Vatican calls Gaza a 'concentration camp'
Please vote for my blog, Israel Matzav, as the Best Midsize Blog in the 2008 Weblog Awards, once every 24 hours by going here. At least two of the blogs in the competition are very anti-Israel (to put it kindly). Thanks.The head of the Vatican Council, which remained silently 'neutral' while six million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis between 1939-45, today referred to Gaza as a 'concentration camp' (Hat Tip: Hot Air).
Echoing Pope Benedict's calls for an end to the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican Council for Justice and Peace, urged Israeli and Hamas to be "more willing" to hold peace talks. He accused both sides of only thinking of their own interests while civilians paid the price.Actually, Israel has been looking at the interests of civilians: its own civilians who have endured more than seven years of nearly daily rocket fire from Hamas.
Cardinal Martino expressed concern over the humanitarian situation, saying "Let's look at the conditions in Gaza: these increasingly resemble a big concentration camp."Really? Where's the forced labor? Where are the beatings and the selections and the gas chambers? Where are the marches across frozen terrain with no clothes? Where are the separated families? Where are the cattle car transports? Concentration camp? Give me a break! Were there scenes like this in a concentration camp?
There are plenty of supplies for Gaza. Plenty of food and fuel and medical supplies. But those supplies are being stolen by Hamas, which then re-sells them to its own populace as if it is doing them a favor. Is that Israel's fault?Israel's foreign ministry was outraged.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that this amounted to "Hamas propaganda", and accused the cardinal of ignoring Hamas's "numerous crimes". "This does not bring the people closer to truth and peace," it said.And so was the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the foremost center of scholarship on the Holocaust.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which monitors anti-Semitism and tracks down Nazi war criminals, attacked Cardinal Martino for making remarks that were "untrue, distort the memory of the Holocaust and are only used against Israel by terrorist organizations and Holocaust deniers".But what is most galling about the Vatican's accusation is that it comes against the backdrop of the Vatican's own refusal to speak up to save Jews during the real Holocaust.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the centre, said: "The cardinal should know that however difficult conditions may be in Gaza, the one thing it surely is not is a concentration camp where Jews were brought to die either by slave labour, starvation, or in most cases burned in the crematorium."
In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.The Vatican is now in the process of canonizing Pope Pius XII. Have they no shame?
Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.
In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.
In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience."
On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote, "The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms." Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the Pope's behalf that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews.
Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:25 PM
14 Comments:
Its tasteless, its offensive and its an insult to every Jew in the world. What makes it worse is the Vacation could not spare a minute to have a word of concern for Hamas' Jewish victims. Why not? If anything, Israel is making sure the Palestinian civilians, most of whom voted for Hamas, are having their lives spared and are having their human needs met. If Israel wanted to inflict genocide upon Gaza, that would easily be within its power. Its done a poor job of it and to equal the Palestinians responsibility for their own hate for Jews with the Holocaust is a grave disservice to history.
Shem re'sha'im yirkav.
Grrr.
Well at least the Vatican is consistent, no?
Tiny Israel is under siege, surrounded by many millions who want every one of us dead, and for trying to make our "concentration camp" a livable place, we are the nazis?
Enough!
Pope Ratslinger can follow the example of his Fuhrer and blow his brains out.
Am Yisrael Chai!!
Go IDF!!
1. According to published information, many Nazis, German and otherwise, got safe passage after WW2 to South America and elsewhere with help from the Catholic Church.
2. One excuse that has been advanced for the Church's curious Middle East positions is that it wants to protect Catholics in Arab countries. In fact, many Catholics have had to leave because of serious mistreatment. Evidently the Church failed in supporting them despite making nice to the Muslims.
This video depicts the current Hamas Schutzstaffel of the "Gaza Concentration Camp", a creation of the Palestinians own making.
The Vatican also stated Vatican reaffirms that "theological dialogue" cannot take place with Muslims
I'm cross-posting a comment I just made under the "It could have been worse" thread:
While we're talking about clueless "leaders" in the West in this thread, the London Times published an article today entitled "'Concentration camp' remark threatens Pope's visit to Israel". The Pope and Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican Council for Justice and Peace, apparently see no moral difference between Hamas and Israel, between Hamas' Islamofascist anti-Semitic hatred and terrorism and Israel's moral and legal right and duty of self-defense.
