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 In essence, it says that the Jews have been replaced by the Christians in God’s favour, and so all God’s promises to the Jews, including the land of Israel, have been inherited by Christianity."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]

Opie and Anthony and the First Amendment,
Radio World Newspaper, August 27, 2002
"(This commentary is by William O'Shaughnessy, president of Whitney Radio and editorial director of WVOX and WRTN in Westchester, N.Y. He is a former chairman of public affairs for the NAB [National Association of Broadcasters]) ... I've been asked by several members of the press about the 'Opie and Anthony' contretemps [in which a couple copulated in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and was recorded for the Opie and Anthony radio show]. And is it a First Amendment matter? ... You've really got to ask these constitutional scholars how the vulgarity and attempted defilement which occurred at Saint Patrick's Cathedral should be viewed ... by the public ... by the government ... and by our profession (or as many of those who used to serve on the NAB Board call it: our "in-dust-ry") ... I am a poor, stumbling, staggering, faltering Catholic and son of the Roman Church. But this is clearly an outrageous insult ... copulating in the best-known cathedral in America. It is an insult not only to Catholics, but also to any God-fearing religion-practicing citizen of the republic. If this had happened in a Jewish temple ... an Israeli swat team would have appeared and then we would really have a story: 'Mel Karmazin [Jewish, and the number two executive of the company that owns the radio station in question] disappeared on the way home. His car has never been found!' You would also have The New York Times declare a Holy War on Sumner Redstone [Jewish, and the number one executive of the radio station company] and Mel Karmazin. If this happened in a mosque ... then you'd better post sentries at the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building! I'm exaggerating and kidding ... and I hope we make a point only that this is not alone an offense against Catholics. And who could deny these good people - our Jewish and Muslim brothers - their sense of outrage over the defilement of a sacred place of worship? You're going to hear a big 'however' from me in just a minute. But, first I have to tell you what I think should happen, and if I had a trade publication I would 'suggest' this: I think Melvin Karmazin and Sumner Redstone should jump in their car and go right over to the Cardinal's Residence on Madison Avenue (they can fight over who gets the best seat!) with the most profound, graceful, heartfelt, sincere apology they can summon up. And I think they also should have a check; 250 thousand dollars is a nice, round number. 'Your Eminence, we can't find the words to apologize for this vulgar insult. However we know of the good work you and Catholic Charities do ... here is $250,00. You have every right to be outraged ... etc.' Clearly this was an insult directly against the Archbishop of New York. This is his ecclesiastical seat ... Saint Patrick's Cathedral. So it is not only an insult to every worshiper who was there that day, but to every Catholic! And it's an insult to every broadcaster. People are saying, 'What trash! What low-class vulgarity is our profession capable of?'"

The Vengeance of the Jews Was Stronger Than Their Avarice. Modern Historians and the Persian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614, by Elliott Horowitz, - from Jewish Social Studies, Volume 4, Number 2, (Indiana University Press) [This is a long, scholarly article about how traditional hostility, and ancient violence, to Christianity has been veiled by today's Jewish academe]
"'The Jews are the mildest of men, passionately hostile to violence. That obstinate sweetness which they conserve in the midst of the most atrocious persecution, that sense of justice and of reason which they put up as their sole defense against a hostile, brutal, and unjust society, is perhaps the best part of the message they bring to us and the true mark of their greatness.' Thus wrote Jean-Paul Sartre in his 1946 Reflexions sur la question juive, published two years later in English under the title Anti-Semite and Jew, a work he later admitted to have written 'without reading one Jewish book.' Sartre's reflections on the 'Jewish question' and, in particular, his essentialist (and some might say racist) remarks on the Jewish character have elicited various responses in the half-century since they were published, some implicit and some overt, some mild and some passionate. Harold Rosenberg, for example, noted upon the book's appearance in English that 'Sartre has cut the Jews off from their past,' and he alleged that 'Sartre has consciously permitted himself to accept the anti-Semite's stereotype of the Jew. His disagreement with anti-Semitism reduces itself to arguing that these Jewish traits...are not so bad.' More recently, Elaine Marks has argued that 'Sartre is transformed in the third part of his essay into the antisemite against whom he rails in the first part.'"

Goldhagen V. Pius XII,
First Things, June/July 2002
"Tendentious attacks on Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) are nothing new. Indeed, they have become commonplace. Yet Daniel Goldhagen’s recent 27,000–word essay for the New Republic, 'What Would Jesus Have Done? Pope Pius XII, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust' (January 21, 2002), calls for special attention. Based upon his forthcoming book, A Moral Reckoning (Knopf), Goldhagen’s essay is noteworthy both for the breathtaking scope of its claims and the air of righteous indignation that infuses it. Not content to argue that Pope Pius did less to save the Jews than he should have, as many other scholars have done, Goldhagen goes much further—to attack Pacelli as an anti–Semite and the Church as a whole as an institution thoroughly, and perhaps inextricably, permeated by anti–Semitism. In fact, he even argues that 'the main responsibility for producing this all–time leading Western hatred lies with Christianity. More specifically, with the Catholic Church' ... Goldhagen seems to want nothing less than a renunciation of Christianity. He accuses Pope Pius XII of collaborating with the Nazis and treats the Cross as a symbol of oppression. He lectures about how portions of the New Testament were fabricated and asserts that the very term 'New Testament' is offensive. His agenda–driven approach, coupled with sloppy fact–checking and poor analysis, results in one of the most unjust broadside attacks launched against Catholics in a mainstream publication in several generations. The New Republic [long-owned by Jewish/Zionist Martin Peretz] owed its readers, and more importantly the Catholic people against whom Goldhagen made his reckless charges, the duty of investigating his claims at least minimally before publishing them. While some difference in analysis is certainly to be expected on this topic, Goldhagen’s factual errors and his evident malice go beyond all bounds of reason. Eugene Fisher of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, a leader in the promotion of good will between Jews and Christians, called this article 'a travesty. And a hate crime.' He was right."

Jews Are Deserving of An Additional Apology From All Christians,
The Jewish Star Times, October 2, 2002
"Now that the Pope has apologized for the sins committed against Jews in the name of the Catholic Church, and the German Lutheran Church has followed suit, it's expected that other Christian denominations will also seek forgiveness for their sins of anti-Semitism. A blanket apology for past wrongs is about all that any group can hope for, since no church, or government for that matter, can be expected to itemize every act of injustice committed by their predecessors over the centuries. The Jews, however, are one group that deserves a special apology from all of Christendom for the pain and suffering inflicted on them by Christians ever since some long-forgotten Gentile first called them Christ-killers two millennia ago."

120 Homes under threat of Demolition,
ICAHD, October 6, 2002
"Israeli courts have upheld an Israeli Army order to demolish 120 newly built Palestinian homes in Beit Sahour, a Palestinian town adjacent to Bethlehem. Residents today demonstrated against the order and launched an international campaign to save their homes. The new homes were built by a group of limited income Palestinian Christian families who banded together as the Arab Orthodox Housing Project to build a new life. They obtained a 99-year lease from their Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, 22 years ago and then began the agonizing process of organizing and saving enough money to start construction."

German Court Halts Book on Catholics and Third Reich,
Deutsche Welle (Germany), October 10, 2002
"The Catholic Church says Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's new book is inaccurate. A German court has issued a temporary injunction against publication of a new book by controversial American author and historian Daniel Goldhagen about the Catholic Church's history in Third Reich Germany. The regional court in Munich responded to a demand by Munich's Archdiocese that the book be withdrawn from publication over a factual error. The district court issued its ruling on Tuesday based on evidence that information contained in the publication implied false association of a member of the Catholic Church with Hitler's Third Reich in World War II."

Mayor Bloomberg Should Disinvite Members of 'The Sopranos' Cast,
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, October 11, 2002
"New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has angered the Columbus Citizens Foundation by inviting members of the HBO-TV series, 'The Sopranos,' to march in New York’s Columbus Day Parade. Officials of the foundation maintain that the TV show portrays an 'extremely negative and ugly stereotyping of our people' ... Catholic League president William Donohue spoke for the league today: '... The Catholic League takes no position on the merits of 'The Sopranos.’ But we do take a position on the merits of private-parade organizers to maintain their autonomy free of government meddlers. At stake is the First Amendment right of freedom of association ... If the organizers of the Columbus Day Parade don’t believe that ‘The Sopranos’ projects a fair image of Italian-Americans, then that is good enough for us. Why it isn’t good enough for Mayor Bloomberg needs to be explained.”

ADL Outraged by Honduran Cardinal's Jewish Conspiracy Theory,
Anti-Defamation League [the Jewish lobbying organization], July 25, 2002
"The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today expressed outrage at comments made by a Honduran Catholic Cardinal that implied an alleged Jewish manipulation of the American media. Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, in a May interview with the Italian-Catholic publication 30 Giorni, claimed Jews influenced the media to exploit the current controversy regarding sexual abuse by Catholic priests in order to divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. 'The Cardinal’s odious anti-Jewish conspiracy theory must be immediately and forcefully condemned by responsible voices in the Catholic Church,' said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, in a letter sent to Cardinal Walter Kasper, of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Jews ... Cardinal Rodrigues Maradiaga stated: 'It gave me considerable food for thought that, at a time of total media focus on developments in the Middle East with all the injustices being perpetrated against the Palestinian people, U.S. television and press people were obsessed with sex scandals of 30 or 40 years ago.'"

