AGAINST THE POPE
                             AND OTHER ARTICLES ABOUT JEWISH
                             ACTIVISM AGAINST CHRISTIAN                              SOCIETY

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Galilee Flowers. [by Israeli author Israel Shaimir] 2001
"Last year, the biggest Israeli tabloid Yedioth Aharonoth reprinted in its library the Jewish anti-Gospel, Toledoth Eshu, compiled in the Middle Ages. It is the third recent reprint, including one in a newspaper. If the Gospel is the book of love, Toledoth is the book of hate for Christ. The hero of the book is Judas. He captures Jesus by polluting his purity. According to Toledoth, the conception of Christ was in sin, the miracles of Jesus were witchcraft, his resurrection but a trick. Joseph Dan, a Professor of Jewish mysticism in Hebrew University in Jerusalem, writing on the death of Jesus stated: 'The modern Jewish apologists, hesitantly adopted by the church, preferred to put the blame on Romans. But the medieval Jew did not wish to pass the buck. He tried to prove that Jesus had to be killed, and he was proud of killing Him. The Jews hated and despised Christ and Christians.' Actually, adds Prof. Dan, there is little place to doubt that the Jewish enemies of Jesus caused his execution. Even today, Jews in Israel refer to Jesus by the demeaning word Yeshu (instead of Yeshua), meaning ‘Perish his name’. There is an ongoing argument, whether His name was turned into a swear word, or other way around. In a similar pun, the Gospel is called ‘Avon Gilaion’, the booklet of Sin. These are the endearing feeling of the friends of Christian Zionists towards Christ ... Jews feel towards Jesus today what they felt in 4 CE or in the Middle Ages ... It is not fear, it is hatred and despise[ment] ... For centuries, Jews concealed from Christians their hate to Jesus, and this tradition continues even now."

Toledoth Yeshu. Online educational archive by Alan Humm at the University of Pennsylvania. [This page is reproduced from Jesus in the Jewish Tradition, p. 148-154]
Toledoth Yeshu is the traditional depiction in Jewish lore of Jesus, who is reputed to be the product of a rape.
"This is a derogatory version of the life of Jesus, growing out of the response of the Jewish community to Christianity. The tradition presented here is most commonly dated to approximately the 6th century CE. The text it self is closer to the 14th c. There is no scholarly consensus on to what extent the text might be a direct parody of a now lost gospel. H.J. Schonfield argued that it was so closely connected to the Gospel of the Hebrews that he attempted to reconstruct that lost work from the Toledoth."

Who Was Jesus? Noah's Covenant Web Site
[sponsored by the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch organization] 2001
"The Talmud (Babylonian edition) records other sins of 'Jesus the Nazarene': 1) He and his disciples practiced sorcery and black magic, led Jews astray into idolatry, and were sponsored by foreign, gentile powers for the purpose of subverting Jewish worship (Sanhedrin 43a). 2) He was sexually immoral, worshipped statues of stone (a brick is mentioned), was cut off from the Jewish people for his wickedness, and refused to repent (Sanhedrin 107b; Sotah 47a). 3) He learned witchcraft in Egypt and, to perform miracles, used procedures that involved cutting his flesh — which is also explicitly banned in the Bible (Shabbos 104b). The false, rebellious message of Jesus has been thoroughly rejected by the vast majority of the Jewish people, as G-d commanded. Unfortunately, however, this same message has brought a terrible darkness upon the world; today, over 1.5 billion gentiles believe in Jesus .... What is the true key to salvation? Those who return to the Law (the Seven Commandments for the Children of Noah, according to the eternal covenant made with Noah in Genesis 9) and who assist the Jewish people (Isaiah 60, 61, 66) will be saved and will participate in the miracles and revelations, including worshipping in the Third Temple, under the kingship of the Messiah. As described in many places, including Jeremiah 16:19-21 and Zechariah 8:20-23, all the old gentile religions of the world will disappear, and their followers will turn to the Jews for spiritual leadership. Until then, Christians are spiritually blinded, and cannot yet understand G-d's wisdom in the Bible."

November 1998 -- a one-month sampling from the Catalyst, an online catalogue of Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights.
The Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights
This online defense agency features a steady diet of news releases about assaults in popular culture against Catholicism. Although not always defined as such by the Catholic Lague, those in the vanguard of this assault are often Jews. (For example, recently: Howard Stern Slanders Priests; Variety Ad Makes Appeal to Viacom's [Jewish mogul] Sumner Redstone about Marshall Brickman, [Jewish] director of "one of the most anti-Catholic plays ever written"; ABC Asked to Sever Links with Belief.net [the heads of ABC's parent company, and Belief.net, are Jewish]; the [Jewish] Anti-Defamation League's attacks against the Pope; and the Jewish-dominated Brooklyn Museum and its anti-Catholic art shows), to begin a long list of Jewish anti-Catholic activism.
For November 1998:
Another Anti-Catholic Play Hits New York: "Jeff Cohen, the director and producer of 'The Cardinal Detoxes,’ said that one of the reasons he brought back the play now was due to the initial decision of the Manhattan Theatre Club to cancel Terrence McNally’s play, ‘Corpus Christi.’ This is quite an admission: to think that Cohen is competing with McNally and for the honor of being known as New York’s biggest anti-Catholic bigot is something."
Demagoguery Colors Wiesenthal Center: "In our New York Times ad commemorating the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul’s papacy, we take note of the slander that has been heaped on the recently beatified Cardinal Stepinac. Leading the slanderous charges has been the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles."
Gays, Jews and 'Corpus Christi.': "It is impossible to say for sure who is patronizing "Corpus Christi," but there is anecdotal evidence that the patrons are disproportionately gay and Jewish. Writing in Gannett newspapers, theater critic Jacques Le Sourd recently wrote a column on the play saying that 'it is no secret that the audience for theater in New York is largely Jewish and largely gay, and that to take a poke at Christian morality in this setting is hardly an act of bravery.' In 1993, arts critic Richard Grenier commented that it was his observation that Broadway was patronized by audiences that were 'overwhelmingly Jewish.' He added that "at the more commercially successful homosexual works, I got the impression that the audiences were something like 10 per cent homosexuals and 90 per cent heterosexual Jews—to all appearances well-to-do, liberal, husband-and-wife couples.' It is a sad commentary that anti-Catholic bigotry has become almost a popular sport among certain segments of American society, and this is especially true of artists and their patrons."
Real Censorship: "The New England chapter of the American Jewish Congress wants the government to remove the designation A.D. (an abbreviation for 'anno Domini'--year of the Lord) from Massachusetts court documents. And it wants the feds to strike 'In God We Trust' from our currency. Think anyone will call the American Jewish Congress censors? We will!"
School Calendars Show Bias: "Every school year we get legitimate complaints from our members about school calendars that recognize Jewish holidays by name but not Christian ones. This year is no exception as complaints have been fielded from Cincinnati, Ohio, Peekskill, New York and other parts of the country. The way it usually works is like this. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are listed but not Christmas and Easter: Winter Break and Spring Break are the preferred euphemisms. There is no law against secularizing Christian holy days while acknowledging Jewish ones. It’s just a matter of insult, bad taste and, arguably, bigotry."

Misrepresenting the Holocaust. The American Enterprise Online. May 1999
"As I find myself in the uncomfortable position of scrutinizing today's Holocaust remembrances, one obvious question is whether they actually discourage animus between people, as is their stated intent. Another question important to me as a rabbi is whether their teachings help or harm the Jewish people. And for me the answer to both of these questions is far from obvious. Most of today's Holocaust exhibits have received funding from American taxpayers. Yet some citizens who initially supported them with good-hearted generosity now see them as promoting a hatred of Christians. I myself am concerned about presentations at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., for instance. This museum is simultaneously one of the world's most eloquent cries against prejudice and also a place which promotes anti-Christian propaganda. Although it was constructed with private funds, the museum occupies land donated by the American people, the most Christian nation on earth. Of course, the American forces who liberated the concentration camp were composed of mostly Christians as well. Therefore it is hard for me to understand why the producers of the film shown to Holocaust Museum visitors, a copy of which I have seen, seem so determined to devote much of the short documentary to untruths which denigrate Christianity."

The Church and Jewish Ideology. Sobran's. May 1999
"Prevalent Jewish myth today is not the founding myth of Abraham or Moses on Sinai, but the story of Jewish persecution. In our time the Jews are defined less by ancestry than by 'anti-Semitism,' which is cited for many purposes, including the legitimation of the state of Israel. Most Zionists no longer claim that God gave the Holy Land to the Jews; instead they contend that the Jewish state is necessary as a haven for world Jewry. According to this modern myth, the Jews are in no way responsible for their own unpopularity from ancient times. What, then, is the source of such persistent hostility to this fundamentally innocent people? Why, the Catholic Church, of course! Many Jewish scholars find the seed of anti-Semitism in the Gospels of Matthew and John, where the Jews are depicted as engineering the Crucifixion, with the assistance of Romans who 'know not what they do.' Some Jews have even demanded that the offending passages be deleted from the Scriptures, not realizing (or caring) that Christians regard their holy books as off-limits to human editing. Others persist in blaming Pius XII for failing to condemn Nazism more strongly for its persecution of the Jews of Europe. The Catholic Church in particular has been targeted as the historic matrix of anti-Semitism; and unfortunately, many churchmen have accepted the role of defendant against accusers who will never acquit the Church or drop the case ... The Jews, with honorable but ineffectual exceptions, judge Christians by a standard that doesn’t seem to apply to themselves. Or rather, their single standard is 'Is it good for the Jews?'”

Christianize Dartmouth?, by William F. Buckley.
National Review, March 23, 1998
"The spotlight, as focused last November by [Jewish Dartmouth University] President Freedman, is on Christianity and Judaism, and I am supposed to contemplate the question, What in fact could be done? We return to what precipitated the exchange in the New York Times. It was at the formal opening of the Roth Center for Jewish Life and Culture that President Freedman disclosed the history of Dartmouth's quota on Jewish students. Now the presumed design of the Roth Center is to invigorate Jewish life and culture, which certainly includes Jewish religion. It was the official enthusiasm shown by Mr. Freedman and others for this enterprise that prompted me to ask whether, even as the Roth Center is designed to Judaize Jews, Dartmouth mightn't explore more vigorous means of Christianizing non-Jews. I asked, 'In welcoming students from other creeds, is it expected that a college must forswear its own traditional creed?' ... Surveying the religion-in-schools scene [Irving Kristol] noticed a 'tension . . . now building up between Jews and Christians [which] has very little to do with traditional discrimination, and everything to do with efforts by liberals -- among whom, I regret to say, Jews are both numerous and prominent -- to establish a wall between religion and society in the guise of maintaining the wall between church and state.'"

Catholics and Jews Confront the Holocaust and Each Other.
America, September 11, 1999
"The controversies range from Jewish concerns over who the Pope meets (Waldheim, Arafat) and where cloistered convents and crosses should be located (Auschwitz/Birkenau), to who the church should declare a saint (Edith Stein, Cardinal Stepinac, Pope Pius XII). Many Catholics are understandably confused as to why some in the Jewish community feel constrained to second guess so many of what are, after all, internal matters in the life of the church. Catholic confusion is compounded when the complaints come at a time of rapid progress in the dialogue vigorously led by Pope John Paul II. This pope's active promotion of Catholic-Jewish relations is unprecedented in the history of the church. And why beat up on Catholics all the time? Why not go after somebody else once in a while? We don't go around setting up Messianic Jewish 'synagogues,' or saying that God doesn't hear the prayers of Jews or opining that the Anti-Christ will be a Jew. Why us ... Dialogue seeks to know what is hurtful to the other and to avoid it. Its goal is not winning but understanding. It would be helpful, therefore, if our Jewish partners in dialogue would learn that using the level of rhetoric on Catholics that is common within the Jewish community can block understanding as often as it communicates to us legitimate Jewish concerns ...Many Jews seem to miss what is to us the obvious point that to attack the papacy is to raise up for us the specter of the Nativist bigotry we thought had been left behind after John F. Kennedy's campaign for the Presidency ... . If Jews are to communicate with American Catholics, there will need to be a softening of the rhetoric until the volume is turned down enough so that we Catholics can hear what they are saying. Right now, the discourse is too loud to be comprehensible."

Two Hotels Take Bibles from Rooms. The Advertiser [Australia] May 29, 2001
"Bibles have been removed from guests' rooms at two major Adelaide hotels, ending a long-standing tradition. Management of the Singaporean-owned Stamford Plaza, opposite Parliament House, and Stamford Grand at Glenelg say Australia is a multifaith society and hotel guests cannot be assumed to be Christian. The Gideon's Bibles at the Stamford Plaza were taken from the rooms on the instruction of general manager Graeme Goldberg, who is Jewish."

Too Jewish for Radio?
Afterword: Canada's National Jewish Student Newspaper, September 2000
"While [Marsha Lieberman, talk show host at Talk 640] has sufficient respect for her background to not try to subvert Judaism, she is constantly at odds with how much her respect is shaped by religion. She's been accused of being anti-Catholic after addressing issues, which she finds odd, since she currently cohabitates with a Catholic ... ['Humble Howard'] Glassman [a talkshow host at a Toronto radio station] has been under fire from Christian groups for a few years now, culminating in last month's 26-page complaint to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission by the Catholic Civil Rights League and the Canadian Family Action Coalition. (They sent copies to the B'nai B'rith and the Toronto Police Hate Crimes Squad.) Particularly at issue was a series of bits done by Glassman and sidekick Fred Patterson regarding Jesus (including the song 'Jesus Was a Fetus') and Easter (a giveaway of chocolate Jesus candies, promising to nail their producer to a cross and holding a Jesus-lookalike contest). Glassman feels the groups failed to understand the humor of having a Jesus-lookalike contest won by a black bike courier. Humble Howard, who rarely uses anything but his nickname on-air, was taken aback by just how often the surname 'Glassman' (he doesn't hide it, but it's rarely mentioned) figured in the CRTC complaints."

