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1 1 of 5 30-Jan-06 12:52 PM SEARCH SITE WEB Company Search January WEBLOGS TIMES ONLINE Home Britain World Business Money Sport Comment Travel Entertainment Books Driving Property & Gardens Women Health Jobs Food & Drink Education Student Tech & Net Games Crossword Law Weather Sunday Times Site Map «Jeffrey John breaks silence on civil partnership Main Friday, 27 YOUR WRITER Ruth Gledhill, Times Religion Correspondent, offers her views here on issues of the day. Your responses are invited. RSS RDF Link XML Link SERVICES My Times Shopping Promotions Classified Mobile Archive

2 Hamas CATEGORIES victory and HMD RECENT POSTS Christian leaders of all denominations issued many fine statements for this year's Holocaust Memorial Hamas victory and Day in Cardiff. Stephen Bates did a good report in HMD the Guardian. The irony of this memorial event occurring almost simultaneously with the election of a Jeffrey John breaks party committed to the annihilation of Israel to form silence on civil the Palestinian government will be lost to few. Have partnership the lessons of the Holocaust been learned? Will the world stand by and let this happen again, or will our religious leaders Students' have the courage union bans to speak out? Christian Union So far, my attempts to elicit comments on the Hamas victory from the main Cruising leaders bishops of our churches have not been successful, although to be fair, everyone is slightly stunned by what has happened and doesn't quite Does know the thought how to react. of But you can judge for yourself by reading the Hamas Padre Pio charter, cheer quoted you below and online here. Besides urging the destruction up? of Israel, the charter also avows jihad against Western crusaders, a term which presumably includes even pro-palestinian Christians. Women bishops: It urges all Arab countries to join in the jihad against, not just celebration Israelis and tinged Zionists, with but all Jews and quotes the blatantly false Protocols sadness of Zion as if they were true. This site here also publishes the charter. Still not convinced? Read it again here. And while I don't want to Sir ruin Iqbal your faces day or police give you nightmares, I really recommend you read Yossi inquiry Klein Halevi's chilling analysis, The End Game, here. As it is no secret that liberal Christians in particular have tended to lean Agca free - Deus in favour of the Palestinian cause, it will be interesting to see how far Caritas est this stance will be maintained in future and what the response will be to this Tony Hamas Banks, victory. ballroom Here dancer is what the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said about Holocaust Memorial Day. (The Archbishop, incidentally, is to visit Germany Women bishops and Poland by next week to attend a major ecumenical theological 2012 conference and to take part in the celebrations marking the centenary of the birth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, also the subject of an exhibition at Westminster Central Hall. Bonhoeffer gave his life in his ARCHIVES battle against the Nazis. He died in a concentration camp.) Dr Williams said: "2006 is a year of particular significance as it is the 350th anniversary of the Resettlement of the Jewish community 16 in this - 22 country. As a nation we should celebrate this anniversary, marking as it does, not only an attempt to right some of the terrible wrongs earlier inflicted on Jewish people, 9 January but 2006 also - 15 as an opportunity to celebrate the quite remarkable contributions of Jewish people to every aspect of the life of this country. Without the Resettlement, it is hard to 2 January imagine 2006 what - 8 our history, culture, politics and economy would be like today. Without doubt we would have been greatly the poorer in every respect. 26 December "It is all the more appalling that despite these positive developments, there is an acknowledged and frightening rise in anti-semitic publications, websites and physical 19 December incidents in this country and in many others. The desecration December 2005 of Jewish cemeteries in Manchester and London, a range of hate incidents and the need for security 12 December at all synagogues these are matters that we cannot ignore. Is December it not a 2005 matter of the gravest concern that a religious community in this country must, on the advice of the police, 5 December put in place a range of security measures for its worship, the December 2005 education of its children and its social activities? For what other religious community is this systematically the case? 28 November This is serious enough; but elsewhere in the world, there December 2005 are inflammatory, bigoted and irresponsible statements made 21 November even by 2005 some - 27 in prominent public positions." The November Archbishop 2005of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, said: "History s greatest evil remains barely graspable by the human mind. But I glimpsed something of it at a visit once to Auschwitz, where LINKS a room contained suitcases stamped with the initials of those who were taken Times to Online the gas Faith chamber. Their suitcases, and their names, were stripped from them: the Jews and others whom the Nazis scapegoated had to be de-humanised in order to be slaughtered. The warning is clear: RECENT wherever POSTSdehumanisation takes hold, terrible evil is sure to follow. Hamas victory and "That HMD is why the message of the Shoah remains one of the defence of the God-given intrinsic dignity of all human beings, of which the right to life Jeffrey is the John primordial. breaks This is a right which comes with birth; it is not a concession silence civil of the state or the law. It cannot be given and taken away. It partnership is the indelible mark of God in us, and its denial is a sacrilege. "The Students' Catholic union Church bans solemnly teaches that Jesus was a descendant of David; that Mary and the Apostles belonged to the Jewish people; Christian Union that the Church is nourished by its roots in Judaism; and that the Jews 2 of 5 are Cruising our elder bishops brothers and sisters in faith. The Catholic people of the world stand with Jews against anti-semitism and holocaust denial, and 30-Jan-06 12:52 PM

