The Middle Eastern question continues to monopolize the attention of the main European dailies. “The right to know”: that’s the title of the editorial in Le Monde (16/4), in which the paper comments on the massacre of Jenin, and the discordant versions of what happened there, furnished by the two sides in the conflict: “This battle of communication, this balance-sheet of horror, would have no reason to exist if the operations were not being conducted in a closed circle that, generally speaking, bodes nothing good (…). There is only one means of knowing what happened and for Israel to prove her good faith: and that is permitting impartial witnesses to draw their own conclusions on the spot, to count the dead, put an end to every controversy, describe the scale of the destruction and, above all, come to the help of the civilian population in a state of shock and deprived of everything. If this does not happen, whom are we to believe? Any hesitation could only be interpreted as a wish to conceal a reality that is not pretty to see”. The “state of emergency” in the territories is commented on by Jean Luc Macia writing in La Croix (15/4), according to whom, quite apart from the urgent need for peace, there is also an urgent “ humanitarian” need for the civilian population today: “There are areas that the Israeli army has occupied, and in large part destroyed, dead bodies to be buried, the injured to be treated, a civilian population to be fed, an economy to be rescued (…). The Israelis ought to understand that they cannot vanquish and ensure their future tranquillity by terror. They have power on their side, but ever less do they have right”. “It is the representatives of the Christian Churches”, notes the Catholic Herald, who “ speak with most force in favour of peace in the Holy Land. And it is the voice of the Catholic Church that is the most authoritative and insistent of all (…). The future is dying, and that is why it is so urgent for Christians to bear witness to the teaching that from death a new life may be reborn. It is too late to lose any time in recrimination. We must not pit one side against the other, but encourage both to work together for peace”. The German dailies this week have given wide coverage to the 75th birthday of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. An anniversary that is usually the “ prelude to the pension explains the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 16/4 but not in the case of the Bavarian cardinal“. “ While many have seen in him a kind of reincarnation of the Grand Inquisitor, and others have praised his icy intelligence, of almost mathematical rigour, the Pope on the contrary is very satisfied with his work“. According to Hans Joachim Fischer, Ratzinger is the prefect who, in the view of John Paul II, has always known how to “ preserve the Catholic identity and project it towards the future“. More colourful is the contribution to the birthday celebrations of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung of 15/4 which describes the “small army of some 400 Bavarians who will descend on Rome in typical regional costumes to pay tribute to their fellow-Bavarian”. “The get-together explains Christiane Kohl is planned for Saturday 20 April after the Audience that the Pope will grant in the Clementine Hall at 10.45 and a mass that will be officiated by Ratzinger himself in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere“. The weekly Spiegel of 15/4 focuses on the theme of anti-semitism with an interview of the ambassador of Israel in Germany, Schimon Stein, according to whom “ a gross lack of information on the causes and development of the conflict in the Middle East is palpable in Germany. The media do not provide in Stein’s view a complete picture of the situation“.
