Gaza Strip=Concentration Camp?
Friday January 9, 2009
The Vatican's chief spokesman on justice and peace issues, Cardinal Renato Martino, has made waves (and added to doubts over a May papal visit to the Holy Land) by comparing the Gaza Strip to "a big concentration camp." (CNS has...
Filed Under: Cardinal Martino, concentration camp, Gaza Strip, Holocaust, Israel, Jewish-Catholic relations, Vatican
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David Gibson is an award-winning religion writer who specializes in writing about the Catholic Church, which he joined as a convert at the age of 30. He is the author The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World. He also wrote The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism. He has written about Catholicism for leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Boston magazine, Fortune, Commonweal, and America. Gibson worked in Rome for Vatican Radio for several years and traveled frequently with Pope John Paul II. He later covered religion for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey. He has co-written several recent documentaries on Christianity for CNN. For further information check out his website at dgibson.com.Search This Blog
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I believe that all Holocaust references are rhetorical tinderboxes, creating a conflagration which ultimately consumes the main message attempted to be conveyed.
No reference to history is necessary to capture the gut-wrenching brutality and shocking loss of innocent life happening in Gaza right now. Sad to be wasting time debating any comparison with Germany of decades ago when the urgent problem is that children are being bombed right now.
And the Vatican continues on its spin into irrelevancy.
Might I suggest a brief perusal of the following op-ed piece:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090109.wcoessay0110/BNStory/specialComment/home
Yes, the Gaza incursion by Israel needs to be resolved urgently and fairly. The larger picture does, however, require any interested influential people and institutions to be aware of and respond in context. The 500 lb gorilla in the room is Iran, and it should not be forgotten when looking at Gaza.
Gaza is not a concentration camp. Nothing can compare to the Nazi atrocities - but the Israelis are catching-up.
Gaza is an open-air prison from which Gazans cannot flee. So the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is a lot easier when they are all living on top of each other - don't you think?
The Palestine Review
http://palestinereview.com
Has everyone forgotten that Hamas forced Israel's hand? Where's the concern that Hamas should stop firing its hundreds of rockets into Israel and stop targeting Israeli civilians? No sovereign country would absorb the assaults that Israel has over the past decades. Their evacuation of the Jewish settlement in Gaza was supposed to appease the situation and it emboldened it.
What would have been Israel's proper response? To jump into the sea and disappear from the face of the earth? Israel has every right to defend itself from Hama attacks and that means they must act offensively.
It's hard to stomach all the Catholics criticizing Israel. Perhpas the Church has short memory.
The comparison to Nazi Germany is accurate and valid, Israel and by Proxy the US is not the innocent victim in this situation.
Maybe a dozen dead Jews do not compare to the hundreds of dead Palestinians, Israel is a cery powerful occupying state, forcing a life of horror, death and destruction on a population that is subjegated against its will. So there are no gas chambers - Israel obviosuly dosnt need them as the weapons provided by the US do a fine job. The story of "evacuating" civilians into a home and them bombing it the next day killing all inside smacks of centration camp tactics.
Israel has been in violation of UN oders for decades, every year the order to withdraw is reinforced and ignored - that is a terrorist state. Israel is reaping what they sow and more is coming - when the US can no longer afford to support Israel due our economic collapse Israel had best be on high alert.
What a vile comparison!
The Palestinian Arabs of Gaza are there because the Egyptians never allowed Palestinian refugees entrance to Egypt - but preferred to keep them hostage in refugee camps after 1948. After Israel gained control of this area (after being attacked in 1967), she inherited this problem.
Hamas has been using the residents of Gaza as a human shield, with no regard to the loss of human life, while it shot missiles into Israeli civilian centers.
And Christians have been largely silent while their co-religionsits in Gaza have been persecuted and murdered by Moslem fanatics.
this is so sad that ppl had to go through that just b/c they were jews!!!!!
these are very good discriptions of the conditions and very good pictures to show what it was like
what was the location where this photo was taken?
I think the point here is not to see who is worse, or to lessen the suffering of one side or the other. If we are reading this, I assume we are catholics and as such we have to support respect for all human life, jewish, palestinian, catholic or muslim. Both the holocaust and the tragedy of Gaza are horrific evil crimes and we should stand against and not try to find the worst victim. Instead of trying to prove who's argument is better we can do a lot more good by living our Gospel faithfully starting by the love that should characterize us all. Please please out of mercy stand against the crime and sow the seeds of love that our world so badly needs.
i think the whole thing is discusting,in english were watching the boy in the stripe pjarmas,and talking about all this,if hitler didnt like jewish people,fair enough doesnt mean he had to kill them all does it,its horrible,ive seem pictures of it all, and went to auchwitz with a few of my friends as your aloud in there,there was a 50ft room 60ft high ful of shoes and it made me sick coz underneath a few of the shoes there were tiny shoes .. its horrible
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