to burn it down if the terrorist was prosecuted.
“The police released the assailant immediately.” (Emphasis
added)
~~~~~~~~~~
Can we plausibly even say we are shocked by these events any more?
Friday night, the IDF thwarted a planned terror attack in Migdal Oz, in
Gush Etzion:
“...patrols on shift in watch towers in the Etzion region identified two
suspicious figures approaching the kibbutz and then standing in front of a
cluster of houses.
“Security forces managed to close in on the suspects [two Palestinian
Arabs] quickly and detain them for questioning.
“The quick work of observation forces, in cooperation with operative combat
forces in the Etzion region, has brought remarkable success,” said Etzion deputy
brigade commander, Lt. Col. Ayes Fares.”
Vigilance at all times.
~~~~~~~~~~
Let me turn here to another sort of attack, one that can be managed:
The Israeli NGO Yesh Din (“there is justice”) is mounting a major attack on
the Levy Report, which is an underpinning of the Legal Grounds Campaign, which I
co-chair with Jeff Daube.
See our website - http://wehavelegalgrounds.org/ – for a
good deal of information about the Levy Report, as well as a picture of Justice
Edmund Levy z”l handing the Report to Prime Minister Netanyahu.
We don’t find it threatening, so much as interesting – that this is
happening. That a group whose focus is work “to defend the human rights of the Palestinian
civilian population under Israeli occupation” feels the need to discredit this
material, big time, tells us a great deal about the power of the Report.
And about the importance of our work to promote it.
Understand that when I say they are working
“big time” to discredit this material, I mean that they have secured large sums
of money to underwrite the effort. And the funds have come from such
sources as the government of Norway and the EU.
This raises a whole other issue, which is under
serious discussion here now, regarding the right of foreign governments to
underwrite a campaign that seeks to affect Israel’s retention of Judea and
Samaria.
I will likely come back to this. Here I
wish simply to call the attention of my readers to this, and to sound the call,
for any and all who can lend support, to please consider doing so. Write
to me if you wish to discuss this further.
~~~~~~~~~~
And then, sigh, we have the visit of Pope
Francis to this area. A mixed scenario at best. Officially he is here to
further a Christian ecumenical spirit. A rapprochement between the
Catholic Church and Christian Orthodox churches of the east first took place on
the Mount of Olives in 1964. The pope on this visit with recognize the
50th anniversary of this event with ecumenical meetings, notably with Bartholomew I, the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople at
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
That’s officially. Unofficially, his
warmth towards Israel is being celebrated with much enthusiasm. As a JPost
editorial – which refers to Francis’s “philo-Semitism” - put
it:
“Already in 1964, the Church repudiated a
millennia-long tradition of “No salvation outside the Church...the
Church...affirmed that the covenant God made with Israel is full and permanent –
a reversal of the replacement theology that had defined Catholic
self-understanding...
“Francis seemed to go further when he praised
the Jews for remaining faithful to God ‘despite the awful trials of these last
centuries.’ If Jews were once condemned for being present when Jesus appeared
but choosing to reject him, Francis was now thanking them for holding stubbornly
to their faith.”
~~~~~~~~~~
And yet... and yet... there are elements of his
trip that are deeply disconcerting. Yes, the claim has been made – by the
pope himself – that the trip is purely religious and not political. Yes,
he has to be even-handed. Yes, he must call for peace.
But he didn’t come our way directly from the
Vatican via Ben Gurion airport, as might have been expected. He came via
Amman, where he landed yesterday, and met with the king of Jordan and other
officials. From there he went by helicopter, this morning, to
Bethlehem. And, oh, did the Palestinian Arabs make the most of this. They
took him on an unscheduled side trip to see the “occupation wall” in Bethlehem –
the wall constructed to keep terrorists out. Abbas, additionally, lamented
to the pontiff that Israel is “judaizing Jerusalem.”
And take a look at this from Palestinian Media
Watch: A mind-boggling art exhibit set up for the pope by the PA, in which
Palestinian Arabs are represented as Jesus.