Jews Can't Take 'Yes' for an Answer. Reform Judaism. Fall 2000
"But what stands in the way of an affirmative acceptance of good news? Why such reluctance bordering on negativity toward the outstretched hand? I have in mind the reluctant reaction of many Jewish leaders and organizations to the bold efforts of the Catholic Church, which, for two and a half decades and particularly under the reign of Pope John Paul II, has called for a reconstruction of the Church's relationship to Judaism and the Jewish people. The traditional 'displacement theology' of the Church that viewed Christianity as a faith that supersedes Judaism has been replaced with a positive appreciation of the relevance and vitality of Judaism .... Its adherents are addressed by the Pope as 'our dearly beloved brothers,' indeed 'our elder brothers.' Yet, the multiple calls by the Vatican for the "sinful sons and daughters of the Church" to purify their hearts in repentance of past errors and infidelities so as to 'help heal the wounds of past injustice' have met with tepid and even negative response by much of the organized Jewish community. No less a strong advocate of Jewish-Catholic rapprochement than Cardinal Edward Cassidy, the head of the Pontifical Commission For Religious Relations With The Jews, has stated publicly that the Church's effort for reconciliation is being 'undermined' by leaders of Jewish organizations ... In exasperation, the cardinal declared: 'We expect and hope that the Jewish partners will at least show us respect. You can hardly claim to respect someone if at every possible opportunity you are ready to criticize the person, even without making a real effort to understand and appreciate the position of the other person.' This is a charge more serious than not being able to take 'yes' for an answer. We are facing a threat to Catholic-Jewish relations, and repairing the breach will require our earnest attention and moral statesmanship."

The Apology in Context: Fifty Years of Catholic-Jewish Kulturkampf.
Culture Wars, May 2000
"The history of the last 40 years has been the history of increasing Jewish animus against Catholics, during which the Catholics have taken a beating defending the moral order. This battle stretches from the Catholic defeat in defending the Hollywood production code through the Ginsberg obscenity decision, wherein Philadelphia handed the pornography industry a defeat it never forgot, through Lemon v. Kurtzman, all the way to Hitler’s Pope and the most recent academy awards ceremony with teary-eyed tributes to abortion propaganda and Billy Crystal making jokes about the pope. All of these battles have one thing in common, they were part of a struggle between Jews and Catholics over control of the culture which Catholics have lost on a consistent basis for going on 40 years now ... If, as [prominent Jewish lawyer Alan] Dershowitz says, "God is not central to my particular brand of Jewishness," then what he calls Judaism is really an ideology whose main tenet is hatred of Jesus Christ."

Pope Blasted for Silence. May 2001. Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Another Jewish attack against the Pope, this time for not complaining about things that President Assad of Syria said about Jews.

Greek Orthodox Accuse Israel of Meddling in Vote.
Haaretz [Israeli newspaper], July 12, 2001
"The Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem yesterday angrily accused Israel of meddling in the election of the church's top clergyman in the Holy Land, after the government disqualified one-third of the candidates, including one of the front-runners. In a letter signed by Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit, five of the 15 candidates for election as Greek Orthodox patriarch were banned for alleged security reasons, said Metropolitan Isychios, a top church official and one of the disqualified candidates. 'The Patriarchate condemns this unwelcome and unlawful intrusion of the Israeli government into church affairs, which serves undisclosed and suspicious interests,' the church said in a press release. The church did not elaborate on what hidden agenda it believed Israel had in the matter. Metropolitan Isychios said the church would ignore the Israeli objections and proceed with the elections, with all the candidates taking part. The five banned candidates included one of the front-runners, Metropolitan Timotheos, who has served for years as secretary and spokesman for the Patriarchate in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's walled Old City. Metropolitan Isychios said the security reasons cited in the letter were 'bogus' and Israel was not stating the real reasons. 'If I have done anything against Israel, let them arrest me,' he said ... Israeli officials said they had the right to disqualify candidates. Asked about Israel's objections to five candidates, Raanan Levy, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said: 'Israel is sovereign in Jerusalem and the reasons have to do with Israel's interests in Jerusalem.' He would not elaborate. Shmuel Eviatar, an adviser to Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, also said Israel acted within its rights. 'Israel, as the sovereign power in Jerusalem, has the right to disqualify any candidate whom it does not regard as suitable to be head of the biggest and most ancient church in this country,' he said. A senior church official said Israel's intervention violated the freedom of Christian communities in the Holy Land."

Lives of the Saints. Philadelphia City Paper, December 14-21, 1995
This is a review of Jewish author Christopher Hitchens' book that trashes Catholic heroine Mother Teresa. To guarantee maximum offense, the book is entitled "The Missionary Position."
"Last year, when Vanity Fair and The Nation columnist Christopher Hitchens co-produced Hell's Angel, a British TV documentary slamming the works of Mother Teresa, international outrage ensued. The show was labeled blasphemous, and Hitchens received several death threats and countless 'How dare you!' letters and comments. Good journalists, of course, are supposed to ask the inappropriate questions. This being said, I was nevertheless disappointed in Hitchens' new book on Mother Teresa. While he raises plenty of legitimate concerns, the book is marred by the personal nature of his attack on the former Agnes Bojaxhiu, and by his larger assault on religion itself ... Certainly we should be as skeptical about Mother Teresa's financial dealings as we've been about the financial dealings of Jim and Tammy Faye Baker. What keeps The Missionary Position from being a greater book is Hitchens' genuine hatred of Mother Teresa. He uses anything and everything to paint her as a phony, from photo-ops with malevolent world leaders to name-calling (from 'religious fundamentalist' to 'demagogue' to 'Gorgon'). This isn't a reporter examining both sides of an issue; this is a guy with a vendetta."

The Medium May Be Different, But the Message is the Same: Porn Sells,
Seattle Weekly, February 11-17, 1999
"As the newest millionaire computer geek from the Eastside, boyish [and Jewish] Seth Warshavsky already has a lot to live up to. Depending on who is characterizing him, he's either a genius, a misogynist, a respected global businessman, an exploiter of children, the Bill Gates of porn, or the Larry Flynt of cyberspace ... Warshavsky says that [Mark] Cohn, who heads up Four Star Financial, a South SF investment company, is his only partner [in his Internet porn company] ... Then came the Pope. IEG [Warshawsky's company] recently linked its sites to others that carried news of Pope John Paul II's visit a couple of weeks ago to St. Louis. To make sure Catholics were properly horrified, IEG included an account of papal sex scandals and dirty religious jokes. In a suit by the church, a federal judge in St. Louis ordered the link severed, turning back Warshavsky's free-speech argument. 'The Pope and I share many of the same interests,' Warshavsky snickered in a publicity release. 'Sex is what drives our business and sex is a main concern of the Pope.'"

"Sensation" and Lack of Sensation, by Camille Paglia.
Salon.com, October 6, 1999
"As an arts educator, I think that the behavior of the Brooklyn Museum has been self-interested and shortsighted .... The Brooklyn [Museum] show [entitled 'Sensations'] is a perfect example of the improper diversion of public monies -- in this case to aggrandize a single British collector, an obnoxious advertising executive of dubious taste .... And I'm just as sick of "Catholic-bashing" as [New York City mayor] Giuliani himself. I may be an atheist, but I was raised in Italian Catholicism, and it remains my native culture. I resent the double standard that protects Jewish and African-American symbols and icons but allows Catholicism to be routinely trashed by supercilious liberals and ranting gay activists. Missing from media accounts was that this Brooklyn Museum flap disastrously broke in the midst of a furor over the alleged anti-Semitism of the Irish Catholic presidential wannabe Pat Buchanan. That a Jewish collector [Charles Saatchi] and a Jewish museum director [Arnold Lehman] had no compunction about selecting a parodic image of the Madonna from the whole of [artist] Chris Ofili's dung-bedecked oeuvre shows either stupidity or malice." [This article originally had a daring subtitle: Why are a Jewish collector and a Jewish museum director promoting anti-Catholic art?, later removed. So notes The Nation in its own article (not sympathetic to Paglia): Catholic Bashing, November 1, 1999]

How Saatchi Orchestrated Brooklyn Museum's Frenzy ... Money -- Not Art -- Rules Show. New York Observer, October 4, 1999
[Note the Jewish complexion, as described above, to this exhibition. The author of the excerpt below, Hilton Kramer, is also Jewish]
"What is essential to understand about this exhibition, the full name of which is Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection, is that it is first of all about money–or, to put the matter more delicately, about the vicissitudes of art commerce in the 1990’s. That Charles Saatchi is an advertising genius is beyond doubt. That he is also one of the shrewdest traders on the international art bourse is also well known. He buys and sells art futures the way other traders buy and sell pork bellies ... One of the nastiest objects in the show is indeed Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary (1996), which has already caused so much uproar. It turns out, however, that the elephant dung that is attached to this canvas is by no means the most offensive thing about this disgusting picture. Attached to its surface are myriad little cutouts from porno magazines depicting assholes and vaginas in graphic detail. Who was it who said that anti-Catholicism was now the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals? I have no reason to suspect that Mr. Ofili is any sort of intellectual, but he seems to have understood that it is O.K. now to engage in this kind of public ridicule of sacred subjects–and win a little art-world fame in the bargain. Had he attempted something similar in mocking the sacred tenets of Islam, Mr. Ofili would probably now require the protection of Scotland Yard, and the Brooklyn Museum would probably have some security problems, too. But it seems to be O.K. to engage in this kind of lewd anti-Catholic expression in public places so long as it passes for serious art."

Rudy's Right to Bring It Up -- Photo Is Given a Shrine.
New York Observer, February 26, 2001 [A second anti-Catholic art exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum]
"It has been said that anti-Catholicism in this country is the anti-Semitism of intellectuals. Whether, and to what extent, this claim has any validity as a general proposition, it is certainly true that in certain quarters of our cultural and intellectual life, expressions of virulent anti-Catholic sentiment are regarded as a permissible prejudice. One of those quarters can be found nowadays on the fringes of the professional art world in New York ... This is one of the facts of cultural life that has to be kept in mind in assessing Mayor Giuliani’s indignant response to the photograph currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum called Yo Mama’s Last Supper, in which Christ is depicted as a naked black woman. Another fact, alas, is that legal challenges to the public expression of such permissible prejudice are destined to fail if the work in question makes claim to the status of art. Neither the courts nor the liberal media will support such challenges. ... Let’s face it: If the outrage in question had taken the form of an anti-black, anti-Moslem or anti-Semitic exhibition, there would now be a firestorm of protest that would shut down the museum, if only to maintain civil order, and the liberal media would be in the vanguard of that protest."

Polish Gallery Director Resigns.
The Art Newspaper [Great Britain], March 13, 2001
"Anda Rottenberg, the Jewish director of Warsaw’s leading state-funded art space, the Zacheta Gallery, has resigned. She blamed a long and sometimes anti-Semitic campaign by ultra-nationalist politicians for her decision, saying she was tired of the battles surrounding her work. The gallery has recently been at the centre of two controversies, firstly when it showed film stills of famous actors in Nazi uniforms and then again when Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture of the Pope was put on display. In both cases the exhibitions were attacked and damaged, and in the second case nine right-wing politicians sent a letter to the Minister of Culture demanding her dismissal."

Cattelan's Crushed Pope Damaged by Polish politicians.
The Art Newspaper [Great Britain], February 23, 2001
"The arrival in Warsaw of Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture of the Pope crushed under a meteorite provoked an outcry. Two MPs from the Catholic nationalist party, Halina Nowina-Konopka and Witold Tomcyk, seriously damaged the sculpture when it was on display recently at the publicly funded Zacheta Gallery. The authors of the attack alluded to the Jewish origins of Anda Rottenberg, the museum’s director, 'How would [s]he like a sculpture to be sent to the National Museum of Israel showing a rabbi squashed by Stalin or Arafat?' (Pope John Paul II  is, of course, Polish). The Polish Minister for Culture has been inundated with letters of protest about the sculpture calling for Mr Rottenberg’s dismissal."

Outcry as Polish Actor Slashes Nazi Portraits.
The Art Newspaper [Great Britain],
"One of Poland’s best known actors and film stars is currently under police investigation and faces a possible prison sentence for slashing a portrait of himself, in an exhibition in Warsaw’s leading contemporary art gallery. The events happened shortly after 'The Nazis' opened at the publicly funded Gallery Zachenta. The show consisted of an uncaptioned series of photographs of actors in Nazi uniform, taken from film stills without the actors agreement, by the Polish artist Piotr Uklanski. Accompanied by TV cameramen and reporters and as the cameras rolled, the actor Daniel Olbrychski, featured in one of the portraits, entered the gallery, pulled a sword from under his greatcoat and slashed some of the exhibits, then tore the two featuring himself from the wall and left. The choice of the sword was significant: it was one used in a film about a swashbuckling Polish hero and patriot Kmicic ... Mr Olbrychski later declared: 'I defend the right to say that there are some frontiers of decency which were clearly overstepped in this exhibition, and I reacted violently in the hope that my gesture will highlight my objections. I did it in the spotlight of the camera and flashlights because I wanted for Poland to know about my feeling about such ‘artistic practices’. Furthermore I received the agreement of other actors whose portraits were in the show, including the French film star Jean-Paul Belmondo who agreed that I should protest in their name. I can understand that there are opportunistic artists but I cannot understand why the director of such a serious institution as Zachenta has accepted this. Soon Mrs Anda Rottenberg [the director] will organise an exhibition at which she will expose the faces of known actors on lavatory paper because she considers that as we are public figures she is entitled to do so. It is unthinkable.'”

A Boil Is Lanced in Boyle Heights.
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. March 9, 2001   
[A noteworthy counterpoint to the above anti-Catholic art stories]
"The call came in last Wednesday from one J.R. Durrer, an Encino resident who works in Boyle Heights. Durrer had been heading west up Seventh Street, where he caught a red light at the corner of South Boyle. A glance at the mural on the wall surrounding the auto maintenance shop to his right put him face to face with what he characterized for The Journal as 'an unflattering caricature of a Jewish landlord.' Pulling up to this work-in-progress the next morning, I came face to face with Durrer’s propensity for understatement. He had described the mural as a kind of timeline chronicling the Hispanic presence in California. Sure enough, it begins with the bucolic image of a peasant tilling the fields. The scene quickly segues into a more urban setting, though, culminating with a Latino mother in her apartment kitchen who is feeding her baby in his high chair. Outside her door, alas, a pot-bellied, hook-nosed Chassidic Jew lifted straight out of Der Sturmer hammers on her door, demanding 'la renta' ... The artists were two Latinos in their late teens or early 20’s. They had approached [the owner of a building] some weeks earlier, asking for permission to paint the wall. She said that she could see no reason not to comply — that is, as long she didn’t have to pay for the privilege ... Toward day’s end ... the Chassidic figure had mysteriously disappeared. 'Perhaps he or one of the neighbors spoke to the artist," [a local activist] said in an e-mail to me. 'Or maybe someone else took matters into their own hands. Maybe the city stopped by. All I can tell you is that, as of 4 p.m. this afternoon, the caricature has been painted out to white.'"