The London Times quotes the Pope, "..."Once again I would repeat that military options are no solution and that violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly condemned," he said in an even-handed address." I wouldn't characterize that as "even-handed" but as mentally myopic moral equivalence between Hamas terrorism and scrupulous Israeli self-defense.
The article goes on, "...Echoing Pope Benedict's calls for an end to the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican Council for Justice and Peace, urged Israeli and Hamas to be "more willing" to hold peace talks. He accused both sides of only thinking of their own interests while civilians paid the price." That's a breathtakingly historically ignorant and offensive remark, effectively equating Hamas barbarism and Israeli decency and restraint.
Unfortunately the full article at Il Sussidario is in Italian, which I don't speak. They do have some articles translated into English but this isn't one of them. So, we're having to rely on the London Times article and excerpts to give an accurate and fair translation and explanation.
On a personal note, I was born and raised a Catholic. I left the Church years ago and am now a Protestant. If I were still a Catholic, I would feel compelled to write a letter of apology for the Pope and the Cardinal's remarks, sending it to the JPost and other prominent Israeli papers, addressed to the people of Israel.
This sort of intellectually and morally bankrupt thinking by the Pope and Cardinal Martino is representative of the reasons I left the Catholic Church. Additionally, the Church's ambivalent history during the Holocaust; the Church's systemic decades-long cover-up of pedophile clergy -bishops even!- ; the Church's silence on Islamic persecution of Christians while appeasing Islamofascists...all this and much more leaves me thinking that the Pope and other leaders of the Catholic Church have lost their moral foundations and have absolutely no standing to criticize Israel's right of self-defense.
May G-d bless Israel and protect the brave Soldiers of Israel in their just cause!
Oh, right, because the Nazis sent lots of trucks with humanitarian aid into their concentration camps, and called the Jews' cell phones to warn them before bombing their houses, and allowed their children to be treated in German hospitals, and so forth. Yipes. What an idiot.
Yes that's true.
And of course the Jews fired thousands of rockets into Berlin from Poland, so they deserved it.
Concentration camp is a generic term.
It literally means any camp where a certain group of people are "concentrated" and shut off from the rest of the world- an accurate description of Gaza.
There have been many concentration camps before and after the Holocaust, but unfortunately Jewish moral panic ensues whenever the term is used, effectively equating it ONLY with the Holocaust Death Camps.
Smith,
Don't you think the term is being used to specifically insult Jews?
Yours is a pathetic attempt to sanitize evil.
And the Vatican is silent when just last month, the Jews of Yemen were being rounded up into a ghetto.
This was a pointed insult to the Jews by an org that was a partner in the Holocaust.
The RCC can go to hell.
Go IDF!!
RAM,
About a year ago, I ran a story that showed a picture of Eichman's passport and offered proof that it was obtained by the Catholic Church and the Red Cross.
Birds of a feather stick together.
As a Christian I wanted to make sure I commented. We Fundamentalists Baptists despise the Catholic Church, especially Roman Catholicism (the Vatican & the Pope). The Catholics helped Nazi's escape via what is known as the "ratlines". They never apologized.
They also hold to doctrine that Jerusalem and the Holy Land belongs to them. That is why they root for the Palestinians so that the Jews will leave and leave a Vacuum for the Catholics to come in and take over. They still hold to this doctrine ever since the crusades which were not really Christian, but inspired by Roman Catholicism.
The pope himself is blasphemous as he calls himself the vicar of Christ, or in other words, God on earth until Messiah comes back. There is so much more, just read the book "A Woman Rides the Beast" by "Dave Hunt". Jew and Christian alike should read this book, as it exposes Roman Catholicism as nothing more than paganized Christianity and unfortunately many Jews get their impression of Christians from Catholicism which can not be farther from the truth.
Are there good Catholics? Yes, there are, but they are rare and many change from Catholicism to Baptist or non-denominational.
I wish I could go into more detail, but this post is long enough. Just get that book I mentioned above: A Woman Rides the Beast - Dave Hunt
A great read about the heresies and just plain evil of Roman Catholicism.
Can "Jusstice and Peace" really be advanced when such historically bloody hands are wiped clean by this pious attribution of a moral equivalency as outrageous as it is false?
Can "Justice and Peace" really be advanced when such historically bloody hands are wiped clean by this pious attribution of a moral equivalency as outrageous as it is false?
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