Assessing the pontificate of Benedict XVI - Israeli-Vatican Relations

Zenit News Agency, an assessment of the pontificate of Benedict XVI from the perspective of the Church's relations with the Jewish people:

“[Benedict XVI] is a great Pope with a very strong personality but maybe people don’t understand the depth of his thought,” said the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni -- someone who has been highly critical of the Church during recent disputes. “We have a complicated relationship with him because relations between Catholics and Jews are complicated on their own, but now we have to deal with a theologian, so you cannot avoid these problems.”

Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, Mordechay Lewy, said Israel considers the Holy Father to be a strong friend and that “we are not deluded by the mishaps -- I won’t call them controversies -- which are due to the machinery, but not to him.” He said Benedict XVI is “well meaning” but that the “machine," meaning the Roman Curia, “has some obvious difficulties." Indeed there is a strong belief in Israel that the Curia has not been fully behind him, on this and other issues. “It’s a difficult tenure for him -- really,” Lewy said.

Di Segni particularly admires the way the Pope is an honest broker -- “he is what he seems," he said. He hoped the Pius XII controversy will settle down but he’s not confident that it will. However, he was pleased with the Pope’s visit to Rome’s synagogue in January. It showed, he said, that this pontificate is not departing from an established path. “We needed this sign otherwise all the polemics, all the stories, would damage the atmosphere,” he said. “This showed us that the Church wants to go on.”

Father Norbert Hofmann, the German secretary of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews, pointed out that this Pope has done just what John Paul II did, but over a period of five, not 27, years. “He’s been to Israel, he went to Auschwitz, and he’s visited three synagogues -- no pope has ever been to three, perhaps with the exception of Peter!” he joked. “I know him personally and I know it’s in his heart to improve relations with the Jewish people.”

Father Hofmann also brushed off the well-publicized disputes. “Controversy is part of the package,” he said. “It’s part of the Jewish issue -- without controversy, you can’t have a dialogue with the Jewish people.” But he was particularly pleased with the Pope’s visit to the synagogue in Rome, and stressed that Benedict has just the right “personal qualities” for dialogue. “He’s very clear, sincere, and has a personal way of relating with people that’s very decent and humble,” he said.

As for the future, the Holy Father and Father Hofmann are planning on reaching out to young Catholics and Jews, and Orthodox Christians, encouraging them to work closer together.

The overall picture, therefore, is one of surprising optimism and warmth.

“[Benedict XVI] is the Pope we have to deal with,” said Rabbi Di Segni. “But it’s an honor to deal with him, notwithstanding all the difficulties.”

Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Hamas, tells of his conversion.

Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices - newly released from Ignatius Press:

The shocking true story of a Hamas insider who rejected his violent destiny - and is now risking everything to expose closely guarded secrets and show the world a way to peace.
Since he was a small boy, Mosab Hassan Yousef has had an inside view of the deadly terrorist group Hamas. The oldest son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founding member of Hamas and its most popular leader, young Mosab assisted his father for years in his political activities while being groomed to assume his legacy, politics, status . . . and power.
But everything changed when Mosab turned away from terror and violence, and embraced instead the teachings of another famous Middle East leader. In Son of Hamas, Mosab Yousef--now called "Joseph"--reveals new information about the world's most dangerous terrorist organization and unveils the truth about his own role, his agonizing separation from family and homeland, the dangerous decision to make his newfound faith public, and his belief that the Christian mandate to "love your enemies" is the only way to peace in the Middle East.

Jewish-Catholic Relations: A Roundup

• "Catholics and Jews: learning to disagree" - Some commentators argue that Catholic-Jewish relations are at an all-time low. In fact they have attained a new maturity, says the Catholic Herald's Anna Arco. (January 22, 2010).

• "Cordiality" and "mutual understanding" -- and not "crisis" or "breakdown" -- was how a joint Israel-Holy See statement described the most recent round of talks between the two sides. (Zenit News Service December 11, 2009). Speaking of which, here is a lengthy interview with Father David Maria Jaeger, Franciscan friar of the Custody of the Holy Land and a professor of canon law in Rome, on the state of Israeli-Vatican relations and the English-language statement released on January 20, 2010, upon the conclusion of a four-day meeting of the Bilateral Commission of the Holy See and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

• Mordechay Lewy, Israel's ambassador to the Holy See, urges Jewish openness to Catholics, admitting that there is an "asymmetry" in this dialogue (Zenit News Service. January 21, 2010):

  Despite the fact that his government is in favor of "continual dialogue at the highest official levels, between the Central Rabbinate of Israel and the Holy See, there continues to be skepticism on the part of the main current of the orthodox," Lewy explained.