They''ll Never Catch Me. Daily Express, July 6, 1999
"Though a Jew and an agnostic, [Martin] Frankel said he was fascinated by St Francis of Assisi and wanted to follow in his footsteps by setting up a charity with £600 million to help the poor. Contacts were made with senior figures in the Vatican. Soon Frankel's emissaries - including Kathe Schuchter, who appeared in hot pants and a bikini top for one meeting - were flying to Rome to explain his plan to astonished Franciscan monks. It involved the creation of a foundation in the offshore tax haven of the British Virgin Islands. The foundation was to take over insurance. In return, Catholic charities were promised at least £30 million. Frankel even offered to pay £6 million for the Pope to visit Russia ... Frankel also set up another offshore trust, the St. Mary's Foundation for the Protection of Homeless Children, which acquired the small stockbroker Liberty National Securities. The insurance companies invested their money through Liberty. Its head office was just an accommodation address. Calls were routed to Frankel's home, where he answered using the name Eric Stevens. Insurance regulators in Mississippi started to become suspicious. The companies appeared to be doing billions of dollars of business with Liberty but only paid out $25,000 in commission. This was because Frankel was inflating the value of his companies by inventing false transactions. Then, one of his insurance companies asked to be repaid £90 million. Frankel stalled. It was time to run."

Vatican, Israel Trade Charges at Anti-Semitism Conference.
Catholic World News, July 20, 1999
"A Catholic-Jewish conference in Israel on relations between the religions was rocked on Monday when a Vatican representative said the problem was not just perceived Catholic anti-Semitism, but also Jewish anti-Catholicism. Father David Yager said the Catholic Church is not anti-Semitic and that all traces of the ideology have been purged from the Church's institutions, but Israel continued to hold an anti-Catholic attitude that is harming prospects for better relations. Father Yager cited continuing accusations by some Jewish leaders that Pope Pius XII did not forcefully enough condemn the Nazism and the Holocaust."

Vatican Charges It is Target of a 'Slanderous Campaign' in Connection with Pope Pius XII.
Tampa Tribune [TBO.com, from AP News], August 7, 2001
"The Vatican accused Jewish historians on a special Holocaust commission of 'clearly incorrect behavior,' charging that they have helped mount a 'slanderous campaign' against the Catholic church ... The Vatican's response was written by the Rev. Peter Gumpel, a German Jesuit gathering documents to support the possible beatification of Pope Pius XII, the World War II pope ... Gumpel said he had met with the group and answered some of their questions and offered to answer the rest at another session, but that this was ignored. It was therefore disconcerting, he said, that in the following months 'some Jewish members in the group had systematically affirmed that they never received answers to their questions.' He also said it was 'false' that the Vatican does not intend to open up its archives, saying this will be done as soon as they are ready. Gumpel said several though not all the Jewish members of the commission had 'publicly spread the suspicion' that the Holy See was trying to hide documents 'that in their judgment could be compromising.'"

Catholic League Upset by Showtime Flicks. Agape Press (Christian News Service), May 21, 2001
"The Catholic League is voicing its concern over an anti-Catholic cable movie scheduled for later this month. Patrick Scully is director of communications for the Catholic League. He explains why the group is alarmed over the May 27 presentation of a film version of the Christopher Durang play, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You. 'You don't have to make my word for it -- all major theater critics are on record as saying this is a viciously anti-Catholic film,' Scully says. 'It rips, it mocks just about every Catholic teaching. It is just something that is overwhelming in its bigotry.' Scully says the League has already taken action by contacting Viacom, the parent company of Showtime. '[We called] upon Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone ... to speak out about this. What does he think?' Scully asks. 'This is a ... very powerful man in the media today who has a history of speaking out against intolerance and ... bigotry.' Last week, the New York Post contained quotes from both the director and the president of Showtime regarding the movie. Scully sums up what they said. '[They said] they're going to get a pass to make fun of the Catholic church if they want because they happen to be Jewish.' Scully says being a religious minority is no excuse for bigotry."

Anti-Catholicism Charged Against U.S. Senator.
EWTN News [Catholic Global Network], August 10, 2001
"During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing held on July 19, senior Senate staffers charged that [Jewish] Senator Barbara Boxer's (D-Ca.) statements and demeanor exhibited a strong anti-Catholic bias. An observer of the hearing claimed that 'Boxer treated the Catholic Church as if it were a peculiar cult with thirty or forty people rather than a world faith professed by more than one billion people' ... In July, 2000, Boxer personally blocked a Senate endorsement of the Catholic Church's presence at the UN, which had passed the House of Representatives with only a single dissenting vote. Boxer also voiced approval for the first international homosexual celebration - World Pride 2000 - that was held in Rome during the Church's own celebration of the Jubilee Year. Boxer wrote that 'I applaud this creative effort to celebrate diversity.' Organizers of the event have said that they selected Rome so that 'Christian pilgrims will have to share the city with gays and lesbians from Greenland to Afghanistan who are to converge on Rome to party, parade and polemicize…no wonder the Vatican is scared.' Senate observers are increasingly concerned that Bush nominees who are practicing Catholics will not receive a fair hearing from Senator Boxer."

Anti-Christian Jokes. Do Not Swear!, by Jakub Spiewak, Yidele [a journal by Jewish youth in Poland]; [http://www.jewish.org.pl/jidele/]
"'Saint Joseph was a cuckold', 'Jesus Cunnist', 'Jesus ? - Don't swear,' - are only a few examples of what I've managed to hear in the so called Jewish Bermuda Triangle - the building at 6 Twarda street [the Jewish Community Center in Warsaw, Poland]. You might think that those were accidental, not to say primitive, people. You couldn't have been more wrong - those jokes came from people I am very close to, people who I have always regarded as intelligent ... The majority of young Polish Jews grew up in Christian or atheistic families, most of which didn't observe Jewish traditions and religion. Most of us started searching for our Jewish identity and began to ponder over our attitudes towards Judaism only during adolescence or later. And now we've become subject to what was unavoidable, namely neophytism. Many of us make all the efforts to be more holy than the Pope or, if you have it, more Jewish than Abraham ... Many of my Jewish friends are too embarrassed to admit that they have been Baptized and have received the Holy Communion. By professing radically anti-Christian opinions, they try to convince themselves and others that their ties with Christianity have been long broken. What is wrong with being brought up in Christianity ? Myself, I have attended a seminary - very briefly, but still ... Spreading this kind of jokes blinds people in hatred and stupefies them. The Christian-Jewish dialogue and the Polish-Jewish dialogue become difficult when observed through the prism of such humor. It also poses a serious threat for this two-course dialogue. Let's imagine that one of those less than refined jokes reaches a public forum. Would that still make us a serious and trustworthy dialogue partner who deserves friendship? I would risk saying that by spreading such 'humor' we become like the people who tell jokes about Jews in Auschwitz or like father Jankowski [a Polish Catholic priest who has been critical of Jews] who continues to profess idiocies about the Star of David being inscribed in the swastika. And we have criticized those people so many times! If we demand that Jews - the nation and their religion - be respected, we must show respect for others. In here, we are bound by the diplomatic principle of reciprocated respect."

Appeals Court Rejects Lawsuit Challenging Christmas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, February 2001 [scroll down page]
"The observance of Christmas as a federal holiday does not violate the separation of church and state, a federal appeals court has ruled. In a brief order issued Dec. 19, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling dismissing the lawsuit against Christmas, which was brought by Cincinnati lawyer Richard Ganulin. Ganulin, who is Jewish [and who is an attorney for the city of Cincinnati], told the Cincinnati Post he objects to the government celebrating a Christian holiday. 'It’s not that I’m against Christmas,' he said. 'I’m seeking the dignity of equality for non-Christians.' Ganulin said he disagrees with the lower court, which held that although Christmas is a religious holiday, the government’s reason for observing it can be secular. The Cincinnati-based attorney said he plans to appeal the Ganulin v. U.S. case to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Poetic Justice, Cincinnati Enquirer, December 12, 1999
As part of her decision sustaining Christmas against Richard Ganulin's lawsuit, Judge Susan J. Dlott playfully wrote some doggerel: "The court will address Plaintiff's seasonal confusion / Erroneously believing Christmas / Merely a religious intrusion. / Whatever the reason / Constitutional or other / Christmas is not / An act of Big Brother! ... One is never jailed / For not having a tree / For not going to church / For not spreading glee! ... Santa / The Easter Bunny too / And maybe the Great Pumpkin / To name just a few! An extra day off / Is hardly high treason / It may be spent as you wish / Regardless of reason. / The court having read / The lessons of Lynch / Refuses to play / The role of the Grinch! / There is room in this country / And in all our hearts too / For different convictions / And a day off too!"

Pollsters Take Off the Gloves in Feud Over Intermarriage: Critics Charge Bias in AJCommittee Study. InterfaithFamily.com [from the Forward]
"Mr. Case demanded his own apology from Mr. Cohen. 'InterfaithFamily.com encourages interfaith families to participate in Jewish life and to raise their children as Jews,' Mr. Case wrote. 'We distance ourselves from Dovetail and other organizations which encourage families to have two religions in the home. Unless you can point to one single statement that I have ever made orally or in writing in which I 'promote the blending of Christianity and Judaism' or 'seemingly encourage Jews to marry non-Jews,' you should retract those slanderous statements.'"

Two Held for Curse Ritual Against the Pope,
Jerusalem Post, March 23, 2000
"Former Habad activist Meir Baranes of Safed, who was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of putting a religious curse on Pope John Paul II, was remanded for five days yesterday by the Acre Magistrate's Court. A second suspect was arrested yesterday, and will be brought for remand today. Three haredim took part in the pulsa de nura ('lashes of fire') ceremony in a Safed cemetery, aired on Channel 2 on Monday just before the pope's arrival and broadcast on foreign networks worldwide. Police are searching for a third suspect. Last night, Itim reported that police investigators suspect that the ceremony was staged in cooperation with Channel 2, which denied the charge ... The midnight rite, which Channel 2 said was enacted last Thursday in a cemetery in Safed, recalled rabbinical curses cast on prime minister Yitzhak Rabin prior to his 1995 assassination by Yigal Amir. Participants in the ceremony, sounding ritual calls on ceremonial ram's horns, cursed the pope as a 'hater of Israel.'"

The Worship Service as a Cultural Experience, by Tzvi Howard Adelman,
The Jewish Agency for Israel [The Department of Jewish Zionist Education], August 22, 1999
"The question is whether the prayer once contained more specific references to Christians and because of the demands of censorship the text was changed. Such an assertion plays a regular role in Jewish-Christian relations, providing Christians an opportunity to demonstrate the fundamental anti-social and anti-Christian aspects of Judaism. Such assertions are buttressed by the fact that Solomon Schecter found in the Cairo Geniza, the massive medieval repository of worn out manuscripts, versions of the prayer which did invoke God's wrath against apostates (meshumadim) and Christians (Notzrim) ... Of particular concern to Christians has been the line 'She-hem mishtahavim lahevel varik umitpalellim el el lo yoshia,' 'They bow down to vanity and emptiness and the pray to a god who will not save.' This line, which appears after the line that ends with the word 'multitude,' 'hamonam,' is not found in either Leviant or Birnbaum, but is found in not only manuscripts but many prayerbooks that are used today ... By 1370, perhaps with the appearance of Alenu [prayers] in the Mahzor Vitry, Christians began to protest against the Jews saying such a prayer. Sometimes they even tried to force Jews to abstain from saying the offensive line. For example, in 1702 the Prussian government began an investigation of the prayer which, concluding on August 28, 1703, banned the offending line as well as spitting. This ban was repeated in 1716 and 1750 ... Some Jews changed the line to read, 'She-hayu mishtahavim laelilim umitpallelim el ale lo yoshia,' "They used to bow down to idols and pray to a god who does not save." This way they changed the meaning from the present, against Christians, to the past, against pagans ... In Sephardic communities, often in Muslim countries, where Christians were usually not in power, the full prayer is still said. In my own congregation in Jerusalem I noticed an interesting compromise had been worked out concerning this line, perhaps unwittingly since nobody can recall any discussion about it. The offending line appears in the prayerbook, Rinat Yisrael, reflecting a historical reality and some contemporary Jewish practices, but it is not recited, reflecting local custom based on either sensitivity or habit. In his commentary on the prayerbook, Joseph Hertz, once the Chief Rabbi of Britain and one of the greatest apologists for Judaism ever, whose biblical and prayerbook commentaries are mainly valuable as a repositories of apologetics, crowed that this prayer is 'sublime,' 'noble,' and 'ancient' and 'universalist' which 'voices Israel's undying hope for the day when all idolatry shall have disappeared' and 'the essential character' of Judaism."

Lutherans Charge Israelis Using Schoolchildren as Human Shields, by Elaine Ruth Fletcher. San Diego Union-Tribune, August 31, 2001
"Lutheran church officials around the world have decried the invasion by Israeli army troops into a Lutheran church boarding school in the Palestinian-controlled village of Beit Jallah earlier this week. The Rev. Jadallah Shehade, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Reformation and principal of the church's boarding school, charged the children were being used as 'human shields' by the Israelis, who had postioned themselves on the rooftop of the church compound. Ironically, the soldiers had stationed themselves on a new church building known as Abraham's Residence, which was being built as a seminar center for Christian-Muslim-Jewish peace dialogues. 'We denounce in the strongest possible terms the Israeli occupation of our buildings and demand that the army immediately withdraw from our church premises as well as from Beit Jallah,' said Bishop Munib Younan, head of the Lutheran church in the Holy Land. Younan said he was appealing to human rights organizations and Lutheran church bodies overseas to protest the Israeli action. In Geneva, the Lutheran World Federation sharply condemned the occupation of the town near Bethlehem, particuarlly 'the forces' misuse of the Lutheran church as a base for weapons fire and military activities. In a brief note to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the Rev. Ishmael Noko, Lutheran World Federation general secretary, called the incursion 'an outrage' and said the troops had invaded 'one of the holy places of the Christian community.'"