Proposed rehanging of Ten Commandments sparks criticism,
Penn Live, October 14, 2002
"A plaque displaying the Ten Commandments no longer hangs in Altoona's municipal building, and some council members who want to put it back on display are running into opposition. Critics, including the Jewish family that donated a Ten Commandments plaque 76 years ago, are opposed to the city's plans to rehang the brass marker, which was taken down during renovations last year ... Altoona, a working-class city of 50,000 tucked in the Appalachian Mountains, traces its heritage to German, Irish, and Scotch immigrants and was once a popular train stop between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The debate began about two months ago when the City Council discussed retrieving the plaque from the Blair County Historical Society's museum even though it was quietly removed last year at the request of Joe Silverman, whose family donated the plaque in 1926. Silverman said, through his rabbi, that he believes the plaque is inappropriate as the city grows diverse, with Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists using City Hall. 'I felt he had made the right choice,' Rabbi Burt Schuman said. 'I had been concerned about the misuse of a clearly sacred and very particularistic text in a universal way.'"

Selman v. Cobb County: court battle over creationism,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 16, 2002
"Jeffrey Selman, who is suing the Cobb County School District, says the county’s school board is kowtowing to a 'vocal, myopic, sectarian minority' by allowing educators to teach creationism in science classes. On Sept. 26, the seven-member Cobb County School Board unanimously approved a resolution on teaching the origin of earth’s species that will allow teachers to discuss both creationism and the theory of evolution. That vote followed an August decision by the school board to place stickers in science textbooks stating that evolution is a scientific theory, not a fact. (The American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU] has challenged the stickers as a 'fundamentalist Christian expression' that violates separation of church and state.) Selman, 56, filed his case after the disclaimer was approved, and may expand the suit to include the school board’s decision on teaching creationism."

Christian generosity becomes a rabbinical nightmare,
Ha'aretz (Israel), October 17, 2002
"Debate has raged among American Jews about their new alliance with evangelical Christians, who in the past two years have shown themselves to be Israel's most vocifeous supporters in the United States (maybe in the world). The issue has recently reached the Chief Rabbinate Council in Israel. Two weeks ago, the council decided to form a special committee of four members - Rabbi Simha Hacohen Kook, Moshe Rauchberger, Shmuel Eliyahu and Yehuda Deri - to look into the Jerusalem Friendship Fund. This fund distributes large amounts of money contributed by evangelical Christians the help Jews immigrate to Israel, as well as for their absorption and for welfare organizations - $15 million in the past year alone - and for Jewish communities in the Diaspora (especially in the former Soviet Union and Argentina) ... Kook maintains that from the material that has been brought to his attention, there is a clear missionary intention behind the fund ... He says that even if direct missionary work by the fund is not involved, accepting evangelical money is wrong because it comes from people who believe, according to their Messianic vision, that Israel will ultimately disappear with one-third of world Jews converting to Christianity and the other two-thirds being destroyed ...Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein of Chicago has been active in fundraising efforts among evangelical and other Christians since 1983. About seven years ago, he established the Friendship Fund, which raises funds for immigration, absorption, and welfare projects in Israel. So far, the fund has contributed about $65 million. Eckstein moved to Israel two years ago and established the Israeli branch of the fund, which coordinates the fund's activities in Israel. Thanks to its generous contributions, Eckstein has become a very well known figure in the Jewish establishment."

Freak Factory,
Israel Shamir, October 17, 2002
"The Jews of old, on the other hand, were defiantly proud of the deed of their ancestors, and the ‘Gospel according to the Jews’, Toledot Yeshu, (it could be called 'How we killed Christ') is the most frequently copied (non-Biblical) Jewish manuscript of Middle Ages. Adepts of Judaism kept fighting Christ and Christians. Soldiers of the last Jewish king Bar Kochba massacred Christians in 135. In Yemen, a Jewish ruler Yusuf Zu Nawas burned churches and killed thousands of Christians in 519. Palestinian Christians were slaughtered in 529 and 614. Afterwards, the warfare switched to ideology. The Middle Ages are full of rather crude Jewish anti-Christian propaganda. Its examples could be found in Jesus through Jewish Eyes, a recently published compendium of Jewish writings about Jesus, and they include infamous Toledot Yeshu and Nestor Hakomer, written in Arabic in 9th century. Even today, leaflets in Jerusalem describe Judas as ‘the Redeemer of Israel’. That is why, as a short-hand, the Jews were described as ‘enemies of Christ’. Christians fought back, and slaughtered quite a lot of Jews as well. It is a peculiarity of modern convoluted discourse, that Christian persecutions of Jews are well known, while persecutions of Christians by Jews are consigned to oblivion. There is ‘post-Auschwitz Christian theology’, but there is no ‘post-Mamilla Pool, or post-Deir Yassin Judaism’. This distortion of history is used by the Jewish leadership in order to induce Christians with destructive guilt feeling. That is why it is important to explain that the relations of Jews and Christians weren’t as one-sided as depicted by the Jewish apologists. II The millennia-old ideological warfare against Christ became the most important element of Jewishness, and it is still with us. ‘T’is better to serve Hitler than Christ”, - words to such effect said a well known Israeli Rabbi. Acceptance of Christ is the worst possible crime for a Jew, and it is felt by vast majority of the community. Jews aren’t just ‘non-Christians’, like we are ‘non-Buddhist’, they are anti-Christian. Even now, when majority of Jews ceased to practice the rules of faith, this anti-Christian streak is not gone. For instance, a baptised Jew is banned from receiving Israeli citizenship by the Law of Return. Recently, a few good Jews in America wrote to the State of Israel renouncing their right of return. There is just one way to do it: accept Christ and you would lose this right."

WHILE CHRISTIANITY IS EVERYWHERE PATHOLOGIZED IN THE "SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE" INDICTMENT, MEANWHILE, WE HAVE -- EVERYWHERE -- THIS:
Court: Jewish community can mark symbolic district,
CNN, October 24, 2002
"Officials in a New Jersey borough discriminated against an Orthodox Jewish community when they refused to allow it to place plastic strips on utility poles to mark the boundaries of a symbolic religious district, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the borough of Tenafly's argument that allowing the unobtrusive strips constituted an improper government endorsement of religion. The strips mark an eruv, a symbolic district within which Orthodox Jews are allowed to perform physical tasks otherwise banned on the Sabbath, such as pushing baby carriages or helping elders who use wheelchairs visit friends. Most major American cities contain eruvs, although many residents may not realize it because they often are marked with easily overlooked strands of wire."

No, they don't rest in peace. Improper construction, neglect and vandalism have turned Ashkelon's Christian cemetery into an eyesore,
Ha'aretz (Israel), October 27, 2002
"'Whenever Jewish gravestones in overseas cemeteries are sprayed with hate messages, there is a huge hue and cry: `Anti-Semitism!' However, when Christian gravestones are uprooted in Israeli cemeteries, are any protests heard?' This is what Romy Nudelman recently wrote in protest over the desecration of the grave of her Catholic mother in the Christian cemetery in Ashkelon. 'Is it not a divine decree that the stranger living in your midst should be treated with dignity? And is respect for the dead merely a cliche?' she continued in her letter to the President of the State of Israel, to the ministers of religious affairs and the interior, and to the mayor of Ashkelon. For more than seven years, she has protested the vandalism that has been carried out in Ashkelon's Christian cemetery. Various government agencies have admitted that the situation in that cemetery is 'serious and shocking'; however, no substantive measures have yet been taken to amend it."

Evangelicals Mix Church and Jewish State Prominent American Christian conservatives lead a nationwide prayer campaign in support of Israel. The push could help GOP at the polls,
Los Angeles Times, October 21, 2002
"Along with the soaring hymns and shouted hosannas, Sunday services at Mount Paran Church of God carried a sobering whiff of geopolitics. The 700 or so parishioners attending morning services at the church on the outskirts of Atlanta were asked to pray for Israel -- part of a nationwide effort among an estimated 16,000 churches to signal Christian backing for the violence-plagued Jewish state. 'The past two years of conflict unfortunately have reminded us that not only is there not peace in Jerusalem, but the very existence of Israel is being threatened by its adversaries,' Shmuel Ben-Shmuel, Israel's consul general in Atlanta, told the congregation. Israeli diplomats also were scheduled to appear at church services in San Antonio and Bakersfield, where an afternoon rally involving 16 churches was planned. The one-day prayer campaign was the latest in a series of high-profile events by evangelical Christians in support of Israel in recent months -- a show of solidarity that has gratified many American Jews but left others uneasy with what they see as an unlikely marriage of convenience ... [T]he visible expressions of support by Christians may help the GOP make inroads with Jewish voters, who as a group tend to tilt heavily Democratic ... Citing a recent survey, Stand for Israel said that U.S. Jews were warming to President Bush due to his handling of the war on terrorism -- 81% of respondents viewed him as a strong backer of Israel. Such a trend 'could have an impact' on the next two election cycles, the group said, although Democratic activists give Republicans little chance of prying away Jewish votes. 'That's not why we're doing what we're doing," [Ralph] Reed said. "We're doing what we're doing because Israel is in real crisis right now.'"

