RUTHFULLY YOURS

Pope Francis gave his first-ever interview on China and the Chinese people on Jan. 28 to Asia Times columnist and China Renmin University senior researcher Francesco Sisci. The Pope urged the world not to fear China’s fast rise in a historic one-hour interview at the Vatican. He said the Chinese people are in a positive moment and delivered a message of hope, peace and reconciliation as an alternative to war, hot or cold. The pontiff also sent Chinese New Year’s greetings to the Chinese people and President Xi Jinping, the first extended by a Pope to a Chinese leader for the Lunar New Year in 2,000 years.

Sisci’s exclusive interview took place in a Vatican hall decorated with a painting of the Holy Mary Undoer of Knots, in which she performs the miracle of untying impossible knots.

ROME–He felt it immediately, or so I sensed, and he tried to put me at ease. He was right. I was in fact nervous. I had spent long hours hammering down every detail of the questions I was going to ask, and he had wanted time to think and churn them over. I asked for an interview on broad cultural and philosophical issues concerning all Chinese, of which over 99% are not Catholic. I didn’t want to touch on religious or political issues, of which other Popes, at other times had spoken.

I hoped he could convey to common Chinese his enormous human empathy by speaking for the first time ever on issues that worry them daily – the rupture of the traditional family, their difficulties in being understood and understanding the western world, their sense of guilt from past experiences such as the Cultural Revolution, etc. He did it and gave the Chinese and people concerned about China’s fast rise reasons for hope, peace and conciliation with each other.

The Pope believes the Chinese are in a positive movement. He says they should not be scared of this, nor should the rest of the world. He also believes the Chinese have a great legacy of wisdom that will enrich them and everybody and will help all to find a peaceful path forward. This interview is, in some respects, the Pope’s way of blessing China.

Sisci: What is China for you? How did you imagine China to be as a young man, given that China, for Argentina, is not the East but the far West? What does Matteo Ricci mean to you?

Amjad Sakari made no effort to hide his feelings and intentions towards Israel. The soldier in the Palestinian security forces filled his Facebook page with paeans to Saddam Hussein. Last weekend he published two posts indicating his imminent plan to carry out a terrorist attack.

In other words, if the PA forces he served had been serious about preventing their members from carrying out terrorist attacks, they could have easily prevented Sakari from driving to an IDF checkpoint between Ramallah and Beit El Sunday morning, opening fire and wounding three soldiers – one critically. Sakari, who was killed in the course of his attack, was the third member of the US-backed PA security forces who engaged in terrorism in the past two months.

On December 3, Mazen Ariba, an officer in the PA’s US-sponsored Preventive Security Forces opened fire on Israelis at the Hizma checkpoint north of Jerusalem. Ariba wounded two Israelis – one critically – before he was shot and killed.

Ariba, was PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat’s nephew. Erekat made a very public condolence call to Ariba’s home. Ariba was posthumously hailed as a hero.

Two weeks ago, the Shin Bet arrested Ala’a Barkawi, an officer in the PA’s US-supported intelligence services. Barkawi was a member of a three-man terror cell that carried out a shooting attack against IDF forces operating in Tulkarm earlier last month.

Sunday night Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu demanded that PA President Mahmoud Abbas condemn the terrorism carried out by forces operating under his command. Abbas rejected Netanyahu’s demand and instead doubled down in supporting terrorism.

“ZDF Heute,” a leading news program on German TV, reported, on January 25, 2016, that terrorists are using the asylum channel to enter countries where they plan to carry out terrorist attacks. The German news program mentioned three recent cases. The first case was the terrorist attacks in Paris, on November 13, 2015. Among the perpetrators were two terrorists who entered Greece as asylum seekers and then traveled to France via the so-called Balkan route. They carried forged Syrian passports in the names of Ahmad al-Mohammad and Mohammad al-Mahmod. They arrived on the Greek island of Leros, on October 3, 2016, where their fingerprints had been taken.

ISIS later glorified the Paris attackers in the manifesto “Black Flags From the Islamic State.” This manifesto, quoted by John Rossomando in IPT News, describes how “the plotters evaded detection by Western intelligence.” “This has shocked the intelligence agencies and many European countries are thinking about closing their borders so future Mujahideen cannot escape to neighboring countries.” The only attacker who survived was Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian-Moroccan national from Brussels. John Rossomando adds: “Black Flags From the Islamic State brags that Abaaoud slipped in and out of Europe hiding among the refugees traveling through Turkey into Greece and then deeper into the continent.” This was shortly before the terrorist attacks in Paris.