{"id":15402,"date":"2013-12-03T22:11:02","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T03:11:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=15402"},"modified":"2013-12-03T22:11:02","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T03:11:02","slug":"israels-netanyahu-and-pope-francis-exchange-gifts-talk-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2013\/12\/03\/israels-netanyahu-and-pope-francis-exchange-gifts-talk-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel&#8217;s Netanyahu and Pope Francis exchange gifts, talk policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just as a jumping off point for my inane comments, I will use the <em>Los Angeles Times<\/em> report<a title=\"The Los Angeles Times article\" href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/world\/worldnow\/la-fg-wn-pope-netanyahu-vatican-20131202,0,5095835.story\" target=\"_blank\"><strong> Israel&#8217;s Netanyahu and Pope Francis exchange gifts, talk policy<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Netanyahu presented the pontiff with a Spanish translation of &#8220;The Origins of the Inquisition,&#8221; a book written by the Israeli leader&#8217;s late father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, an acclaimed historian known widely for his research on the topic. &#8220;To his Holiness Pope Franciscus, a great shepherd of our common heritage,&#8221; Netanyahu inscribed on the inside cover.<\/p>\n<p>Francis thanked Netanyahu and gave him a bronze plaque of St. Paul.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am sure there is more to the story of the gifts, and it probably makes sense, but&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>When I first read of this story, I thought surely Netanyahu must either be autistic or at least have Asperger&#8217;s syndrome.\u00a0 Why else would Netanyahu have a diplomatic mission to the Vatican and choose this particular present?\u00a0 Maybe there is a &#8220;rub their nose in it&#8221; theory of diplomacy that I had not heard of before.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe Pope Francis had two gifts he could have chosen to give Netanyahu.\u00a0 When he saw what Netanyahu gave him, he decided to give a Catholic religious symbol to the Jewish Prime Minister.\u00a0 What is the equivalent in Spanish of touch\u00e9?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just as a jumping off point for my inane comments, I will use the Los Angeles Times report Israel&#8217;s Netanyahu and Pope Francis exchange gifts, talk policy. Netanyahu presented the pontiff with a Spanish translation of &#8220;The Origins of the Inquisition,&#8221; a book written by the Israeli leader&#8217;s late father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, an acclaimed historian [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15403,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15402\/revisions\/15403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}