Vatican Under Scrutiny As Nuns, Landowners Lose Israel Wall Challenge

[Purveyor]

BEIT JALA, West Bank (Ma’an) -- After a seven-year legal battle, a group of Palestinian landowners and Catholic nuns this week lost an appeal against Israel building its separation barrier on their land.

The ruling by an Israeli appeals committee places the lush Cremisan Valley, in a northern corner of Bethlehem, behind the Israeli wall.

Running straight through Vatican-owned land, the route of this section of the wall also places the position of the Catholic hierarchy under uncomfortable scrutiny.

The proposed construction will also cut off 58 Palestinians in Beit Jala, a predominantly Christian suburb of Bethlehem, from their fields. They launched a legal challenge in 2006.

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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=590000

[Purveyor]

1. Monastery To Be Severed From Convent By West Bank Barrier

A Salesian monastery and convent will be severed from one another by the barrier separating Israel and the Palestinian territories, after an Israeli court last week rejected a petition for a planned portion of the barrier to be rerouted. The ruling was made public on Saturday.

The Tel Aviv Magistrates Court rejected the petition from Palestinian landowners in the town of Beit Jala and representatives of the nearby Salesian monastery, who sued to have a portion of the West Bank separation barrier rerouted.

The Society of St. Yves, a Catholic human rights group that argued the case on the monastery's behalf, said an Israeli appeals court had endorsed a plan to expand the barrier built in the area.

Officials of the (Catholic) Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem were unhappy with the decision, because the Israeli barrier would sever the convent of the Salesian order from the monastery, and also separate the convent from its farmland.

The wall would surround the convent on three sides, St. Yves said in a statement.

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http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/monastery-to-be-severed-from-convent-by-west-bank-barrier.premium-1.517993

Apartheid on Parade...

[bravenak]

2. When countries have to build walls around themselves, it doesn't bode well for their existence.

I remember the Berlin Wall falling. I was maybe 8, and I just didn't get why they had put it up in the first place. Strange to be separating people like that.

[delrem]

3. So you're just a young pup compared to me!

Not that I have a rational explanation for the Berlin wall and the Cold War.

From a rational point of view I think it was all about misunderstanding pushed by fanatic political zealots who led their countries into different kinds of disaster, and to be frank I think it was Lenin/Stalin who were by far the biggest bricks in the wall. Lenin, in spite of tomes after tomes of writings explaining his "Marxist vision", was the worst, because he set the groundwork for Stalin, an absolutely retrograde despot. Fact is I don't think Lenin understood Marx.

On the other hand folk like McCarthy in the US pushed another extreme, an extreme which was by no means opposite but was built on the pretense that it was opposite. The mission of McCarthy and co. was to decimate the union movement in the USA. A fact is that any union movement is the most potent dynamic of "free association", a right guaranteed. And necessary. Such a movement is especially potent when grasped by workers in similar industries, faced with similar models of exploitation. It goes without saying that these models of exploitation are capitalist models - even, bear with me, models funded by those same workers' pension funds.

IMO the manner in which US political discussion is "going after" social security funds, and so-called "entitlements", contradicts the symbiosis that exists between the fact that these funds are a social guarantee, and the fact that these funds ought to be invested in rock solid securities for the future.

[bravenak]

4. Yep. Just a baby.

This is a strange world we live in. And I agree, Lenin/Stalin didn't understand Marxism.
The USSR built the wall, the wall came down, now we have Russia.
Strange how the government that built the wall collapsed.
I guess we better not build that stupid, electrified wall between us and Mexico.

[delrem]

5. Some say we never learn lessons,

but after several asskickingings we do. Sometimes. After a reshuffling of the deck.

OK, maybe we often learn the wrong lesson.

Still, we've got a lot more to go on for experience since 500, 1000, 2000, 3000, yrs ago. And the pace of the 21st century is forcing faster moves. See how CELAC pointedly excludes Canada and the US but includes Mexico and every country to the south of it. It might well be that an electrified wall between US and Mexico is pulled down by Americans demanding to be let in....

Israel's wall, that's something else. The fear and hatred toward those who Israel dispossessed, toward all of "their kind", is totally overwhelming. And unique. In the surrounds all that oil, the geopolitics of puppet "kingdoms" and the seeming ease with which a massive mid-east wide civil war is being now being orchestrated for who knows what end, and Israel's role as focus of that... It all leaves me speechless.

One thing I'm certain of: Obama is continuing the identical program that Bush W. initiated, not deviating in any way at all, and from the start that program has been privately driven.

[holdencaufield]

6. That depends on why the wall is built

You may recall that the Berlin Wall wasn't built to keep people OUT -- but to keep people IN.

The Israeli separation barrier is there to keep people -- those who have killed Israelis of all faiths and seek to do more so -- OUT. And it has been very successful -- since significant portions of the separation wall have been completed, suicide bombing attacks from the West Bank have dropped to zero.


If you can't understand the distinction then there is no point in having the discussion.

[delrem]

7. "Running straight through Vatican-owned land" uh huh.

Push half the nuns out, pull half the nuns in...
Some say one purpose of the wall is a land grab. Nothin' in that, of course.