Of ocurse I am going to take the opportunity to talk about the Hamas attack on Israel. First, I'd like to talk about my background, or baggage, regarding the country. I have lived in Israel, some years ago. This was not for religious reasons; I spent several months there working on a movie. During pre-production, weeks of location scouting and shooting the movie, I was all over the country, and spent a fair amount of time in the West Bank, where we also shot. This included a lot of places that normal tourists would not see, including predominantly Arab areas such as East Jerusalem, the Arab quarter of the old city, Ramla and the southern part of Jaffa, which is predominantly Arab. It also included heavily Orthodox areas like Mea Shearim. I dealt with Israeli Arabs, Palestinians and Bedouins. Here are a few things I believe I learned there: First of all, the Palestinians I knew were perfectly normal people with the same interest in living a safe, secure
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He says of the 1929 Lateran Treaty: "The purpose of this agreement between Mussolini and pro-fascist Pope Pius XI was to destroy Italian democracy and to privilege the Catholic Church over all others''... meaning the claim to be a head of state is not legitimate.
He contents that the Holy See has "infiltrated" the UN as a state rather than a religion. He does also say however that purely as a religious leader the Pope should be respected.
And as soon as he does something that deserves respect, I will be happy to do that.