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4 Comments Dear Ruth, Does not the gloriously liberal(?) victory of Hamas as the rightful representatives of the rights of all(?)philestanis Revolution merit revision to the more accurate spelling of, "PalesTAN"? and Philistanis? Yours sincerely, Frank Adam Posted by: Frank Adam Sunday, 29 at 10:02 PM The word holocaust is a hopeless expression of the Nazi persecution of Israelites, Romany, Jehovah s Witnesses, and various other unfortunates singled out by Hitler s regime as enemies of the State; this is why its very utterance rankles with Mankind. The holocaust was thou shalt not kill enacted under the auspices of human economics. The people murdered by the Nazis were not sacrificed. They were cold bloodily murdered; millions of innocent people, for a political purpose and not religious ceremony as the term holocaust implies; as for example Mayan treatment of their captives may be described. Mankind should never ever forget what the Nazi regime did; but a hysterical memory must be dropped. The global population must believe and go forward as one peaceful mind. Posted by: Steve Ward Sunday, 29 at 02:02 PM Dear Ruth, You wrote: "So far, my attempts to elicit comments on the Hamas victory from the main leaders of our churches have not been successful, although to be fair, everyone is slightly stunned by what has happened and doesn't quite know how to react." Though no less stunned, most Israelis have a clear-headed view of what all this means, including those of us, like my wife and me, who have experienced the cold-blooded and brutal murder of a child at the hands (literally) of the new parliamentarians. My wife Frimet was interviewed in your paper yesterday (28th Jan) - see Her comments were straightforward and to the point: " Nothing has changed, says Mrs Roth. Hamas wants the destruction of the state of Israel just the same; only now they have learnt how to talk to the media. In a country that has lost more than 430 citizens to Hamas suicide bombs in the past five years, many believe the decision to withdraw from Gaza gave Hamas a huge boost. For them, that was a clear indication that the way of terror was worthwhile, Mrs Roth said." I think Frimet spoke for most Israelis. For years, we've listened to the wishful-thinking-posing-as-analysis of those who wanted us to believe Hamas and the other Islamicist barbarians at war with Western culture and with Jews in particular were some sort of insignificant fringe element. Last week's events now demand that the proponents of that 'fringe' theory own up. Hamas truly does speak for a majority of Palestinian Arabs. Those discomforted by the revelation are left to do some serious soul-searching - and perhaps extend apologies to those families, like mine, who have a permanent empty place at their table and a huge hole in their hearts for a fifteen year-old child blown apart in the name of the Kingdom of Islam on Earth. There's some background for anyone interested at Yes, I'm aware that those apologies will not arrive soon. Indeed, that same Times interview yesterday bracketed my wife's plain-speaking with the sophistry of an Israeli left-wing extremist. For those of your readers who might not have imagined it possible that reflexive ideologues of the left could take this week's massive vote of confidence in the Tiny Extremist Radical Faction and turn it into a ho-hum-nothing-new-here apologetic, I offer the words of Frankenthal, bracketed in some sort of pathetic attempt at 'balancing' those of my wife: "Many Israelis said that their Government should negotiate with Hamas. One poll showed 48 per cent in favour. Yitzhak Frankenthal, whose son was killed by Hamas, said: The PLO also had a clause talking about the destruction of the state of Israel and they changed it. International pressure will bring Hamas to do the same. Sadly most journalists and their editors lack the wit to place off-the-map comments like his in their rightful place. Suggesting, as Saturday's Times piece does, that most Israelis want to engage with the islamo-nazis of Hamas is straight out of cloud-cuckoo land. Frankenthal and his ilk have too much at stake, personally and ideologically, to sit quietly and repent at the latest events. 4 of 5 30-Jan-06 12:52 PM

5 5 of 5 30-Jan-06 12:52 PM Post a comment Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the author has approved them. Name: Arnold Roth Address: arnold.roth@gmail.com URL: Remember personal info? Comments: Preview Post Contact our advertising team for advertising and sponsorship in Times Online, The Times and The Sunday Times. Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard Terms and Conditions. Please read our Privacy Policy. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website.