Two American Jewish groups have strongly rejected communications from the Vatican responding to their appeals to Pope John Paul II last month not to receive Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat. Arafat was granted a Papal audience on September 14.
Julius Berman, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said he received with “dismay and disappointment” a letter dated October 7 from Johannes Cordinal Willebrands, president of the Secretariate for Promoting Christian Unity in Rome.
The letter, made public by Berman late last week along with his reply, defended the audience as consistent with the Pope’s efforts to promote peace and understanding and said it could not in any way be construed as an endorsement of Arafat and the PLO or as an expression of hostility toward Israel and the Jewish people.
A similar letter, dated October 9, was sent to the Simon Wiesenthal Center at Yesniva University of Los Angeles by Msgr. Jorge Mejia, secretary to the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. It stated that the Pope strongly opposes “all forms of anti-Semitism” but reiterated his wish “to show his good will towards the Palestinian people and his participation in their protracted sufferings.”
Mejia’s letter was made public along with a response on October 15, by Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, dean and assistance dean, respectively, of the Wiesenthal Center. They charged that “Arafat’s visit to the Vatican helped convince extremists that the Jews are legitimate targets for the PLO chairman’s kind of terrorism.” The Wiesenthal Center officials cited specifically the terrorist attack on the main synagogue in Rome on October 9.
REPLY TO BERMAN’S LETTER
Cardinal Willebrand’s letter was a reply to a September 13 cable from Berman to the Pope on behalf of the Presidents Conference, stating that “We are profoundly distressed at news reports that you may grant an audience to Yasir Arafat, chairman of the PLO, the slaughterer of hundreds of Israeli children, mothers and old people, including survivors of the infamous Nazi concentration camps.”
The cable warned, “If you grant Arafat an interview the world will interpret it in only one way: that you regard his views as worthy of discussion, his leadership of the Palestinian Arabs legitimate, his pretensions to statesmanship valid, his terrorist acts forgiven …”
Willebrands stated in his reply: “The Holy Father is prepared to receive all men and women who ask for it, intending in this way to manifest his concern for all people, to further the aims of peace and to promote understanding among nations … the fact that the Holy Father receives someone in audience is in no way a sign of approval of all the ideas and actions attributed to that person … the considerations that led to the granting of the (Arafat’s) audience, and also its meaning … cannot in any way be interpreted as hostile to Israel and the Jewish people around the world. The attitude of the Holy See toward the Jewish people and its strong opposal to all forms of anti-Semitism have in no way been changed by this audience.”
Berman replied that he was “gratified” to receive the Cardinal’s letter but “In fact, the embrace the Pope gave to this murderer of children was taken by the world to confer legitimacy on him and exploited by Arafat to that end, If the Pope wished to show his good will toward the Palestinian people and his participation in their protracted sufferings, it was not necessary to shake the hand of one who is responsible for the assassination of so many Palestinians and the suffering of so many more,” Berman wrote.
NO COMFORT IN THE CARDINAL’S LETTER
According to Berman, “For Jews around the world, there can be no comfort” in Cardinal Willebrands’ letter. “Rather, this justification of the Pope’s meeting with the killer Arafat comes as a profoundly depressing event, are that puts into question all the hopes for Christian-Jewish understanding that began so encouragingly with the works of Pope John XXIII … There has been dialogue between Jews and Catholics because there is a mutual commitment to peace, to understanding and to good relations between them. To place the Pope’s meeting with the world’s leading terrorist on the same basis fills us with dismay and disappointment.”
Berman added that the Pope’s audience with Arafat “has caused a blow to the cause of world peace and deep distress to Jews the world over.”
Mejia’s letter to Hier and Cooper stated: “In the exercise of his high pastoral office, the Holy Father is ready to receive all men and women who ask for it, intending in this way to manifest his concern for all people, to further the aims of peace and to promote understanding among nations.”
RABBIS REPLY TO VATICAN OFFICIAL
The rabbis, in their reply noted: “While the Pope has the right to invite anyone he wishes to the Vatican, for many Jews the fact that Pope John Paul II has never met with the duly elected Prime Minister of the democratic State of Israel — giving, instead, a private audience to the self-appointed head of the Palestinians; a man who has brought fame to international terrorism–serves as on endorsement of Yasir Arafat at the expense of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.”
Mejia’s letter was accompanied by a copy of the communique issued by the Vatican Press Office on September 15, summarizing the Pope’s remarks to Arafat the day before.
The communique said the Pope “expressed the hope that an equitable and lasting solution of the Middle East conflict should exclude recourse to arms and violence of all kinds, especially terrorism and reprisals; it should involve the recognition of the rights of all peoples, particularly those of the Palestinian people for a homeland of its own and of Israel for its own security.” The Mejia and Willebrands letters essentially reiterated the points made in the communique.
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