altJerusalem – “It is not worthy of political and religious leaders to support, feed, foment revenge. Revenge calls for revenge, blood calls for blood. And innocent people who are killed, all the children killed, are victims sacrificed on the diabolical altars of hatred. We pray for the parents and families of all these young people kidnapped and killed”. With these words, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, expresses his dismay regarding the news of the sixteen-year-old Palestinian Mohammed Abu Khdeir, whose body with signs of violence was found this morning by Israeli police in a forest west of the city of Jerusalem, after the family had reported his abduction.

A targeted killing that suggests a vengeance, after the kidnapping and killing of the three Jewish boys who disappeared on June 12 and found killed on June 30 near Hebron. “The visit of Pope Francis in the Holy Land and then the prayer meeting held in the Vatican”, said the Patriarch, “had fueled so many happy hopes for peace.

Now, with the sacrifice of innocent young people, the cycle of violence in which we live seems to reassert its dominance with even greater ferocity. It almost seems like a reaction to stave off the hopes that had been aroused. For this we must continue to pray, to ask for the miracle of peace. Peace and forgiveness are good for everyone”.

On Tuesday evening, July 1, hundreds of extremist Israeli settlers crossed the center of Jerusalem expressing their anger after the killing of the three Jewish children. This morning, in Beit Hanina and Shuffat, dozens of Palestinians clashed with Israeli police after they had spread the news of the discovery of the lifeless body of Mohammad Abu Khdeir. “There is a nation that has lived for years in mourning”, says Patriarch Twal to Fides Agency, “and it is necessary to stop the perverse logic of those who discriminate among the innocent victims on one side and the other, and believe that their pain can be relieved from the pain of others. Only forgiveness calls for forgiveness”.

By: Agenzia Fides