• Dimitri Cavalli (Haaretz) on the "much-maligned pontiff, Pope Pius XII":

  The campaign against Pope Pius XII is doomed to failure because his detractors cannot sustain their main charges against him - that he was silent, pro-Nazi, and did little or nothing to help the Jews - with evidence. Perhaps only in a backward world such as ours would the one man who did more than any other wartime leader to help Jews and other Nazi victims, receive the greatest condemnation.

"Treating a Terrorist as a Hero"

Stephen Flatow (The Forward) on an outrage that occurred "right under the nose of our Vice President" during his trip to the Middle East:

On March 11, 1978, a gang of seaborne Palestinian terrorists landed near a nature reserve on the coast north of Tel Aviv. There was only one person who had the misfortune to be on the beach that afternoon, a young American photographer named Gail Rubin. Gail, a native New Yorker who happened to be the niece of U.S. Senator Abraham Ribicoff’s sister-in-law, was taking pictures of birds.

The terrorists shot Gail dead. They didn’t ask her what she thought about settlements or borders. They didn’t ask if she agreed with this or that Israeli policy. They didn’t care if she was a moderate Jew or a militant Jew. She was a Jew. That’s all they needed to know. And for that reason, they murdered her. Then they hijacked a bus on the nearby Tel Aviv-Haifa coastal highway, ultimately causing the deaths of 37 other innocent civilians. [...]

The P.A. marked the March 1978 massacre by naming a public square near its capital city, Ramallah, after Dalal Mughrabi, a woman who commanded the terrorist squad.

Read the rest.

From Nazi Skinhead to Jew

Changing Face in Poland: Skinhead Puts on Skullcap (Dan Bilefsky, New York Times February 27, 2010):

When Pawel looks into the mirror, he can still sometimes see a neo-Nazi skinhead staring back, the man he was before he covered his shaved head with a skullcap, traded his fascist ideology for the Torah and renounced violence and hatred in favor of God.

“I still struggle every day to discard my past ideas,” said Pawel, a 33-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew and former truck driver, noting with little irony that he had to stop hating Jews in order to become one. “When I look at an old picture of myself as a skinhead, I feel ashamed. Every day I try and do teshuvah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for repentance. “Every minute of every day. There is a lot to make up for.”

Pope Benedict XVI on the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz

65 years after the of liberation of Auschwitz, Pope Benedict XVI was overcome with emotion as he remembered the victims of the Holocaust during the weekly general audience.

Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome

On April 13, 1986, Pope John Paul II became the first Catholic pope to visit a Jewish synagogue -- the Great Synagogue of Rome. Today, commenting on his own impending visit, Pope Benedict recalled the example set by John Paul II -- noting that despite Catholic-Jewish problems, the overall climate between the two religions was one of respect and dialogue (Catholic News Service).

Following is a roundup of news and commentary on the Pope's visit to Rome's Jewish community.

A member of Rome's Jewish Community walks past by Rome's main synagogue as a TV technician prepares cable to broadcast the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. Credit: Associated Press

Roundup 2 (Post-visit)

• Via Catholic News Service, the English translation of Pope Benedict's address

  ... The teaching of the Second Vatican Council has represented for Catholics a clear landmark to which constant reference is made in our attitude and our relations with the Jewish people, marking a new and significant stage. The Council gave a strong impetus to our irrevocable commitment to pursue the path of dialogue, fraternity and friendship, a journey which has been deepened and developed in the last forty years, through important steps and significant gestures. Among them, I should mention once again the historic visit by my Venerable Predecessor to this Synagogue on 13 April 1986, the numerous meetings he had with Jewish representatives, both here in Rome and during his Apostolic Visits throughout the world, the Jubilee Pilgrimage which he made to the Holy Land in the year 2000, the various documents of the Holy See which, following the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration Nostra Aetate, have made helpful contributions to the increasingly close relations between Catholics and Jews. I too, in the course of my Pontificate, have wanted to demonstrate my closeness to and my affection for the people of the Covenant. I cherish in my heart each moment of the pilgrimage that I had the joy of making to the Holy Land in May of last year, along with the memories of numerous meetings with Jewish Communities and Organizations, in particular my visits to the Synagogues of Cologne and New York.

