During his tour of the
Holy Land, which starts Saturday, Pope Francis is scheduled to meet with a leader from the Palestinian Authority who once called for the extermination of Jews.
According to the Jewish & Israel News source,
Algemeiner.com, the Pope will meet Mufti Sheikh Muhammad Hussein, the most senior religious figure in the Palestinian Authority, who is described by Palestinian Media Watch as having "an ongoing record of vicious anti-Semitic hate speech, which has been
condemned internationally."
The Pope will also meet with Israel's two chief rabbis, according to the report.
PMW said that in 2012 the Mufti preached that it is Muslim destiny to exterminate Jews as part of a Muslim holy war. On another occasion, in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, he said that Jews were "enemies of Allah," and in another speech he said that the souls of suicide bombers "tell us to follow in their path," Algemeiner.com reported.
Mufti has also rejected Christian teachings, according to PMW, saying that Jesus was not a Judean, but a Palestinian who preached Islam. He also called Jesus "a Palestinian par excellence" and claimed that Jesus and his mother, Mary, were Palestinians, not Jews.
In the past, Mufti's public comments about the Jews were condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the British Foreign Office, and the European Union, among others, Algemeiner.com reported.
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