Jewish Human Rights Group Meets With Pope

Associated Press ^ | Tue, Dec 02, 2003 | VICTOR L. SIMPSON

[presidio9]

A Jewish human rights group met Monday with Pope John Paul II, launching a campaign to urge the international community to treat suicide bombing as a "crime against humanity."

Calling suicide bombing "the crime of the 21st century," delegation members from the Simon Wiesenthal Center said they will begin lobbying governments for a U.N. resolution so that those who plan the bombings can be brought to justice.

"The world turns to you, Your Holiness, to declare such acts as both crimes against God and crimes against humanity," the center's founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier, said in a speech to the pope.

The Los Angeles-based group also presented the pope with its humanitarian award for his "lifelong friendship to the Jewish people."

In brief remarks released by the Vatican (news - web sites), John Paul said, "In these difficult times let us pray that all peoples everywhere will be strengthened in their commitment to mutual understanding, reconciliation and peace."

The pope did not mention the group's proposal, but Hier later told reporters: "I believe he will take it into consideration."

He said the delegation sought the pope's support because of his role as a "moral force" in the world.

Hier said that the use of suicide bombing, a tactic of Palestinian militants in their conflict with Israel, has now spread, cutting across national and religious lines. He noted that recent suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and Iraq (news - web sites) have killed Muslims.

In his address to John Paul, Hier also raised the problem of the "proliferation" of anti-Semitism in Europe and the world, calling it a "malignancy that must be challenged."

[presidio9]

Finally, an end to Catholic suicide bombers is in sight.

[Cicero]

I'm sure the Pope is sympathetic. But his first duty is to Catholics and other Christians who live in Islamic country around the world under conditions of low-grade persecution. That's the basic reason why he has avoided offending Muslims when possible. If he spoke out, the persecutions of Christians would only increase, and probably not much good would be accomplished.

Unfortunately the Pope doesn't have much influence on the new European antisemites, who are almost all leftists and are as anticatholic as they are antisemitic.

Ironically, it's the same predicament Pius X faced in regard to defending the Jews too publicly in confrontation with Hitler. He lacked the power to enforce demands, and his moral authority meant nothing to Hitler.

[Alberta's Child]

The Los Angeles-based group also presented the pope with its humanitarian award for his "lifelong friendship to the Jewish people."

Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles also happens to be the guy who has been leading a crusade against the screening of Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion" -- which means that as far as I'm concerned, the Pope should have told him to take this humanitarian award and shove it up his @ss.

I don't think the Pope is going to have much to say about Marvin's proposal to declare suicide bombing a "crime against humanity," either. Catholic doctrine does not have much room for such a concept -- people are judged before God based on their crimes, regardless of the labels that man attaches to them.

Besides, the phrase "crimes against humanity" has no meaning in a religious context. It was specifically invented to fit a secularist worldview that has no room for a Divine being, and to serve as a justification for a state to reach outside its normal jurisdictional limits to prosecute foreign citizens.

[F16Fighter]

"I'm sure the Pope is sympathetic. But his first duty is to Catholics and other Christians who live in Islamic country around the world under conditions of low-grade persecution."

Ahem -- "Christians" are being slaughtered by Muslims in the Sudan, in Nigeria, and in other equatorial African nations every day with nary a relative whisper of protest from the Pope.

Quite frankly, if this sort of persecution and slaughter were taking place in the Pope's native Poland, Paul and the Vatican would be screaming from the top of their lungs in protestation.