  Furthermore, the Church has not failed to deplore the failings of her sons and daughters, begging forgiveness for all that could in any way have contributed to the scourge of anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism (cf. Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, 16 March 1998). May these wounds be healed forever! The heartfelt prayer which Pope John Paul II offered at the Western Wall on 26 March 2000 comes back to my mind, and it calls forth a profound echo in our hearts: “God of our Fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the nations: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.”

  
  Pope Benedict XVI (L) visits the Synagogue of Rome on January 17, 2010 in Rome, Italy. Credit: Getty Images

  The passage of time allows us to recognize in the Twentieth Century a truly tragic period for humanity: ferocious wars that sowed destruction, death and suffering like never before; frightening ideologies, rooted in the idolatry of man, of race, and of the State, which led to brother killing brother. The singular and deeply disturbing drama of the Shoah represents, as it were, the most extreme point on the path of hatred that begins when man forgets his Creator and places himself at the centre of the universe. As I noted during my visit of 28 May 2006 to the Auschwitz Concentration camp, which is still profoundly impressed upon my memory, “the rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people”, and, essentially, “by wiping out this people, they intended to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that remain eternally valid” (Discourse at Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp: The Teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, II, 1 [2006], p.727).

  Here in this place, how could we not remember the Roman Jews who were snatched from their homes, before these very walls, and who with tremendous brutality were killed at Auschwitz? How could one ever forget their faces, their names, their tears, the desperation faced by these men, women and children? The extermination of the people of the Covenant of Moses, at first announced, then systematically programmed and put into practice in Europe under the Nazi regime, on that day tragically reached as far as Rome. Unfortunately, many remained indifferent, but many, including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with courage, often at risk of their lives, opening their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down, and earning perennial gratitude. The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.

  The memory of these events compels us to strengthen the bonds that unite us so that our mutual understanding, respect and acceptance may always increase. ... [Read the rest]

• From Zenit News:

  The Pope arrived around 5:25 this evening and was welcomed by a group including the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, Riccardo Pacifici; the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Renzo Gattegna; and by the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni.

  Before entering the synagogue, the Holy Father placed flowers before memorial tablets that record two of the darkest moments in the history of the Jewish Community of Rome: one commemorating the round-up and deportation of 1,022 Jews on Oct. 16, 1943; the other marking the Oct. 9, 1982, terrorist attack on the Tempio Maggiore, in which a two-year-old child was killed, and more than 40 others were injured.

  Benedict XVI, the second Pope to visit the Synagogue of Rome -- John Paul II being the first in 1986 -- was the first Pontiff to pause before the memorial tablet for the child. He placed a vase of white flowers there. He also greeted the relatives of the murdered child and the injured who survived the attack, among whom was Emanuele Pacifici, the father of the president of the Jewish Community of Rome.

  Red flowers were placed before the tablet recalling the 1943 deportation.

• As anticipated, John Allen Jr. reports that tensions over Pius XII surface in pope's synagogue visit:

  “The silence of Pius XII on the Holocaust is still painful,” said Riccardo Pacifici, head of the Jewish Community of Rome, in his remarks to Benedict XVI.

  “Perhaps he could not have stopped the trains of death, but he could have transmitted a signal, a final word of comfort, for our brothers on their way to the camps of Auschwitz,” Pacifici said.

  Pacifici also called upon the Vatican to open its archives from the era of Pius XII. While the Vatican has already published multiple volumes of material which it asserts contain everything relevant to the pope’s conduct during the war years, other material has not yet been unsealed.

  Rome’s Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, was more indirect, but no less clear in his reference to Pius XII.

  “The silence of God about the evils of the world, or our inability to hear his voice, is an inscrutable mystery,” Di Segni said. “But the silence of man is a different matter. It confronts us, it challenges us, and it does not escape judgment.”

  In his speech, Benedict XVI issued what amounted to a veiled defense of his controversial predecessor.

  Benedict noted that the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews reached as far as Rome, and conceded that “unfortunately, many remained indifferent.”

  “But many, including Italian Catholics, sustained by their faith and by Christian teaching, reacted with courage, often at risk of their lives, opening their arms to assist the Jewish fugitives who were being hunted down, and earning perennial gratitude,” the pope said.

  Benedict then added: “The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.”

Pope Benedict shakes hand with chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni at Rome's main synagogue January 17, 2010. Credit: Reuters

Roundup 1 (Preliminary)

• From Zenit, the official program for Pope Benedict's Sunday Trip to Synagogue.

