Or was that "Jesus wept"? According to an article today, Jesus apparently jumped himself out of danger once upon a time.
Israel announced Sunday that it plans to invest NIS 5.7 million in a religious ceremony to be led by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit this May. The pope will conduct a large mass on Mount Precipice, the Nazareth site where Jesus is said to have leapt to avoid an angry mob.You learn something new every day, eh?
File this one under "no good deed goes unpunished." Last week Strings of Freedom, a Palestinian orchestra made up of youth from a refugee camp in the West Bank, performed a concert for Holocaust survivors in Israel.
The Palestinian youths from a tough West Bank refugee camp stood facing the elderly Holocaust survivors on Wednesday, appearing somewhat defiant in a teenage sort of way. Then they began to sing.The conductor is Wafa Younis, an Israeli Arab, who wants to promote coexistence between two peoples who do not know or understand each other.
The choir burst into songs for peace, bringing surprised smiles from the audience. But the event had another twist: Most of the Holocaust survivors did not know the youths were Palestinians from the West Bank, a rare sight in Israel these days. And the youths had no idea they were performing for people who lived through Nazi genocide - or even what the Holocaust was.
Younis, from the Arab village of Ara in Israel, then explained in fluent Hebrew that the youths would sing for peace, prompting the audience to burst into applause.Apparently, for some this sort of thing is completely unacceptable.
"Inshallah," said Sarah Glickman, 68, using the Arabic term for God willing.
The encounter began with an Arabic song, "We sing for peace," and was followed by two musical pieces with violins and Arabic drums, as well as an impromptu song in Hebrew by two in the audience.
Palestinian authorities disbanded a youth orchestra from a West Bank refugee camp after it played for a group of Holocaust survivors in Israel, a local official said on Sunday.It speaks volumes.
Adnan Hindi of the Jenin camp called the Holocaust a political issue and accused conductor Wafa Younis of unknowingly dragging the children into a political dispute.
He added that Younis has been barred from the camp and the apartment where she taught the 13-member Strings of Freedom orchestra has been boarded up.
"She exploited the children," said Hindi, the head of the camp's popular committee, which takes on municipal duties. "She will be forbidden from doing any activities.... We have to protect our children and our community."
"On the Internet there are pictures of the children under photos of the Israeli prisoners, and they performed for Holocaust survivors," one Fatah [Palestinian West Bank governmental] official said. "Hamas accused us of normalization activities, of identifying with the enemy, so we were forced to expel Younis. The subject is now closed."In other words, Hamas terrorists accused Fatah of doing something "normal" people do (you know, being nice and acting like friends) so there was no choice but to punish the Arab woman for having something other than hatred in her heart. Priorities, I guess.
I found this depiction of the casualty footprint of current conflicts interesting on a number of levels.
According to the amount of reporting that goes into the different conflicts, you'd never know proportion of real tragedy that is happening outside of this small strip of land.
via The Augean Stables
