Word: visitant
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...Pope John Paul II stepped into Rome's central synagogue on April 13, 1986, the man in white was met by a thunderclap of applause. After centuries of Jews suffering through pogroms, ghettos, Nazi death camps and arm's-length-at-best cohabitation with Christians, the first-ever papal visit to a Jewish house of worship - entering the synagogue side by side with Rome's avuncular chief Rabbi Elio Toaff - was much more than a photo op. It was a shared embrace to begin to heal the wounds of history...
...Still, the momentous visit 24 years ago, during which John Paul referred to Jews as Christians' "older brothers," could never fully erase that history. And indeed, when John Paul's successor, Benedict XVI, crosses the Tiber River on Sunday to visit that same synagogue, he will be dogged by a new dispute about the past: the controversy over the Vatican's decision last month to push for possible sainthood for World War II-era Pope Pius XII, whom some Jewish groups and scholars blame for not doing enough to try to halt the Holocaust. Because of this and other tensions...
...leading rabbis, Giuseppe Laras, said he would boycott the service, citing a number of sore points with the Pope, most notably his decision to reactivate Pius XII's sainthood dossier, which Benedict himself had put on hold three years ago to await more historical study. "The Pope's visit to the Rome synagogue is a negative fact," Laras, head of the Italian Rabbinic Assembly, told the German-Jewish community newspaper Juedische Allgemeine Zeitung. "[The visit] won't bring anything worthwhile, but will only serve the most reactionary sectors of the Catholic Church...
...Turkish-Israeli relations are still anchored by military cooperation, as they have been since the 1950s. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is due to visit Ankara next week, hoping to reinforce strategic ties and negotiate deals for Israel's military industries, which already have contracts worth more than $1 billion to supply Turkey. Meanwhile, a Turkish delegation is currently in Israel to wrap up the purchase of 10 Heron drones. "Defense ties have become the safety valve for bilateral relations," says Candar. "They prevent a complete breakdown. That doesn't change the fact that there has been a significant structural...
...Turkey, a NATO member that shares borders with such key Israeli adversaries as Syria and Iran, has long had a close relationship with the Jewish state, particularly at the level of military cooperation. Sources within Israel's Defense Ministry expressed concern that the Ayalon-Celikkol incident might imperil the visit to Turkey by Defense Minister Ehud Barak that is scheduled for Jan. 17. Barak plans to offer Turkey's military establishment an even tighter relationship with Israel. Already, the security relationship between the two states involves hundreds of millions of dollars in trade, while their intelligence communities cooperate closely...