Praying For Peace

"I was not surprised because [in this part of the world] you take certain actions and there are always different interpretations."
"There was some difficulty [among the Israelis] in interpreting the positive side of his act."
Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman

Pope Francis touches the wall that divides Israel from the West Bank, on his way to celebrate a mass in Manger Square, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem on May 25, 2014 Osservatore Romano—Reuters

The "act" was Pope Francis's spur-of-the-moment impulse to halt his motorcade at the separation wall, near Bethlehem. There, beside graffiti that read "Free Palestine", he rested his forehead in brief contemplative prayer for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Authentic Palestinians are those who lived on the land for multiple generations dating well back into timeless history, and they were Jews. Their descendants will never be permitted to return to their ancestral land.

The separation wall is there for a defined and quite necessary purpose. Before its erection Palestinian Arab incursions into Israel bent on suicide missions to martyr themselves for the greater glory of Islam were frequent occurrences. Once the separation wall had been installed, the suicide attacks came to a sudden halt. The presence of the wall has incurred practical hardships in the lives of ordinary Palestinians; the price they pay for their leadership inciting to violence.

Pope Francis's sincere wish to pay notice to Palestinian suffering is authentic and laudable to say the least, tugging at his humanitarian heart. Israeli authorities were angry at what they interpreted as a symbol of favouritism toward the Palestinian cause, which in all fairness it was. The Pope sees the need for a just and acceptable end to the constant tugs of war between the adversaries, a miserable stalemate that has gone on far too long.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevailed upon Pope Francis, in his lightning-strike-swift Middle East trip, to also visit at the last moment, a memorial to Jewish victims of terrorism, and as a gesture to appease his hosts, and equally to pay his humble respects to the victims of violence, Pope Frances acceded. Which was when and where a verbal tug of war took place:

"Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew", said the prime minister.

"Aramaic", corrected the pope.

"He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew", responded Mr. Netanyahu.

Both men were correct, according to biblical scholars, for while Christ's mother-tongue was Aramaic, he would have been exposed to the-then holy language of the Judaic sacred scriptures, Hebrew. Vatican officials, attempting to mediate the offence taken by Israel stressed that Pope Francis prayed for peace for the region in its entirety, a gesture not meant in its heartfelt sincerity to be taken as selective partisanship.


^{Pope Francis touches Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City (REUTERS)}
 
"I want to thank the Pope for accepting my request to visit this memorial", said Mr. Netanyahu. The wall, he commented, had saved "thousands of lives -- after it was set up, the terror stopped." Terrorism, the Pope said, after praying at the memorial, is "evil", and "fundamentally criminal". And, visiting the Yad Vashem memorial, he described the Holocaust as "a boundless tragedy".

_{Pope Francis lays a wreath in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem}