Pope Walks Out on Hostile Islamic Judge in Jerusalem An insult, a handshake and a walk-out:
Pope Benedict XVI walked out on a toxic anti-Israeli Islamic judge at a meeting in Jerusalem on Monday night.
Taking the podium after the pope without being on the original list of speakers scheduled for the evening, Tamimi, speaking at length in Arabic, accused Israel of murdering women and children in Gaza and making Palestinians refugees, and declared Jerusalem the eternal Palestinian capital.
Following the diatribe and before the meeting was officially over, the pope exited the premises. Army Radio reported that the pope shook Tamimi’s hand before walking out.
Sheikh Taiseer al-Tamimi is head of the Palestinian Authority’s Sharia Courts.
Instapundit says it best,
Hey, you can’t have meaningful dialogue with some people. So why pretend?
Indeed.
Why shake his hand? That kind of sounds like approval, even if he did leave.
German TV text news is reporting a different story (my translation):
Tamimi reinforced the historic claim of the Palestinians to Jerusalem and challenged the Pope to take up the cause of Palestinian prisoners. A few Jewish representatives then tried to leave the room. The Pope, who seems not to have understood the Arabic speech, followed the development with amazement.
Another report on the same channel focuses on criticism by the leader of Yad Vashem because the Pope didn’t specifically say that Germans and Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust.
This seems a bit picky to me because the Pope was not there to represent Germany. Does anyone really think he would deny that Germans and Nazis were responsible? German media love nothing better that criticism of the Pope.
Sheikh Tamimi is not shy to express the feelings of his people. He has a history of being uncomfortably honest, in a ‘nothing hidden under the carpet’ manner. It may be inconvenient at these highly diplomatic occasions but it is highly respected by the Palestinian people. He has had some famous bust ups including one with Rabbi David Rosen in the Religions for Peace conference in Japan.
The MEPI visits used to include the Shariah court and Sheikh Tamimi.
http://www.upf.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=250&Itemid=91
http://www.mepi-eu.org
It looked to me like the sheikh grabbed the Pope’s hand for a grip and grin. It didn’t look like a willing handshake.