• Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler (jerusalem)
• Tuesday, May 12, 2009
• Inter Press Service

Before stepping into Jerusalem's interfaith and inter-political Middle East minefields, Pope Benedict XVI had posited himself as a 'pilgrim of peace'. But, only hours into his spiritual mission, the Pope found himself crashing up against the walls erected by pain - Jewish pain and Muslim pain, the memory of the Holocaust, and Palestinian pain of the continued Israeli occupation.

The Holy See had carefully crafted the five-day papal visit to Israel and occupied Palestine as a balanced act of faith in which the pontiff hoped to be able to be a bridge between the conflicting pains, and so perhaps even pave the way for a universal peace that begins in Jerusalem by prodding Jews and Muslims to understand each other's pain.

The columnist James Carroll argues in the New York Times that Benedict XVI 'as the head of a church that has earnestly grappled with its legacy of anti- Semitism...as the Vicar of Christ in whose name so many colonial adventures (the Crusades) were launched,' is uniquely placed.

Now that the Catholic Church has corrected those immoral attitudes, the Pope could, suggested Carroll, embrace the pain of each of the warring sides in the Holy Land, and thus to convince the Muslims to acknowledge the importance of understanding 'anti-Semitism no-more', and to convince the Jews to acknowledge the importance of understanding 'colonialism no- more'.

Enter Middle East realities with a vengeance. Upon landing at Tel Aviv airport at noon on Monday, balance was indeed the papal act - his identification with one pain was immediately complemented by identification with the other. On the tarmac, the pontiff said all the right words. He said anti-Semitism is 'totally unacceptable' and should be combated, but also voiced support for the Palestinians' right to a homeland.

There was, however, little compassion. Hours later, the Pope reached the first station on his Jerusalem pilgrimage, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Israelis had not hidden their anticipation for the kind of compassion demonstrated there by the Pope's predecessor, John Paul II, who spoke passionately of the Church's remorse at centuries of mistaken attitudes to the Jewish people.

Benedict XVI spoke painfully of the need to ensure that the Holocaust would not be forgotten, nor repeated, nor minimised. But for Israeli ears, there were glaring omissions: no mention of the Nazi perpetrators, no mention of the Vatican's ambiguous attitudes during World War II to the Holocaust, use of the word 'killed' rather than 'murdered' to describe what happened to the victims.

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, chairman of Yad Vashem and himself a Holocaust survivor, described the Pope' speech as, 'beautiful, well-scripted and very Biblical. There was a lot about the pain of humanity, cosmopolitan words, but he didn't have a single word of condolence, compassion or sharing the pain of the Jewish people.'

Israeli historian Tom Segev, author of The Seventh Million, a book which delves into Israel's complex attitudes to the Holocaust, bemoaned in the daily Haaretz on Tuesday the Pope's over-cautious tone: 'No church bell would cease to ring had the Pontiff said something about Christian anti-Semitism. The verbal stinginess,' Segev went on, 'also diminishes the impact of anything Benedict XVI might say about Palestinian suffering. Had he said what he needed to about the Holocaust, he could have said more to condemn Israel's systematic violations of the human rights of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.' Less than 24 hours into his pilgrimage, the Pope may have discovered that it is not his followers in the faith as much as the followers of the other two monotheistic faiths who will determine the spirit of the pilgrimage. Jews and Muslims alike are following every word he utters, every gesture he makes, at every station. He is being seen as unfeeling towards the historical pain of both Jews and Muslims. But, this may simply stem from the Vatican's contrived attempt at balance. That, in turn, is making the pilgrimage even more sensitive than Pope Benedict XVI himself might have contemplated.

The Pope went directly from the Holocaust memorial to an interfaith conference at the Notre Dame church conference centre in east Jerusalem. In his speech to the gathering of priests, imams and rabbis, the pontiff again used the right words, praising their efforts to seek common values and mutual respect, to overcome differences in religious practice that 'may at times appear as barriers.'

He was in for a rude surprise. A Muslim cleric, the head of the Palestinian Sharia courts, Sheikh Taysir Al-Tamimi, appealed directly to the pontiff to help end what he called 'the crimes of the Jewish State' as he went on to accuse Israel of 'ruining the Muslim holy sites, and of slaughtering women, children and the elderly in Gaza.' The harangue was delivered in Arabic without translation.

After Benedict XVI was informed of the nature of the Sheikh's address, he left the conference. The Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, criticised Sheikh Al-Tamimi' speech: 'In a meeting dedicated to dialogue, this...was a direct negation of what dialogue should be.'

After visiting the holy sites of the three faiths in Jerusalem on Wednesday, the Pope will conduct mass at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, traditionally the birthplace of Jesus. Thereafter, he will have an opportunity to address Palestinian pain directly when he visits the Aida refugee camp under the shadow of Israel's imposing security wall on the eve of what Palestinians call the Naqba - The Catastrophe - the takeover of their homeland and the creation of the State of Israel.

The peace pilgrimage is still only half-way through, but the Pope's failure thus far to reach out successfully across the Jewish and Muslim walls of pain may diminish the impact of the pilgrimage, and to undercut what he has defined as his prime mission ever since being designated the supreme head of the Church - to strengthen the Catholic faith and its influence around the world.

© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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