• The Pope also visited the Jewish Museum of the Eternal City:

  For the occasion, the museum has organized an exhibit called "Et Ecce Gaudium": The Jews of Rome and the Investiture Ceremony of the Popes." The exhibit will present to the public panels dating from the 1700s that had been thought lost. ...

  The display will show paintings and documents that explain the role of Rome's Jewish community for the investiture ceremonies of the popes of the 1700s.

  More historical details on Jewish participation in the "investiture ceremonies" and the Museum's exhibit, from Catholic News Service:

  The centerpiece of the exhibit is comprised of 14 decorative panels made by Jewish artists to mark the inauguration of the pontificates of Popes Clement XII, Clement XIII, Clement XIV and Pius VI in the 1700s.

  For hundreds of years, the Jewish community was obliged to participate in the ceremonies surrounding the enthronement of new popes -- often in a humiliating manner.

  Various groups in the city were assigned to decorate different sections of the pope's route between the Vatican and the Basilica of St. John Lateran. The Jewish community was responsible for the stretch of road between the Colosseum and the Arch of Titus, which celebrates the Roman Empire's victory over the Jews of Jerusalem in the first century. The Roman victory included the destruction of the Temple, Judaism's holiest site, and the triumphal arch depicts Roman soldiers carrying off the menorah and other Jewish liturgical items.

  Rome's main synagogue is located less than two miles from the Vatican in the neighborhood that was once the city's Jewish "ghetto," a word originally coined by the Italians and used to describe a section of a city where Jews were forced to live. ... [

• From Catholic News Service, an interview with Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome:

  Rabbi Di Segni said Pope Benedict's visit is important first of all as "a symbolic continuation of the gesture made by (Pope) John Paul II, who was the first pope to set foot in a synagogue in 19 centuries. There is precedence, though," because St. Peter obviously had been in synagogues, he added.

  Visiting the synagogue 23 years after Pope John Paul did "is important because it is saying that the journey undertaken has not been interrupted, but will move forward," he said.

  "Times have changed," the rabbi said. "Many things have been achieved; other things still need to be done. The path, the Jewish-Catholic encounter, is terribly complicated. It is not a smooth road leading onward, but it is one continually filled with stumbling blocks. The visit of a pope to the synagogue should demonstrate that beyond the stumbling blocks there is a substantial desire to communicate with each other and resolve problems."

• From Vatican Radio, an interview with Cardinal Walter Kasper, resident of the Pontifical council for promoting Christian Unity, on the Pope's visit to Rome's synagogue.

• Deep splits have appeared in Italy’s Jewish community just before Pope Benedict makes his first visit to Rome’s synagogue, with at least one senior rabbi and one Holocaust survivor announcing a boycott." Reuters' Faithworld has the details on the tensions surrounding the papal visit.

Holocaust Survivor meets Pope Benedict XVI

Among the attendees to Pope Benedict XVI's general audience today was Cacilie Peiser, an 87 year old survivor of the Holocaust, accompanied by Salesian Father Norbert Hofmann, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews. Zenit News has the story.

An Open Letter to Justice Goldstone

CAMERA -- Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America -- publishes "A Formal Letter to Justice Goldstone":

Dear Justice Goldstone,

You've frequently accused critics of presenting ad hominem arguments against you instead of dealing with the substance of the Report prepared by the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict which you headed. I have several specific questions about the substance of the report arising from statements made there and from your own subsequent comments on November 5th at Brandeis University. I hope that you will clarify these points and address my concerns.

The Mission concluded that Israel may be guilty of war crimes based on the assumption that the country's military forces and leaders deliberately targeted civilians. In order to reach this conclusion, the Mission ignored or discounted available evidence that contradicted that assumption while ignoring the weaknesses in testimony and evidence that imputed to Israel the motive of targeting civilians. This gives rise to the following questions. ... [More]

Read the rest.

Violent protest cancels Israeli film

(Via Elder of Ziyon) -- Violent left-wing protests have prohibited the showing of a documentary film, Why Israel, about the role of the Jewish state as a homeland for refugees:

In late October, the 1973-produced film was scheduled to be shown at the B-Movie cinema, but roughly 50 left-wing activists from diverse anti-Israel groups affiliated with the anti-Zionist International Center B5 barred visitors from entering the movie house.

In Why Israel, Claude Lanzmann - perhaps best known for his groundbreaking documentary Shoah - depicts Israelis who found refuge in Israel after the Holocaust.

The movie house said in a statement that it had been compelled to cancel the film screening and a podium discussion because "we were threatened with violence."