Pro-Family Groups Predict Hate Crimes Laws Will Target Christians,
Agape Press [Christian News Network], September 5, 2001
"One pro-family activist says politicians are eager to pass 'hate crimes' laws and that if they succeed, the real targets will not be criminals, but Christians. Robert Knight is director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America. Knight says laws and penalties are already in place for committing crimes, but that adding the term 'hate crime' is merely a politically correct emotional response. He says this is dangerous legislation because it attempts to regulate how a person thinks. 'Hate crimes set up special classes of victims that get more government protection than others,' Knight says. 'This fundamentally violates the equal protection concept of the U.S. Constitution.' 'Hate crimes also introduce the un-American concept of 'thought crime' -- that's where some thoughts or beliefs that are tied to crimes are actually criminalized,' he explains. 'You can't go around hitting somebody over the head anyway or burglarizing the house or defacing their garage -- these are already illegal. But if you say that some people get more punishment depending on their attitude while they're doing it, now you're setting up different classes of belief.' According to Knight, the day will come when Christians will be charged with hate crimes for simply stating their religious beliefs."

Jewish Scholar Panel Rejects 'Inflammatory' Attack by Vatican,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, September 5, 2001
"Jewish scholars of an interfaith team formed to study the Vatican's role in World War II lashed out against what they deemed 'inflammatory' and 'totally unjustified' Vatican attacks, and renewed their calls for more access to the Holy See's archives. The Jewish scholars — Michael Marrus of Toronto, Bernard Suchecky of Brussels and Robert Wistrich of Jerusalem — were responding Tuesday to a communique issued Aug. 24 by Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. Kasper had accused the Jews on the Catholic-Jewish panel of 'indiscretion' and making 'polemical remarks in the press' that fomented 'distrust' and made research 'impossible to continue.' 'We hope you will understand our sense of shock that the Jewish members of the group of scholars have been singled out for blame, both in your own communique and in some extraordinarily harsh and totally unjustified statements emanating from the Holy See in recent weeks,' the historians wrote to Kasper ... 'We have had inflammatory and scathing statements' from the Vatican 'directed at all members of the commission but with particular virulence towards the Jews.'"

'Errors' in Judgement. A Priest Reflects on His Jewish Roots and Questions His Beliefs, [book review of a novel by Jewish author Alan Isler],
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, September 21, 2001
"[Main character Father Edmond] Music is, quite consciously, a mass of contradictions that cannot, and should not have to, co-exist for long. For one thing, this is a priest who, for upward of 50 years, has also been an atheist. For another, he is actually Jewish; as a child in France during World War II, his parents had him converted just before they separately disappeared — his mother into Auschwitz, his father to God knows where until he resurfaces in Tel Aviv long after the war. Third, Music has been sleeping with his housekeeper, the lovely Maude, ever since the day she came to Beale Hall, the scholarly Catholic retreat that Music directs, almost half a century ago ... [Father Edmond says:] 'What I betrayed ... was not the God of the Jews, not the ancient faith, but the Jews themselves, my own people. When, at first to save my life, I joined the enemy, hung the Cross about my neck, genuflected before painted idols, ingested and imbibed like a cannibal what I was told were the real body and blood of the Jew Jesus, I betrayed the six million, and the millions before them, and the many since. It doesn’t matter that I believed none of it.... I knew myself to be a traitor.'"

MTV Rock Musical Ready to 'bare' all in New York,
Yahoo!News [from Variety], September 25, 2001
"MTV is making its first foray into musical theater, a high school-themed play called 'bare!' The musical [written by Damon Intrabartolo and Jon Hartmere Jr.] is a coming-of-age tale about five high school seniors wrestling with a sense of self that doesn't mesh with the expectations of parents, church or society. 'Bare!' was launched at the Hudson Street Mainstage Theater in L.A. last October, and won best music and lyrics trophies at the 2001 Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards The music cable network's MTV Films division will team with Immortal Entertainment Group, another theater newcomer, to mount the show in New York. They will produce the show with theatrical producers Daryl Roth ('Proof') and Jordan Roth ('The Rocky Horror Show')."

Christian Students Brutally Bullied By Jewish High School Pupils, FIDES (Pontifical Mission Society for the Propagation of the Faith), [Italy]
October 31, 2001
"Students of a Christian school in Jaffa were brutally beaten up by a group of Jewish school pupils. The incident occurred on October 25 at 6.30pm at Shoket Intersection, at Beersheba, where the students had stopped at a roadside eating-place. A report was filed to Fides by Fr Arturo Vasaturo OFM., parish priest of Jaffa Catholic Church (Tel Aviv) and headmaster of Terra Santa School. The mayor of Jaffa, Mr. Ron Goldi, refused to visit the injured school children. Fr Vasaturo said that on October 25 a group of 42 students (aged between 14 and 15) of Terra Santa School, Jaffa, run by the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, went on a school trip to Negev. On the way back they stopped at a Macdonald’s restaurant near Beersheba. It was around 60.30 p.m. and there were no other customers in the restaurant. A little later six or seven buses filled with Jewish students from the last grade of high school arrived. Mrs. Sheikha Helawy, a teacher of Terra Santa school who accompanied the Christian group explains what happened. 'As soon as the Jewish students came in and heard our pupils speaking Arabic, they began to bully them, beat and insult them even following them into the toilets. Some of our pupils were listening to music from a tape-recorder (not oriental at all, actually it was modern Rap-Trans), and the Jewish students ordered them provocatively to switch it off. When they refused one of the Jewish students slapped one of our pupils in the face and in a second the whole place was full of at least 60 Jewish students kicking our children, beating them with sticks, and hurling stones while cursing them ... We tried to escape to our bus, the only safe place. But those who had been hurt couldn’t make it, and they were badly beaten and kicked. During those long minutes of violence not one of the security guards accompanying us or the escorts of the Jewish pupils lent a hand to calm things down."

Racism Among Young Israelis Must Be Cured, FIDES (Pontifical Mission Society for the Propagation of the Faith) [Italy], Octobe 31, 2001
"This is the second time that the Catholic community in Jaffa [Israel] is attacked. A few years ago a young soldier suddenly opened fire in St Anthony’s parish church, which is connected with the Terra Santa School from which the pupils attacked yesterday come. Thank goodness on that occasion, no one was injured or killed. But judging from what the delinquent said he was influenced by anti-Christian incitement of certain religious extremists. On that occasion the government contributed towards repairing the damage, while committing itself to giving special attention to education to mutual respect in the spirit of what is today the Basic Agreement. It is obvious that today there is one urgent need: the government must give priority to this matter. Not enough is being done in this regard."

More Christian Leaders Voice Concern Over Israeli Actions,
Boston Globe, November 1, 2001
"Christian leaders from around Massachusetts yesterday added their voices to those of three Episcopal bishops calling for greater concern for Palestinian rights, as Jewish leaders decried the Tuesday protest by the bishops outside the Israeli consulate in Boston as unfairly one-sided. Following the most dramatic local expression of Christian concern over the conduct of the Israeli government, many Christians and Jews said they were worried that a growing divide over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might endanger a relationship Christians and Jews have worked hard to forge since World War II. Christian anger over Israeli conduct increased sharply over the last two weeks, after Israel invaded Bethlehem, traditionally regarded as the birthplace of Jesus, and a young Palestinian died in gunfire in Manger Square."

Pope Joins Criticism of Killing in Bethlehem,
Times [of London], October 22, 2001
"Israel yesterday resisted pressure from the US and France to withdraw its tanks from six nominally Palestinian-controlled West Bank towns as four more Palestinians were killed. The Israeli Government also rejected strongly worded appeals from the heads of the Christian churches in Jerusalem to withdraw its troops from Bethlehem. The streets there have been turned into a shooting gallery since Israeli forces took control of large areas close to Palestinian security headquarters in retaliation for the assassination of Rehavam Zeevi, the Tourism Minister, last week. An Israeli soldier was wounded by a Palestinian bullet near Rachel’s Tomb on the outskirts yesterday. Last night the Palestinian Authority outlawed the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the group that claimed responsibility for killing Mr Zeevi. Israel shrugged off rare criticism by the Pope, who yesterday expressed public sorrow over the death on Saturday of a 19-year-old Arab, Johnny Thaljieh, killed a few yards from the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square by a stray machinegun bullet. Hanna Nasser, the Mayor of Bethlehem, sent letters to the Vatican, the UN, the US and Bethlehem’s twin cities abroad, pleading for diplomatic backing and condemning Israel’s 'aggressive, sadist policy.' At noon prayers in the Vatican, the Pope said: 'War and death arrived even on the square of the basilica of the Nativity of Our Lord. Violence is for everybody only a path of death and destruction which dishonours the holiness of God and the dignity of man.”

The Crucifix, by Moshe Rozdzial, NOMAS (The National Organization for Men against Sexism), Brothers Archive, Winter 1999/August 10, 2001
"In fact, if I could be really honest, growing up around holocaust survivors, especially grandparents who had been part of village life in Poland, my clearest memory of anything that related to churches was the way my grandmother would spit three times, you know, tu! tu! tu!, like in Fiddler on the Roof, to ward off the evil spirits, every time she would walk past a church steeple. The cross has really been more a burden to Jews, than for Christians to bear. For my Bubbe, my grandmother, it represented the wrath of Satan, swooping down on a helpless people when they were not vigilant to warding off the evil eye. She saw Nazism as just another version of Christianity, hoards of Aryan barbarians, swooping down with their broken cross, to do the work that the church had laid the foundation for, for a thousand years. I remember walking down the street with my hand in hers, feeling that tug and knowing, almost instinctively that if I look up I'd see a cross atop a roof, as she reflexively crossed the street to avoid walking directly in front of the church. Muttering, Nevelah! Nevelah! Do you know what that means? The impurity of the dead. Any dead thing, that by Jewish law, could not be touched in any way, so as not to be defiled from spiritual purity. That's what Bubbe thought of the crucifix and ultimately, the church ... The dead Jew on the cross was a Nevelah to her, a presence that has always defiled her life, Jewish life. A symbol of death and human corruptness, to my people. I know it's not politically correct for me to say these things to you. We Jews are always watching our tongues, when it comes to Christianity."

Pope's Road to Israel Paved By Past Errors, Washington Post, March 12, 2000
"Jews are ambivalent about the pope's trip [to Israel], largely because of the Vatican's public silence during the Holocaust and the bitter historical dispute that swirls around the role and influence of the wartime pope, Pius XII. The Vatican insists that Pius XII worked quietly and wisely to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust, and that vocal public intervention by the Vatican may have only brought retribution from the Nazis, against Jews as well as Catholics. But many Jews believe that by keeping quiet, the pope was guilty of complicity in the slaughter, or at the least passivity ... And a large group of rabbis and laymen, representing rabbinical councils across Israel, signed a petition calling on the pope to cancel a Saturday Mass in Nazareth. Although Nazareth is populated entirely by Arabs, the 2,137 signers of the petition were concerned that Israeli security arrangements for the Mass at the Basilica of the Annunciation would entail a 'massive desecration' of the Jewish Sabbath ... Klein Halevy, who grew up in Brooklyn in the 1960s and '70s, underwent his own transformation of attitudes toward Christianity and the Catholic Church, much of it under John Paul's papacy. For him, as for some other religious Jews, the Christian cross itself represented a kind of menace. 'Jews see it as a visceral threat, and that's how I grew up,' he said. 'Growing up in Brooklyn I'd be afraid to walk past the church. I'd cross the street to avoid it. The question was, do you cross the street or walk past it and surreptitiously spit? I had to actively train myself to first of all not fear the cross, and then learn to respect and then learn to appreciate it as a symbol of devotion. But that was a conscious act of training."

Auschwitz Crosses Removed, Church Net UK, June 1999
"The controversy over the crosses erected on land adjacent to the Auschwitz extermination camp has come to an end. On May 28, in the presence of several priests, the army removed the 300 small crosses that had been erected there. The Jewish community had considered them an offense to the memory of the Holocaust ... The nuns [who had a convent there] left the land at the explicit request of the Jewish community."

Jewish Protest at Christian Job Rules,
Sydney Morning Herald [Australia], January 21, 2000
"A Justice of the Victorian Supreme Court has criticised the Howard Government's condoning of religious discrimination in employment and questioned its constitutionality, as the Jewish community yesterday signalled its plans to pressure the Government on the issue. In coverage of the controversy - in which church-based organisations in the Government's Job Network insisted employees be Christians - the Jewish News quoted Justice Howard Nathan, a Reserve Judge of the Victorian Supreme Court, as saying the issue 'invites almost certain constitutional challenge.' His comments come after Labor raised the possibility last week that the discrimination in favour of Christians by church agencies holding Federal Government contracts could be unconstitutional."

Messianic Jews Face Discrimination and Persecution,
Marantha Christian Journal, November 16, 2001
"'Messianic Jews ['Jews for Jesus'] face distinct difficulties not encountered by others who believe in Yeshua [Jesus],' said Jay Sekulow, chief legal counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, who presented a paper he co-wrote with ACLJ attorney Mark N. Troobnick, who, like Sekulow, is a Messianic Jew ... One form of discrimination comes from the hands of fellow Jews who claim 'the one thing a Jew cannot do -- and remain a Jew -- is to embrace Christianity,' said Paul Feinberg, a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Ill. "You can believe what you want," Feinberg said, describing the attitudes of some Jewish leaders. "It is incredible that one can believe almost anything they want about God -- or nothing at all -- and still [be considered] a Jew. The one thing they cannot do is embrace Jesus as the promised Messiah" ... Sekulow warned that Jewish discrimination against Messianic Jews is not limited to the United States. 'There is increasing societal and governmental hostility to Christian religious expression in both America and in Israel,' Sekulow said. 'Messianic Jewish religious expression ... suffers unique disabilities in both countries.'"

