farmdoc's blog post number 283

Last 13 December I wrote of anti-semitism. Exactly two weeks later, Operation Cast Lead began. During its 22 days, over 250 anti-semitic incidents were reported world-wide – including Australia – compared with 80 the year before. The Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism said a major factor was comparisons between Israel’s actions in Gaza and Nazi Germany’s during the Holocaust. Perpetrators include the Vatican’s justice and peace minister, and a high-level Norwegian diplomat. On 27 January 1945 – 64 years ago yesterday – Auschwitz, the most infamous of Nazi concentration camps, was liberated. In 2005 the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution (A/RES/60/7) designating 27 January as an annual International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and condemning unreservedly all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, whenever they occur. Perhaps someone should tell German-born Pope Benedict XVI who late last week welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church British bishop Richard Williamson – who was excommunicated in 1988 after being ordained without Vatican permission, and who in an interview broadcast just before the Pope’s announcement, said historical evidence ‘is hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler’. That’s not free speech, Pope. That’s beyond the pale.