Burial Artifact May Be the Oldest Evidence of Christ,
ABC News, October 21, 2002
"An inscription on a burial artifact that was recently discovered in Israel appears to provide the oldest archaeological evidence of Jesus Christ, according to an expert who dates it to three decades after the crucifixion. Writing in Biblical Archaeology Review, Andre Lemaire, a specialist in ancient inscriptions at France's Practical School of Higher Studies, says it is very probable the find is an authentic reference to Jesus of Nazareth. The archaeology magazine planned to announce the discovery at a news conference today. That Jesus existed is not doubted by scholars, but what the world knows about him comes almost entirely from the New Testament. No physical artifact from the first century related to Jesus has been discovered and verified. Lemaire believes that has changed, though questions remain, such as where the piece with the inscription has been for more than 19 centuries. The inscription, in the Aramaic language, appears on an empty ossuary, or limestone burial box for bones. It reads: 'James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.' Lemaire dates the object to 63 A.D. ... James is depicted as Jesus' brother in the Gospels and head of the Jerusalem church in the Book of Acts and Paul's epistles. The first century Jewish historian Josephus recorded that 'the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, James by name,' was stoned to death as a Jewish heretic in A.D. 62. If his bones were placed in an ossuary that would have occurred the following year, dating the inscription around A.D. 63." [Emphasis added]

The Usefulness of Daniel Goldhagen. His new book attacking Pope Pius XII is filled with factual errors, providing an opportunity for other anti-Catholic writers to claim the middle ground,
by J. Bottum, Weekly Standard, October 23, 2002
"If you haven't been able to read all the writing about Pius XII, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust, you needn't feel too bad. Not even scholars in the field have been able to keep up. By my count, there have been at least fourteen books on the subject in the last three years, with the threat of more to come ...Into this flood of (mostly Catholic) works for and against Pius XII, there will shortly splash Daniel Goldhagen's new book, 'A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair' ... As I say, no one is going to have trouble finding Goldhagen's mistakes. And that's exactly the problem. By writing such an error-filled, anti-Catholic diatribe as 'A Moral Reckoning,' Goldhagen makes what used to be the extreme of public discourse look like middle ground--the middle ground that, on any historical question, most of diffident, well-mannered America wants to inhabit."

Christian leaders determined to continue their witness in Jerusalem, despite dwindling numbers,
Ecumenical Delegation to Jerusalem, December 9, 2000
"'The number of Christians in Palestine is dwindling so much that the situation is becoming dangerous,' Armenian Patriarch Torkom II told a visiting delegation of church leaders from the United States during a conversation today. 'But we are here, and we will be here in the future because the holy places are not museums.' Yet he admitted that 'it is a miracle that we have survived.' Christians are determined to 'make our presence strong—and to make it heard and seen.' The Armenian Patriarch and other church leaders said that the churches are living in some difficult times. 'As Christian communities we have our problems. So far we have not succeeded in stopping the violence—and this is not a local concern but one for the whole world.' The situation is complicated by 'the presence of extremists on both sides.' Sometimes the difficulties are very direct. The Armenians are one of the guardians of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over the traditional site for the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. During the march to the church every other week, 'We meet Jews who spit on us,' occasionally provoking fights. 'These are realities,' he said."

The Last Respectable Prejudice,
by Kenneth L. Woodward, First Things, 126 (October 2002): 23-35
"Does anti-Catholicism exist? Yes it does. Can we define it? Yes we can. It’s repugnance for things Catholic, both real and imagined. It’s the sort of thing Catholics and non-Catholics alike recognize when they see it. Is anti-Catholicism, historically, as virulent as anti-Semitism, to which it is often compared? Not then. Not now. And likely not ever. But in the American experience anti-Catholicism is older than anti-Semitism, and it is still the more acceptable prejudice among academics and their illegitimate offspring in the chattering classes, among whom anti-Catholicism is less conscious, less stigmatized, and therefore less noticed. Is anti-Catholicism as important to American Catholics as anti-Semitism is to American Jews for the maintenance of group identity? Not by another long shot. Jews are the least religious religious cohort in American society, if we exclude the Jewish Unitarians, Ethical Culturalists, and Buddhists, and so the most in need of prejudice, real or imagined, for the maintenance of group identity. Their only rivals are the Mormons, manqué Jews themselves. And I say that in full realization that my statement may be construed by some as itself anti-Semitic, if only because an outsider is saying it. Be that as it may, the American Jewish Committee and other communal organizations recognize its truth. They are my sources. Some manifestations of anti-Catholicism are obvious. For example, I think Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s diatribe in the New Republic last January—'What Would Jesus Have Done? Pope Pius XII, the Catholic Church, and the Holocaust'—was a blatant example. But he is a known academic nut. More blameworthy, in my view, is Leon Wieseltier [both Goldhagen and Wieseltier are Jewish] , the magazine’s powerful literary editor and the man who decided to run Goldhagen’s venomous piece, giving him more space than anyone has ever been allotted in the magazine. Has some of the coverage of the current scandal in the Catholic Church been driven by anti-Catholicism? Indeed, in style, intensity, and the unrelenting nature of the coverage, some of it has . ... And then there is the New York Times [the NY Times is dominated by Jews in its executive hierarchy, and owned by Jewish Sulzberger family] ... Anti-Catholicism comes in different packages. By its own reckoning, the Times is an institution, not just a newspaper: in its own secularist fashion it is a kind of church, complete with its own hierarchy and magisterium. For many of its readers, the Times defines what is real and what is not, what is acceptable thought and behavior and what is not, thereby setting the boundaries between the secular polis and the religious barbarians pounding at the gates. In short, the Times evangelizes a wholly secular worldview, which bleaches out whatever—even in New York City—does not conform to that perspective ... It is common for defenders of the Catholic Church such as Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, to substitute Jews or blacks or gays for Catholics and ask those who smear Catholics if they would dare ridicule these other identity groups in the same fashion. In general, I think that this is a fair test, and I am astonished to learn that his adversaries find his question repulsive. Clearly, Catholics are fair game, but why should this be so? ... Over these years, Newsweek’s top editors—all of them but one in the past forty years Protestant or Jewish by background—have manifested certain preferences in the coverage of religion." [Kenneth L. Woodward is a Contributing Editor at Newsweek, where he has been Religion Editor for thirty-eight years.]

From: Martin Luther, 'Von den Juden und ihren Lügen' ('About the Jews and their Lies'). facstaff.bloomu.edu, (1542-1543),
[Martin Luther, the famous Protestant, is famed in Jewish circles for his vehement antisemitism. This link contains some of his bitter comments about Jews. What is missing in today's condemnation of Luther's view about Jews is the historical context and social realities within which he registered his outrage]
"One should put a flail, axe, mattock, spade, distaff, spindle, etc. into the hands of young and strong Jews and Jewesses and make them earn their food in the sweat of their brows as is the task of Adam's children. Because it is wrong that they should let us damned goyim work in the sweat of our brows and they, the holy, the chosen people, should laze around behind the oven, splurge, eating their fill, and be sinfully proud of being the Christians' masters, taking advantage of the fruits of our labor. One must drive the laziness out of them. In case we should worry that they do us physical harm, cause damage to our wife, child, workers, cattle, etc., when they serve us or work for us, because it can well be assumed that such noble worldly lords and poisonous and bitter worms not used to any kind of work would hate to humiliate themselves before the damned goyim let us take recourse to the well-known wisdom of other nations, such as France, Spain, Bohemia, etc. and figure out what they took from us through usury. Having established a balance and equitably distribute the money, let us chase them out of our land! As we have heard, God's wrath against them is such that softness would do nothing but cause them to get worse and worse, harshness, however, would make them little better. Therefore: let's get rid of them! I hear people say that the Jews give large amounts of money for the benefit of the government. But--where do they get the money? Not from their own people, but from government property and the subjects of our country. What the Jews give is what they get from the subjects who are being exploited. That is how the Jews can stay in the country, lie, blaspheme, curse and steal safely and openly. Should the desolate Jews not secretly laugh about us, who allow ourselves to be so shamefully fooled and cheated, us, who give our money so that they can stay in our country and commit all imaginable abominations getting rich while doing them, from our sweat and blood, while we are being reduced to poverty, sucked empty by them."

Israel Army Keeps Grip on Nablus, Envoys Talk Peace,
By Alistair Lyon, Yahoo!News (from Reuters), June 1, 2002
"Israeli troops kept their stranglehold on the West Bank city of Nablus and the nearby Balata refugee camp as international envoys pursued efforts to revive Middle East peace talks after 20 months of bloodshed ... A Palestinian priest said troops had blown up a Christian site in the West Bank. The army said it had not known that what it described as a cave used by militants was holy to Christians. 'The Israeli army on Friday night detonated explosives at the site of Saint Barbara. I found that this small site was completely destroyed and became a pile of scattered stones,' a Greek Orthodox priest, Father Aziz Halaweh, told Reuters."

Orthodox Priest Murdered by Israeli Fanatics,
Pravda (Russia), Novembr 29, 2002
"Saint Martyr Philumen was killed near the altar of his church of Jacob’s Well in Nablus (Samaria) in the Holy Land in 1979. 'A week before, the fanatics came to the monastery of Jacob’s Well in Nablus. They demanded to take crosses and icons away; they said it was a place only for Jews. They shouted blasphemous anti-Christian blasphemous words, four-letter words, and threats against Christians. Then, on November 29, the Jews rushed into the monastery in a downpour. Father Philumen was already getting ready for the evensongs. Father Philumen was tortured, and he was forced to disavow Christ; this is proved by the cut fingers of his right hand, the fingers that Christians use for the sign of the cross. His face was chopped crosswise. The church itself and all the holy things inside were desecrated. However, nobody was detained or brought into criminal responsibility for the crime ' ... This is an abstract from an article by Iegia Ienovkian (Ellisville, Mississippi, U.S.A.), published by Orthodox America magazine." [See also the All Saints of North America Russian Orthodox Church web site; the murdered priest's last name is correctly spelled Philoumenos: "May God, through the prayers of the New Hieromartyr Philoumenos, enable the beleaguered Orthodox of the Holy Land to survive the mounting wave of anti-Christian violence which threatens to overwhelm them, and may He ever grant them the strength and grace to confess the Faith boldly and with fervent zeal."]