~~~~~~~~~~
The pope at one point referred to “the state of
Palestine.” Israel national news
further reports:
The pope “paused for several moments in front
of a graffiti on the security wall in Bethlehem, bowing his head in prayer in
front of a message proclaiming, ‘Pope we need to see someone speak out about
justice. Bethlehem look like Warsaw ghetto. Free
Palestine.
“...ahead of the trip, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin
defended the Palestinian Arabs’ right to a ‘sovereign and independent’ homeland
and said he hoped Francis’s visit would lead to ‘courageous decisions’ for
peace.
“Rabbi Sergio Bergman, a member of the Argentinian parliament and close
friend of Pope Francis, reported in February that the pope intends to define
himself as the ‘Che Guevera of the Palestinians’ and support their ‘struggle and
rights’ during his visit.
“...It has been noted that the pope has been remarkably
tight-lipped over the violent persecution of Christians in Bethlehem,
instead choosing to condemn alleged Jewish ‘price tag’ vandalism.’” (Emphasis
added)
~~~~~~~~~~
All of this is deeply unsettling, and rather puts the lie to the notion
that the pope is being even-handed. But perhaps most seriously disturbing
of all is the readiness by the pope, in the name of political correctness or
devotion to the Palestinian Arab cause, or whatever, to turn his back on the
suffering of Arab Christians.
“Justus Reid Weiner of Hebrew University has reported
that Bethlehem's Christians have been
suffering ‘many examples of intimidation, beatings,
land theft, firebombing of churches and other Christian institutions, denial of
employment, economic boycotts, torture, kidnapping, forced marriage, sexual
harassment, and extortion.’
“PA officials are reportedly directly responsible for
many of the attacks and some Muslims who have converted to Christianity have
been murdered. The Muslim Fatah-controlled authority in Judea and Samaria is
encouraging a ‘sharp demographic shift’ in Bethlehem, where the Christina
population went from a 60 percent majority in 1990 to...about 15 percent of the
city’s total population today, according to Weiner.”
This pope, who has been declared “fearless” in his calls for peace, is
without moral authority.
~~~~~~~~~~
Now that the pope - having been flown from Bethlehem to Ben Gurion Airport
for an official ceremony, and then on to Jerusalem - is here in Israel (until
late in the day on Monday), he will take all of the requisite actions expected
of a head of state visiting here. This will include laying a wreath on
Herzl’s grave. He has called for both Peres (not Netanyahu, you note) and
Abbas to come to the Vatican and pray for peace, and they have apparently
accepted. Peres loves this sort of thing.
But there is one other item on the pope’s agenda while he is here that is
enormously infuriating for Jews: He will be meeting Grand
Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, and on the Temple Mount, no less.
The Grand Mufti?
“In 2012, the Mufti preached that it is Muslim
destiny to kill the Jews. On a different occasion, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, he
taught that Jews were ‘enemies of Allah,’ and in another speech he said that the
souls of suicide bombers ‘tell us to follow in their path.’”
~~~~~~~~~~
I don’t care if the Mufti is the Palestinian Arab “chief rabbi.”
Better, I think, that the pope should have stayed home, rather than imbue him
with very visible credibility.
~~~~~~~~~~
Netanyahu, when meeting the pope in official
ceremony, pledged that he is “committed to maintaining the status quo at the
holy sites of Muslims, Christians and Jews.”
There are several implications to his words. One the one hand, we
might say that he is reassuring the pope that all religious sites are safe under
Israeli administration.
But there is a push now, which I will continue to follow, for allowing
Jewish prayer on the Mount – and with this statement he is making it clear that
he will all he can to prevent this.
Lastly, there have been for weeks over-wrought rumors, never confirmed,
about the intentions of the Israeli government to turn over to the Church
ownership of the room over David’s Tomb on Mt. Zion, which is said by Christians
to be the room of the Last Supper. Government denials of all such
intentions were apparently on the level.
~~~~~~~~~~
Credit: GPO
Credit:
Vassollomalto
~~~~~~~~~~
©
Arlene Kushner.
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