| | CMEP Weekly Bulletin: White House Calls Israeli Knesset's Passage of Judicial Overhaul Bill "Unfortunate" A look at the Israeli Courts, the Lebanese Central Bank, and more news in this week’s bulletin. CMEP’s Bulletin is a weekly round-up of news from the Middle East and represents an array of perspectives on the issues we cover. CMEP does not necessarily agree with all the views expressed in the articles, and they do not speak on CMEP’s behalf. | | | |  | Image: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images) | | | White House calls Israeli Knesset's passage of judicial overhaul bill "unfortunate" Axios “Why it matters: The Biden administration, including the U.S. president, has for months publicly and privately urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to unilaterally move forward with the legislation, and instead try to reach a broad consensus with the opposition. Driving the news: Netanyahu’s coalition passed the bill, the first of the Netanyahu government's controversial judicial overhaul plan, on Monday (July 24) after the talks between the government and the opposition, mediated by Present Isaac Herzog, collapsed.” | | | | | |  | Image: Right wing minister Ben-Gvir calls for Israeli unity. (Screen grab) | | | Israeli far-right minister leads incursion of Al-Aqsa compound Al-Jazeera “Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has led a group of more than one thousand ultranationalist settlers to the Al-Aqsa compound in occupied East Jerusalem, his third such entrance to the site this year. The provocative minister’s entrance to the holy site on Thursday (July 27) took place as Jews observed Tisha B’Av, a fast day mourning the destruction of two ancient Jewish temples.” | | | | | |  | Image: Israeli settlers stormed the Orthodox Church complex in occupied Jerusalem (Quds Press) | | | Israel settlers storm Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem Middle East Monitor “Two Israeli settlers stormed the Orthodox Church complex in the Mount Zion area of occupied Jerusalem, laid blankets on the ground and announced that they would remain there… When a church official asked them to leave the settlers started shouting insults, obscene and racist slurs towards him, telling him to ‘get out’ of the grounds, and claiming that ‘Mount Zion belongs to the Jewish people’, adding that every minute the church remains standing is considered ‘looting’.” | | | | | | | | | | | |  | Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) is pleased to announce our upcoming event on Wednesday, August 2nd at 12:30 EST : Fast & Pray: Settler Violence and Settlement Expansion. We invite you to join us and our special guest, Adam Manasra, for a 30-minute prayer session to lift up the challenges faced by Palestinians as they continue to struggle against settler violence and settlement expansion. | | | | |  | Armenia at War: the Survival of the Church in the Oldest Christian State Join us beginning September 20th for this mini-course about Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. This three-week course will address several issues. The first week will focus on the sustainability of the church in the oldest Christian state, the history of the Armenian genocide, and the ongoing struggle to protect the Christian heritage and presence in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ancient Armenia. The second week will discuss the political dynamics in the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The third session will be a prayer gathering, including Christian ministries in Armenia, and the opportunity to pray together for an end to the ongoing war and the sustainability of the church in the region. | | | | |  | July 25, 2023: CMEP Supports US Opposition to Israeli Judicial Overhaul: On Monday, July 24th, the Government of Israel passed legislation limiting their judicial system’s authority in relation to the Knesset (Israeli Parliament), hindering the government’s balance of powers and possibly limiting further accountability for human rights issues. This legislation cancels the “reasonableness” clause, which allowed the judicial system to block Knesset decisions and appointments they deemed unreasonable and contrary to public interest. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Support CMEP: Have you heard of CMEP's monthly giving circles? Consider making a recurring gift with lasting impact today! | | | | | | | | | | | |  | Image: Aerial photographs of the city of Baghdad (Photo by Rasoul, 2015) | | | Patriarch Sako leaves Baghdad in response to Iraqi president.
ACN International “His Eminence Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, Patriarch and the leader of the Chaldean Church, has publicly announced his decision to ‘withdraw from the patriarchal seat in Baghdad, and go from where I am currently in Istanbul, on a church, mission, to one of the monasteries in Iraqi Kurdistan’.” | | | | | |  | Image: Lebanese Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh speaks during a news conference at Central Bank in Beirut, Lebanon, November 11, 2019. (Reuters/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo) | | | Lebanese politicians scramble to avoid central bank vacuum Reuters “Lebanese officials were in a last-minute scramble on Wednesday (July 26) to avoid leaving the crisis-hit country's central bank without a leader when governor Riad Salameh's 30-year tenure ends next week. The prospect of a vacuum at the top of the central bank has added to concerns about the further fragmentation of the state as it barrels towards a fifth year of financial turmoil.” | | | | | |  | Image: A Qatari employee of Al-Jazeera Arabic language TV news channel walks past the logo of Al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. (AP Photo/ Kamran Jebreili) | | | Al Jazeera condemns Egypt’s decision to add some of its journalists to a terrorism blacklist AP News “The pan-Arab news network Al Jazeera has condemned a recent decision by Egyptian authorities to brand some of its journalists as terrorists. The media outlet, which is owned by the Gulf state of Qatar, said that ‘a number’ of its Egyptian journalists and presenters had been added to a list of alleged terrorists published in an official newspaper earlier this month following a ruling by the Cairo Criminal Court." | | | | | |  | Image: Bader lost part of his right leg after being hit by a shell on his way home from school. (Goktay Koraltan/BBC) | | | Yemen: The children of a forgotten war BBC “Most of children maimed and killed in Taiz over the years have been victims of the Houthis. Others died in airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition - in the early war years - and some were killed by government forces. All sides have blood on their hands. Yemen's conflict is now on a lower flame - since a UN-brokered truce last year that held for six months. It's no longer all-out war, but it's not peace either.” | | | | | | | | | | CMEP's Bulletin is a weekly round-up of news from the Middle East and represents an array of perspectives on the issues we cover. CMEP does not necessarily agree with all the views expressed in the articles, and they do not speak on CMEP's behalf. | | | | Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP)
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