Whatever You Do, Don’t Mention the Jews,
by Richard John Neuhaus, First Things. The Journal of Religion and Public Life, May 2002
"Hypocrisy aptly describes much discussion, or non–discussion, about the role of Jews in American life. It is commonly practiced among Christians, and my Jewish associates assure me it is as common among Jews. A significant difference is that there is a large literature produced by Jews on Jews in American life, whereas non–Jewish discussions of the subject tend to be confined to the shadowed world of bigotry and conspiracy–mongering. For non–Jews who understand how things are done, Jews in American life is a forbidden subject, at least in public. Consider the recently released tapes from President Richard M. Nixon’s Oval Office when, in 1972, he and Billy Graham discussed what they obviously viewed as the Jewish problem ... [T]he press played it as an instance of anti–Semitism, and that does provide an occasion for trying to understand a phenomenon usually obscured by dissembling, evasion, fear, and, yes, hypocrisy. No Dirty Little Secret Anti–Semites—and there really are anti–Semites—think they have a corner on a dirty little secret. Their supposed secret is that Jews have a disproportionate influence in American society. But of course that is no secret at all; it is the obvious fact. About 2 percent of the population, a little over five million people, exercise an influence far out of proportion to their numbers. In certain sectors of American life—notably in media, entertainment, prestige research universities, and to a lesser extent in finance—people in that 2 percent hold 20, 40, or even more than 50 percent of the positions of greatest influence. It is quite astonishing. It is clearly disproportionate. Some say that it is not only disproportionate, which is obvious, but that it is inordinate, meaning that it is excessive and contrary to the right order of things. People who say that are also given to suggesting that the disproportionate influence of Jews is baneful. Certified anti–Semites say out loud, and many others say sotto voce, that America has a Jewish problem ... There are those—Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic comes to mind—who make no secret of their contempt for Christianity, and are as offended when the 'others' do not think about Jews as when they do think about Jews ... In politics, both nationally and in the states, the low–profile days are long past. This is not true in the media, in entertainment, or in the prestige universities, where nobody is supposed to notice the disproportionate Jewish influence ... Jews are, understandably, not enthusiastic about a notion of equality that would limit them to no more than 2 percent [their percentage of the American population] of anything ... On an array of questions that come under the rubric of 'church–state relations,' Jews have in the last fifty years been at odds with most Americans. Generally speaking, they have thought the naked public square a very good thing. The more secular the society, the better it is for Jews ... Now it appears that a devotion to public secularism is no longer, if it ever was, a source of Jewish security and flourishing. It has become, rather, a liability that unnecessarily places American Jewry in an adversarial relationship to the culture, provoking the perception that Jews really are, in Silberman’s phrase, strangers in their own country."

U.S. Postal Service Joins Israel in Hanukkah Celebration,
pinedalfamily, (from U.S. Postal Service), October 8, 1996
"FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Stamp News Release Number 96-062. The U.S. Postal Service and the Israeli Postal Authority will kick off a new series of 'Holiday Celebration' stamps October 22 with the debut of a colorful stamp commemorating Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. The stamp, a joint issue featuring the contemporary image of a menorah and nine multi-colored candles, will be dedicated during dual ceremonies in Washington and Jerusalem. It marks the first-ever joint-issue between the two countries, and the Israeli stamp is that country’s first in the self-adhesive format. Postmaster General Marvin Runyon [Jewish?] will dedicate the American version of the stamp at an 11 a.m. ceremony at the Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C. The Israeli version of the stamp will then be dedicated in Washington by Dr. Eliahu Ben-Elissar, Ambassador of Israel, and Amos Mar-Haim, Chairman, Board of Directors, Israel Postal Authority. Meanwhile, Postal Service Governor S. David Fineman will be joined by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli President Ezer Weizman at a private ceremony at the Knesset in Jerusalem to dedicate the Israeli version of the Hanukkah stamp ... 'The joint issue of this stamp with Israel allows us to deliver the Hanukkah message across geographical and cultural boundaries,' Runyon added, 'and reminds us, as Americans, that at the heart of our diversity we are joined together by a network of common needs and values' ... Both the American and Israeli versions of the Hanukkah stamp were designed by Hannah Smotrich, a graphic designer and instructor at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., and Board Member of the Washington Chapter -- American Institute of Graphic Arts ... In the Holiday Celebrations series, the Postal Service will issue a new stamp each year reflecting a different cultural or ethnic holiday. The Postal Service will print 104 million of the Hanukkah stamps this year in self-adhesive panes of 20 stamps."

Latin Patriarch tells Israel to Surrender Lands to Palestinians. Catholic leader says Israel will never have peace unless it 'converts all of its neighbors to friends,'
Christianity Today, November 1, 2001
"The Latin Patriarch in the Holy Land has called on Israel to stop its troops firing at an Arab Christian village and to surrender all occupied land to the Palestinians. Archbishop Michel Sabbah, the highest-ranking Catholic official in Jerusalem, made the appeal during a tour of Beit Jalla, near Bethlehem on the West Bank. Beit Jalla has been subject to Israeli tank fire since Palestinian gunmen began using the village as a base to fire at Gilo, a neighboring Jewish suburb of Jerusalem. Gilo is built on land annexed by Israel following the 1967 Middle East war. Archbishop Sabbah said that Israel must not react by increasing levels of firepower. The patriarch was accompanied by Beit Jalla's mayor, Raji Zeidan, who said the Palestinian Authority was working to restrain gunmen from using his village to fire at Gilo. Zeidan also criticized Israel for using heavy fire against Beit Jalla, saying it was making victims of residents who took no part in the violence. 'No shots came from the houses that were bombed [by Israel],' he said. 'There are other ways to deal with that matter.'"

New York City Schools Sued In Federal Court Over Policy Discriminating Against Christians During Christmas Season,
Thomas More Law Center, Dec 10, 2002
"The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of New York, the Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and another school official, alleging that the City’s policy regarding 'Holiday Displays' unlawfully discriminates against Christians. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Andrea Skoros and her two children, elementary school students in the New York City public school system. At issue is a school policy promulgated by the Chancellor’s office that prohibits the display of Nativity scenes in the City’s schools during the Christmas season, but expressly permits and encourages these schools to display during certain religious holidays and seasonal observances the Jewish Menorah and the Islamic Star and Crescent. City officials claim that the goal of this policy is 'to promote understanding and respect for the diverse beliefs and customs relating to our community’s observance of the winter holiday.' Ms. Skoros and her children are devout Roman Catholics, and they object to this policy because it endorses and promotes the Jewish and Muslim faiths and conveys the impermissible message of disapproval of Christianity. Last year, pursuant to this policy, several New York City public schools, including one of the schools attended by Ms. Skoros’ son, displayed the Jewish Menorah and the Islamic Star and Crescent, but not the Nativity scene. In fact, one public school principal issued a memo pursuant to the 'Holiday Displays' policy encouraging teachers to bring to school “religious symbols” that represent the Islamic and Jewish religions. No mention of Christianity was made in this memo ... This year, New York City public schools are at it again. Pursuant to the City’s policy, prominent displays of the Jewish Menorah abound, with no Christian Nativity scenes to be found. According to the lawsuit, the City’s policy violates the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment, as well as Ms. Skoros’ constitutional right as a parent to direct the religious education of her children."*

Mexican film of priest in love affair prompts an anti-Semitic response,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 1, 2002
"The American distributor of a Mexican film denounced by Catholic groups has been flooded with protest letters, many with a distinctly anti-Semitic tone. 'The Crime of Father Amaro' is based on a 19th-century Portuguese novel, but the film is set in contemporary Mexico. Its protagonist is an ambitious young priest who starts an illicit affair with a young woman, which ends in tragedy. Also shown are issues confronting modern Mexican priests, such as donations received from drug dealers and aid sent to guerilla activities in poor rural areas. Catholic groups say the film depicts the church in an unfair, negative light. A huge success in Mexico, where it was released last summer, 'Father Amaro' is being distributed in the United States by Samuel Goldwyn Films. The company’s president, Meyer Gottlieb, told the Los Angeles Times that he is alarmed by the anti-Semitism in many of the protest letters and postcards the company has received ... .Among the objectionable scenes are one in which the priest and the young woman make love under the mantel of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and another in which a cat eats a communion host. Carlos Carrera, the film’s director, defended it as 'fictional,' but also told the Times that 'all of this behavior seen in the film has happened in reality. None of this is a lie or a part of our imagination.' 'Father Amaro' became the highest grossing movie produced in Mexico, despite pressure from Mexican bishops to have the movie banned."

