Ayoub Kara is a rarity in this country. He's an Israeli Arab MK who gets it. In fact, he's an Israeli who just happened to be born Arab and not an 'Israeli Arab' like the ones I usually describe with scarequotes. There are two reasons for this: He's Druze and not Muslim, and he belongs to the Likud and not to one of the 'Israeli Arab' parties. In fact, Kara often gets it better than his Prime Minister.
Kara gets it about Christians in the Middle East enough that he met with the Pope in Rome last week and tried to explain it to the Pope.
Member of Knesset Ayoub Kara said on Monday that he got the feeling from his meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican last week that the Catholic Church was behind the pontiff on behalf of the Jewish people. Speaking on Arutz Sheva's Hebrew journal, the deputy minister for development of the Negev and the Galilee said that the pope's speech on International Holocaust Day showed that he knew what happened in the concentration camps.I have my doubts that this Pope gets it about the Holocaust (see canonization of Pope Pius XII and Williamson) but Kara definitely gets it about what would happen to churches in the Middle East if there were no State of Israel. In fact, the number of Christians is increasing in only one country in our region.Kara said that after his meeting with the pope, he had an argument with the Church's representative on the Middle East, who said internationalization of Jerusalem was the optimal solution to the Arab-Israeli struggle over the capital. Kara responded by saying that if there was no Israel, there would be no churches in the Middle East, noting how the Christians of Bethlehem and Nazareth are being treated by their Muslim neighbors. He added that the interest of the Church should be Israeli control, and felt that some of what he said was accepted by the cardinal.
You guessed it: Israel.
Israel Matzav: Israeli Arab MK: If there is no Israel, there will be no churches in the Middle East
