Rosary and Mass Card Projects

By URI AVNERY - Counterpunch
[full article]
One of the wisest pronouncements I have heard in my life was that of an Egyptian general, a few days after Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem.

We were the first Israelis to come to Cairo, and one of the things we were very curious about was: how did you manage to surprise us at the beginning of the October 1973 war?

The general answered: "Instead of reading the intelligence reports, you should have read our poets."

I reflected on these words last Wednesday, at the funeral of Mahmoud Darwish.

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
[full article]
DR. BERNARD SABELLA, author and sociology professor at Bethlehem University, discussed “The Decline of Palestinian Christians: Religious, Cultural and Strategic Implications,” at Georgetown University on April 23. An elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and executive director of the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees for the Middle East Council of Churches, Sabella provided insight into what is happening to Christians in the Holy Land at the event, co-hosted by Churches for Middle East Peace, Foundation for Middle East Peace, Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation, and the Office of the President of Georgetown University.

By Akiva Eldar - Ha'aretz
[full article]
The Israel Defense Forces roadblock on Highway 55 does not note the border crossing between Israel and the West Bank. No sign marks the dirt road that winds between the tin shacks and the few brick houses, whose plaster and color have worn off, of the Palestinian village of Arab a-Ramadin. The little hill overlooks Qalqilyah to the north, Kfar Sava to the west, and Alfei Menashe to the east.

The Israeli government's decision to place the separation fence east of Alfei Menashe, in order to bring it closer to Israel, has distanced Arab a-Ramadin's 300 Bedouin residents from the West Bank - the focus of their lives. There are 7,000 Palestinians living like them, on the seam - neither here nor there. Their home is in the west, and their heart is in the east. Now the Israeli authorities are offering them a solution: packing up and moving to the other side of the fence, a voluntary - or perhaps not so voluntary - transfer.

by Yossi Beilin
[full article]
No peace agreement between Israel and its neighbors will be signed before the end of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's term of office. The most far-reaching move imaginable would be some sort of agreements in principle between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and the Syrians. The chances of that happening don't appear very good, but it's not impossible.

2008 ANNUAL DONATION
WE SINCERELY THANK OUR DONORS FOR THEIR GENEROUS GIFTS TO THE ORDER. WITH YOUR GENEROSITY OUR GOALS OF HELPING THE PATRIARCH FULFILL HIS MANY COMMITMENTS CAN BE MET.
AS A RESULT SCHOOLS UNDER HIS JURISDICTION CAN BE SUBSIDIZED AND MANY OF THE NEEDS OF THE CHRISTIANS WHO MAINTAIN THEIR PRESENCE IN THE HOLY LAND ARE BEING ADDRESSED.

WE ASK FOR A MINIMUM DONATION OF $600 PER MEMBER SENT TO OUR TREASURER Sir Leonard Vuylsteke, KHS
2838 East Burnside Street
Portland, OR 97214
PLEASE RESPOND AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

Legacy Giving

Including the Order in Your Estate Plans Estate planning has many aspects, but they all boil down to how you use the property you have to help the persons and causes you care about, both during your lifetime and after you have died. Lady Nafla Michael, LGCHS, deceased in November 2007, has expressed her concern for the Christian presence in the Holy Land by bequesting $10,000 to the Lieutenancy to achieve its goals of furthering the charitable and spiritual works of the Order.
Lady Nafla was a vibrant presence in the Anchorage contingent of the Order for many years. We are all honored to be able to continue her memory through the use of this most generous gift. Please be assured we will continue to pray for her.

HOLY LAND PILGRIMAGES

Led by Franciscan Father Mario DiCicco, O.F.M.
President/Rector of the Franciscan School of Theology, Berkeley, California
September 20 – October 1, 2008
Land & Air from Chicago $3,000
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The Western USA Lieutenancy presents
A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Under the Spiritual Direction of:
His Excellency, Most Rev. Tod D. Brown, D.D., KC*HS, Bishop of Orange
with Rev. Michael McKiernan, KCHS
12 Days:October 24 to November 4, 2008
$2999 Special Cash Discount Price / $3118 Standard Base Price
From Los Angeles (LAX) plus airport taxes, Jordanian visa fe

