Catholics on Both Sides of the Gaza Border Pray for Peace

By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service

JERUSALEM (CNS) — As diplomatic efforts were underway to reach a ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel Nov. 20, Catholics on both sides of the Gaza border prayed for peace.

“When we pray for peace, we pray for peace for everyone,” said Father Yoel Salvaterra, who serves the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, after a morning in which more than 20 rockets landed in the city. “Our prayers have no borders. We know we are suffering here and they are suffering there. It is just suffering.”

Egypt was reported to have been brokering a cease fire agreement between Hamas and the Israeli government late Nov. 20, according to news reports.

The parish celebrated Mass Nov. 18 in the church bomb shelter, Father Salvaterra said, and only 15 people came to pray, about half the normal number. The community has about 150 members.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

American Army Suspends anti-Islam Training Course

Pauline Jelinek and Robert Burns – The Associated Press
Posted : Thursday May 10, 2012 18:27:17 EDT

WASHINGTON — A course for U.S. military officers has been teaching that America’s enemy is Islam in general, not just terrorists, and suggesting that the country might ultimately have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina without regard for civilian deaths, following World War II precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima or the allied firebombing of Dresden.

The Pentagon suspended the course in late April when a student objected to the material. The FBI also changed some agent training last year after discovering that it, too, was critical of Islam.

 The teaching in the military course was counter to repeated assertions by U.S. officials over the last decade that the U.S. is at war against Islamic extremists — not the religion.

“They hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit,” the instructor, Army. Lt. Col. Matthew Dooley, said in a presentation last July for the course at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va. The college, for professional military members, teaches midlevel officers and government civilians on subjects related to planning and executing war.

Dooley also presumed, for the purposes of his theoretical war plan, that the Geneva Conventions that set standards of armed conflict, are “no longer relevant.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM ARMYTIMES.COM

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Class suspended over anti-Islam concerns (April 25)