Wow, can you people express anymore self pity? Seriously, who hasn't seen a movie, or documentary, or other people talking about the only genocide the world has known? Ok, so there have been many, but the way you people carry on, you would think this is the only one. I am so sick and tired of you people pissing and moaning over and over and over, insulting leaders that show respect but not enough unless they are on their knees. You people realize I'm not the only one getting tired of this?

totally agree and well said

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060528_auschwitz-birkenau_en.html

I do not believe anybody forcibly bent your arm to surf into this editorial in this Israeli news site. Therefore, if you feel so "sick and tired" of what you read - then instead of whining and bitching about "sparing you", I have a better solution for you: how about YOU sparing yourself the agony, and simply do not stick your nose here any more? The contemptuous and sneering attitude in your post, lacking any minimal attempt to understand where the author comes from - only proves that aside for hatemongering, you have nothing to contribute here. So why don't you spare yourself then? We would only be grateful.

Tanker - don't you understand that if during the Holocaust the Pope would have told the millions of Catholics not to cooperate hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. This was irresponsible. Something like your lack of respect for human life, "stop whining about a few million lives were sick of hearing it". Disgusting! It's hard to believe people can be so callous.

at this time there are israil and no hitler ... before there were hitler and no israil to day i raed a condelesence from a girl to her parents which they died before one year .it is long i read it silently but the last line i raed it aloud . the girl aske any one who read the newspaper to aske the mercy for her parents ... my sister said why .. we asked the mercy to our parents .it is better .. and i think hitler was awfull to germans as to the jews

thanks, you are 100% right! we Israelis love self pitty

Didn't we learn how to apologize in kindergarten? What is SO hard in saying "sorry"? Seriously? I'd rather hold onto what you PERCEIVE as self pity than to stop letting the Vatican know of their hypocritical ways. I'd assume the same for anyone in any other position. And you really believe us Jews ignore the other atrocities? Really?? Because you better believe that Jews are the founders of most of the Human Rights organizations and tons of non-profits to help those in genocide and atrocity plagued regions on this earth. We must do so because everybody else is too busy blaming Israel disproportionally instead of focusing on matters that are just as if not more treacherous.

The pope, the Germans, Poles, Russians, Hungarians, French, Serbs, and even Arabs, heck Palestinians specifically, are all BAD BAD BAD! The pope has probably made dozens, maybe hundreds of speeches, yet people, like Yaacov in Jerusalem believes that STILL demand pity, apologies, reparations, etc... many of which is going to punish Gaza. Yes, as Yaacov says, it's hard to believe people can be so callous.

I don't quite understand the importance in such "differentiations". Everybody knows that 6 million jews were killed in the Nazi-genocide, this is mass-murder. To "kill" in that context implies of course murder.

move on, jews exploit that situation for too long.

with a few modifications. though seriously, this is beginning to become a laughing stock. next thing is that the pope will be tried for warcrimes or antisemitism or something because he didnt give an apology. if he has to give jews an apology, then so does he to the muslims-which arent anxiously waiting btw-for that crap he said about the prophet. he came here for pilgrimage and some sort of promoting peace business, whatever that may be. for your god's sake- leave the damn guy alone.

Please calm yourself down. The dramatic effect you're trying to infuse here in order to strengthen your point, is completely baseless. Nobody would try the Pope for war crimes or antisemitism for not giving an apology. However given the horrid history of how Catholics treated Jews, from the Inquisition to the Church's silence during the Holocaust - an apology would make a big difference, and help rebuild trust in the battered Judeo-Catholic relations. As Aaron wrote in #9, what is SO hard in taking responsibility and saying "sorry"? Seriously? Why can't he just say it? World leaders have apologized for atrocities smaller than the Holocaust. Take Bill Clinton apologizing for slavery, for example. As for your ridiculous comparison to the Pope's statement against Muslims - first, he actually DID take his words back, following angry death-threats by millions of hot-headed Muslims worldwide, and second, how silly is a comparison for a MERE STATEMENT, to the Church's total silence when millions of Jews were slaughtered? Such comparison is truly offensive to intelligence.