The Annual Meeting
Holy Land Education Committee Workshop


The Holy Land Education workshop will be held at 10:00 to 11:30 on Saturday October 4, 2008. It will be moderated by Sir Albert E. Hazbun. The participants will be Msgr. Archimandrite Robert L. Stern, P.A., Secretary General of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), and Israeli Knesset member Nadia Hilou. Msgr. Stern has spoken several times at our annual meetings and is always very informative and challenging. Mrs. Hilou became the first Christian member of the Knesset when she was sworn in on April 17, 2006. She comes from a Catholic Palestinian Family that remained in Jaffa when Israel was established. The Jerusalem Post quoted her: "I hope to be an active, visible member of the Interior Committee, the Education Committee, and the Committee for the Status of Women," said Hilou, who was a social worker before she entered political life. "I am still part social worker. There are very important humanitarian issues that I want to advance and especially important is advancing co-existence between Jews and Arabs."

Obituary
Please pray for the Repose of the
Souls of the following members
of the Northwestern Lieutenancy:

Lady Theresa Willett – deceased 3/17, 2008
Lady Theresa Willett was a Councilor for Oregon and Chair of the Annual Meeting in Portland. Her husband, Sir Ken Willett, KGCHS, and her family and many friends grieve her loss.
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Sir Thomas Mullaney, KC*HS, – deceased 6/9/08
Sir Thomas Mullaney leaves his wife, Lady Vivien, LC*HS, and his loving family. He has been a member of the Equestrian Order since 1998.
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“CHRIST BE OUR LIGHT”
2008 ANNUAL MEETING


Planning continues for the upcoming annual meeting in Oakland October 3 – 5, 2008. This year marks the 15th Anniversary of the Northwestern Lieutenancy so our meeting will have special significance. The historic Claremont Resort and Spa will be our 2008 meeting site. Many of you are familiar with this wonderful hotel located in the Oakland/Berkeley hills. The features of the hotel include a world-class spa, fine restaurants, swimming pools and tennis courts.

The weekend will begin on Friday afternoon, October 3rd with the vigil service for our investees. This will be held at the lovely chapel at St. Albert’s Priory in Oakland. The chapel will provide the perfect setting for prayer and reflection. We will also have the wonderful treat of traveling to St. Mary’s College in Moraga on Saturday evening for the Promotion Mass with dinner to follow on the campus. The Christian Brothers operate both St. Mary’s and Bethlehem University. The current President of the College has been President of Bethlehem University and several brothers now at St. Mary’s have taught in Bethlehem as well. It will be our privilege to honor the Christian Brothers for their work in education, especially in the Holy Land.

BROTHER VINCENT MALHAM, PRESIDENT OF BETHLEHEM UNIVERSITY

Brother Vincent Malham, FSC, Christian Brothers University president, died Friday, May 2, 2008 in an automobile accident in Louisiana. Brother Vincent was a popular frequent speaker at annual meetings of the Northwestern Lieutenancy, sharing his experiences of working with the lives of students at Bethlehem University. During his all-too-brief tenure at CBU, Brother Vincent oversaw the University's largest capital project in more than a decade with the new construction and expansion of the CBU Science Complex, as well as the renovations of the University Theater and campus housing. His guidance led to a number of new degree programs and expanded the University's scope in academic offerings. Throughout his tenure at Bethlehem and afterward, he was a strong voice for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East.

LIEUTENANT’S LETTER

Each year, the 13 Lieutenants and one Magistral Delegate of the North American Lieutenancies of the Equestrian Order meet with the four North American representatives on the Grand Magisterium. This year’s meeting was held over a weekend in Toronto, Canada. For the past several years, we have been honored with the presence of His Excellency Pier Luigi Parola, Governor General of the Order. This year, we had the additional opportunity to meet with our new Grand Master, His Eminence John Cardinal Foley.

The Governor General continued his practice of fiscal transparency with the North American Lieutenants, discussing the Order’s sources of income, its administrative expenditures and the projects which the Grand Magisterium was proposing for the Lieutenancies’ consideration this year. While the Order’s commitment to supporting the parish schools and high schools throughout the Latin Patriarchate remains strong, this year we are asked to consider supporting projects in the Greek Melkite and Armenian communities which are in union with the Holy See. I will be discussing these projects with our Council at the Oakland Annual Meeting in October to determine how our Lieutenancy wants to participate in these important projects.

