We need an answer from the Vatican
By Ibrahim Ebeid
The editorial of Professor Vittiorio Parsi, of the Catholic University of Milan was very hostile and very offensive to the Arabs and to the Iraqis. Calling upon the West to master their armies from NATO and send those troops to Iraq to join the Americans in their brutal war to kill more innocent people is indeed outrageous. Helping the Allawi bandits to be selected in the phony election is part of the Zionist-US process to suppress the Iraqi people and it is part of the operation that serves the aggressors. I wonder if he has obtained the blessing of the Pope and the leadership of the Catholic Church in Rome? I would say yes, because the editorial was published in the Avvenire newspaper (September 26, 2004), which is headed by the Italian Bishops Conference and by the organization’s president the Pope’s Cardinal Vicar, Camillo Ruini.
Unfortunately the professor twisted the facts and blamed the situation in Iraq on the Baathists and on the freedom fighters. This was a distortion of the facts of history and carries the germs of hate to the Arabs. I wish that his flagrant article reflected his own thinking and not the thinking of the Vatican. He arrogantly stated “What they want is, in fact, not "Iraq for the Iraqis," but "Iraq for the assassins," assassins above all of the Iraqi people. When the last foreigner – whether soldier or volunteer – leaves the country, the terrorists will have won, and the Iraqi people will again have lost. Thus all of Iraq will become a colossal common area for fundamentalist terrorism, for the brigands of Baath, and for the most extremist Shiite mullahs”.
As an Arab man from Christian background, to be specific from Roman Catholic upbringing, I express the feeling of the Majority of the Christian Arabs who condemn such position whether it was taken by the Vatican or by this arrogant Professor Parsi.
The call to send the NATO troops to Iraq is an act of war against the Arab people; the support of the Allawi government is a support of the brutal occupation that the church should be against.
Iraq is occupied and the occupiers are the assassins and the robbers, the thieves and the brigands. The professor and his supporters whether they were bishops or Cardinals are becoming part of the process of ruining Iraq and adding more suffering to Iraq and its people.
Iraq was very advanced under the Baathists; no one in his senses can deny that, the Baathists were the ones who built it. Iraq under them became the most advance and the most progressed in the Arab World. The Bushes, the Blairs and their supporters savagely ruined it. They created mass graves to swallow innocent Iraqis and the wise professor put the blames on the Baathists?
The election under the guns that the professor calls for to impose the government of Allawi and his likes will not produce progress and the “intelligent” professor knows it. Any government that might come out of this masquerade is pre-designed. Its task is already prepared. This government represents the interests of the new Crusaders that want to dominate the Arab World and exploit it for the interests of Zionism and Imperialism.
We demand an answer from the Vatican. As Christian Arabs we would like to know where is the stand of the Catholic Church. Is it with the oppressed or with the oppressor? We would like to know if the call for more European troops was designed to kill more Iraqis and destroy the Iraqi society or is it part of a new Crusade against us?
As Christian Arab I prefer living in my environment in which I was raised among my Muslim brothers and sisters. They are part of me and I am part of them. The Christians who invaded my country, ruined my society and gave my country Palestine to the Zionists are not part of me, their cross is not mine, and mine is the true cross of Jesus, the prince of peace not the prince of darkness.
The Crusader war is being renewed in Iraq and in Palestine but my people will triumph and will defeat the new crusaders. Parsi is Peter the Hermit reincarnated and his campaign will fail.