I guess forgiveness isn't on anyone's agenda.

looked down upon with action that are looked down upon. I care not only about the extermination of jews, but also the other peoples that were killed under hitler's rule not to mention the rest of the atrocities that happened all over the world. you, yourself calm down-dont worry about me, I was laughing at this article when I first read it. lol. what makes the pope different from the rest of the people that have been lately on the news on counts of holocaust denials or "antisemetics" deportations, and what \ever concoctions that can be thought up of. Catholics havent only mistreated jews, so jews dont come before anyone else. I didnt see any footage of the current pope actually taking part in any of those historical events that your talking about, so why should he apologize? didnt the pope before him already apologize? It would be nice to have trust, he could do other things to promote it(; "trust" is a little hard to get by these days.) In response to your refering me to number 9's question: as you can see, he doesnt want to apologize; what are you going to do about it? thats a shame that you see slavery as "smaller" than the holocaust-I on the other hand dont. Then ya'll should take the muslims form of action to get that apology then, if you want it so bad. If you want to keep it limited to just the church fine: the church has been silent plenty of times while PEOPLE were killed, not to mention their fellow Christians; Im sorry that I dont see that the Jews come before the other victims of the holocaust-not to mention if he wasnt stopped, he would have went on to a different classification of people, with his ideologies. If my comparison is "offensive to intelligence" then your reply to my statement isnt really hitting your mark either. Whats, to me, "offensive to intelligence" is how "some people" think that they are better then others.

Without going into every point of your lengthy post, the only "real" argument it presents, is that Jews were not the only ones who suffered, yet they "think they are better then [sic] others". Well, nobody said we're better. But we DID suffer a genocide, much more serious than any other group of people which exists today. Show me another people today, who had six millions of them - about one third -slaughtered? All we want is that a leader of a religion, would express regret over his religion's proven responsibility of so many deaths of our people. Since he has close to a billion followers who closely listen to his every word - such show of regret would have a great weight and would do wonders to repair Jewish-Catholic relations. And if it makes you feel better - then I have no problem at all if the Pope would apologize to other peoples who suffered the Church's atrocities. We don't consider ourselves better or more special - we simply suffered more than any other people have (show me otherwise), hence this apology is legitimate. Slavery was horrible, however it didn't come close to the Jewish Holocaust. And if slavery was apologized for, why not the Holocaust? I'm glad to see you've taken my point about the Muslim way of gaining apology - for a mere STATEMENT, no less. We Jews are not like them. All we would do is protest quietly and politely. Yet if the Pope "doesn't want to apologize", as you say - well the only thing I can say is that it's a pretty sad day for Jewish-Catholic relations.

As much as I support & admire the state of Israel, no one wears that cloak of aggrieved self-righteousness like the Israeli community ( though the Arab & Progressive camps run a very close, hot 2nd ). Count your blessings, and less time fussing like a sour old woman over the hardness of history & the world. Pardon my bluntness, but the rest of the planet has little use for that "ultimate, special victims of history and reality " routine.

Some years ago, a book was published -- written by a former Catholic priest -- called "Constantine's Sword." One of the most striking points he made was that if the Jewish population had been left to increase and decrease naturally, the Jewish population in the world today would be around 330 million. We number around 13 million. We kept getting killed in a whole lot of places. In numbers you would not believe. So I think perhaps your response has more to do with shame and responsibility than anything Jews have said or done. We have a perfect right to remember our history in any way we please. You should, too.

My earlier response is rooted in a general sense of weariness with those who presume to exist on some sort of higher plateau of virtue, morality, and action, than the rest of the humanity. In this quality, Israel is as guilty as the Muslim World of indulging in. The pogroms, massacres, and Holocaust of history do not exempt Jews, or the state of Israel, from honest criticism or condemnation, from others. It's always a 2-way street, as it should be. Sorry, but no one has any time for that "Light unto the Nations", or "holier than thou" mindset. Painting yourselves as "the eternal victim" merely breeds eternal contempt. As much as I endorse Israel ( and no, Sarah, that support does not arise from some sort of guilt complex over the Holocaust ), good friends occasionally have to look eachother in the eye, and talk real straight.

