Dear Editor, 

After visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem recently, a group of German bishops crossed over into Occupied Palestine and compared Israeli treatment of Palestinians to Nazis treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust.

Bishop Gregor Hanke of Eichstaett reported, “This morning we saw pictures of the bestial Warsaw Ghetto at Yad Vashem, and in the evening we were in the ghetto of Ramallah. It gives one the creeps,” he said.

Cardinal Joachim Meisner, who served as bishop of Berlin when it was divided by the Communist-built Berlin Wall, commented when crossing a checkpoint into eastern Jerusalem , “This is something that is done to animals, not people.”  He later explained to reporters, “I never thought I would see something like this again in my life.”

Walter Mixa, the bishop of Augsburg spoke of Palestinians facing "ghettoization with almost racist characteristics.”  When asked to clarify his comment he replied, “I wanted to say that building the wall between Israel and the Palestinian autonomous areas, as well as the many Israeli settlements, amounts to a degree of provocation from the point of view of the Palestinian population.”

As might be expected, the bishop’s statements have been condemned as anti- Semitic, just as President Jimmy Carter has been accused of anti-Semitism for daring to tell the truth about Israeli-American policies in his best seller, “Palestine – Peace Not Apartheid.”  

Israel’s killing, maiming, imprisonment, torture and abuse of Palestinian men, women, children and elders is supported by Congress with US tax dollars.

Genevieve Cora Fraser
Orange, MA