Tel-Chai Nation

Pope Benedict XVI conducted a synod this week for discussing the persecution of Catholics in Muslim lands. But what really takes by surprise is that this platform was turned into an absurdity with attacks on Israel:

Pope Benedict XVI convened a synod (meeting) of Middle Eastern bishops to discuss the attacks on the Catholic church in Muslim lands. However, the bishops have been talking more against Israel than about Muslim aggression against Catholics – or at least, it was the anti-Israeli angle that the Associated Press news agency chose to play up.

According to the report, the pope denounced "terrorist ideologies" that spur violence in G-d's name and said they were based on false gods and should be "unmasked." However, he despite his own advice, he did not “unmask” the ideology threat by specifying that he was talking about Islamic terrorism.

On Monday, the synod's opening day, “attention focused on the decision by Israel to require new citizens to pledge a loyalty oath to a 'Jewish and democratic' state — a bill criticized by Arab Israelis as racist and a provocation,” AP reported.

The Coptic Catholic patriarch of Alexandria, Egypt, Antonios Naguib, who is in charge of running the synod, said that the Israeli decision contained a "flagrant contradiction" since Israel likes to call itself “not just the most democratic but the only democratic state in the region.”

"You cannot announce, publish and affirm to be a democratic state and a civil democracy then at the same time say 'in our democracy we require such things,'" Naguib said. "In the logic of classic democracies, that doesn't work," he said.

I suppose it's possible to assume that the reason why Naguib attacked our new immigration law is because he's afraid that if not, the Islamofascists will really go after him in Egypt. But beyond that, this is truly disgusting that the Catholic Church is making fools out of themselves and taking away the impact of their whole discussion by attacking an immigration law that isn't all that different from what the USA happens to have. And if they really did this badly, then one can only wonder if they're really interested in saving the Christian world from Islamofascism.

Lesson to be learned: don't dampen the impact of the chief issue by bringing up something that's got little or nothing to do with it, and don't imply that it's to blame for the problems either.

And if Islam is the problem, say it, for heaven's sake!

Labels: anti-semitism, Christianity, Egypt, islam, Israel, Israeli Arabs