Oh, I can. I can tell you all about growing up with parents who are concentration camp survivors. I can tell you about their nightmares. I can tell you about their tattoos (what were they, cattle to be branded?). I can tell you about having no grandparents, no aunts and uncles, no cousins -- they went up the chimneys. I can tell you how my sister and I ran and hid when we heard our parents discussing sending us to camp for the summer. You see, if you grow up with Holocaust survivors, you have a very special knowledge of what "camp" is. My parents' generation was one-third destroyed. My generation has suffered as well. As has my children's. So you know what? That earns me the right to talk about the Holocaust until the fricken cows come home. And if you don't like it, Cameron? That makes you stupid and uninformed. Oh -- and by the way -- people are talking to this day about destruction of the State of Israel and extermination of the Jews. Have you listened to the rhetoric coming out of Iran? Out of Islamic Jihad? Out of Hizbollah? Out of Hamas? The idea still hasn't gone away, and too much of the world agrees with these vile people. The more things change .... the more they seem to stay the same. The most consistent thing about the Jews is that we have always been murdered in vast numbers. For no good reason. That fact is as branded in Jewish brains as the tattoos on my parents' forearms. You owe me an apology. I don't expect one -- but you do owe one.

"Show me another people today, who had six millions of them - about one third -slaughtered?" In 1994, approximately 75% of the Tutsi population of Rwanda was massacred. This is about the same as the proportion of Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe who died in the Holocaust.

You are absolutely right. And the amazing thing is, the massacre took under 100 days. Why isn't the United Nations, say, delving into that? The point you miss, however, is that the slaughter in Rwanda was kind of immediate -- See, kill. What the Nazis did to the Jews was more an assembly-line process. Isolate; extract; choose; utilize as forced labor or immediately execute; execute. There's a world of difference there, dear.

History is hard as hell on many. Little time for professional, full-time victims.

Would the distinction have any relevance to those still left alive in Rwanda,? Differing methodology - same end.

The massacres in Rwanda were part of an inter-tribal war, where both sides committed atrocities at one another, over many years before. These massacres were done by simple people against simple people - not as a result of an organized, carefully-conducted, government-sponsored extermination plan, as was the Jewish Holocaust, therefore it is different. Some may argue about this, but this is not the main point. My main point is this: had the Church known about these tragic massacres and hadn't done a thing to stop them, as was in the Jewish Holocaust - then by all means - the Pope should apologize for that too. However, that was not the case.

"These massacres were done by simple people against simple people - not as a result of an organized, carefully-conducted, government-sponsored extermination plan, as was the Jewish Holocaust, therefore it is different. " First of all, just because it was "different" doesn't mean it was any less horrible. Do you think any of the Tutsis being hacked to death by machetes were thinking, "Gee, at least I'm not being sent to the gas chamber like the Jews were in the Holocaust! Aren't I lucky!" Secondly, the genocide in Rwanda was not simply a spontaneous occurence that was part of a civil war. It was premeditated. There were extensive preparations made beforehand, like there were with the Nazi Holocaust.

the rest was developing of that "real" arguement. anyway, thats just your opinion. I, on the other hand, dont see the holocaust being the more/most serious genocide. I'd say (the various by different countries) overall colonialism in Africa is more uglier. Well, i hope you get your wish. I could care less for any mere apology, neither do i think that the pope can do anything about it even if he tried-he is related to the people supposedly by religion. Thats life-people suffer. By viewing yourself as a people that "simply suffered more than any other people have (show me otherwise) hence this apology is legitimate" you actually are considering yourself better or more special. I am not going to bother about debating "who suffered the most" here and i respect your opinion, though not moved by it. I just gave you the neatly-cut answer to the question of why the holocaust wasnt apologized for (because he doesnt want to. If he did, he would have done it by now-all he needs to do is flip on the tv if he was too stupid to understand by now). Its kind of hard to deny someone didnt do something when the person (and the arab world) parade it all the time.(lol). a mere statement obviously hurt the arabs, just like a lack of mere apology (a statement) did to the jews. (Belittling actions isnt going to get you anywhere either- and the arabs did something about it). I tend to differ about "We Jews are not like them. All we would do is protest quietly and politely. " -but thats a different story. Hope you get your apology. You are obviously passionate about this whole affair