"Jesus Has Two Mommies" Comes to Somerville,
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, November 30, 2001
"When Faith Soloway was asked why a Jewish lesbian is staging a play starring Jesus, she replied that Jesus ‘is the most absorbed, he’s like the icon of the Bible’ and that around Christmastime he is ‘sort of the star.’ She’s sort of right. But when she says of her own work that in a ‘lighthearted way’ she is ‘holding up [her] middle finger at some of our social constructions,’ she is sort of unnecessarily vague. It would be more accurate to say that she is holding up her middle finger at Christians and that few would see this as being lighthearted. Interestingly, nothing in her repertoire suggests that she has done anything to endear herself to her fellow Jews or to African Americans the way she has Christians. This is especially telling given that Hanukkah and Kwanzaa provide great opportunities for her in December."

Santa Puts Jews on Defensive, Jewish Times, December 7, 2001
"The alleged moratorium on Kriss Kringle [in Kensington, Maryland] also brought out some unsavory elements, including one individual with a banner proclaiming, 'If Jews can ban Santa, why can't we ban Jews?' His banner — which was, at one point, connected to a piece of city property — so inflamed the gathering's attendees that it was torn down. The man, who identified himself as Bill White of nearby Derwood, soon disappeared into the crowd ... More than an estimated 1,000 people attended the Washington suburb's annual tree-lighting ritual at which Santa traditionally arrives on a town fire engine to flip on the switch for the 50-foot fir's lights. This year, however, the jolly Christmas icon's presence was cordially not requested when on Oct. 29, Kensington's four-member town council voted unanimously to honor firefighters, police officers, first-responders and postal workers by making them the focus of the event. The council's action was kept relatively quiet until some Jewish town residents requested that a menorah be added to Town Hall's front lawn. That request was denied, and the council reached a compromise, asking that Santa not attend. That's when things turned a little ugly, largely the result of extensive media coverage and myriad talk-show discussions ... At least two other attendees of the gathering agreed and distributed leaflets blaming Jews for the controversy. Others chanted 'No Santa, no peace!' and carried signs reading such slogans as "PC=Stupid."

Harvard Shows Intolerance to Christians,
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, December 5, 2001
"Catholic students at Harvard University have a moral obligation to request the placement of a nativity scene on the campus in the same area where menorahs are placed. If they are denied, the Catholic League will give Harvard all the publicity it deserves on this issue. Just as there are Catholics who are anti-Semitic, there are Jews who are anti-Catholic. Unfortunately, the problem of anti-Catholicism that afflicts some of those in the Jewish community rears its ugly head every December. Not only are Catholics, and Protestants, told they cannot have their religious symbol (the nativity scene) on public property, they are now told that such secular symbols as Santa Claus and Christmas trees must be banned. Yet such religious symbols as the menorah and the Star of David are just fine. The latest complaint we’ve heard is that Christmas trees are too big as compared to menorahs. Well, not in Central Park. In Central Park Jews will now erect the world’s largest menorah. God bless them. We will put our little (by comparison) nativity scene in the same area on December 19. But unlike the anti-Catholic bigots, we will not complain. That’s because size doesn’t matter to us."

Nativity Scenes Requested in NYC Public Schools,
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, December 4, 2001
"Regarding a request by the Catholic League to place nativity scenes in the public schools, Dr. Harold Levy said yesterday that 'The Supreme Court has previously refused to permit erection of a nativity scene on public property.’ This is inaccurate. There is no such decision. On two occasions in the 1980s, the high court said that religious symbols could be displayed on public property if they are accompanied by secular symbols. Furthermore, in 1995, the Supreme Court held that the Klan could place an unattended cross on the grounds of the state capitol in Ohio because it was purely a matter of free speech covered by the First Amendment. And consider this: on December 19, the Catholic League will erect a nativity scene in Central Park (as it has for years) without legal contention. We have secured a permit from the Parks Department that is entirely legal. Indeed, in just a matter of days the world’s largest menorah will be displayed in Central Park. Right now menorahs and crescents and stars (religious symbols of Judaism and Islam) are allowed in the public schools precisely because they are surrounded by a Christian secular symbol, namely the Christmas tree. Now imagine the uproar if New York City schools banned the menorah and crescent and star and allowed a nativity scene next to a dreidel! On the matter of Dr. [principal Fran] Levy, she ordered a Christmas tree taken down last Thursday and then invited Jewish and Muslim teachers to bring religious symbols to work. Bowing to public pressure, she has reversed her decision. Nonetheless, we want to know what is going to be done about her decision to exclude Christians.”

Yahoo! Displays Bias Against Christians,
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, December 3, 2001
"The Internet portal, Yahoo!, displays a bias against Catholics that it refuses to correct. When the word 'Catholic' is typed in to the search engine site, the second of the Category Matches has a listing called 'Christian History > Catholic Inquisition.' By clicking on that category, the listings of 'Torture' and 'Witch Hunts' appear. But when the words 'Protestant,' 'Judaism,' or 'Islam' are typed in, no negative episodes associated with these religions are listed. No other Internet portal shows an anti-Catholic bias. Just as disturbing, when 'Catholicism' is typed in, the first listing under Web Site Matches is 'The Case Against Catholicism.' It consists mainly of the work of 'Joseph McCabe’s Rationalist Encyclopedia.' More accurately, it consists of some of the most remarkably twisted interpretations of the history of the Catholic Church ever produced. The second listing is called 'Gay and Lesbian Catholicism': it is loaded with criticism of the Church’s teachings on sexuality. Interestingly, the official Vatican website, 'The Holy See,' is listed fourth. Catholic League president William Donohue addressed this issue today: 'On November 2, I wrote a letter to Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel [who is Jewish] stating my objections to his portal’s bias against Catholicism. He has chosen not to respond and that is why I am making this matter public. Indeed, since my letter was written, things have only gotten worse: the ‘Joseph McCabe’ contribution to anti-Catholicism was entered after November 2. Nothing I have objected to is outside the control of Yahoo! If they wanted to correct this situation they could easily do so. Evidently, they do not care if they offend Catholics.'"

Rael Wants to Sue the Pope for Crimes Against Humanity,
rael.org, [press release] December 3, 2001
"Following the recent apologies made by the pope for crimes committed against the Australian Aboriginals, which include the forceful abduction of thousands of children placed in Catholic institutions and victims of pedophile acts by priests, Rael - founder of the International Raelian Movement - has decided to help the Australian Aboriginals to sue the pope for crimes against humanity before Belgian tribunals where laws allow one to sue any citizen from any country." [Who's "Rael?" See next link below]

The Rael World Comes to New York. Clone Ranger,
Village Voice, August 29-September 4, 2001
"Rael's message has captured the imagination of an eclectic following, including sex industry workers and artists ... 'In a sense, all Raelians are Jews,' says Rael [born Claude Vorilhon]. 'The Raelians have a particular interest in Israel because our goal is to rebuild the third temple,' in the form of a government-sanctioned embassy for extraterrestrials. 'It says in the Bible that whoever devotes themselves to the building of the third temple is a real Jew. So we are therefore more Jewish than most born Jews.' The Raelians have the means to begin building, but are waiting for Israel to legitimize their request. If Israel doesn't cooperate by 2035, Rael teaches that the Elohim will stop protecting Israel from its surrounding neighbors. And if a more alien-friendly country agrees to build the embassy at any time before then, Israel's extraterrestrial-spiritual protection will be lifted. Rael had Jewish ties before his encounter with the Elohim. 'My mother had thought that her Jewish boyfriend had impregnated her, and that he was my father,' he says. His family welcomed the new explanation. 'When I told my mother and grandmother the true story, my grandmother was relieved because she said that she had seen UFOs lingering around the house over the years and had never told anyone ... Despite the fact that he is a race-car enthusiast who claims an intimate, even familial relationship with extraterrestrials, and that he is a devout atheist with a messiah complex and a Jewish identity, Rael comes across as clear-headed and gentle."

The Grinch Who Stole Tolerance. Interfaith Relations Hit a New Low for the Holidays, Pravda [Russia], December 8, 2001
"'If Jews Can Ban Santa, Why Can't We Ban Jews?' the banner read. Yes, it was your humble Pravda correspondent, with a few friends, who had carried it there. But the sentiment was not confined to our little clique, all lifelong residents of Montgomery County. According to one letter published in the Montgomery Gazette: 'The Jewish people have been persecuted and kicked out of one country after another. In America, they found welcome and safety. ... Their response in recent decades has been to suppress or attempt to suppress religious observance by the more than 90 percent [98 percent, to be exact] of the American public that is not Jewish. ... [Jews should] wonder how things look from the other side: From the viewpoint of those who have given Jewish religion and culture every welcome only to have a tiny Jewish minority work assiduously to force our beliefs and rites underground.' That was only one of hundreds of letters the Gazette received. Many were too hostile to Judaism for a paper owned by the Jewish owned Washington Post company to publish. But how has these hostilities started? Was it the imperialist goy forcing Christmas down the throats of starving Jewish children? No - it was an incident that had been provoked totally by the town's Jewish population. The act to suppress Santa has been initiated by local racist Jewish families, and a counter-proposal by non-Jewish families to include a Menorah in the display had been rejected by the fanatically nihilistic, mostly Jewish Town Council. It wasn't equality with others that Kensington's Jews were demanding, or toleration for their religious difference - it was the prohibition by law of expressions of non-Jewish faith. The plan backfired."

'Mea Culpa,' Meet Mea Shearim,
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, March 17, 2000
"A day after Pope John Paul II offered his unprecedented apology for historic Catholic sins, Father Dennis Mikulanis was sitting in his parish rectory in San Diego, CA, feeling just a bit miffed. For Mikulanis, the pope's March 12 confession was a personal milestone. As ecumenical affairs director of the Catholic diocese of San Diego for the last 15 years, he's played a vital role in fostering religious understanding in America's sixth-largest city. Putting old suspicions to rest is a lifelong mission. 'He even has a mezuzah on his door,' says Rabbi Aaron Gold, a longtime friend. Last week, though, after hearing the largely negative Jewish responses to the pope's message, Mikulanis himself was feeling somewhat, well, misunderstood. 'I'll be very honest with you -- I'm disappointed in the Jewish reaction,' he said. 'Here's the Catholic Church, bending over backward to say mistakes were made, we were wrong. But nothing is ever enough. Can't we ever hear a simple 'Thank you'?' The pope had captured the world's imagination with his dramatic confession of Catholic wrongdoing through the centuries ... Almost as stunning was the gesture's speedy dismissal by Jewish spokesmen. Israel's Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, Yad Vashem director Avner Shalev, Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman -- one after another they leaped forward to voice 'disappointment.' Their shared complaint: the pope hadn't mentioned the Holocaust. There were variations, mostly in emphasis. The American Jewish Committee's statement was largely upbeat, though it too began with disappointment. Rabbi Lau, despite his distress, said he welcomed the pope's 'initiative to seek the forgiveness of the Jewish people' (actually, forgiveness was asked of God, not the Jews). A handful of voices, notably Rabbi David Rosen of ADL's Jerusalem office, accepted the confession as a moment of Catholic soul-wrestling. But they were virtually lost in the flood of negativity. Many Catholics were left stewing. Even Catholic ecumenical activists, normally Jews' staunchest defenders within the church, sounded uncharacteristically testy. 'It's interesting that people will make comments about what they expected from the confession,' says Father Lawrence Frizzell, director of the Institute for Judaeo-Christian Studies at New Jersey's Seton Hall University. 'It's not quite appropriate when discussing somebody else's liturgy. I don't criticize Yom Kippur.'"

Makers of Holiday Greeting Cards Dumb Down Christmas,
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, December 10, 2001
"Catholic League president William Donohue commented as follows: 'American Greetings is the worst offender of the mainline greeting card producers. By far the most obscene producer is Tomato cards. It has a card this year that mocks the Blessed Virgin Mary. 'What this just goes to show is that there is a contempt for Christianity among our elites in this country that has no rival. Sometimes the bias they sport is subdued and other times it is not. But that it exists is beyond question. Dumbing down Christmas is very important to these people otherwise they wouldn’t be working overtime to get the job done. We will do our best to inform the public as to their agenda.'" [Context: Morry Weiss is the CEO of American Greetings, America's largest greeting card company. It was founded by Weiss' father-in-law, Irving Stone, who has been a trustee for the Jewish Community Federation, Yeshiva University, and Young Israel).

Making Christmas Disappear,
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, December 20, 2001
"Many examples of making Christmas disappear have recently come to the attention of the Catholic League. Here are some of them: · An insert in the New York Times Magazine of November 18 entitled, 'The Best of the Season,' had a calendar section that listed events for Hanukkah on December 9 and Kwanzaa events for December 26. For December 25, the only listing was for 'A walking tour through a century-and-a-half of Jewish history' on the Lower East Side. · On December 3, the Copley News Service ran an article on 'Travel and Adventure' in New York. The only event listed for December 25 was a 'Jewish Lower East Side Tour.' · 'Holiday Light Spectacular' is the name of a booklet that covers events at Jones Beach that runs from November 17 to January 1. Released by New York State’s Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, the 'Holiday Trivia' section lists questions regarding Hanukkah, Winter Solstice and Kwanzaa. Christmas is not included. · The Farmer’s Almanac Every Day Calendar 2002 highlights Jewish holidays in a respectful way while ignoring or treating lightly Christian holidays. Catholic League president William Donohue remarked as follows: 'None of this is by accident. All of it is by design. Though none of it is organized, it remains true that many of our elites are at war against the values that have undergirded our society from the beginning. The instances cited above are no less invidious than the more blatant attacks on Catholicism that we’ve recorded. Those responsible for making Christmas disappear are not against cultural celebrations, per se: it’s just Christian ones they deplore.'”

