Thursday, February 19, 2009

Vatican lifts excommunication of anti-Semitic society

Haaretz reports:

In lifting the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson who has been accused of Holocaust denial last month, the Catholic Church also readmitted a priestly society that openly propagates virulent anti-Semitism, according to a probe by a Belgian Jewish newspaper.

The Roman Catholic Church excommunicated The Society of St. Pius X in 1988 along with Williamson and three other member priests, declaring their consecrations were "unlawful" and "schismatic."

In January of this year the Vatican lifted the excommunication. On the same day, a Swedish television station aired an interview with Williamson in which he denied the existence of gas chambers during the Holocaust.

In a research performed after the readmittance, a team of journalists from Joods Actueel, an Antwerp-based Jewish news publication, found what they describe as "a slew of anti-Semitic content" on the society's Web sites in five languages.

The probe whose results were made public on Thursday, found that the society's official U.S. Web site described Jews as "the enemy of man, whose secret weapon is the leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy," adding that "heads of Jewry have for centuries conspired methodically and out of an undying hatred against the Catholic name."

The South African site said that "Jews have come closer and closer to fulfilling their substitute-Messianic drive towards world dominion." The Irish site asks whether "the Jews are guilty of Deicide," answering: "We must say yes."

The site from Germany, a country with strict limitations on anti-Semitic speech, clarifies that "contemporary Jews are for sure guilty of the murder of God, as long as they don't recognize Christ as God."

The Belgian site accuses Jews of "still believing they are the chosen people" while "awaiting world domination." The Austrian site warns that the Jewish organization B'nai Brith is "found everywhere" and "commands the entire world." [...]

1 comment:

  1. Ynet.com reports:

    Rabbi Aviner: Visiting Nazi death camps forbidden

    Prominent Zionist rabbi says leaving Land of Israel not for sake of mitzvah banned, as is helping Poles – who collaborated with Nazis – make living out of death camps

    Kobi Nahshoni
    Published: 02.23.09, 14:21 / Israel Jewish Scene

    Educational school trips to the Nazi death camps in Poland have become common among most Jewish sectors in Israel, but prominent Zionist Rabbi Shlomo Aviner recently claimed that they are in fact forbidden for halachic reasons, and urged schools to cancel them.

    Answering a reader's question on the subject in the religious "Ma'ayaney Hayeshua" journal, Aviner stated that trips to Poland were "not good" due to the halachic ban on leaving Eretz Israel, and because they "provide livelihood to murderers."

    In a conversation with Ynet, Aviner explained: "As is well known, leaving Israel is permitted only for the sake of mitzvah, while visiting the death camps is not defined as a mitzvah by the Halacha. There are important figures and great rabbis who have not visited there.

    "Clearly what happened in the Holocaust must be remembered, but this can be done using films, books, the Yad Vashem museum and there are even the testimonies of survivors who are still alive," he stated.

    And what about the emotional experience?

    "I once told educators that in any case the impression vanishes after six months, like any other emotional experience with a short shelf life. They smiled and said that it actually fades away after three weeks."

    Aviner also said that the trips have not been proven to have an "educational value." "For some this experience is very difficult and they come back utterly distraught," he added.

    'Why should Nazi collaborators benefit?'

    Another argument against visiting the camps, according to the rabbi, was the fact that the Polish people "collaborated with the Nazis" and were now making a living off of these visits. "I'm not busy holding a grudge against the Poles, but we shouldn't provide livelihood to people who allowed death camps to be built on their land and who are now making a profit out of it.

    "They are not my friends and I don't want to support them."

    According to Aviner, it was not accidental that the Nazis chose to erect the extermination camps in Poland. "They knew that the people would do nothing. One person was enough to blow up the railroad tracks. Why wasn't this done? Because they all said, 'good,' smiled and waited for what needed to be done to be done by the Nazis.

    "Many Jews who escaped from the camps were later murdered outside by the Polish resistance. When the Jews came back to the city their housees were inhabited and they faced a pogrom. To this day trials are being held against Poles who stole houses," he concluded."

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