Submitted by cabbage juice (Palestinian Territory, Occupied), Sep 14, 2007 at 00:47
Bruno Hussar, the Dominican priest who conceived the idea of Neve Shalom, died in 1996, shortly beform Tom Kitain, an Israeli soldier from there was killed in a helicopter crash in 1997. Despite the fact that some Israeli Arabs do serve in the army, the Arab residents were very uppity about this, saying that he went to Lebanon to "kill their brothers".
In the end they agreed to a watered down memorial that called him a "child of peace, killed in war". This kind of compromise is a band-aid on the yawning gaps of ideology that even clergymen can't in their utter simplicity and naivete, bridge. The most aggressive mindset will prevail--and the rest will have to bow down. Those members of Neve Shalom who wanted to expand their houses more than what was originally agreed upon, got away with it. The Guesthouse commercialized the original idea more or less turned the rustic little village into a 'showcase for peace'.
So when a Franciscan priest, rather sheltered from the realities of the workworld, announces to the Italian public, "Look at me, I got Palestinian so and so to sit on the same piano bench with Israeli so and so, playing Hungarian Rhapsodies", it should be taken with more than a handful of salt. Bruno Hussar didn't seem to be in it for self-promotion though. But who REALLY knows?
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