Pope Benedict: Tear Down This Wall

I'm not surprised that the Pope's trip to Israel is slightly controversial. I'm really surprised at the tone he's setting.

From Reuters:

Pope Benedict stood by the wall Israel has built round the West Bank Wednesday and called it a symbol of "stalemate" between Israel and the Palestinians, urging both sides to break a "spiral of violence."

"Towering over us ... is a stark reminder of the stalemate that relations between Israelis and Palestinians seem to have reached -- the wall," he said in a speech at a refugee camp in Bethlehem, the town where Christians believe Jesus was born.

"How we earnestly pray for an end to the hostilities that have caused this wall to be built," he said, on an outdoor stage at a camp school, across a road from the 8-meter (25-foot) concrete wall and an Israeli watchtower.

It was the kind of imagery and language that Palestinians had been hoping for from the pope's one-day visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in the middle of a five-day tour of the Holy Land, mostly focused on Israeli-controlled Jerusalem.

The German-born pope, who found himself criticized in Israel over what Jews saw as a lack of personal emotion in remarks he made about the Holocaust, was careful to stress that the conflict involved two sides, and urged a just and lasting peace.

"On both sides of the wall, great courage is needed if fear and mistrust is to be overcome, if the urge to retaliate for loss or injury is to be resisted," he said.