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Mike Cox Backs Israel

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A16 May 14 • 2009

Washington/JTA — Attorneys general
from 10 states, including Michigan's
Mike Cox, defended Israel's military
action in the Gaza Strip. The support
came in a letter sent to U.S. Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The letter, sent last month, con-
demned Hamas for what it called war
crimes for its bomb attacks on civilian
targets in southern Israel.
The attorneys general wrote, "By
intentionally targeting 6,300 rockets
against Israel's civilian population,
llamas is guilty beyond a reasonable
doubt of a war crime in that it has
violated ... the Geneva Convention of
1949:'
The letter notes that the Geneva
Convention provides that parties in a
conflict must distinguish between civil-
ians and combatants, and civilian and
military objectives, and "direct their
operations only against military objec-
tives."
"In addition to its war crimes com-
mitted against the Israeli civilian
population, llamas has also committed
atrocities against the Palestinian civilian
population under its control in Gaza by
using these civilians as shields for its
criminal conduce,' the letter continued.
The officials concluded, "llamas' con-
tinuous rocket and mortar attacks on
Israel's civilian population are a casus
bellum. As in all wars, the appropriate
response is not a 'proportionate one but
one measured to bring about an end to
the acts of war."
The 10 attorneys general represent
the states of Colorado, Florida, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio,
Rhode Island, Utah and Washington.
Michigan Attorney General Cox has
visited Israel through a program offered
by the Jewish Community Relations
Council of Metropolitan Detroit.

Pope Visits Israel
Jerusalem/JTA — Pope Benedict XVI
vowed to fight anti-Semitism and called
for an independent Palestinian state
upon his arrival in Israel.
The pope invoked the memory of
the 6 million Jews who died in the
Holocaust and said he would pray for
peace during his five-day visit to Israel,
which began Monday morning when
he landed in a plane belonging to the
Jordanian royal family at Ben-Gurion
International Airport.
"I come, like so many others before
me, to pray at the holy places, to pray
especially for peace — peace here in the
Holy Land, and peace throughout the
world:' Benedict said during a welcom-

between the Holy See and the Jewish
people. We cherish this process and your
leadership. Our door is open to similar
efforts with the Muslim world."

61116,
Pope Benedict XVI

ing ceremony at the airport.
The pope said that at his scheduled
visit later in the day to the Hall of
Remembrance at Yad Vashem, he would
"have the opportunity to honor the
memory of the 6 million Jewish victims
of the Shoah, and to pray that humanity
will never again witness a crime of such
magnitude:'
Benedict lamented the worldwide rise
in anti-Semitism.
The pope then switched his attention
to achieving peace between Palestinians
and Israel.
"In union with people of good will
everywhere, I plead with all those
responsible to explore every possible
avenue in the search for a just resolu-
tion of the outstanding difficulties, so
that both peoples may live in peace in
a homeland of their own, within secure
and internationally recognized borders:'
he said.
Israeli President Shimon Peres greet-
ed the pope in Latin and Hebrew before
addressing him in English.
"Your visit here brings a blessed
understanding between religions and
spreads peace near and far:' Peres said.
"Historic Israel and the renewed Israel
together welcome your arrival as pav-
ing the great road to peace from city to
city"
"I am deeply grateful to God and to
you for the opportunity to stand here in
silence: a silence to remember, a silence
to pray, a silence to hope," the pontiff
said.
Before his visit to Yad Vashem, the
pope planted an olive tree during a visit
to the president's official residence in
Jerusalem.
"Old divisions have aged and dimin-
ished," Peres told Benedict. "So more
than the need for another armored vehi-
cle, we need a strong, inspiring spirit
to instill both the conviction that peace
is attainable, and the burning desire
to pursue it. Ties of reconciliation and
understanding are now being woven

Pope Falls Short
Jerusalem/JTA — The chairman of
Israel's Yad Vashem Council said the
pope's address at the Holocaust memo-
rial museum did not go far enough.
"A few points were missing in the
pope's address," Rabbi Israel Meir Lau,
a former chief rabbi of Israel, told
Israel's Channel 1 Monday shortly after
Pope Benedict XVI visited the Hall of
Remembrance.
"There was no mention of the
Germans, or Nazis, who carried out the
massacre. There was not a word of shar-
ing the grief or of compassion or pain
for the 6 million victims."

Demjanjuk Deported

Cleveland/JTA — Former Nazi death
camp guard John Demjanjuk was taken
in an ambulance from his Cleveland-
area home to nearby U.S. Immigration
offices. From there he was deported to
Germany.
On Friday, immigration officials deliv-
ered a notice to the Demjanjuk family
home ordering Demjanjuk, 89, to sur-
render to U.S. authorities for deporta-
tion to Germany.
A warrant for Demjanjuk's arrest
issued in Munich accuses him of being
an accessory to murder in the deaths of
29,000 people in the Sobibor Nazi death
camp in Poland.
On May 7, the U.S. Supreme Court
rejected without comment an appeal
by Demjanjuk to stop his deportation.
Demjanjuk had appealed the deporta-
tion, citing frailty.
U.S. Justice Department officials, who
had successfully stripped Demjanjuk of
his U.S. citizenship because he had lied
about his Nazi past, released video in
showing Demjanjuk in good health.
Demjanjuk in 1986 was sent to Israel,
where he was convicted and sentenced
to death for being the notorious "Ivan
the terrible" death guard at Treblinka.
Israeli prosecutors later cleared him of
those charges after uncovering evidence
that "Ivan" was another man.
Israel's Supreme Court said the
evidence nonetheless proved that
Demjanjuk had worked as a guard
at Sobibor, but released him in 1993
because the seven years he had spent in
jail were equivalent to the sentence he
would have served for the lesser crime.
He returned to the Cleveland area,
where U.S. authorities launched pro-
ceedings to strip him of his citizenship.

