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Sunday, May 17, 2015

Pope calls Abbas ‘angel of peace’ during Vatican visit

Pope Francis welcomes PA President Mahmoud Abbas 5-16-15

Francis made the compliment Saturday during the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace. He presented Abbas with a medallion and explained that it represented the angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.” – Times of Israel

On Friday I posted on Pope Francis legitimizing Islamic terrorists in recognizing the unity government of Hamas-Palestinian Authority (PA) as a sovereign nation named Palestine. Today the Times of Israel ran the story on Pope Francis greeting Mahmoud Abbas as an angel of peace that is “destroying the bad spirit of war.”

Islamic Terrorist Mahmoud Abbas

Born in March 1935, Mahmoud Abbas, commonly known as Abu Mazen, is a leading politician in Fatah. He served as Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA) from March to October 2003. In January 2005 he was elected President of the PA.


Through the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, Abbas travelled with Yasser Arafat and the rest of the PA leadership-in-exile to Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia. In 1966, after the pair had murdered a number of intelligence officers in Syria, they fled to Jordan. Four years later, after their effort to topple Jordan's Hashemite regime sparked a brutal civil war, they were expelled to Lebanon. "By 1975," writes Yoram Ettinger, former Minister for Congressional Affairs at Israel's Embassy in Washington DC, "they had plundered large parts of southern Lebanon, attempting to overthrow the central regime in Beirut, which triggered the Syrian invasion of Lebanon, a series of civil wars and the destruction of Lebanon."


"One of the extraordinary blind spots of contemporary Middle East history is the obsession of calling Mahmoud Abbas, whose nom de guerre or war name is Abu Mazen, a peace-loving moderate. ... Abbas was not only Yasser Arafat's deputy for 40 years, he also co-founded with him the terrorist group Fatah, masterminded the Munich massacre and wrote a PhD thesis and book denying the Holocaust. He has completely failed as READ ENTIRITY (MAHMOUD ABBAS (A.K.A. ABU MAZEN); Determine The Networks)


JRH 5/17/15
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Pope calls Abbas ‘angel of peace’ during Vatican visit
Francis meets with PA chief after Holy See’s decision to acknowledge Palestinian state angers Jerusalem



By AFP AND AP
May 16, 2015, 11:40 am
Updated: May 16, 2015, 1:51 pm

Pope Francis praised Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as an “angel of peace” during a meeting at the Vatican.

Francis made the compliment Saturday during the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace. He presented Abbas with a medallion and explained that it represented the angel of peace “destroying the bad spirit of war.”

Francis said he thought the gift was appropriate since “you are an angel of peace.”

Abbas is in town for the canonization Sunday of two new saints from what was then Ottoman-ruled Palestine. It also comes days after the Vatican finalized a bilateral treaty with the “state of Palestine,” making explicit its recognition of Palestinian statehood.

Abbas, for his part, offered Francis relics of the two new saints.

The treaty, which was finalized Wednesday but still has to be signed, makes clear that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic relations from the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.

A bilateral commission is putting the final touches to the agreement, on the Catholic Church’s life and activities in Palestine, which then “will be submitted to the respective authorities for approval ahead of setting a debate in the near future for the signing,” the Vatican said on Wednesday.

Some observers speculated that the agreement could be signed during Abbas’s visit.

The news of the treaty immediately drew ire from Israel.

“Israel heard with disappointment the decision of the Holy See to agree a final formulation of an agreement with the Palestinians including the use of the term ‘Palestinian State’,” said an Israeli foreign ministry official.

“Such a development does not further the peace process and distances the Palestinian leadership from returning to direct bilateral negotiations. Israel will study the agreement and consider its next step.”

The agreement, 15 years in the making, expresses the Vatican’s “hope for a solution to the Palestinian question and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians according to the two-state solution,” Antoine Camilleri, the Holy See’s deputy foreign minister, said in an interview earlier this week.

In an interview with the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper, Camilleri said he hoped “the accord could, even in an indirect way, help the Palestinians in the establishment and recognition of an independent, sovereign and democratic State of Palestine.”

The Palestinian Authority considers the Vatican one of 136 countries to have recognized Palestine as a state, although the number is disputed and several recognitions by what are now European Union member states date back to the Soviet era.

Abbas’s visit came a day before two nuns who lived in Ottoman Palestine during the 19th century will be made saints at a Vatican ceremony.

Marie Alphonsine Ghattas of Jerusalem and Mariam Bawardy of Galilee will become the first Palestinian Arabs to gain sainthood.

Ghattas was born in Jerusalem in 1847, and died there in 1927. She was beatified — the final step before canonization — in 2009.

Bawardy was born in Galilee, now in northern Israel, in 1843. She became a nun in France and died in Bethlehem in 1878.

She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1983.

Although there are several saints who lived in the region during Christianity’s early days, Bawardy and Ghattas are the first to be canonized from Ottoman-era Palestine.

The canonization of a third Palestinian — a Salesian monk — is still under review by the Church.
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© 2015 THE TIMES OF ISRAEL, All rights reserved

ABOUT THE TIMES OF ISRAEL

The Times of Israel is a Jerusalem-based online newspaper founded in 2012 to document developments in Israel, the Middle East and around the Jewish world.

It was established by veteran UK-born, Israeli journalist David Horovitz and his US-based capital partner Seth Klarman. Horovitz is the founding editor, responsible for the site’s editorial content.

The Times of Israel has no partisan political affiliation. It seeks to present the news fair-mindedly and offers a wide range of analysis and opinion pieces.

We also highlight developments from Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora, and thus serve as a global focal point for the Jewish world – informing and engaging members of the tribe everywhere.

We aim for the site to serve as a READ THE REST

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