In her recent
article/a, Mona Charen praises John Bolton for his work in
defeating the “Zionism is Racism” United Nations resolution.
But step back and think about this for a second. The Israelis
are not just persecuting the Arab population in their borders.
While from the media reports it often seems that all Palestinians are
Muslim, a good many of them are Christian (most of the Christians are
in fact Catholic, but that is a side point). And the Israelis are
making life incredibly/em difficult for them also. Did you
know that you cannot have a Catholic tour guide in Israel? Only a
Jew may have the job title “Tour Guide”[1]. So the Palestinian
Catholics who act as guides for the shrines, monasteries, and other
holy sites in the care of the Franciscans go by the title “Pilgrimage
animator”. And that only after the Franciscans closed their doors
to everyone (thus preventing the Jewish “Tour Guides” from having
anywhere to give tours) forced the Israeli government to come to that
“compromise.” The Jewish government wants an all-Jewish state just
as much as the Muslim population wants an all-Muslim Middle East.
So which is better really? Good question, the only clear answer is
that we created Israel, and in doing so put them in harm’s way, so
we have some responsibility to help protect them from that harm./p