Analysis: After a five-day visit to the Holy Land, the Pope may be wondering why he came.
JERUSALEM — As the Pope’s special El Al flight departed Tel Aviv for Rome Friday at the end of his five-day visit to the Holy Land, he might have kicked off his red slippers, dropped his seat into recline, and wondered why he bothered to come.
He had to endure a nasty anti-Israel tirade by a Palestinian cleric at what was supposed to be an interfaith dialogue meeting in Jerusalem. He was excoriated in the Israeli press for insufficient hand-wringing at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. Then the Israeli prime minister buttonholed him about Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions, which would hardly be within the remit of Benedict XVI’s “personal pilgrimage” to the Holy Land.
Of course, the Pope wouldn’t be the only one wondering why he came. Israeli newspaper commentators acknowledged that, at best, he meant well. Palestinians were glad he posed in front of the Israeli wall around Bethlehem, but wanted a stronger denunciation of Israel — on that score it’s fair to say they’re hard to please. Even local Christians were disappointed that, unlike his predecessor, Benedict chose not to boost their flagging community by urging Catholics around the world to make a pilgrimage to the Christian sites of the Holy Land.
And everyone wondered why the 82-year-old pontiff didn’t smile.
When he visited the Western Wall on Tuesday, the Pope faced the old Herodian stones of the ancient Jewish Temple’s retaining wall and recited Psalm 122: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.”
The response from the people of Jerusalem was, in effect: “Prayers? That’s all you’ve got?”
Because the people of Jerusalem had more than just prayers for Benedict.
At the Notre Dame Pontifical Institute opposite the New Gate of Jerusalem’s Old City, the Pope concluded his first day in the Holy Land by walking off the stage to signal his disapproval of an undoubtedly pre-planned outburst by Sheikh Taisir Tamimi, the head of the Palestinian Authority’s Islamic courts. Tamimi grabbed the microphone to welcome Benedict to “the eternal political, national and spiritual capital of Palestine.”
The interfaith meeting was billed as an occasion to recognize the suffering of others, rather than dwelling on one’s own victimhood as is the wont of Israelis and Palestinians. The Pope’s address was a rather esoteric meditation on religion’s role in a world made somehow smaller by new communications technologies.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/israel-and-palestine/090515/pope-holy-land