Senator Lautenberg And His Stealth Amendment,
V-Dare, November 7, 2002
"Every year, with absolutely no publicity, Congress votes to re-authorize the 'Lautenberg Amendment.' This legislation grants extraordinary immigration privileges to Jews, and also to Evangelicals and certain members of the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Church, who live anywhere in the former Soviet Union. (The “FSU,” as it’s known in State Departmentspeak.). Any member of these protected groups, because Congress arbitrarily declares them to be persecuted, can claim the automatic right to enter the U.S. as a 'refugee.' Since 1989, when Senator Lautenberg first succeeded in perpetrating this trick, about 400,000 FSU inhabitants have availed themselves of this privilege. About 11,000 will come in 2003. And guess who’s paying for it? Refugees, unlike non-refugee immigrants, receive interest-free government loans for airline tickets to the U.S. They are also, within 30 days of arrival, eligible for welfare on the same basis as an American citizen. A staggering 38% of refugee households arriving from the FSU in the last 5 years have one or more members on the life-time welfare program SSI. (see 1999 ... Senator Lautenberg’s real concern in 1989, of course, was the Soviet Jews. Overwhelmingly, they have been the primary beneficiaries of his amendment. Including programs that anticipated Lautenberg’s legislation, perhaps 500,000 Soviet Jews have come here in total– a major population transfer, significantly augmenting the American Jewish community, which was estimated at only 5.5 million in 1990. Perhaps the inclusion of Soviet evangelicals in the Lautenberg legislation was an early fruit of the alliance between the 'Christian Right' and the pro-Israeli lobby ... More likely, however, the evangelicals and Ukrainians were added merely as a fig leaf. But the FSU seems to running out of Jews who want to immigrate to the U.S. Next year, only a couple of thousand Jewish “refugees” will come here under the Lautenberg Amendment. Partly, this is a tribute to the obvious vigor and vibrancy of Russian Jewish life today. But an estimated 44,000 Jews will emigrate to Israel next year (with the help of a $60 million U.S. grant to United Israel Appeal.) ... [T]he Lautenberg Amendment’s main support still comes from Jewish groups."

The Unmentionable Foe. With Malice Toward Goyum,
Etherzone, November 8, 2002
"Former Judge Roy Moore now Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court whose refusal to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom created lawsuits and much furor, has now had a two ton granite monument placed in the rotunda of the state Judicial Building inscribed with the same Godly Statutes which created the first furor ... The furor is supported by small groups of God haters and an inordinate number of Jews. Montgomery attorney Stephen Glassroth is the Plaintiff. He is represented by Attorney Morris Seligman Dees, Jr. Attorney Dees is head of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which he formed with a New York Jewish Attorney named Joseph J. Levin, Jr. SPLC is the Nation’s wealthiest civil rights organization with $68 million in assets. Dees was raised a Baptist on an Alabama cotton farm and has apparently reverted to Jewish roots. Attorney Dees has been joined in the prosecution by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AUSC) and its president, peripatetic spokesman Rev. Barry Lynn. SPLC has been involved in prosecuting various white supremacy groups and in promoting Tolerance. Both are Jewish agendas. Jews have been major backers of racial strife between blacks and whites and are solidly behind tolerance and diversity which includes open borders, gays and lesbians, religious minorities, pornography, etc. As events of this sort unfold it is ironic that Christians and Christian organizations fail to notice that the adversary is often Jewish. D. James Kennedy has lambasted the ACLU for years. He has mentioned that the roots are Communistic but has failed to mention that they are also Jewish."

The Root of the Problem. Supporting Evil Will Not Produce Righteousness,
Etherzone, November 8, 2002
"Unlike the bogus war on terror, Christianity can only expect victory if the enemy has specificity. Decrying Hollywood's blatant denigration of Christians, the ACLU's successful legal battle against our Christian culture, television's degenerate promotion of homosexuality, secular coverage of news in the print media; lamenting these pincers movements against the Christian foundation of our Nation while failing to specify the real enemy will surely end in defeat ... Christians need to review their blind support of Israel and the Jewish agenda ... It is high time American Christians begin to understand that hating the Jewish agenda is not the same as hating Jews. Hollywood's denigration of Christ and Christians is a Jewish agenda, produced and marketed by Jews. The ACLU is a Jewish organization. People for the American Way is Jewish. Television is controlled by Jews and is a conduit for heinous immorality bent on the destruction of Gentile families. Diversity and open borders are Jewish agendas. While naive and confused Christians are busily engaged in supporting their own demise, Jews are arrogantly exerting anti-Christian programs."

"PRESS RELEASE. The Attorney General of Israel, Dr Eliyakim Rubinstein, and police and government bodies intend to press criminal charges against a leading churchman, the spiritual head of the native Greek Orthodox community, Dr Theodosios Atallah Hanna, for performing his religious duty. The spiritual leader of the oldest Christian community in the world, established directly by Our Lord, the dean of St James Cathedral, a native of Nazareth and the highest-ranking native Palestinian clergyman in the Orthodox Church, is well known as a proponent of full equality for Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Holy Land. He calls for peace and brotherly love between denominations, creeds and nations, defends the poor and oppressed, guards the legitimate rights and property of the Church, of the community and of all the dwellers of the Holy Land. These activities have made him disagreeable to the state officials, who prefer pliant clergymen ready to compromise public interests for their personal benefit. The Attorney General's office indicated that Fr Atallah Hanna will be charged with the offence `unauthorized contact with the enemy' for his visits to Christian communities in Syria and Lebanon, though practically all leading churchmen, rabbis and Muslim clergy in Palestine regularly visit their brethren in the nearby countries. The Attorney General has not charged the rabbis who visit the Jewish communities in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, and his decision to charge a Christian priest goes against the principle of equality before the Law. Father Atallah is to be charged with meeting with `terrorists'. His accusers fail to see the similarity between a priest and a physician: neither should ever refuse a call. Man of faith, Fr Atallah would meet even Sharon and Mofaz, people charged with war crimes in European courts of law. He would not send away even the ex-PM Yitzhak Shamir, though he was a leader of LEHI, the terrorist organisation. Both priest and rabbi should meet the sinner as well as the virtuous. The impending charge of incitement to violence is groundless as well. The Christian faith upholds love, charity and mercy: the Church rejects violence and vengeance." [More]

Armenia - Genocide Denied,
International Current Affairs, October 09, 2002
"This year an expected 500,000 people will visit the Holocaust Museum in Auschwitz, Poland. Israel, quite rightly, wants the world to remember the attempted extermination of European Jewry. But that wasn't the first genocide of the 20th century. Though few remember, in 1915 the Ottoman Turkish empire slaughtered its minority Armenian population. But the Turkish Government maintains the Armenian genocide never happened and it dismisses countless eyewitness testimonies as propaganda. Turkey receives endorsement from an unlikely source - it's Middle Eastern ally - Israel. But now prominent intellectuals in both Turkey and Israel are speaking out against their governments' policies of denial.
HALIL BERKTAY: That is why it is so important. It is a question of, it is a question of democracy and freedom of conscience and freedom of scientific research and all that, academic freedom, democracy and academic freedom in Turkey, and of the gradual maturing and relaxation of tensions in Turkish society. One place where you might expect the Armenians to find compassion and refuge is Israel. Both races have suffered the horrors of genocide. But, despite this common history, the opposite has happened. On this Armenian genocide poster in the old city of Jerusalem is scrawled in Hebrew, 'You deserve it.' The Israelis have become vocal deniers of the Armenian genocide and, worse still, they have colluded with other states to ensure it remains denied.
DR YAIR AURON, OPEN UNIVERSITY, TEL AVIV: Because, unfortunately, more and more Israel took sides with the Turkey side and, today, Israel in one way or another says that the Armenian genocide had not happened and this is unacceptable morally for me and, of course, it's incorrect historically speaking.
GEORGE HINTILIAN, ARMENIAN HISTORIAN: To hear it from the Israeli people that our, we didn't have a genocide. or our genocide is simply 'atrocities' or 'tragedy', this is very painful for us and this is very artificial. The Armenians also feel the Israelis are forcing them out of Jerusalem. Armenia was the first territory in the world to convert to Christianity and in 500 AD, they established a community in the Holy City. They've been here ever since. A section of the old city is named the Armenian Quarter. In Jerusalem, the Armenians have been survivors, but since the creation of Israel in 1948, their community has shrunk to a fifth of its size. This church was to be a memorial to the Armenian holocaust but, in 1975, the Israelis stopped the community from building it, claiming they had no approval. For 27 years, it's remained skeleton-like, a half-built monument to a holocaust denied. And there is little the Armenians can do about it. The Israelis don't allow them any representation on the Jerusalem Municipality ...
Yair Auron is the author of the book, 'The Banality of Indifference'. It details the Israeli denial of the Armenian genocide. Auron is one of the few pushing for recognition of the Armenian genocide in Israel.
DR YAIR AURON: Unfortunately, there are segments in this society who want to keep the monopoly of the fact that we were victims. They think, wrongly in my opinion, that by recognising other genocides, maybe our monopoly will be damaged in one way or another. Samuel Avyatar says, in the future, the church will be built, but the Armenians remain sceptical, with good reason. Since Israel took control of their quarter in 1967, they haven't been granted a single building licence [in Jerusalem]. This also means no housing can be constructed. Like most Armenian youth, Hargot Kirkorian is preparing to emigrate. He doesn't see a future under Israeli administration. Despite having top grades, he can't find a job or a place at university.
HARGOT KIRKORIAN: The Israelis doesn't want you to advance in your life more than a certain limit. They draw a red line and that's where you can go, that is as far as you can reach. And I think that's really bad because they are, they are people that passed discrimination and they are doing it the same towards us and towards the Arabs. The Armenians have never challenged or opposed the state of Israel, but they are treated with the same suspicions and restrictions as the Palestinians ... For Israelis, if you're not a Jew, then you're an Arab. It doesn't matter what you are. That's how it works here in the Middle East. That's what they do to everybody. In my ID, it's written 'Armenian' but the policeman doesn't even care to look at it. He says, 'You're not Jewish. Then you're an Arab, probably.'"

