ISRAEL: President offers warm wishes for Christmas

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‘From here, from the eternal city of Jerusalem, from this beautiful place, I want to wish each of you, and all of us, a happy and merry Christmas. Let’s pray the next year will be a year of peace, brotherhood, of tolerance, of affluence. That nobody will suffer unnecessarily. That everybody will be helped accordingly. This is the call of heaven. This is the wish of our Lord. This should be our own purpose. Let’s celebrate and hope and do accordingly. All the best to all of you.’

President Shimon Peres extends not only his warm wishes but his outreach too. This month, he launched a YouTube channel. ‘Please join me in finding solutions to three key issues: how to advance peace in the Middle East and the world, how to further reconciliation between different faiths, and how to harness new technologies for the good of mankind,’ he wrote on the site.

‘Join me in dreams, in hopes, in conversation,’ Peres invited viewers in his first video message on the channel. Check it out; it’s well worth a listen.

-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem