The Israeli paper is slanting the news coverage about what the church actually said. Its not asking the GoI to stop Israeli toursits from coming to India. Its only a letter written to Palestinian Chrisitans (yes there are Palestinian Christians as well), supporting them. More specfically from what I understand, the end of Israeli military prescene in the Arab majority areas i.e. West Bank and Gaza .
Here is how its being reported in India
The Hindu : NATIONAL / KARNATAKA : Goa Church expresses solidarity with ‘sisters and brothers' in Palestine
The Goa Church authorities have addressed an open letter of solidarity from Goa to “sisters and brothers who suffer under Israeli occupation and still struggle in dignity for their liberation”.
Fr. Maverick Fernandes, Executive Secretary, Council for Social Justice and Peace (CSJP), Archdiocese of Goa and Daman on Monday released the copies of the letter sent through the Jerusalem Inter-Church Centre and Kairos Palestine stating how in the last few years the issues of Palestinians had come to capture spirit of the Goa Church and how it caused to find ways of understanding and relating to the struggle for freedom and justice in Palestine.
Expressing solidarity with the Palestinian society for its sufferings for 64 years, the letter lamented that from this distance, it was hard to imagine how one people can celebrate the creation of their state while another moan the loss of their lands and endure suffering, deprivation, denial of rights, dislocation, and imprisonment of a sister, brother, father, son, a neighbour or a relative.
Acknowledging their own indifference and inaction in the past and deeply regretting it, the CSJP letter said that three years ago, for the first time, they sprung into action when they decided to study the issue of Israelis who had completed their term in the IDF and who turned up on the shores of Goa to overlook and disregard their actions while on military duty. “Our study revealed how dehumanised these young people had become and how, because of an oppressive and cruel system of illegal military occupation, even the victimisers had turned casualties and victims of their own cruelties,” said the CSJP letter further and added, “We have felt somewhat distant and helpless. We want to abandon this sense of distance and powerlessness. We now wish to be drawn into a closer relationship - one in which we can do something concrete and demonstrate our solidarity in tangible ways,” the letter further stated.
“In line with this, this year we observed the World Week for Peace in Palestine Israel (WWPPI) by bringing together a group of young and senior leaders from our churches to pray and be educated about the injustices the Palestinian people face and now wish to embark on an initiative that will bring us face-to-face with your realities and accept your suffering as ours, your pain as ours, and your liberation as ours,” said Fr. Maverick in his letter.
“As a first step, we wish to respond to your call to “Come and See”- a major chapter in the Kairos document issued by Palestinian Christians in 2009. We respond with humility with our own message of peace and love. We respond because we want to understand the facts on-the-ground and bear witness to your agonising reality and respond as you ask “to take a position of truth with regard to Israel's occupation of Palestinian land”, the letter further stated.
“For us in Goa, the World Week for Peace is a defining moment which we hope will rouse us into action. Our concerns include all Palestinians- be they divided by the separation wall, consigned to life as refugees or exiles, rendered homeless by sheer revenge ,” Fr. Maverick's letter stated and expressed concern for “the extreme reduction in the number of Christians in The Holy Land.”