According to eyewitness reports in the German media, left-wing protesters ranging in age from 16 to 70 shouted "Jewish pigs" and "faggots" to the cinema attendees.

Related

• Director Lanzmann "shocked" at Israel film about riots, by Sebastian Hammelehle. Der Spiegel - interview with the director.

The Untold Stories of Israel's Martyrs

The Untold Stories of Israel's Martyrs: "For the first time ever, in a book, depictions of the victims of Islamist hatred. Young and old, men and women. Struck down in a bus, at a bar, at the market. Killed solely for the 'fault' of being Jewish"

Anne Frank -- Agent of Zionism

Anne Frank's diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by Hezbollah, condeming it as a "Zionist invasion of education."

Via Elder of Ziyon.

Visa Restrictions -- a response to "the Western Confucian"

The "Western Confucian" posts the following query:

News that "[t]he Israeli Ministry of Interior is refusing entry visas to priests and members of religious orders and is also reducing their period of stay in the Holy Land," including "not only figures from the Arab world, but also well-known personalities and biblical experts from Europe and Africa" — Israel restricts visas for priests and religious. What say you, Catholic Friends of Israel?

The cited article fasserts that "the return of the Fundamentalist party Shas to control of the powerful Interior Ministry in the present Israeli government has brought with it renewed trouble for clergymen and members of religious orders." As far as approaching this matter, I'm personally inclined to agree with Fr. Jaeger's approach mentioned in the same article:

... In seeking to persuade the State to take back control of visa policy from the fundamentalists, Church officials can rely on the Fundamental Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Israel (1993). There, in Article 3, Paragraph 2, the State recognises the right of the Church to "deploy" its own personnel to Israel.

Reached by AsiaNews, the noted expert on Church-State relations in Israel, Franciscan Father David-Maria A. Jaeger, who was part of the bilateral team that wrote the Agreement, confirmed that this was understood on both sides as being the meaning of that treaty provision, and the precise reason for the otherwise unusual use of the word "deploy" in reference to Church personnel.

“Of course - he adds - later in that text, the Church recognises the right of State to ensure the safety of its people, and that this means, in the present context, that the State can in good faith decline to permit the entry of individuals who might pose a risk to public safety, but that the State may not otherwise substitute its judgement for that of the Church with regard to the personnel the Church may wish to 'deploy" from anywhere in the world to its own institutions, for its own purposes, in Israel”.

Father Jaeger has clarified that he cannot comment on the facts and violations here reported. But that as jurist he says he is “confident that the key to resolving any difficulties in the matter lies in the 1993 Fundamental Agreement”.

I think any nation has the right to regulate the entree of foreign parties (religious or otherwise) for reasons of security, and this right should be granted to Israel just as it is to any other nation. Obviously, this may also be subject to abuse. (Not knowing the particulars of the cases referred to in the article, I won't venture an opinion).

I completely understand why this is a point of contention between the Church and Israel; at the same time, I don't think that clergy, simply by virtue of their being religious, are automatically exempt from such regulation.

(Thanks to The Western Confucian for the query and the link to our site!)

Recommended Reading

• No way home: The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora - A special report by Judith Miller and David Samuels. The Independent [UK] discovers, contrary to their expectations: "You might think Palestinian refugees would be welcomed by their Arab neighbours, yet they are denied basic rights and citizenship."

• Goldstone Fallout: A Break in HRW's Ranks Robert Bernstein, who serves as chairman emeritus for Human Rights Watch, joined the group's critics in a very public way -- in a post to the New York Times' op-ed page.

• CAMERA's Preliminary Response to Editorial in Jesuit Magazine ("Snapshots" September 29, 2009):

  The editors of America, a Catholic newsweekly owned by the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) recently published an editorial that invokes the Goldstone Report and the Mishneh Torah. This editorial, which amounts to an indictment of Israel, typifies the magazine's troubling double-standard when covering the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the pages of America, violence against Israel is unremarkable, while Israeli efforts to bring this violence to an end are subjected to intense, and unfair scrutiny. Documentation of this tendency can be found here.

  CAMERA has submitted a brief, preliminary response to the magazine, but it is unclear whether it will be published on the magazine's website. [Consequently, it has taken to publishing the text on its own blog, "SnapShots"].

• Understanding the Goldstone report - offering critical analysis of the claims of Judge Richard Goldstone's 575-page "Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict".

• Humorous in any other context, this is just ... sad: Goldstone Endorses Palestinian Witness Who Claimed Israel Distributed Aphrodisiac Gum CAMERA "Snapshots" September 29, 2009.