Merry Christmas Goes Out of Fashion at The Gap,
National Post [Canada], December 11, 2002
[NOTE: Donald Fisher, the founder and CEO of The Gap clothing chain, is Jewish]
"Staff at Gap clothing stores have been told to wish customers 'Happy Holidays' instead of 'Merry Christmas'" Global National sent undercover cameras into a store in Calgary yesterday to see how the advisory is working ... The advisory follows other recent controversies over 'inclusive' language at Toronto City Hall, where the Christmas tree was, for a while, renamed a 'holiday tree'; the Canadian Royal Mint, which ran an ad about 'The Twelve Days of Giving'; and the Royal Ontario Museum, which uses the terms Common Era and Before Common Era instead of the more traditional AD and BC on the James ossuary, an exhibit believed to have contained the bones of the brother of Jesus. Leigh Bridger, an Ottawa high school teacher whose students told her about the advisory, is concerned overly sensitive merchants are smothering the spirit of Christmas, and the meaning of tolerance. 'They [The Gap] hire these students for the Christmas rush, and they won't let them say Merry Christmas,' she said. 'I think tolerance is a two-way street. If the policy was like, 'Use sensitivity, guys,' that's fine. If there's someone who's obviously Muslim -- and there's certain indicators in terms of dress for women -- you're not necessarily going to say Merry Christmas. But if somebody comes with a list and they say they're buying Christmas gifts, why shouldn't that student be allowed to say, 'Well, have a Merry Christmas?' ... Gap Inc. is a global company with annual sales of nearly $14 billion from its Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy stores."

Jewish Groups Challenge Ordinance,
Newsday, November 12, 2002
"Two Jewish groups filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging an ordinance banning anyone but the city from holding events or erecting displays at a downtown plaza during the holiday season. City officials had said the ordinance, which was passed in April, was intended to encourage economic development by keeping Fountain Square uncluttered during the year's busiest retail season. The ordinance prevents the Ku Klux Klan from erecting a cross in the square, as it had done for several years in the 1990s. In 1993 a federal judge granted an injunction blocking city attempts to prevent Klan displays. The lawsuit was filed by Chabad of Southern Ohio, a nonprofit religious organization, and Congregation Lubavitch, which want to continue erecting a menorah on the square. The suit calls the ordinance an unconstitutional 'administrative scheme.'"

Historian to claim England practised Jewish 'ethnic cleansing',
Ananova, October 1, 2000
"A controversial historian will claim on a BBC television programme that England was the first country to conduct 'an act of ethnic cleansing on its Jew'". Simon Schama, a British Jew, is set to spark a new row by making the claim in an episode of the History of Britain series. In it, he'll say King Edward I's expulsion of Jews in 1290 and his execution of hundreds of the elders of the community made England the 'first country to perform a little act of ethnic cleansing'. Another programme mentions that a British chronicler became possibly the first person to use the term 'holocaust' in referring, approvingly, to atrocities against the Jews under the reign of Richard I a century earlier. Researchers on the programme said last week that finding the reference gave them a 'visceral shock'. Schama stresses the support of the Church and the populace for anti-Semitic violence and describes an incident when a ship's Jewish passengers - expelled from England - were deliberately drowned 'to the entertainment of the crew and all who heard about it'. Schama's emphasis on the poor treatment of Jews in England in the Middle Ages will anger traditionalists who have already attacked his programmes for denigrating England and the English, reports the Observer. Conservatives say English 'self-esteem and self-image' will 'take another knock' and that 'the great achievements of this nation are being run down' and there is said to be anger that the BBC has broadcast such programmes."

Not Walt Disney's World Anymore,
by Chuck Baldwin, Toogood Reports, December 19, 2002
"CNS News recently reported, 'Walt Disney World in Florida has eliminated its 28-year tradition of offering on-site religious services to Christian guests.' The report continued by saying, 'Disney is now advising Christian guests to find other places of worship, some of which are miles outside of the Magic Kingdom's boundaries.' Walt Disney must be turning over in his grave. His once family-friendly theme park has become a cutting edge proponent of anti-family activities, including hosting annual 'Gay Day' festivities that draw tens of thousands of sodomites from all over the world. This event is billed as 'America's Biggest Gay and Lesbian Vacation Experience.' Beyond that, Disney [Jewish] CEO Michael Eisner recently boasted that as many as 40% of Disney's employees were homosexuals or lesbians ... [T]oday's Disney seems to delight in flaunting immoral lifestyles. Beyond that, Disney has now decided to expel Christian activities from its park."

Judge refuses to remove monument,
UPI, Nov. 19, 2002
"Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore said Tuesday he will not move a 5,300-pound granite Ten Commandments monument he installed in the state's judicial building in July 2001 and he will appeal a federal court ruling that said it was unconstitutional ... 'We ask Chief Justice Moore to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the judicial building and to stop imposing his personal religious views on the people of Alabama,' said Richard Cohen, executive director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, representing plaintiff Stephen Glassroth."

Palestinian Christians face ethnic cleansing,
by Abe Ata, National Catholic Reporter, November 22, 2002
"The Palestinian Christian is an endangered species. When the modern state of Israel was established there were about 400,000 of us. Two years ago the number was down to 80,000. Now it’s down to 60,000. At that rate, in a few years there will be none of us left. Palestinian Christians within Israel fare little better. On the face of it, their number has grown by 20,000 since 1991. But this is misleading, for the census classification 'Christian' includes some 20,000 recent non-Arab migrants from the former Soviet Union. So why are Palestinian Christians abandoning their homeland? We have lost hope, that’s why. We are treated as non-people. Few outside the Middle East even know we exist, and those who do, conveniently forget. I refer, of course, to the American religious right. They see the modern Israel as a harbinger of the Second Coming, at which time Christians will go to paradise, and all others (presumably including Jews) to hell. To this end they lend military and moral support to Israel. Even by the double-dealing standards of international diplomacy, this is a breathtakingly cynical bargain. It is hard to know who is using whom more: the Christian right for offering secular power in the expectation that the Jewish state will be destroyed by a greater spiritual one, or the Israeli right for accepting their offer. What we do know is that both sides are abusing the Palestinians. Apparently we don’t enter into anyone’s calculations. The views of the Israeli right are well known: They want us gone. Less well known are the views of the American religious right. Senator James Inhofe, R-Okla., said: 'God appeared to Abraham and said: ‘I am giving you this land,’ the West Bank. This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.'” House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, was even more forthright: 'I’m content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank. … I happen to believe that the Palestinians should leave.' There is a phrase for this: ethnic cleansing. Why do American Christians stand by while their leaders advocate the expulsion of fellow Christians? Could it be that they do not know that the Holy Land has been a home to Christians since, well … since Christ? Do not think I am asking for special treatment for Christians. Ethnic cleansing is evil whoever does it and to whomever it is done. Palestinian Christians -- Maronite Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Armenians, Baptists, Copts and Assyrians -- have been rubbing shoulders with each other and with other religions -- Muslims, Jews, Druze and most recently Baha’is -- for centuries. We want to do so for centuries more. But we can’t if we are driven out by despair. What we seek is support: material, moral, political and spiritual." (Abe Ata is a ninth-generation Christian Palestinian born in Bethlehem. He is a visiting Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne in Australia and author of 11 books, including Intermarriage between Christians and Muslims.)

As evangelical Christians cheer, preacher gives money to back Israel,
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 25, 2002
"They came to honor Israel, at a time when the Jewish state feels particularly isolated in the world. Some 5,000 cheering parishioners of the Cornerstone Church here watched Sunday night as Pastor John Hagee presented $1.5 million for Israel-related causes to the president and CEO of the United Jewish Communities, Stephen Hoffman. Beamed across the world on 26 satellites, Hagee assured the millions in his audience that 'Seventy million evangelical Christians in America stand by Israel in their day of trouble. Israel, you are not alone. We are Zionist. If a line has to be drawn, draw the line around both Christians and Jews. We are one. We are united. We are indivisible.'”

Chanukha Q&A,
ADL (Anti-Defamation League)
[This Jewish lobbying agency's efforts include the pathologizing of Christmas; here it posts a list of "how-tos" to get Christmas references out of the school system, like the following:]
"Is it acceptable for a public school administrator to decorate his office with a Christmas tree and a nativity scene? You have the challenge of communicating two messages. First, you need to let the principal know that, while you understand and respect his beliefs, displaying a nativity scene on school grounds is illegal since it is an unambiguous religious symbol. In order to maintain the legal separation of church and state, he, in his role as school principal, cannot appear to favor one religion over another or create an environment in which students may feel that he harbors a particular bias that may color his decisions in his role as school authority figure." [The ADL encourages watchdogs to report references to Christmas in the schools here]

The 'Holiday Tree' PC Canadians Rule Out Christmas,
xtramsn, November 26, 2002 [Note who is included below in the hero's role: Jewish groups that have been in the vanguard of destroying Christmas]
"Christmas is becoming an endangered word in parts of Canada in a rash of politically correct behaviour - such as renaming a Christmas tree a 'holiday tree' - that even non-Christians dismiss as silly. Toronto city officials began the flap last week when they called the 50-foot (15.2 meter) tree set up outside City Hall a 'holiday tree.' That sparked much derision and prompted the city's mayor to set the record straight. 'Our special events staff went too far with their political correctness when they called it a holiday tree,' said Mayor Mel Lastman [who is Jewish]. 'They were trying to be inclusive and their hearts were in the right place, but you can't be politically correct all the time.' The mayor plans to introduce a motion in city council this week that will officially put the word Christmas in front of the word tree in all future city documents. The name change led to complaints from Christians and left many non-Christians wondering what all the fuss was about. 'To take a generic term, slap it on a symbol that really only has significance to one religion..and then say we're being multicultural does not really fit,' said Anita Bromberg of the Jewish group B'nai Brith Canada. 'Whatever you call it, it's still a Christmas tree ... The Royal Canadian Mint has a commercial in which it changes the old holiday standard 'Twelve Days of Christmas' to 'Twelve Days of Giving.' But Mint spokesman Phil Taylor said the wording was merely meant to "position coins as a great gift for the holidays for whatever faith.' 'It's the same kind of over the top political correctness," said Bernie Farber, Ontario executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress."

Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights,
Chicago Sun-Times, November 27, 2002
"Heaven help the unsuspecting families who wander into 'Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights' expecting a jolly animated holiday funfest. The holidays aren't very cheerful in Sandlerville, which is why the PG-13 rating mentions 'frequent and crude sexual humor.' The MPAA doesn't mention it, but there's also a lot of scatological humor in the film, in keeping with Sandler's inexplicable fascination with defecation, flatulence and bodily fluids. If this is not a family film, what is it? Well, the audiences for 'Jackass' may enjoy a scene where Davey, the hero, slams a sweet little old man into a Port-a-Potty and shoves it down a hill. When the geezer emerges at the bottom, he is still alive, but covered from head to toe with excrement. Then Davey sprays him with a garden hose, and he freezes solid. Ho, ho. Davey (who looks like and is voiced by Sandler) is 'a 33-year-old crazy Jewish guy,' the film informs us, who is up before the judge on the latest in a long series of brushes with the law, this time for drunkenness ... I can understand why Sandler might want to venture into 'South Park' territory with a raunchy animated cartoon, but not why he links it to Christmas and Hanukkah. The advertising will inevitably use holiday images, and in the minds of most people those images will not suggest a film this angry and vulgar. There is also an odd disconnect between Sandler's pride in his Jewishness, which is admirable, and his willingness to display the obnoxious behavior of this particular Jewish character to an audience that may not get the point."

'I believe in Santa', says PM,
The Age (Australia), November 29 2002
"Prime Minister John Howard today declared he believed in Santa Claus and said any childcare centre planning a Santa boycott was a slave to political correctness. Some Victorian kindergartens and childcare centres have banned Father Christmas, replacing him with figures such as clowns to avoid offending minority groups. Mr Howard said the move was ridiculous and said believing in Santa was one of the wonderful things about childhood ... The prime minister also attacked department stores which skipped traditional nativity scenes as part of their festive decorations, saying they had also caved in to political correctness."

Israelis arrest pastor after W. Bank protest,
Deseret News, November 30, 2002
"A United Methodist pastor from Washington state was among a group of protesters detained after demonstrating against Israel's construction of a security fence near the West Bank town of Tullkarem. The Rev. Gordon Hutchins said he was released Nov. 19 after four days in custody and rejoined the Lutheran group he had been traveling with. 'The people of Palestine are being systematically destroyed,' he told United Methodist News Service. 'The objective of Israel is ultimately to be the only people in this country.'

Court Reverses Cincinnati Ban on Menorah Display,
ABC News, November 30, 2002
"A U.S. Supreme Court justice has struck down the city of Cincinnati's ban against a Jewish display of the menorah on a downtown square -- and all other religious exhibits -- during the holiday season. Justice John Paul Stevens ruled late Friday that the city may not enforce its restriction against such displays, which was designed primarily to block the Ku Klux Klan from erecting a cross on Fountain Square as it has several times during the Christmas season in the past. In upholding a decision Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott, Justice Stevens said the city was denying citizens' rights to use the square as a 'public forum.' Judge Dlott called it an 'offensive violation' of free-speech rights for the city to confine the use of Fountain Square to a city-sponsored display, including a huge Christmas tree, during the seven-week period ... When the Ku Klux Klan has put up Christmas crosses in the past, the city has been forced to protect them from protesters who have dismantled them on several occasions. Such disorders have discouraged people from shopping downtown, the mayor said. Chabad of Southern Ohio, the Jewish organization which sought to overturn the city restriction, had applied for a city permit to erect a 10-foot-high candelabrum known as a menorah during the eight days of Hanukkah, which began Friday."

Jews follow Jesus between worlds. 'He Is The Messiah,'
gomemphis.com, November 30, 2002
" They are avoided by most Jews and misunderstood by many Christians. Though they share beliefs with both faiths, they don't belong to either. They are Messianic Jews - Jews who believe Jesus is the Messiah. Twenty years after Memphis's first Messianic congregation moved from a private home into a converted bungalow in East Memphis, B'rit Hadasha Messianic Jewish Synagogue is still a bit of a mystery to most. "A lot of times we feel isolated, like we're between two worlds," says Rabbi Gary Shansky. 'Christians are hungry to hear more about us, but they don't understand why we hold on to those (Jewish) things. But the Jewish world is totally against us. They look at us as being dangerous, like a cult trying to convert Jews to Christianity' ... Messianic Jewish congregations have been accused of being Christians masquerading as Jews. 'That's why we make sure that our congregations have some Jews among their members,' said Evelyn Hamilton with the union in Albuquerque. B'rit Hadasha considers itself more Jewish than not. Fifty-five families belong, with 80 to 100 people attending weekly services, Shansky said. The congregation is about 30 percent Jewish and 70 percent non-Jewish - members with no Jewish bloodline. 'I'm Jewish by birth,' Shansky says, but he doesn't advocate that those who are not call themselves Jews. Those with non-Jewish backgrounds are called simply Messianic believers. They follow the Jewish calendar, embrace Jewish traditions, celebrate the Jewish feasts and honor the Torah. They love and support Israel. Their services are a mixture of English and Hebrew. They have prayer shawls and yarmulkes or skull caps. They use siddurims or Jewish prayer books. They observe the Sabbath on Saturday. And their Torah scrolls are held and protected in a huge ark. 'We feel our faith is very Jewish,' Shansky says."

Ripping Up the Religious Roots of Christimas,
Catholic Defense League for Civil and Religious Liberties, December 4, 2002
" In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that it was okay to display a menorah on public property because it was situated next to a secular symbol (a Christmas tree) but it was not okay to put a crèche standing by itself on public property. In any event, the current status in the U.S. is troubling. “In New York City, a menorah and a crèche (the latter owned by the Catholic League) are allowed to be erected in Central Park. In Chicago, Daley Plaza is home to both religious symbols. But in Airmont, New York, menorahs are allowed and crèches are banned. The same is true in Birmingham, Michigan. In this instance, the town’s mayor, Seth Chafetz, has unwittingly insulted Christians by saying his city is a model of ‘tolerance and diversity’ because it allows a menorah and a Christmas tree. He mistakenly drew on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court decision in 1986 that banned the nativity scene from being erected in front of City Hall in Birmingham because it was not adorned by secular symbols. In short, he could okay a crèche in the same spot as the menorah."

MP's Christmas card angers Jewish group,
Toronto Star, December 6, 2002
"A Quebec member of Parliament has outraged a Jewish organization for using public funds to send out a Christmas card that shows him posing with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Jean-Guy Carignan, 61, who sits as an independent, but is still a member of the Liberal party, began mailing the card to about 2,000 constituents of his Quebec City East riding on Tuesday. The cards were printed and paid for by the House of Commons and sent out under the postal exemption that allows MPs to mail constituents for free. The photo was taken in Ramallah in May, when Carignan and eight other MPs went to the Middle East. Toronto-based Palestine House paid for the trip. He says the image reflects his desire see a resolution to the Middle East conflict. But the image drew an angry reaction from officials with B'nai Brith Canada, who thought the card was a practical joke when it was first described to them. National president Rochelle Wilner said that both Jews and non-Jews would find the use of taxpayer dollars for the card offensive, particularly during the holiday season."

The Creativity of Tina Brown,
First Things, August-September 1995
"Is there a bathroom or den in any university town in America that is not graced with Saul Steinberg's New Yorker cover of a map showing Manhattan as the center of the world? ... Ms. [Tina] Brown and those she has brought on board to create the new New Yorker are of the arrested adolescent school of journalism in which "creativity" never gets beyond self-congratulatory daring in defying putative taboos ... In his more recent efforts, [David] Remnick has deployed his talents in bashing the Pope and celebrating Elaine Pagel's polemical outbursts against Christian hangups about good and evil ... Among the other instances of 'creativity' at the new New Yorker, the cover of the issue coinciding with Holy Week this year was notable. It was a crude cartoon of an Easter bunny crucified on an IRS return. Unlike the cover with the amorous Hasid, this occasioned little comment locally. One might think that has something to do with the Jewish presence in New York publishing, but it possibly has more to do with people having become accustomed to Ms. Brown's juvenile delinquencies. It's just Tina being daring again, don't you know ... The cartoonist, Art Spiegelman, said he didn't know why the Catholic League was upset, since all he was trying to do was criticize Republican proposals for a tax cut that would 'crucify' the average American. Ah well, that's different. We thought it was an egregious trashing of the cross of Christ but, now that Mr. Spiegelman explains that it was all in the good cause of scoring a partisan point against those dreadful Republicans, that puts it in a quite different light ... For the Christmas issue, Mr. Spiegelman had done a cover of a urinating Santa Claus, but Ms. Brown killed it. Some things are still sacred, after all."