Palestinian Christians Reject Israeli Charges,
Catholic World News (Catholic Online), 1997
"The Latin-rite Catholic Patriarchate of Jerusalem has reacted strongly to dispute recent stories that the Palestinian Authority has been engaged in discrimination against-- and even persecution of-- Palestinian Christians. The Patriarchate has reported continued friendly relations with Palestinian authorities, and dismissed the stories of persecution as propaganda efforts. Moreover, the Patriarchate-- which serves the spiritual need of Latin-rite Catholics among the Palestinian people-- argues that the Israel government itself has discriminated against Christians by cutting of Catholic (and Orthodox) radio broadcasts. Representatives of the Church have asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to restore their access to radio programming ... In late November the Israeli government released a report claiming that Yasser Arafat's regime was engaged in 'persecution' of Christians; the report argued that this persecution was the main reason for the steady flow of Christian emigrants away from the Holy Land. In a December 4 op-ed column for the Washington Times, Congressman J.C. Watts had repeated the Israeli claims, saying that Arafat was heading a 'brutal and relentless persecution' against Christians. Actually, the Jerusalem Patriarchate noted, 'Conditions for Christians bear no resemblance to the conditions portrayed by the Israeli report.' Dr. Wadie Nassar, a Church spokesman, reports that he has investigated every incident mentioned in the Israeli report, and found no basis for claims of anti-Christian bias in any case ... In fact, the Jerusalem Patriarchate turned the tables on the Israel government early in December, complaining that the state radio network had silenced the voice of Christians. Msgr. Giacintio-Boulos Marcuzzo, a spokesman for the Patriarchate, said that the broadcasts put out by the Catholic Church had been discontinued by the Voice of Israel's Arabic service. 'They have cut off an entire community,' said Msgr. Marcuzzo. 'This is evident religious discrimination and we want the situation to be changed.'"

Arafat: 'Who Is Sharon to Keep Me from Bethlehem?',
Jerusalem Post, December 24, 2001
"Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and top Roman Catholic cleric in the region, Michel Sabbah, met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in Ramallah this morning. 'Who is [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon to keep me from Bethlehem,' Arafat told Sabbah during the course of the meeting, Army Radio reported. 'No one can humiliate the Palestinians or make them lose their determination,' he said. Arafat will be allowed to leave Ramallah to attend Christmas Mass in Bethlehem if he arrests the assassins of slain tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi by sundown, Israel said today. Sabbah, a Palestinian, said he came to show his support for Arafat. 'The dignity of President Arafat is the dignity of all of us,' said Sabbah. 'The occupation situation is unfair to the Palestinians and they have to have their freedom. This is the message of Christmas.'" [Arafat, of Muslim heritage, is married to a Christian].

School Apologizes for Burning New Testament,
Jerusalem Post, December 25, 2001
"The organization that administers Orot school in Beit Shemesh issued an apology yesterday for publicly burning a copy of the New Testament a student received from Christian missionaries. 'Everybody knows we made a mistake,' said Jordana Klein, spokeswoman for Sha'alei Torah. 'We wouldn't do it again. We don't think it's the right thing to do.' The book-burning took place in the school courtyard the week before Hanukka, after a teacher in the boys' school found that one of his sixth-grade students had brought in a Hebrew copy of the New Testament. The student received it from local missionaries who, according to Klein, have been active in proselytizing Beit Shemesh children. 'The teacher said: 'God sent it and He gave us the privilege, and we'll be able to burn the New Testament,' said Ariel Lesnick, 11, who is in the class. The teacher consulted with the principal, Rabbi Yair Bachar, said Klein. After receiving approval, the teacher - whose name Klein refused to divulge - took his class outside. Then, Lesnick said, 'We took a few sticks and we burnt it.'"

Settler Violence and September 11, Tikkun, Nov/Dec 2001
"As the four teenagers in kippot approached the bus stop in Jerusalem where I was waiting for an Israeli friend, I instinctively whipped off the red hat that identified me as an international observer. A British friend visiting our team in Hebron had been wearing one when a settler assaulted her recently. The young men drew closer, and I realized with some panic that I had forgotten about the red Christian Peacemaker Team armband pinned to my sleeve. I looked at the ground to avoid making eye contact, but they stopped in front of me ... My initial reaction disturbed me. Recent experiences in Hebron had made me assume that the young men, because they were wearing kippot, had wanted to hurt me. All my anti-racism training had been for naught. I have worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron since 1995. Even if the end of my most recent tour of duty had not coincided with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I would have called the two months I spent there this summer among the most difficult of my experience. Before the calamities in the United States happened, I would have characterized summer 2001 in Hebron as 'Lord of the Flies: Book 2.' Teenage settler girls without fail assaulted Palestinian vendors in the vegetable market on the infrequent occasions when the Israeli military lifted the curfew there. The military would then reimpose curfew. (The rules of the game in Hebron: If Israelis are attacked by Palestinians, Palestinians are punished. If Palestinians are attacked by Israelis, Palestinians are punished.) Our British friend, a Ploughshares activist, had witnessed a girl heave a rock at a seventy-five-year-old man and then laugh as his white headscarf became soaked with blood. My friend pled with an adult male settler to stop the girls from throwing rocks. He proceeded to cover her Women in Black solidarity outfit with white globs of saliva, call her a Nazi, punch her in the head, and smash her camera."

Jewish Activist Cites Jesus In Lawsuit,
Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2002
"A Jewish activist believes Jesus is on his side in a lawsuit he filed against the city. Irv Rubin, who sued when a Mormon bishop used 'Jesus Christ' in a prayer before a Burbank City Council meeting, claims in a recent court document that the Lord himself would agree with his cause. '... Jesus disapproved of praying in public. Hypocrites pray in public because they want people to believe that they are inspired by God,' wrote Roger Jon Diamond, Rubin's attorney, in a brief filed Dec. 18. In it, Diamond cites biblical passages that allegedly support his argument. But getting rid of the prayer period before council meetings is not Rubin's goal -- just eliminating specific references to any deity. Rubin sued the city in December 1999, a month after the disputed prayer, saying it violated the mandated separation of church and state." [Rubin was arrested in 2001 on charges of planning to bomb a mosque and Arab senator's office]

He Said What?, Hearst News Media
[Interview with the British Monty Python comedian group about their film about Christ, "The Life of Brian"]
"It's kind of like with Life of Brian, we cut Otto out. Even though it was his sketch, Eric was very keen to cut it out, and I think it was because he was living in Hollywood and worried about offending 'Jews who run Hollywood,' or because he works in Hollywood and half his friends are Jewish. I don't know, I thought, 'This is crazy. We made a film to offend everybody! If we're going to offend the Christians, come on!' We ended up cutting it out because both Terry and I felt dramatically it could go, but I regret cutting Otto because Otto was a really funny idea, a really funny scene--its problem is it just came at the wrong point of the film."

Goldhagen's Smear. Catholicism, Nazism, and the Holocaust, andrewsullivan.com (also in the New Republic), January 17, 2002
"I've now read [Daniel Jonah] Goldhagen's essay several times [entitled 'What Would Jesus Have Done?' in the New Republic] to absorb what I think I was reading ....In fact, the only original thing in Goldhagen's essay is something else. He uses others' scholarship to advance a new claim: that there was no relevant moral difference between Nazism and Catholicism in the 1930s and 1940s. Yes, there are phrases designed to insulate him from such criticisms, but I see no other way to interpret his piece as a whole. For Goldhagen, the cross and the swastika are interchangeable. This strikes me as not only offensive, but deeply dangerous. By regarding the Catholic Church as morally indistinguishable from the Nazi Party, Goldhagen disturbingly undermines the uniqueness of the evil Hitler represented. Does Goldhagen make such an outrageous claim? I'm afraid I see no other way to interpret his piece ... The Pope is a more tempting target, especially in a culture where anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice. Nor will any Catholic be unaware of the ancient slur that the papacy is an instrument of the anti-Christ. It is a staple of street bigots. Goldhagen deploys it more than once. In fact, he argues that the Church was actually 'serving' a human anti-Christ, i.e. Hitler, and that 'any evaluation of the Catholic Church as a moral institution must centrally' take that into account. The anti-Christ, huh?"

Catholics, Jews Unitd to Attack Scholar's Latest,
[Jewish] Forward, January 18, 2002
"'Anti-Semitism led to the Holocaust,' wrote Mr. [Daniel] Goldhagen, a former Harvard professor and author of a controversial 1996 book, 'Hitler's Willing Executioners.' 'Anti-Semitism has been integral to the Catholic Church. Surely the question of what the relationship is between the church's anti-Semitism and the Holocaust should be at the center of any general treatment of either of these subjects.' Eugene Fisher, associate director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, lashed out at Mr. Goldhagen. 'This is a remarkably uninformed piece,' said Mr. Fisher, who has been involved for many years in Jewish-Catholic dialogue. 'He lives in fantasy land and he is making this up. It's a sad case and he ought to see a psychiatrist.' Rabbi David Rosen, international director of inter-religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, said that Mr. Goldhagen 'has an unconcealed antagonism against the Catholic Church, and it shows' ... However, Seymour Reich, chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, the official Jewish liaison with the Vatican, praised the Goldhagen article as 'very powerful' and believed it would have a 'great impact.'"

Vatican's Shameful Secret, The Times [of London], January 18, 2002
"It is a sordid and shocking story, if true. The Roman Catholic Church is accused of fuelling the rise of anti-Semitism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its own ghettos and anti-Jewish laws were models for the Nazis. The Vatican allowed Jewish children to be seized, separated from their parents and forced into the Catholic faith. Its pet newspapers ran racist campaigns that are vile even by the poisonous standards of the era. And its priests enthusiastically endorsed and encouraged a revival of the atrocious medieval accusation that Jews were ritually murdering Christian priests and children. To all this a succession of Popes — from Pius VII in Napoleonic times to Pius XII, who negotiated a mutually beneficial concordat with Hitler — turned a blind eye. Thus was the road to the Holocaust paved with godly intentions. This is the substance of Unholy War, a savage new book by the [Jewish] American historian David Kertzer, a professor at Brown University."

You Mean Hitler Wasn't a Priest?, National Review, January 21, 2002
"A shocking story has been revealed: Adolf Hitler was not a Christian after all. Instead, he hoped to destroy Christianity. This news flash comes courtesy of a group of students at Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, who have posted papers on a website detailing Hitler's desire to eradicate Christianity. The documents are from the archives of Gen. William J. Donovan and were originally prepared for the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, so we can safely assume they are authentic. To be sure, Hitler's antagonism toward Christianity will not be news to everyone. That its central figure hails from a Jewish family did not set well with him, and its teachings of universal love ran contrary to his violent precepts. Yet one could easily get the impression, these days, that Hitler believed himself to be something of an altar boy on a mission for God ... The Rutgers project's editor, for example, seems to have been taken a bit by surprise. Julie Seltzer Mandel told the Philadelphia Enquirer that 'When people think about the Holocaust, they think about the crimes against Jews, but here's a different perspective.' The Nazis, she says, 'wanted to eliminate the Jews altogether, but they were also looking to eliminate Christianity.' That will unsettle those who have been taught that Hitler was a Christian of some stripe — and indeed, by some accountings, an enthusiastic Catholic."

Urgent Call for Prayer: The Arab Evangelical School, Ramallah,
Episcopal Church (episcopalchurch.com), January 18, 2002
"Early this morning the Israeli military broke through the doors from the playground to the school and forced their way into the Arab Evangelical School in Ramallah, one of the service institutions of the Diocese of Jerusalem. The School building was entered under threat of harm by the soldiers, and each classroom and office searched. Samira Nasser, the School's director arrived and was told by the Israel soldiers to return to her home, and that if she stayed she would be in danger. Soldiers are now stationed at the main entrance to the school and have prevented The Rev. George Al Kopti, rector to St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Ramallah, and Sister Najah Rantisi, of the Evangelical Home, from leaving the premises. At any attempt to leave, they have been threatened by the military, both verbally and with weapons. There are also nineteen children, aged three to seventeen, currently boarding at the Evangelical Home, adjacent to the school. The Arab Evangelical School and Home are under the ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, and as such are on church property. It is very serious indeed, when military forces forcibly enter church property."

NPR Admits Error in Anthrax Story Naming Conservative Group,
CNS News (Cyberspace News Service), January 31, 2002
"While refusing to issue a direct apology, National Public Radio Tuesday admitted that it was 'inappropriate' to name the [Christian] Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) in connection with a story the network was doing about the anthrax investigation ... 'A story last week about the ongoing anthrax investigation mentioned the Traditional Values Coalition, whom we called to ask if they had been contacted by the FBI. They said they had not since there is no evidence that they were or should be investigated. It was inappropriate to name them on the air,' [NPR spokesman Jess] Sarmiento said ... . 'The battle against National Public Radio continues,' [TVC chairman Lew] Sheldon said. He also said TVC is going ahead with a lawsuit against NPR. According to the transcript from NPR's Morning Edition program last week, reporter David Kestenbaum said, 'Two of the anthrax letters were sent to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy, both Democrats. One group who had a gripe with Daschle and Leahy is the Traditional Values Coalition, which, before the attacks, had issued a press release criticizing the senators for trying to remove the phrase 'so help me God' from the oath.'' Kestenbaum also reported, 'The Traditional Values Coalition, however, told me the FBI had not contacted them and then issued a press release saying NPR was in the pocket of the Democrats and trying to frame them. But investigators are thinking along these lines. FBI agents won't discuss the case, but the people they have spoken with will.'"

Christians Who Hate Jews, The Spectator (UK), February 16, 2002
(Both the editor of this journal, and author of this piece, are Jewish)
"It was one of those sickening moments when an illusion is shattered and an ominous reality laid bare. I was among a group of Jews and Christians who met recently to discuss the Churches’ increasing public hostility to Israel. The Jews were braced for a difficult encounter. After all, many British Jews (of whom I am one) are themselves appalled by the destruction of Palestinian villages, targeted assassinations and other apparent Israeli overreactions to the Middle East conflict. But this debate never took place. For the Christians said that the Churches’ hostility had nothing to do with Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinians. This was merely an excuse. The real reason for the growing antipathy, according to the Christians at that meeting, was the ancient hatred of Jews rooted deep in Christian theology and now on widespread display once again. A doctrine going back to the early Church fathers, suppressed after the Holocaust, had been revived under the influence of the Middle East conflict. This doctrine is called replacement theology. In essence, it says that the Jews have been replaced by the Christians in God’s favour, and so all God’s promises to the Jews, including the land of Israel, have been inherited by Christianity."