"Understanding the Goldstone Report" - New Resource

On September 15, 2009, Judge Richard Goldstone and his Commission presented their 575-page Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict to its mandating authority, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). From the beginning, observers raised serious questions about the Commission’s propriety. These involved its mandate and terms of reference, the sponsoring body’s domination by dictatorships that regularly abuse human rights in their own countries, the biases and prejudices of members of the Commission itself. And yet, the report will play a key role in the effort to specifically target Israeli troops in both boycott movements and lawfare attacks, and more broadly to establish a reigning paradigm of international law as applied to 21st century asymmetrical conflicts.

Those of us who have constructed Understanding the Goldstone Report, have been following the claims under contention since the events themselves almost a year ago, and have read the report in detail. We offer a wide range of analysis, from careful examination of specific incidents and controversies to broader legal and conceptual issues. In so doing, we have come to the following conclusions:

• The report violates international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact-finding, replicating earlier UNHRC biased statements. The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case.
• The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; the report reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies.
• At the same time, the Commission inexplicably downplayed or ignored substantial evidence of Hamas’ commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of terror, including specifically its victimization of the Palestinian population by its use of human shields, civilian dress for combatants, and combat use of protected objects like ambulances, hospitals and mosques.
• The Commission openly denies a presumption of innocence to the Israelis accused of crimes (while honoring Hamas’ presumed innocence) and acknowledges that it made accusations of crimes without proof that would stand up in court.
• The report contains numerous gratuitous digressions into issues beyond the purview of a fact-finding commission that are inaccurate and profoundly hostile to Israel and Jews.
• The Commission distorted legal standards, imposing on Israel standards that reverse their generally understood and applied meaning, while ignoring important rules of international law that put the onus of responsibility on an organization as base, by Goldstone’s own standards, as Hamas.

Pope Benedict XVI to visit Rome's synagogue in the fall

In a telegram to mark the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, Pope Benedict XVI conveyed his greetings and informed the Chief Rabbi of Rome that he intends to visit Rome's synagogue this fall.

According to Zenit News, it will be the third synagogue that he will visit in his pontificate, after the synagogues of Cologne, Germany, in Aug. 2005, and of Park East in New York, in April 2008 -- and will occur 23 years after Pope John Paul II's historic visit there on April 13, 1986, "the first time that a Pope entered a Jewish place of worship since St. Peter."

Imagine that.

In other news, Human Rights Watch's Marc Garlasco, the point man for the organization's monitoring and criticism of Israel, turns out to have a fanatical obsession with ... Nazi memorabilia.

Meanwhile -- HT: Volokh Conspiracy -- NGO Monitor has published a systematic analysis of HRW entitled "Experts or Ideologues?":

NGO Monitor's detailed report examines HRW's activities related to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and particularly on Israel -- including analysis of key HRW staff members, five case studies of HRW campaigns, and quantitative analysis comparing HRW publications in the Middle East, covering the period from 2002 to 2009.

* * * Harmless coincidence or something rotten within the organization? -- Reading on, we learn that the deputy director of HRW's Middle East section, Joe Stork, once praised the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972 as an "achievement." And this same individual attended a conference on "Zionism and Racism" in Saddam Hussein's Iraq:

There he made a presentation that lamented the "devastating defeat" of the Six Day War, which he attributed to "imperialist collusion that lay behind the Israeli blitzkrieg." A decade later, Stork was still railing against "the pernicious influence of the Zionist lobby." It was Stork's boss, Sarah Leah Whitson, who went to Saudi Arabia to tout HRW's battles with "pro-Israel pressure groups.

For details, see:

• Watching Human Rights Watch Implode Weekly Standard August 17, 2009.
• Human Rights Botch Weekly Standard July 27, 2009.
• Human Rights Watch Goes to Saudi Arabia - , by David Bernstein. Wall Street Journal July 15, 2009.

Remembering Our Roots

The Liturgy of the Hours and Jewish Prayer, by Taylor Marshall. Chapter Nine “Jewish Nazirites, Catholic Monastics” in The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity.

Human Rights Watch: Too little, too late.

Human Rights Watch finally gets around to issuing a report on the Hamas rocket attacks.

HRW in the news:

• Human Rights Watch Goes to Saudi Arabia OpinionJournal July 15, 2009.
• Dictatorships and Double Standards, by Noah Pollak. "Conentions" August 5, 2009.

The US background of John Paul’s historic 1986 visit to Rome's main synagogue (Via Cindy Wooden. Catholic News Service).