Science, Jews, and Secular Culture: Studies in Mid-Twentieth-Century American Intellectual History,
by David A. Hollinger
Paper | 1998 | $17.95 / £12.95 | ISBN: 0-691-00189-8
Princeton University Press
[Book blurb]
"This remarkable group of essays describes the 'culture wars' that consolidated a new, secular ethos in mid-twentieth-century American academia and generated the fresh energies needed for a wide range of scientific and cultural enterprises. Focusing on the decades from the 1930s through the 1960s, David Hollinger discusses the scientists, social scientists, philosophers, and historians who fought the Christian biases that had kept Jews from fully participating in American intellectual life. Today social critics take for granted the comparatively open outlook developed by these men (and men they were, mostly), and charge that their cosmopolitanism was not sufficiently multicultural. Yet Hollinger shows that the liberal cosmopolitans of the mid-century generation defined themselves against the realities of their own time: McCarthyism, Nazi and Communist doctrines, a legacy of anti-Semitic quotas, and both Protestant and Catholic versions of the notion of a 'Christian America.' The victory of liberal cosmopolitans was so sweeping by the 1960s that it has become easy to forget the strength of the enemies they fought. Most books addressing the emergence of Jewish intellectuals celebrate an illustrious cohort of literary figures based in New York City. But the pieces collected here explore the long-postponed acceptance of Jewish immigrants in a variety of settings, especially the social science and humanities faculties of major universities scattered across the country."

Jews, Gays Suing Methodist Home For Hiring Bias,
[Jewish] Forward, AUGUST 9, 2002
"Jews and gays have joined as plaintiffs in a lawsuit here that may test the limits of state-funded institutions in delivering faith-based services. Filed July 31 in the Superior Court of Fulton County, the suit claims that the Decatur, Ga.-based United Methodist Children's Home refuses to hire any Jews, has fired qualified workers for being gay and requires counselors to condemn homosexuality in violation of accepted professional standards. The lawsuit challenges state funding for the home and alleges encouragement of religious indoctrination and discrimination in employment practices. The foster-care facility receives over one million dollars a year from the state. The seven plaintiffs include an openly gay rabbi, a Jewish man who alleges he was not hired by the home because of his religion and a counselor who says she was fired by the home because she is a lesbian. Also named in the suit are the state of Georgia's Department of Human Resources and the department's commissioner, Jim Martin. 'I am in this lawsuit to support Jewish values," said Rabbi Joshua Lesser, founder of Congregation Bet Haverim, a gay and lesbian synagogue in Decatur, two miles from the home. Lesser also said he joined the suit as a taxpayer 'and to support the separation of church and state.'"

War Against Christmas Competition 2002 [IV]: South Park Offensive,
by Kevin Beary, Vdare, December 23, 2002
"Among the younger generation, South Park’s 'Mr. Hankey, The Christmas Poo' is fast becoming a staple of Yuletide viewing - right alongside A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life. 'This [Christmas] episode has an important moral lesson,' Comedy Central's South Park producer Matt Stone tells us in the prologue ... This irreligious recital sets the tone for the entire episode. The recitation from Luke is immediately followed by a rehearsal of the South Park school's Christmas play, 'The Birth of Jesus,' in which Mary moans as Joseph tells her, "Come on, Mary: push!' With a pop! a purple infant comes out of the girl playing the Blessed Virgin. This scene is, of course, meant to desanctify and mock the birth of Christ. The hero of the episode is Kyle, a Jewish boy who is unpopular at school because of his mother’s efforts to suppress the celebration of Christmas there. (She succeeds). Mr. Hankey, a turd wearing a Santa Hat, issues from the toilet bowl in Kyle’s house. He sings, dances and writes the word Noel in excrement on the bathroom mirror. Kyle tells his schoolmates about the apparition of Mr. Hankey, but they deride him. The boy is sent to the school counselor, who has him put into a straight jacket and a padded cell. However, when the school audience riots while viewing a 'happy, non-offensive, non-denominational Christmas play,' one of the children says: 'Everyone is fighting and my best friend is in an institution, just because we didn't believe in Mr. Hankey' ... The “Hankey” episode ends with a scene inside the South Park Public Access television station studio. The studio is empty save for a figure meant to represent Jesus Christ. He is alone at a big birthday table, singing 'Happy Birthday To Me' in front of a birthday cake with lighted candles. The Christ-figure blows out the candles of his cake and is left in pitch blackness."

[FURTHER CONTEXT TO THE ARTICLE ABOVE]
Jewish kid hitting the big time on TV's outrageous `South Park',
Jewish Bulletin (from Jewish Student Press Service), April 17, 1998
"As Seinfeld sings his swan song, another Jewish character -- a foul-mouthed 8-year-old -- is emerging big-time on the small screen. Though he lacks Jerry's comic genius, receding hairline and outrageous salary, he too has the word 'Jewish' stamped across his resume. He is Kyle Broslofski, from the cartoon show 'South Park.' Taking mostly adolescent and young-adult audiences by storm, the show appears on Comedy Central, the all-comedy cable network. From flaming farts to gay pets, Kyle and his pals push TV's boundaries just as far as they damn well please ... With 4.5 million viewers tuning in each week, 'South Park' is the most popular series in the history of Comedy Central. 'South Park' was born in 1995, when Brian Graden, then an executive at Fox, commissioned Matt Stone, 26, and Trey Parker, 28, to create a holiday video for him to send to friends and colleagues. The two former University of Colorado film students took on the project and used construction paper cutouts and stop-action animation to produce 'The Spirit of Christmas' .... 'It's hard to be a Jew on Christmas,' wails Kyle. References to Kyle's Jewishness have been plentiful in other episodes as well. Most characters latch on to the fact that Kyle is Jewish; it is the trait that defines his character. Kyle is the Jewish kid in the same way that Cartman is the fat kid or Kenny is the poor kid ... Stone, who believes that viewers can, and do, relate to Kyle. 'I can totally sympathize with Kyle,' Stone said in an interview. 'I mean I'm pretty much him.' Stone does the voice-overs for Kyle, chooses his story-line and adventures and is responsible for his personality. Though Stone did not grow up wearing a green cap with earflaps, like Kyle, he knows exactly where Kyle is coming from. 'We're both reactionary, short-tempered and impatient,' Stone said. But the similarities don't stop there. He was born in Houston and raised in the suburbs of Denver. Stone's mother is Jewish, his father Irish and he, like Kyle, considers himself 'ethnically Jewish, but that's about all.'" Stone's annual experience during the holiday season gave him the idea for the Christmas special. "On Christmas Day for my entire life, I've had nothing to do.'"

[MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM ALAN BOOKBINDER!]
Controversial Virgin Mary film defended. Alarm has reportedly been sparked among Catholics,
BBC, December 22, 2002
"A BBC One programme about the Virgin Mary has been criticised by a Catholic bishop as 'crude and offensive' guesswork. But the film's producer Alan Bookbinder has defended the decision to question the virgin birth. The documentary, to be screened on Sunday evening, questions the Mary of popular imagination. It portrays her as a poor and downtrodden girl, who might have conceived Jesus as a result of being raped ... [T]he Catholic Church said the documentary sparked 'serious alarm'. The RC Bishop of Portsmouth, the Right Reverend Crispian Hollis, accused the programme of offensive speculation which misrepresented a figure respected by millions ... The BBC documentary raises doubts about other traditions, including the birth of Jesus in a stable at Bethlehem and the presence of three wise men. The programme said the traditional image of Mary as a blue-eyed, blonde haired woman wearing expensive blue robes was probably wrong. Mary is revered in the Catholic faith She was probably a hard-working uneducated girl in simple tunics who had an arranged marriage with Joseph aged 13, the programme claims. The programme also questions the Biblical story of Mary's divine conception of Jesus Christ. It reports a version of the event put forward by a second-century historian, who claimed Mary was raped by a Roman soldier."

[MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM WILLIAM PROPP!]
A Scholar Rips Handel’s Messiah,
by William H. C. Propp [Propp is also Jewish],
Bible Review, December 2002
"Every December, concert halls and churches throughout the English-speaking world resound with the strains of George Frederic Handel’s mighty Messiah. For centuries, music lovers have gone home humming the arias and choruses that Handel’s librettist, Charles Jennens, lifted from the 1611 King James translation of the Bible. For this, we may all shout 'Hallelujah!' But here and there in the crowd leaving the concert hall, we spy a biblically literate pedant muttering 'Bah, humbug,' and fretting that, even if the singers’ diction was impeccable, the audience may have missed what the Bible actually says ... Jennens could write with fond condescension, 'Handel’s head is more full of maggots than ever' ... Throughout Jennens juxtaposed New Testament verses with Old Testament passages that the church had traditionally viewed as anticipating Jesus, sometimes lightly adapting the text. (For example, Jennens would change the tense and/or pronouns to imply that Jesus Christ was the subject.)5 At the time, European theologians of the Enlightenment were starting to question the Christian approach to Scripture as divine revelation. With Messiah, Handel and Jennens produced a musical reaffirmation of the conservative view ... However transcendent the average listener finds the soprano aria 'I know that my Redeemer liveth,' here the Grinchy scholar really grinds his teeth ... But I can’t imagine anyone wanting to sing my version. Okay, that’s enough. I’m done being Scrooge. Please forget everything you’ve read here before you attend another performance of Messiah. Sit back and enjoy the music. Although early critics deprecated Messiah as a gross vulgarization of Christian dogma, and though even Jennens complained that Handel had let him down, time has validated the composer’s own appraisal: 'I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God Himself.'"