Disney Shareholders Asked to Dump Miramax,
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, February 19, 2002
"On February 5, Catholic League president William Donohue faxed a letter to [Jewish] Disney chairman Michael Eisner and [Jewish] Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein requesting that they reschedule the opening of '40 Days and 40 Nights' until after Easter. The movie is about a Catholic, played by Josh Hartnett, who pledges to give up sex for Lent but has his will tested by his ex-girlfriend. Some movie critics have already noted the vulgar content of the film and have questioned the propriety of opening the show during Lent. It is rated R for 'strong sexual content, nudity and language.' It is precisely because the film is scheduled to open during Lent (March 1) that Donohue requested the opening be postponed until after Easter. On February, 6 a New York newspaper reported that Miramax had turned down the request. Hence, the decision to appeal to the Disney shareholders via the Hartford Courant. In 1995, the Catholic League protested the Miramax-distributed movie 'Priest' and succeeded in getting the film’s opening bumped from Good Friday. In 1999, following a Catholic League protest, Disney succeeded in getting Miramax to find another distributor for 'Dogma.' Now the Catholic League is asking Disney’s shareholders to support our effort in getting Disney to dump Miramax once and for all."

The Cross and the Swastika, Sobran's, February 5, 2002
"In the democratic West we are seeing a renewed conflation of Christianity and 'anti-Semitism.' A flood of books and articles have tried to blame anti-Semitism (still vaguely defined) on Christian doctrine, especially Catholic doctrine. Many of the attacks focus on Pope Pius XII, who has been called 'Hitler’s Pope.' Some actually blame Christianity for the murder of six million Jews. The latest and most audacious entry in the campaign to equate Catholicism and anti-Semitism is that of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of the forthcoming book A Moral Reckoning: The Catholic Church during the Holocaust and Today, to be published by Knopf. A long excerpt has just appeared in The New Republic. Goldhagen goes far beyond the now-routine charge that Pius XII was culpably 'silent' during the Holocaust. This charge, by the way, falls under the heading of Virtual Truth — a falsehood repeated so often that it becomes futile to refute it. During World War II, the New York Times praised Pius for being the only major figure in Europe who was not silent about racial persecution: 'a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent' ... But Pius XII isn’t Goldhagen’s ultimate target; Christianity is. He contends that the central Christian doctrine — the doctrine of the Crucifixion — is anti-Semitic! After all, the Gospels mention a Jewish role in that event. Goldhagen seems to imply, without explanation, that this is factually false. In Goldhagen’s mind, the Cross begot the Swastika. Nazism was the updated spawn of the earliest Christian teachings and the Holocaust was their fulfillment."

School is Planning Apology to Catholics. Pregnant nun costumes had won faculty award, by Andrea Estes, Boston Globe, December 6, 2001
"In a town that touts its tolerance and diversity, Catholic leaders in Sharon are incensed over a school Halloween contest they say was anti-Catholic. The winners were three male students, two of whom dressed as pregnant nuns. The third dressed as their priest and impregnator. The trio were singled out by a faculty panel, as part of Sharon High School's annual Halloween Day festivities. They won the most comical costume award. 'The event was outrageous and deeply offensive,' said the Rev. Robert Bullock, pastor of the town's only Roman Catholic Church, Our Lady of Sorrows. 'It was a mockery of Catholic religious persons' ... School Committee chairman Mitchell Blaustein said at first he didn't see the problem. 'Being majority Jewish in a community and having it happen to Catholic kids, first I needed to educate myself,' he said. 'I know the kids didn't mean any malice, but they also didn't really think what they did would be insensitive to some other kids' ... 'Everyone I spoke to thought it was funny. No one I personally spoke to thought it was insulting, so it took me a while to realize the seriousness of it,' he said ... Catholics make up a tiny minority of the town's population, which is overwhelmingly Jewish, Bullock said. There is one Catholic church in the town and seven synagogues."

Should Non-Catholics Run the Catholic Church?, by [Jewish author] Paul Gottleib, LewRockwell.com, March 15, 2002
"... A man identified as the secretary general of the Spanish Jewish Federation, Carlos Schorr, fumes that the church would consider for high honors [Queen Isabella] someone who had engaged in religious persecution, though he adds that not being a Catholic or being in charge of the church, the call is not really his to make. The same piece, published in a Jewish Global News Service, explains that the consideration of Isabella for canonization is the latest in a series of offenses that the church has recently inflicted on Jews and other sensitive people. For example, the church canonized Edith Stein, who died in a concentration camp as a Jewish woman but had previously become a Catholic. And the church has the temerity to propose Pius XII as a saint, despite the fact that 'he was generally silent during the Holocaust.' The collected gripes here reproduced have the value of one enormous whine. Having studied the matter, I think Pius deserves praise (canonization I leave to the church) precisely for his admirable behavior in helping out Jews during the Holocaust. As for Edith Stein, I suppose the same objection raised against her canonization could be made just as easily against St. Paul, who abandoned the Jewish community of his time by taking on Christian beliefs. I am also struck by the fact that the Spanish Jewish leader quoted does not have a Sephardic but a Central or Eastern European Jewish name."

Mother in Bethelehem, rense.com, March 18, 2002
"[FROM BETHLEHEM] I watched the Hebrew news in English last night and I heard all their pretty justifications for what they are doing. They're 'withholding the full extent of their military power.' They're 'acting with restraint out of concern for minimizing civilian casualties.' They're 'disabling weapons factoriesj.' They're 'dismantling the terrorist infrastructure.' Their purpose is 'to establish a cease-fire and return to negotiations.' Their "highest priority is peace.' All this must sound so pacifying to the ears of the West. So proper. So civilized. So sterile. So believable from a distance. And then we switched the channel and came back to reality, up close and oh, so personal. As the local cameramen made their way from house to house, street to street, and camp to camp, we watched in horrified numbness. No words could possibly describe what the camera was showing us. The young woman with the baby on her hip just shook her head, speechless, gesturing to the rubble of the home behind her with tears slipping down her cheeks. The old man gazed uncomprehendingly at what remained of his home, his face seeming to collapse in on itself. The old woman, standing amid splinters of furniture, tore at her headscarf shouting, 'What can I say? What should I say?? What is there to say???' What can and must be said is that heavily armed Israeli soldiers, accompanied by tanks, bulldozers, and helicopters, entered the miserable homes of some of the most impoverished and wretched souls on the face of this earth and vandalized everything in sight. They broke furniture, slashed clothing and bedding, shattered dishes and tvs, stole what money and valuables they could find, and then knocked down the walls themselves, leaving nothing. Leaving people who were already refugees homeless once again. They entered shops and vandalized the merchandise. They entered sewing workshops and vandalized the sewing machines. They entered computer clubs and vandalized the computers. They entered printing shops and vandalized the typesetting equipment. They entered a small appliance repair shop and what was left was not even recognizable. Words are truly inadequate to describe the destruction. It must be seen to be believed, and it must be believed because it is the ugly reality behind the pretty words."

Steinem Blames White Male Dominance for Church Sex Scandal, 9-11,
Newsmax, March 25, 2002
"Gloria Steinem, who has led the feminist movement for decades, lashed out this weekend at the Catholic Church and blamed the pedophile scandal on its male-dominated hierarchy – a structure she also blamed for creating Adolf Hitler. Speaking at a charity luncheon for the YWCA of Palm Beach County, Fla., this past Friday, Steinem began her speech by saying, 'I hardly know where to begin.' 'To create a hierarchy of authority and sanctity and then suppress sexuality as a natural form of expression and subject these men to total control,' Steinem said, 'well, it's almost natural that some of them will then seek control over people lower down in the power structure.' Steinem also claimed that pedophile priests were victims, just as the children they had abused, of the male-dominated church hierarchy. According to a press report, Steinem drew a clear line connecting male dominance, the church sex scandals and the terrorists who wreaked havoc on Sept. 11. Steinem then drew a link between the Church sex scandal and Adolf Hitler. 'Let's not forget that Hitler was elected from a society with a strong patriarchal authoritative structure,' Steinem said. 'We can't begin to know how much less violence there could be in the world if one generation of children was raised without violence,' Steinem claimed. According to Steinem, all evil finds its origin in the male gender."

Vatican: Jews on Panel Seek Propaganda,
Seattle Times, August 8, 2001
"The Vatican yesterday accused some Jewish historians on a joint Catholic-Jewish research commission of having 'a clear propagandistic goal to damage the Holy See' as they press for access to its World War II archives. The historians have leaked 'distorted and tendentious news' and are guilty of 'irresponsible behavior,' said the statement, issued with Vatican approval by the Rev. Peter Gumpel, a German Jesuit priest."

Fire Set in Basement of Landmark Church,
Oakland Press, March 31, 2002
"A man allegedly tried to set the National Shrine of the Little Flower Catholic Church in Royal Oak, an Oakland County landmark, on fire during a Saturday morning prayer service. The suspect, a 25-year-old Huntington Woods man, was overpowered and held by parishioners after he allegedly set fire to a gasoline-soaked wastebasket in a basement bathroom at about 9:45 a.m. ... It appears the man poured gasoline into the trash can, set it on fire and spray-painted numerous Stars of David on the walls before he tried to leave, said Thibodeau and Wightman. 'One of our parishioners grabbed the can and took it out of the church, while other parishioners held the man,' Thibodeau said. Wightman said the man admitted setting the fire. The suspect's name is not being released until his arraignment Monday morning in 44th District Court."

Israeli Tanks Enter Nablus,
BBC, April 3, 2002
"In Bethlehem, Israeli soldiers are still surrounding the Church of the Nativity, where more than 100 Palestinian police and militiamen have taken refuge. The BBC's Caroline Hawley, in Jerusalem, says that mounting international criticism is falling on deaf Israeli ears and officials seem determined to press on with what they call a 'war on terror' ... Amid growing calls for an Israeli withdrawal, United Nations staff have accused Israeli forces of wanton destruction in areas they have occupied ... The BBC's James Reynolds, who is in Bethlehem, said that the streets were deserted and strewn with rubble, glass and broken water pipes. Our correspondent says that most people are still staying at home, too afraid to move. Three Palestinian gunmen and at least four non-combatants are reported to have been killed in Bethlehem."

Italian Priest Killed in Bethlehem,
Reuters, April 2, 2002
"An Italian priest was killed on Tuesday during fierce fighting in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, the Roman Catholic Missionary Service News Agency (MISNA) reported. MISNA said Jacques Amateis died in St. Mary's convent in Bethlehem. The news agency said it received confirmation of his death from a Jesuit priest who also worked in the biblical town and who was a friend of Amateis. Amateis, 65, was a member of the Salesian religious order. Italian media said he was killed by a burst of gunfire while saying mass inside the church. A number of nuns were also reported to have been injured in the attack ... Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has demanded an explanation from Israeli authorities into the Bethlehem attack, diplomatic sources said. Witnesses in Bethlehem said outgunned Palestinians fought desperately to keep Israeli troops out of the central Manger Square after tanks and armored vehicles pushed into the West Bank town near Jerusalem overnight. Helicopter gunships poured fire into Manger Square, near the Church of Nativity, where Christians believe Jesus was born, after a Palestinian fighter damaged a tank with a grenade, the witnesses said."

Pope Accuses Israel of Humiliating Palestinians,
Times (of London), April 4, 2002
"Israeli troops pushed farther into the West Bank yesterday as the Vatican summoned the Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See to accuse his country of imposing 'unjust conditions and humiliations' upon the Palestinians. The Vatican also denounced suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism by Palestinian extremists against Israeli civilians, reflecting the Pope’s growing alarm over the threat to Jerusalem’s Holy Sites posed by the fighting. It said that the Pope believed that reprisals and revenge attacks did nothing but feed the sense of frustration and hatred in “this dramatic situation”. The burden of the Vatican’s remarks was, however, seen by diplomats as anti-Israeli, with the statement calling on Israel to use proportionate force in acts of legitimate self-defence. It said Israel should respect United Nations resolutions, a reference to Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian-ruled areas. L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, accused Israel of desecrating the birthplace of Jesus, as Israeli tanks encircled Manger Square in Bethlehem."

Vatican: Respect for Holy Sites is 'Absolute Priority,'
Haaretz, April 9, 2002
"Earlier Monday, the Palestinian governor of Bethlehem said IDF troops and tanks opened fire at the church. Military sources said, however, that the troops began shooting only after they were fired upon. In Rome, the Franciscans on Monday condemned the reported army assault on the church as an act of 'indescribable barbarity' with long-term consequences. Father David Jaeger, spokesman for custodians of Catholic sites in the Holy Land, who is currently in Rome, told Reuters he had been told by telephone that IDF troops had begun firing on the convent and that a fire had started. 'This is an act of indescribable barbarity. It is a violation of every law of humanity and civilisation. It is a violation of the explicit and repeated public and diplomatic guarantees of the State of Israel with consequences that will be long-term and incalculable,' he said. Church officials prevented from marching to Bethlehem Also Monday, the IDF prevented senior members of the Greek Orthodox and Christian churches from marching from Jerusalem to Bethlehem as an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians in the West Bank town. The Orthodox Patriarchs and Christian leaders had intended to head to the Church of the Nativity, but had to abandon the plan when IDF troops refused to let them pass the roadblock."

'Anti-Christian' Feelings Exploding In Israel, by Israel Shahak,
Rense.com, (posted April 7, 2002)
"Dishonouring Christian religious symbols is an old religious duty in Judaism. Spitting on the cross, an especially on the Crucifix, and spitting when a Jew passes a church, have been obligatory from around AD 200 for pious Jews. In the past, when the danger of anti-Semitic hostility was a real one, the pious Jews were commanded by their rabbis either to spit so that the reason for doing so would be unknown, or to spit onto their chests, not actually on the cross or openly before the church. The increasing strength of the Jewish state has caused these customs to become more open again but there should be no mistake: The spitting on the cross for converts from Christianity to Judaism, organized in Kibbutz Sa'ad and financed by the Israeli government is an act of traditional Jewish piety."

Israeli Army Attack at Bethlehem Basilica Roils Franciscans,
Zenit, April 8, 2002
"The Franciscans at the monastery next to the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem accused Israel of attacking the sacred place early today and causing a fire. Father Gianfranco Pinto Ostuni, press director of the Minor Friars´ General Curia, told Vatican Radio that the 'fire was caused by the assault of the Israeli special troops. It began at 3:15 a.m. and ended around 4:30 a.m.' 'Israeli soldiers were lowered from the roofs with ropes,' he added. 'They destroyed stained glass windows and seriously damaged an old mosaic that is in the basilica, in the area administered by the Armenians.' 'Suffice it to know that during the different invasions of Bethlehem this mosaic saved the basilica. Invaders respected that church because of the mosaic´s remarkable artistic value,' he said. 'This time there has been no mercy.' Father David Jaeger, spokesman for the Custodians of the Holy Places, told the Vatican missionary agency Fides: 'This is a horrible act of barbarity, which will have unimaginable consequences.' Franciscan priests said that personal belongings of the Israeli troops were found inside the monastery, Fides reported. Father Jaeger believes that this means that some Israelis had penetrated the compound and are hiding, awaiting a blitz. Israeli military said the fire was caused on purpose to cover up a Special Unit incursion."