Seminarian George Ayoub

For two years, our Lieutenancy has supported with our prayers and tuition assistance a seminarian of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Readers of this Newsletter are familiar with Seminarian George Ayoub, from Nazareth in Israel.

He is now in his third year of Theology and is currently on a month-long visit to Blackburn in the United Kingdom. Blackburn is in the northwest of England, near Manchester. For many years, the local Pastor of the Parish of St. Mary and St. John, Very Rev. Canon Kevin Kelly, has sponsored seminarians from the Patriarchate in order for them to improve their English language skills. One might emphasize that it is “English” they are learning and not the American version of that language.

Transfer of the Patriarach
By
Very Reverend Canon Donald Fraser, KC*HS

A new era has arrived in our Order. Not only do we have a new Grand Master, but we also have a new Grand Prior. His Eminence Cardinal John Patrick Foley, 72, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was appointed Grand Master earlier this year. His Beatitude Fouad Twal, 68, was just installed as the new Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem last month.

I had the great honor of attending the various ceremonies in Jerusalem and elsewhere in the Holy Land accompanying the transfer of the Patriarchs. As a Canon of the Holy Sepulchre, I fulfilled an official role as witness to these events. It was truly an honor to participate in these historical events.

Interview with Lt. Col. (Res.) Ron Shatzberg Project Director, Economic Cooperation Foundation.
[full article]
Can you explain the challenge Jerusalem poses to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

The ethos of Jerusalem as a whole is a challenge but the Historical Basin, comprised of the Old City and a surrounding area of 2.4 square kilometers, is the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The significance of the Basin to both sides only grew with time to the extent that it now includes not only the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall but also the City of David and the Mount of Olives. The issue of the Holy Basin is not only complicated due to the difficulties of Israel and the Palestinian Authority to compromise on but also because other players–Saudi Arabia, the Arab League, the Supreme Muslim Council, members of the Jewish Diaspora and the Christian establishment–feel that they are also stakeholders in the story. If we solve this issue, we’ll be able to jump ahead in the peace process.

Catholic News Agency
[full article]
Quebec City, Aug 7, 2008 / 08:38 am (CNA).- Just five weeks after being installed as the new Patriarch of the Latin Church in Jerusalem, His Beatitude Fouad Twal described his experience to CNA as the “top of happiness.” At the same time, he also said that the complex conflict in the Holy Land requires courageous leaders to forge a new mentality of peace in the region, leaders he is still waiting for.

By Phillip Kurata - America.gov
[full article]
Washington -- The U.S. government and a humanitarian organization devoted to helping the Palestinian people have established a mechanism to channel private American donations into programs that benefit the Palestinians.

A memorandum of understanding was signed August 1 in Washington by the administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Henrietta Fore, and Ziad Asali, the founder and chairman of the American Charities for Palestine.

By Donald Macintyre in Gaza City - The Independent
[full article]
Seriously ill Palestinian patients are being pressured to collaborate with Israeli intelligence by informing on militant and other activities in return for being allowed out of Gaza for medical treatment a report says today.

Israel's domestic intelligence agency, Shin Bet, is playing an increasingly important role in determining whether patients should be allowed to keep hospital appointments in Is

The Guardian - Peter Beaumont in Ni'ilin
[full article]
An Israeli child from a far-right settler group in the West Bank city of Hebron hurls a stone up the stairs of a Palestinian family close to their settlement and shouts: "I will exterminate you." Another spits towards the same family.

Another settler woman pushes her face up to a window and snarls: "Whore!"

They are shocking images. There is footage of beatings, their aftermath, and the indifference of Israel's security forces to serious human rights abuses. There is footage too of those same security forces humiliating Palestinians – and most seriously – committing abuses themselves.

From private correspondence with Sir Albert Hazbun:

Dear Friend,

Earlier today you may have received the message below, forwarded from Jewish
Peace News.

I now re-transmit, adding a relevant passage from the unpublished
autobiography of my late friend, the artist and satirist Shimon Tzabar.

Excerpt from Shimon Tzabar's autobiography

...In the mid fifties, I received a letter from the Painters and Sculptors
Association, of which I was a member, saying that the government had
allocated a village at the foothills of Mount Carmel, to be a village for
artists. It was called Ein Hod. All I had to do to get a house there was