25 March 2013. Passover Starts Tonight… That’s Why You’re Not Seeing Your Jewish Friends

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At sundown tonight, Passover, the Festival of Freedom, begins, and it won’t end until sundown on 1 April. My good wishes to all of my Jewish friends and readers. May God bless you, one and all…

BMD 

Vandals Spray Hate Graffiti on Jerusalem Church

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Vandals spray-painted “Death to Christianity” and “Jesus, son of a whore” on a Greek Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem. The overnight attack on the Monastery of the Cross was the latest in a series of vandalisms of Christian holy sites. Extremist Jews sympathetic to Israel’s settlement movement are suspected. On Wednesday, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said that the vandals also sprayed “price tag” on the monastery’s outer wall… a form of retribution settlers and their sympathisers use in retaliation for acts they consider pro-Palestinian. Extremists carried out similar “price tag” attacks on other churches, mosques, and Israeli military bases. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the defacing of the church. Israel has 155,000 Christian citizens, less than 2 percent of its nearly 8 million people {according to friends who know the region that’s an undercount… they say that the actual figure is closer to 400,000 (5 percent of the population), mostly concentrated amongst immigrants from the former Soviet Union: editor}.

12 December 2012

Washington Examiner

http://washingtonexaminer.com/vandals-spray-hate-graffiti-on-jerusalem-church/article/feed/2055567#.UM4kh-THcZY

UN Upgrades Palestinian Status to Non-Member Observer State

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On Thursday, the UN General Assembly recognised the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a non-member observer state. 138 UN members approved the Palestinian bid, submitted by President Mahmoud Abbas, nine voted against it, and 41 abstained from voting. The move amounts to an implicit recognition of Palestinian statehood and increases the PA’s chances of joining other UN bodies. It also allows the Palestinian Authority to challenge the continuing construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the International Criminal Court. Before the historic vote, Abbas urged the General Assembly “to issue the birth certificate of Palestine”. He also reiterated that Palestinians would continue their efforts to achieve fully-recognised statehood.

Abbas submitted Palestine’s official application for recognition as an independent state in the UN in September 2011. An American veto in the Security Council blocked that bid. Thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip greeted the Thursday vote with great jubilation, as it formally gives them global recognition. Now, the PA, which earlier had “permanent observer” status at the UN, joins the Vatican as the only other entity with non-member observer state status.

Exactly 65 years ago, on 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for Palestine to be partitioned between Arabs and Jews, allowing for the formation of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. The Palestinians rejected that partition plan, and decades of tension and violence followed. The Palestinians demand the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, as a precondition for peace talks with Tel Aviv.

30 November 2012 (MSK)

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20121130/177829129.html

Editor’s Note:

This is a good step. The Church supports the Palestinians… not the violent Zionists and their American sugar-daddies. If it wasn’t for American support, Israel would be forced to have serious peace talks with the Palestinians. As more than one Arab has told me, “So-called ‘terrorism’ will end when the USA ends its support of Zionist terrorism“. Amen.

However, to be clear… I oppose Zionism and all its works… I also oppose anti-Semitism and all its works. That’s part and parcel of a unified world view… to be against anti-Semitism, but to support Zionism, is a logical impossibility. Zionism is racism… anti-Semitism is racism… both are evil and all decent people must fight both.

BMD

Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Visits Omaha

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On Wednesday morning, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem spoke at Bethel Lutheran Church in Omaha NE on topics ranging from the current conflict in Gaza to working together. Patriarch Theophilos Giannopoulos used an interpreter for much of his talk and the question and answer portion of the programme, held at South 45th Street and Poppleton Avenue. He described for the audience the current situation between Israel and Hamas and other things going on in the region. His host for the day, Pastor Nathan Houfek, said it’s important to hear different perspectives on important issues, noting, “Too much of what we hear is filtered through a media that’s coloured by our political ties”. Local Greek families prepared lunch, which featured food that they felt would make the archbishop feel at home.

28 November 2012

6 News WOWT

http://www.wowt.com/home/headlines/Archbishop-Visits-the-Heartland–181235821.html

NB:

Click on the link above; there’s a 50-second video of the Patriarch’s visit.

Editor’s Note:

Again, there was no note on oca.org of Patriarch Theophilos’ visit to the USA. There are three possibilities:

• Syosset is incompetent and clueless (the Tosi hypothesis)
• Syosset doesn’t give a rat’s ass (the Lyonyo hypothesis)
• Syosset is out of the loop (the SVS hypothesis)

Actually, it’s probably a mixture of all three, with it being more skewed to Hutsky-Klutsky rather than conspiratorial. Mollard could’ve met with Theophilos, or, at least, posted a message of good will on oca.org. “We welcome the visit of Patriarch Theophilos of the Holy City of Jerusalem to the USA. We hope that he finds his stay here congenial. We’d like to inform him that he’s always welcome at the Chancery in Syosset, and that he’d meet with a hospitable and Christian reception if he came to visit us. Mnogaya lyeta!” Nope… NOTHING. If that doesn’t tell you that it’s business as usual in Syosset and SVS, well, nothing will. This is abominable…

BMD