Israel-Vatican Relations Threatened,
Yahoo! News (from Associated Press), April 8, 2002
"Some church officials, including a Franciscan friar who briefed senior Vatican officials on the situation, were less diplomatic, angrily accusing Israel of provoking the unprecedented violence around one of Christianity's holiest shrines. A senior Israeli army officer said two Israeli border policemen, wounded when they came under fire from Palestinian gunmen inside the compound, had thrown a smoke bomb that sparked the blaze. But the Rev. David Jaeger of the office of the Custodian of Catholic sites in the Holy Land called the pre-dawn clash and fire an Israeli attack that violates 'every canon of human decency. It shreds the credibility of the people who launched it.' The fire burned in a second-floor meeting hall above the courtyard of St. Catherine's church adjacent to the Church of the Nativity, which is built over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born. The blaze destroyed a piano, chairs, altar cloths and ceremonial cups belonging to St. Catherine's, the site of midnight Mass every Christmas in Bethlehem. Palestinians in the compound said an Israeli soldier shot and killed a Palestinian policeman, 23-year-old Khaled Syam, as he went to put out the fire ... .Last Thursday, four dozen Israeli soldiers stormed buildings of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, locking the Rev. Mitri Raheb in his office for two hours and threatening him at gunpoint as they searched offices, a guest house and a conference center, the clergyman said. Raheb said at the time 35 doors were broken, 55 windows shattered and a 19th-century stained glass was cracked. The army had no comment."

Monk Shot and Seriously Wounded in Bethlehem,
Haaretz (Israeli newspaper), April 10, 2002
"An Armenian monk was shot and seriously wounded Wednesday in the Church of the Nativity compound in Bethlehem, where dozens of Palestinian gunmen have been holed up with a group of monks since last week, when IDF troops entered the West Bank town, traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Christ. A senior IDF source confirmed that monk, Armin Sinanian, 22, had most likely been hit by IDF fire ... Military sources say that according to an initial investigation conducted by the army, it appears that the monk was mistakenly shot by an Israeli sniper. The monk was one of four clergymen who wanted to take water into the Church of the Nativity, and it appears he was shot when the sniper tried to hit an armed man standing next to them, but hit the monk instead. According to reports on the ground, the monk was shot by Israeli troops positioned in the guest wing of the Franciscan monastery. IDF sources insist that the wing is not part of the monastery but is actually located in a nearby hotel, but the Franciscans have disputed this, saying that the wing is part of the Nativity Church compound ... Far-right National Union-Yisrael Beiteinu party chief Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday that Israeli forces should employ gas to force Palestinian militants out of the Church of the Nativity. Lieberman told Army Radio that instead of endangering IDF infantrymen, Israel should order aerial bombings of militants in refugee camps."

Conflict Has Local Echoes,
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia), April 12, 2002
"Relations between local Jews and Christians are being strained by the escalating violence in the Middle East. A long-standing annual inter-faith Sydney service has been cancelled for fear it would be politicised by the presence of the Israeli consul-general, Effi Ben-Matityahu. Jewish representatives yesterday deplored the decision by the Council of Christians and Jews to postpone the Christian service at St Mary's Cathedral commemorating the Holocaust. 'We have received no satisfactory reason as to why the service was cancelled,' chairman of the Shoah Remembrance Committee, David Knoll said. 'There is a clear need for events such as the traditional service during the week of Holocaust awareness to enable Christian regret to be expressed.'"

From Renewal to Rubble in Occupied Bethlehem,
International Herald Tribune, April 15, 2002
"Israeli tanks have turned historic Madbassah Square into rubble, three years after it was renovated at a cost of $2 million. Fires and explosives have ruined a 300-year-old pilgrims' hostel with soaring arches that took two years to refurbish. A once-sparkling new artists' colony, recently completed for $600,000, has been ransacked and defaced. Starting in 1998, the people of Bethlehem began an ambitious makeover of their dilapidated city, sinking more than $250 million into projects designed to lure tourists to a destination that Christians venerate as the birthplace of Jesus. Most of the money came from foreign governments and aid agencies, which had hoped to turn Bethlehem into a showplace for an emerging Palestinian state. The centerpiece of the effort was the 2000 Millennium celebrations, which brought Pope John Paul II and numerous heads of state to the town of 30,000 people. Today, however, Bethlehem's Old City is in tatters, and the cost of repairing the damage to its historic and holy sites is expected to be enormous. Israeli troops have methodically blown up buildings and torn up the freshly paved streets since they invaded on April 2, destroying most of what had been accomplished in recent years and instilling in residents a deep sense of despair over what they view as a noble but wasted effort to revive the town. 'Everything has just collapsed,' said the mayor, Hanna Nasser. 'It has been a most terrible, most savage and most brutal occupation. I cannot imagine right now what our future will look like.'"

Good Priests, Bad Rabbis,
Ukrainian Archive
"Jewish control of the media permits Jews to launch a preemptive disinformation strike at others for sins of which they themselves are most guilty. For example, when Jews themselves have been among the leading war criminals throughout the interval of living memory, they stage show trials featuring the exaggerated or imagined war criminality of others. What the evidence presented in the present letter suggests is that Jewish clerics find themselves in an extremely vulnerable position. Rabbinical sex crimes are widespread and egregious. Rabbinical doctrines and practices would, if exposed to Western eyes, be considered more backward and savage than those of the Taliban. And rabbinical economic crimes are staggering. The response of Jews to their high, and perhaps increasing, vulnerability is not to reform themselves, but to attack others. Already losing their war against Islam, Jews launch a second front against Christianity — one might think an ill-advised tactic, but given the flight of their intelligentsia away from Judaism, those Jews who still remain find themselves without the intellectual resources to devise a superior plan."

[Israeli] Court Rejects Franciscan Petition on Church of Nativity,
Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2002
"The High Court of Justice last night rejected a petition by the International Custodian of the Holy Land - the Franciscan Order in Israel - to order the IDF to transfer food, water, and medicine to male and female monks in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, and to reconnect the church's water and electricity. The Franciscan Order also petitioned the court to allow the burial of two Palestinian gunmen who were killed in an exchange of fire with solders. Their bodies remain in the church compound ... The government's representative, attorney Yochi Gansin, defended the IDF's position and told the court the monks are free to leave whenever they want, but choose to remain to protect the sanctity of the building. A lawyer for the church confirmed that claim. According to court deliberations, the IDF regularly transfers food, water, and medicine to the clergy, but is not prepared to reconnect the water and electricity since this would help the gunmen."

Plaintiffs Say Shocked By Posting of 10 Commandments,
The Chattanoogan (TN), April 29, 2002
"Several plaintiffs testifying in Federal Court on Monday said they were 'shocked' that the Hamilton County Commission posted the 10 Commandments in three public buildings. 'I was shocked. I felt like I had to do something to stop them,' said Tracy Knauss, a local publisher and photographer who is one of the plaintiffs. Mr. Knauss said he is not a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, though many of the plaintiffs said they were. The ACLU and 14 individuals are seeking to have Judge Al Edgar order the plaques to be taken down. Hedy Weinberg, ACLU executive director for Tennessee since 1984, said the postings violate the separation of church and state. She said the ACLU has 131 members in Hamilton County. One of those is Rabbi Phillip Posner of Mizpah Congregation, who said the tablets 'are offensive to me. I see it as a form of civic idolotry.' He said the 10 Commandments were not meant 'to cause a sense of rancor and divisiveness,' and he said there are many different texts of the commandments."

Hostility to Christianity and non-Jews in Jewish Jokes
(A few samples of jokes, mentioned at an online discussion group by an anonymous scholar)

More Discussion of Jewish Jokes
(from WHEN VICTIMS RULE. A CRITIQUE OF JEWISH-PRE-EMINENCE IN AMERICA)

Edward Alexander: Praying for Nazis, Scolding Their Victims. Archbishop Tutu's Christian Message to Israel, (Alexander, the author of this piece, is a Jewish professor in Seattle, WA; His subject, Tutu, is a Black Nobel Prize winner for his activism against South African apartheid),
Independent Media Resarch Analysis (Israel) [from Seattle Times, January 18, 1990
"On the day after Christmas, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Anglican Primate of South Africa and holder of the Nobel Peace Prize, standing before the memorial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to the millions of Jews murdered by Hitler, prayed for the murderers and sermonized the descendants of their victims. "We pray for those who made it happen, help us to forgive them and help us so that we in our turn will not make others suffer" (New York Times, 27 December 1989). This, he said, was his "message" to the Israeli children and grandchildren of the dead. Moral obtuseness, mean spite, and monstrous arrogance do not make for sound ethics and theology. Neither Tutu nor the Israelis he lectured can "forgive" the Nazi murderers. Representatives of an injured group are not licensed (even by the most unctuous of preachers) to forgive on behalf of the whole group. In fact, forgiveness issues from God alone. The forgiveness Tutu offers the Nazis is truly pitiless because it forgets the victims, blurs over suffering, and drowns the past. No one familiar with Tutu's long record of hostility to Jews, Judaism, and Israel will be surprised that he is far less moved by the actuality of what the Nazis did ('the gas chambers,' he once said, "made for a neater death" than apartheid resettlement policies) than by the hypothetical potentiality of what, in his jaundiced view, Israelis "might" do. His speeches against apartheid return obsessively to gross, licentious equations between the South African system and Jewish practices, biblical and modern. 'The Jews,' Tutu declared in 1984, 'thought they had a monopoly on God' and "Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings" (Hartford Courant, 29 October 1984). Tutu has been an avid supporter of the Goebbels-like equation of Zionism with racism. He has alleged that 'Jews . . . think they have cornered the market on suffering' (Shimoni, 51) and that Jews are 'quick to yell 'antisemitism'' because of 'an arrogance of power--because Jews have such a strong lobby in the United States' (New York City Tribune, 27 November 1984)."

Two Jewish folktales about the Pope. In The Jewish Pope, a Jewish illegitimate child is given a vasectomy by a rabbi to prevent further "bastardy." In later life, married, this sterile Jew is exposed as a bastard. Shamed, he divorces his wife, becomes a Christian, and eventually becomes the Pope. The story ends when he "curses the Christian religion" and jumps into a bonfire "in the name of the God of Israel." In Elchanan the Pope, the Pope discovers he is actually a Jew, kidnapped as child by Christians. Reconnecting with his long-lost father, Rabbi Shimon the Wise, the Pope is told that he has defiled the Jewish faith and must commit suicide. The Catholic leader then climbs up a tower, denounces Christianity to all below, declares his cardinals to be insane, and leaps to his death, "martyred in God's name."

Jewish Film Producers Anger Mexican Catholics,
La Voz de Aztlan, Tenochtitlan, Mexico, August 13, 2002
"Jewish film producers Alfredo Ripstein and Daniel Birman Ripstein, of Alameda Films in Mexico City, have insulted and angered millions of devout Mexican Catholics as well as the hierarchy of the Mexican Catholic Church with their release of what has been called a 'blasphemous and sacrilegious anti-Catholic film.' The film 'El Crimen del Padre Amaro' (The Crime of Father Amaro) depicts Catholic priests as being sexually immoral and as taking 'narcolimosnas' or handouts from Mexican drug cartels ... The film has been condemned by the Mexican Catholic Church and a strong protest sent to President Vicente Fox by many Catholic organizations because government funds were used , in part, to produce the film. Among the most energetic condemnations is that of Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez of Guadalajara. He affirmed that the film by the Jewish producers was partially financed by the Mexican government through the 'Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE)' and the "Fondo de Fomento a la Producción de Cine de Calidad (Foprocine)". The Director of IMCINE is Alfredo Joskowicz, a Mexican Jew and good friend of the Riptseins."

Press release to the Jewish Tribal Review from lawyer Jonathan Levy about lawsuits for over $1 billion against the Vatican

New Hampshire Attorney Unleashes Catholic 'Witch Hunt,'
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, October 2, 2002
"Mark A. Abramson, a New Hampshire attorney, has gone into court seeking all Catholic clergy personnel and probation files, archives and complaints of sexual abuse made to the Diocese of Manchester. The names of the alleged victims are not being released by Abramson. This, in turn, has led diocesan lawyers to file a motion forcing the release of the names. Catholic League president William Donohue opined as follows: 'Mark A. Abramson has shown no interest in obtaining the personnel files of ministers, rabbis, imams, teachers, social workers or psychologists. Just priests. His sense of fairness also allows him to oppose due process rights of Roman Catholic priests: they have no right, in his mind, to know the identity of their accuser ... For his ‘witch-hunt’ efforts, we are including Mark A. Abramson in our 2002 annual report on anti-Catholicism. Indeed, we are mailing him a box of our 2001 annual reports today so he can get an idea what his entry will look like. Unlike Abramson, the Catholic League likes to name names.”

Urgent Action Item! TFP Denounces Anti-Catholic Card Marketing, American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property, February 22, 2002
"It is a sad state of things when even a simple trip to the supermarket could be an occasion to view insults ridiculing the Faith. That is exactly what is happening as a leading greeting card company is marketing cards with dirty jokes and cartoons about Jesus, Mary and the Catholic Faith. In response, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) and its affiliate campaign, America Needs Fatima, announced today the launching of a massive grassroots campaign of peaceful protest and reparation. The campaign will focus on the New Jersey-based NobleWorks which has released an 'extreme' line of cards that it admits will be offensive. Among its blasphemous cards, NobleWorks has a Mother's Day card showing Mary warning Jesus to wear clean undergarments in case he is crucified! The birthday card selection includes a card showing a priest near a urinal with the sign 'holy water' above it. There are even Christmas cards that ridicule the Nativity scene." [Protesters are directed to write to the NobleWorks president, Ron Kanfi. A google.com search finds that many Jews have that surname]