Twenty-four years ago this week, I was in Jerusalem to cover Pope John Paul II’s epic pilgrimage to the Holy Land for NBC. After going to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to pray at the eleventh and twelfth stations, I went to dinner with a graduate school classmate, Fr. Michael McGarry, then the director of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute. We drove through East Jerusalem to “Philadelphia,” a Palestinian restaurant Fr. McGarry recommended, where we had a fine meal of local specialties, prepared and served by friendly people who were evidently grateful for our trade (much of East Jerusalem being as dead as a doornail that night). The one discordant note was struck when, on the way out of the restaurant, I noticed a large color poster featuring a photoshopped picture of John Paul II and PLO leader Yasser Arafat under the headline, “Welcome to the Palestinian Holy Land,” a variant on the “Palestinian Jesus” theme Arafat had been retailing.