Tuesday 29 January 2013

'The Jews crucified Our Lord': Irish antisemitism and the complicity of the Catholic bishops

"Palestinians living in Gaza are being treated worse then [sic] animals in a zoo. Ireland must do everything we can to end Israel’s collective punishment of civilians, which is a flagrant breach of international law." (Justin Kilcullen, director of Trócaire - he is also head of CONCORD, the Brussels-based powerful European confederation of 1,600 NGOs across 21 countries for relief and development. The European Union generously provides funds to Trócaire and CONCORD.)
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Ruth Dudley Edwards * @ Daily Telegraph:

Pro-Palestinian fanatics blame 'the Jews'
for Jesus' death
Sarah Honig, a recent Israeli visitor to Cahersiveen, a charming little town in County Kerry, wrote yesterday in the Jerusalem Post of being asked in its main street for a donation by three teenage boys carrying large signs saying "Free Palestine". When asked from whom Palestine was to be freed, they replied "The Jews". "Are you sure", she asked, "that this money wouldn’t fund terrorists and murderers?" She was thrown by the response: "What do you have against Palestinians? What have they done to you? They are only against Jews. Jews are evil." One of them helpfully added that the Jews "crucified Our Lord". Honig then met the teacher, who explained he had brought them out during school hours as part of a class project "to further a humanitarian goal" by inculcating a commitment to charitable work. He "nodded in agreement without a word of objection" when she told him of the children’s remarks about Jews.

Those of us who publicly address the one-sidedness of the Irish take on the Middle East are used to ill-informed and/or bigoted politicians and activists (particularly but not exclusively republican or of the Left), but the Catholic Church has been having a pernicious effect too, particularly through its official overseas development agency, Trocaire, an Irish word meaning compassion.
More HERE (In French HERE)

More on Trocaire HEREHERE and HERE.



* Ruth Dudley Edwards is an historian and a prize-winning biographer and crime writer. Her eleven non-fiction books include The Pursuit of Reason: The Economist, 1843-1993 and Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice. Her twelfth crime novel, Killing the Emperors, a satire on the world of conceptual art, has just been published by Allison and Busby. www.ruthdudleyedwards; RuthDE@twitter

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