My advice is they be expelled and be told to return to Jerusalem

oh what a gentle and wise man you are. If Israel was like paradise and the Israelis were angels you would love and support them. but since they are quite normal (except that they have a 100 times more enemies than normal people) you cannot love them anymore. Who are you ?

Ariel, you're tired. And those on your side whom you brand as extremist are tired, too. But there's something else you have in common with them, something your enemies don't have. Yours is a love of life. Theirs is an aspiration for death. If you love life, protect life. However imperfectly, that's what your side tries to do. It's a truth that these bishops appear to ignore in their haste to meet the expectations of their Easter-tide European flock. It's no leadership, and it's not honesty. Don't put yourself on their side.

This Pope was a member of the Hitler youth. What next?

We apologize for some of our bishops behaviour. They should be interested in improving the terrible Christian people living conditions in Arab countries rather than being involved in others' business.

Yep, I guess we would look pretty. Except these look even prettier: (hizballah) http://www.strategypage.com/military_photos/20057210.aspx (hamas) http://www.allthingsbeautiful.com/photos/uncategorized/hamas_a_dark_victory.jpg And you would be so much smarter if you didn't say such stupid things!

It is interesting that these Catholic Bishops are so quick to pass judgement against people that they tried to exterminate yet protected the thousands of pedophile priests in the Catholic Church. These hard-hearted antisemites had the nerve to criticize Israel after visiting the meorial for millions of innocent Jewish children that were totured, experimented upon, gassed and killed by Germans. It shows that the Catholic Church really has no interest in improving Jewish-Catholic relations. Why don't they go to Darfur and see what real nazi-like behavior is like?

I thank you for what you wrote and that you the courage to say it .... go on ... you feel much better later and don't listen to those like 104 he is an idiot ... you should ask him if he is so proud with Israel why he left .... God bless you .

Are you saying, then, that I shouldn't care about my personal safety or that of my family? "Hey, come on over to my town and feel free to bring whatever explosives and weapons you like!" Did you actually reread your post?

And have *you* actually experienced any terror bombings? (Not anywhere NEAR as horrific as a wall to your way of thinking, I suppose.) Well, I have and I can tell you THAT'S horrific.

"This is something that is done to animals, not people." Yes, Father Bishop, I agree with you, this is a very true statement, and when they stop behaving like animals I am sure they will take the wall down.

Jasmin, you should reread your post, When you say "my town" you are talking about a town illegally occupied by Israel. The israeli occupation is wrong and it will finish soon or later as a history tells us.

Israel is like your country was 60 yrs. ago?? I beg to differ. We don't have ovens. or gas chambers. What you saw in the palistinian areas was of their own making. Israel did not create the horrific conditions there. bone up on your history and current events. All monies that were given to the palistinians went for weapons and not for the betterment of the citizens there. The billions that Arafat stole from those people is still unaccounted for. But; of course it is always easier to blame Israel and the jews for anything and everything that you care to blame them for.

Ok Chana, Your hacked off. I get it! but to say that the UK has been taken over by Muslims is frankly stupid.

except for shortsighted Israeli hardliners, the truth is there for the whole world to see...

Note that these "bishops" are not Christian. Their "Christianity" is heathenism with a thin veneer of Christianity. Their idolatry reveals them. Something totally forbidden in both Old and New Testaments over 100 times! The Bible is very clear that any images representing God is not to be allowed, but heathens love the use of idols. The crucifix is especially abominable in the sight of God. This is just a small part of their monstrous list of heresies, blasphemies and crimes. These people murdered the real Christians whenver they found them and took their name. Kinda like what the arabs are trying to do when it comes to Israel, claiming it's their land and claiming to be Palestinians which is a known lie. They are enemies of the God of Israel.

infiltrate Israeli cities. The comments of the bishops are sick and depraved.

I agree, let's look at pre-1948 maps. In fact let's look at really old maps. The first to come up with the name Palestine were the Romans, following their conquest of the region. They initially called it Judea Capta (Conquered Judea). Some time later they coined the term Palestina, to humiliate the Jews who refused to put up with the Roman occupation and kept revolting. The term Palestina (actually the whole Roman province was called Syria-Palestina) was derived from the filistines (meaning INVADERS) who were themselves of Greek origin (they were red-haired apparently) and seem to have disappeared at some time. You are certainly not the descendants of those Greeks, because you are Arabs, therefore arrived in the Land of Israel in the 7th century of this era, whereas the history of the Jews goes back way longer than that, as the first temple built by King Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 before the common era - that precedes you by over 1000 years. Following the Roman conquest and the destruction of the Second Temple (whom the Romans themselves documented vastly, including the sack of the capital -Jerusalem, and the looting of the Temple treasure), the Jews were slaughtered in great numbers, sold into slavery, dispersed and other such "treats" that the Romans liked to dish out. Then the province of Palestine changed hands, being occupied by waves of conquerers. It was finally part of the Ottoman Empire (as described by Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad) and then handed over to the British whose mandate was to divide Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Except you Arabs never accepted the partition. In fact, the first to refer to the Arabs residing in the Land of Israel as Palestinians, was Arafat, who founded the PLO in 1964, some three years before the Six Days War which resulted in Israel conquering Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan. You declared war, we won. What's your problem? It's not that Israel woke up one morning and thought, wow, those territories over there look mighty good. I think I'm going to occupy them. If you care to take a look at a picture posted on this site by Arab columnist Ray Hanania (Yusuf Hanania, 1925) http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3354970,00.html just enlarge it and you will see that the Hebrew inscription reads The Land of Israel. Just because you have been busy for the last 40 years trying to convince the world that you are the rightful Palestinians doesn't mean it is also true. It's just a piece of cheap propaganda aiming ultimately to remove all Jews from Israel. except we're not going anywhere anytime soon. #David, Haifa occupied? It was the Arab leaders who urged the Arab inhabitants of Haifa to leave - "In three days we will be back, when the Jews are vanquished, and all that is theirs will be ours". You too need a refresher in history, apparently. we're not going anywhere anytime soon.

