Pope Francis Visits Jerusalem with a Rabbi and a Sheikh
COSTELLO: So a rabbi, a sheikh and a Pope travel to the Holy Land and all hell breaks loose. OK so I'm exaggerating just a tad. Still there has been quite the backlash. Pope Francis will visit Jordan, Bethlehem and Jerusalem along with two old friends, a rabbi and a sheikh who leads Argentina's Muslim community. Some conservative Israelis are not exactly thrilled. They scrawled anti-Christian graffiti on Catholic buildings in Jerusalem. Take a look among the sentiments posted on the wall "Jesus is garbage." There are also calls for death to Arabs and Christians. People are also planning protests. CNN's Ivan Watson joins us from Jerusalem to tell us more about that part of the story. Good morning.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. I've spoken with a spokesperson for the Israeli police here in Jerusalem and he told me that basically the main threat -- political threat that the Israeli police are worried about during Pope Francis' upcoming visit is from ultraorthodox nationalist Jewish groups that have been carrying out what he describes as a campaign of quote, unquote "Price tag vandalism attacks", things like the graffiti that you've mentioned right there. Take a listen to what the spokesman of the Israeli police had to say. We were in the command and control room which has cameras -- more than 300 cameras stationed around the old city which will all be working during the Pope's visit. Take a listen.</s>MICKY ROSENFELD, ISRAELI POLICE SPOKESMAN: Our units are dealing with criminal incidents with nationalistic motives, price tags as they are known. The majority of incidents that have taken place over the last few weeks have been against Israeli Arabs. There have been one or two unfortunate incidents against churches.</s>WATSON: And the thing is that the Roman Catholic Church here has expressed concern, Carol, about the quote "unrestrained acts of vandalism that are poisoning the atmosphere ahead of Pope Francis' trip." The remarkable thing is I met the Rabbi who is traveling with him. Rabbi Abraham Skorka and he said without question Pope Francis is a friend of the Jews -- Carol.</s>COSTELLO: It will be a very interesting trip. And I want to talk more about it. Ivan Watson, thanks to you. Joining me now: Rabbi Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and Imam Mohamed Magid president of Islamic Society of North America. Welcome to you both.</s>YEHUDA KURTZER, PRESIDENT, SHALOM HARTMAN INSTITUTE OF NORTH AMERICA: Thank you.</s>MOHAMED MAGID PRESIDENT OF ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA: Thank you.</s>COSTELLO: Thank you so much for being here. Dr. Kurtzer I want to start with you why is the Pope bringing guests? Why not go visit these places alone? Why is he stirring the pot, so to speak?</s>KURTZER: I'm actually not sure that the Pope is stirring the pot as much as trying to avoid controversy. He's framed this trip primarily as a religious pilgrimage and I think he's trying to send a message by bringing colleagues on an interfaith mission that this is still a holy land. That it's primarily historically been a holy land and that the mission of his trip is not to create political problems but to model a type of interfaith discourse and model the possibility of Jews, Christians and Muslims praying together and being hopeful together.</s>COSTELLO: And I hear -- I hear you Dr. Kurtzer but Imam Magid the Pope said the same thing. He said this holy land excursion is strictly religious. Earlier he had described it as a pilgrimage for prayer. But how can it not be political in this particular part of the world?</s>MAGID: I would like to -- to take another understanding of this mission is to raise the profile of the interfaith work to have religious leaders around the world model this example, build an example after this model of the Pope taking an imam and a rabbi with him to the Holy Land. I do believe that the Christianity and Islam and Judaism share the same roots of Abrahamic faith. And the Holy Land having to have Christians and Muslim and Jews living there for a long time together, it's about time to get the leaders of those three major religions to think about peace, to pray together for peace.</s>COSTELLO: That sounds so wonderful. But Dr. Kurtzer, I know that the Pope is going for religious reasons. But he's also expected to call for a Palestinian state which has long been a Vatican policy. And that will surely upset some Israelis, won't it?</s>KURTZER: You know look, religion can't -- can't ever remain divorced from politics especially in the Middle East and I think part of the implicit message that the Pope is sending is that the negotiation process should take into account religious instabilities in a way that it hasn't in the past. It's often been portrayed as a secular national conflict and there are so many religious instabilities that there's a possibility of reconciliation through religion. No doubt that whatever the Pope says with respect to the Palestinians will anger some Israelis even though I think there's a wide consensus among Israelis among people worldwide about the inevitability of a Palestinian state and the need for a much -- a much better reconciliation. There is no questions there's going to be moments along this trip that are going to be so heavily interpreted of the choices that he makes, the places that he visits, how he portrays who the victims are in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the historical relationship between Jews and the church. So you're right. There will be political traps but I agree with the Imam that I think what he's trying to do is to model the way in which religion can be a source of resolution to this conflict and not an indicator of the conflict all together.</s>COSTELLO: And Imam Magid, I want to -- I think the Pope is trying to demonstrate what the Dr. Kurtzer was describing. He's not going to travel in a protected vehicle, an armored vehicle down the streets of Jerusalem, let's say. He's going to try to be out amongst the people. And I'm sure that will kind of be concerning to security forces there. Do you think that's a good idea? What message does that send when the Pope does things like that?</s>MAGID: I think the message he tried to send that we have to create an environment of tolerance and understanding for everyone. No one should fear any kind of backlash of practicing being open about the religion. This is the Holy Land. Everyone should be able to practice freely their faith and I do believe that the freedom of religion is one of the most important principles the Pope will like convey here that everyone should have no fear to be able to be who they are and practice their religion freely.</s>COSTELLO: Thank you both for being with me today. I appreciate it. Imam Mohamed Magid and Dr. Rabbi Yehuda Kurtzer, Dr. Kurtzer. Thank you so much. Still to come in the NEWSROOM, outrage in Washington and beyond over the VA hospital scandal.</s>REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE SPEAKER: We didn't just let them down. We let them die.</s>COSTELLO: But as calls for Eric Shinseki to resign grow louder, is the real problem bigger than Shinseki? We'll talk about that next.