stellina:
Fr. Ambrose, I suppose you conveniently chose to ignore this.
Dear Stellina,
There is another aspect coming to light about the troubled atmosphere in Jerusalem, centred on the Roman Catholic Patriarch.
Patriarch of Terror
By Joseph D’Hippolito
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 4, 2005
frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16525
Christmastime in Bethlehem does not stand for ”peace on earth” but for intensified *jihad * against the occupying Jews, as least according to the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate in the Holy Land.
Michel Sabbah, the Latin [Roman Catholic] Patriarch of Jerusalem, has praised
jihad, justified suicide bombing, and led marches at the behest of the late Yasser Arafat – leading some to question whose bidding the patriarch is doing.
Sabbah, an Arab and a native of Nazareth, expressed his collaborationist sympathies most forcefully during a visit to a refugee camp near Bethlehem in 1999. During that visit, the patriarch placed a wreath on a memorial to so-called “martyrs.” He then maintained that the right of return is “an existing fact that cannot be given up,” and declared that Israel’s “extracting our rights in all circumstances is a form of
jihad” against the Palestinians.
However, he has not always objected to holy war. “Love is power and *jihad * and does not express weakness,” he told the newspaper Al-Quds.
Sabbah goes further by excusing suicide bombing as a legitimate response to Israeli policy. Sabbah said in a 2002 videotape to Palestinian Christians:
Ours is an occupied country, which explains why people are tired and blow themselves up. The Israelis tell Palestinians: Stop the violence and you will have what you want without violence. But one has seen in the history of the last ten years that the Israelis have moved only when forced by violence. Unfortunately, nothing but violence makes people march. And not only here. Every country has been born in blood.
Sabbah’s service to Yasser Arafat’s terrorists extends beyond words. On New Year’s Eve 2002, the patriarch led a “peace” march toward one of the Israeli checkpoints. Only about 200 people – most of them Italian pilgrims – joined Sabbah. A Franciscan priest named Father Ibrahim explained to Italian journalist Massimo Toschi from Missioni Oggi (the monthly published by the Xaverian missionaries) why the march attracted so few people. “He says that…the patriarch organized the march at Fatah’s request and that this was a mistake,” Toschi wrote, “because the next time the request will come from Hamas and the patriarch won’t be able to say no.” The Fatah organization, which Arafat founded in 1959, is dedicated to creating a Palestinian state by destroying Israel. Patriarch Sabbah literally follows their marching orders.
Sabbah has worked with a variety of other Palestinian terrorists, as well. In 2000, Sabbah met with Arafat in Gaza as an act of “Christian solidarity with the Palestinian leadership,” according to a press release from the patriarch’s office. The release’s author took great pains to mention by name the Christians in Arafat’s inner circle – including George Nabash, founder of the Marxist-oriented Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Sabbah’s anti-Semitism is deep and overt, as evidenced by his remarks toward Arafat during Christmas Mass in 1995. In welcoming Arafat, the patriarch “was happy to recall” how Byzantine Patriarch Sophronius tried to persuade Muslim Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab to prohibit Jews from living and worshipping in Jerusalem after conquering it in 636 – eight years after Sophronius instigated a widespread massacre of Jews. “In the end,” Sabbah once said, “we will send them away just as we did to the Crusaders.”
Indeed, he seemed to call for the full-scale demolition of the Jewish state during a proclamation at the 2000 Christmas Mass: “This is our land, to claim our freedom, among our demolished houses and in our besieged towns and villages.”
The patriarch engaged in a worldwide PR effort for terrorists during the seven-week stalemate between Palestinian gunmen and the Israeli army at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2002 – although his testimony was contradicted by others in his church. When gunmen invaded the church and began their seven-week occupation on April 1, Sabbah “immediately declared that the entering Palestinians were not armed, were willingly accepted into the Church by the friars, and given asylum,” Sergio Minerbi wrote for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
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