the real identity of n. 2, "joshua", is igal avidan, a pseudo journalist living in berlin and not in tel-aviv, and making a living by denouncing and attacking israel and al those who support it. stop allowing him to aggress mr. beck through ynet.

The German bishops are being disingenuous. The comparison between the berlin wall and the separation between the palastinian arab territories and Israel is superficial at best and the comparison to the holocost is completely unfounded. The wall between the palastinian territories and israel is there because of Palastinian agression, not to keep arabs captive in Israel. The berlin wall was to keep east Germans from fleeing. With over a million resident Arab citizens of Israel, its hard for me to see how the Israelies are pursuing a genocidal agenda against the Arabs as the Nazis did against the Jews. Its time for the Pope to dicipline these fools. In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I am an orthodox Catholic.

Ben, You have to separate the Catholic Church from these fool bishops. Those responsible need to apologies. What the Church needs to do is get an eclesiastic collar around these people. Mike

It is not only German Bishops that condemn Israel for its evil, but the Words of Holy Tanakh. The Great Sovereign of Israel known to the Hasidim and others as Hashem commands that foreigners within the Land be treated with kindness and mercy. The treatment by the Israeli state of Palestinians is a blasphemy as well as a crime against humanity , and the fact that crime is determined by its nature, not by the identity of its perpetrators (always the other fellow) is something Zionists have long forgotten. German bishops only speak the truth. They have learned from history, Israel has not. If Israel will not heed the rest of the world let them heed the Prophets

Maybe those bishops did not come right out and say Israel is behaving like Nazis but it is obvious to anyone who can see that the comparision was there,and it was extremely cruel and heartless of them to make the comments they did especially given the fact that there are still quite a few eldelry Holocaust surivivors in Israel who lost entire families in the cncentration camps. As for your other remarks, the Palestinian people have brought alot of their own suffering on themselves. You and other's say Israel should end the occupation well they ended the occupation in Gaza and it sure didn't bring peace. The majority of Palestinians still do not recognize Israel's right to exist as a nation. The majority of them have condoned and even supported terrorism against Israeli civilians including women and small children. Why people like you have so much sympathy for these people is mindboggling to me. As for the concrete fence as you referefd to the security wall it is absolutely necessary. A few years ago, before the security fence was built suicide bombings were happening everyweek sometimes almost everyday in Israel. The fence can always be taken down but the lives of Israelis ruined and lost in terror acts can never be restored.

You said the treatment of the Palestinians by Israelis is a blasphemy as well as a crime against humanity ? Well just interested, what would you call a person who breaks into a families home looks a 5 year old girl in the eye cowering in fear under bed and shoots her in the head? What would you call a person who stands next to a group of elderly Jewish people celebrating Passover and detonates a bomb blowing them up? Or men who corner two little terrified boys in a cave and blungeon them with concrete blocks and beat them so severely they can only be indentifed with their DNA records? What would you call a group of people who put on a play at a school to reenact and celebrate a suicide bombing at a pizza parlor ,which killed 15 people,including 7 members of one family? Do you think these are nice ways to treat people? Well the Palestinians have done all this and alot more to the Israelis. Seems to me they could also be accused of blasphemy as well as crimes against humanity in their treatment of Israelis. Are you a member of the Neutri Kara what else could explain your assenine remarks?

Despite the headline I see in this article no comparison to the Holocaust. The Nazi ghettos yes, and this is an important distinction. The Holocaust only began in 1942 with the Wansee decision. The brutal abuse of Jews by the Nazis before that was already a horrible crime against humanity, but it had not yet escalated to the systematic slaughter at the death camps. The brutal occupation of Palestine is indeed as horrible as the Nazi abuse of Jews in the ghettos BEFORE the Wansee Declaration, and it is a criminal abnegation of history to ignore the simliarities. The headline invoking the Holocaust is misleading, inviting outrage and derision to the bishops who said no such thing. Are the Israelis acting like Nazis at Auschwitz in 1943? Of course not. Are the Israelis acting like Nazis in Munich in 1938? There is some basis for comparison! And even if one can maintain that Israel is better than the Nazis -- even before the "Final Solution" was initiated in 1942 -- how is "better than the Nazis" an adequate standard? If you hold your hostess that her cooking was better than raw sewage, she would be rightly insulted. And yet Israel and its supporters argue for this standard (perhaps, as Shakespeare said, protesting too much!) as if merely being better than Nazis is enough to be proud of.

josua, if you are yigal avidan you are a member of the jewish hall of shame.