Note these paragraphs from the JPost article.

“The bishops issued the statement at the close of their two-week meeting, called by Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the plight of Christians in the Middle East amid a major exodus of the faithful from the region.

“The Catholic Church has long been a minority in the largely Muslim region but its presence is shrinking further as a result of war, conflict, discrimination and economic problems.”

That pretty much confirms what I wrote about it above. I will repost that here.

“As for the Middle Eastern bishops, they live in countries where the Muslims will kill Christians at the drop of a Qur’an, literally. Radical Muslims are in the process of driving Christians out of the region, Copts from Egypt, Maronites from Lebanon, Assyrians from Iraq, various denominations from the Palestinian Authority, plus forcing conversions by threats of violence, especially of young women (as in Gaza not long ago). If the bishops don’t suck up to their Muslim overlords their flocks are at risk from pogroms. And their Muslim overlords demand antisemitism. So I don’t like their antisemitism, but I understand their precarious position, too. I don’t doubt that the Christian bishops share this prejudice, but I also realize that for their own safety, when the Muslims say “frog,” they must jump.”

Interesting that the Israel ambassador to the Vatican notes the statement contradicts the decisions of the Vatican II Council, which are authoritative for Catholic doctrine, while the doings of a temporary meeting of some bishops are not. I suspect you are blowing this event way out of proportion, just like with Dubya’s failure to move the embassy to Jerusalem.

Now I don’t know why Dubya failed to have the embassy moved. I could guess that some of the Arabists in the State Department or the Pentagon convinced him that US national interests might be harmed by doing so, provoking hostility unnecessarily among the populations of Muslim countries. I don’t like that, but it might well be the case that he was so convinced. As I say, it is a guess. But here is another fact which I don’t necessarily like but which is, nevertheless, true. Israel is not the summum and end of United States national interests. It is the duty of the President to safeguard the USA. It is my belief that safeguarding Israel will help do that, but a US President cannot subordinate US interests, under any and all circumstances, to satisfaction of Israel or even American Jewish aspriations. My hope is tha when Israel is in danger the US will come to her aid and, if necessary, rescue; that the US will support Israel diplomatically when Israel takes necessary measures to defend herself, measures that meet with widespread condemnation by those who are driven hysterical by the thought of armed Jews defending themselves against genocide. If that long range goal is made easier by keeping the embassy in Tel Aviv, by making it plain that the President is not beholden to Israel or to American Jews as a narrow special interest, then that is OK by me. And Dubya did come to Israel’s aid diplomatically, over negotiations with Arafat, over Israel’s anti-terrorism actions, and over the 2006 War with Hezbollah.

Finally I’d speculate that the real reason conservatives did not comment on this conference of bishops is that almost none of them knew about it. Just as I did not know about that idiotic statement by the Sephardic Chief Rabbi, so that I was unable to denounce it before now, and comment that he appears to be suffering from cranial rectal impaction.

You are wrong, there were thousands of conservative Jews. Your idea only Jews are liberal is a myth at best. Back in the 40’s -60’s those Jews that could not break in because they were Jews often disguised their religious affiliation. Many in my family were closet republicans. My uncle even belonged to a Jewish republican club. They met under the guise of poker night. I am here to tell you it was near impossible in many states for a Jew to openly be embraced by republicans. One would think post Shoah this country would have embarrassed Jews when in actuality Antisemitism became even stronger.

The idea every Jew was liberal is outright wrong.But then the crap they took from Christian Republicans in the early days,it is no wonder many continued to stay democrats. Why do you think this topic was not discussed so widely in the book, “Why are Jews Liberal?” To the author who is sponsored by many wealthy Christians, it would be a liability to actually write the entire truth.

I wish you well.

It’s not much worse than what the Irish endured. Most immigrant groups can tell similar tales of woe. If a few decades of limited access to country clubs and Ivy Leagues along with a little personal discrimination is as bad as it got, then I would say Jews didn’t endure too much.

“Nor was the quota system fun which barred many Jews from entering the U.S post Shoah.”

America had let millions of Jews into the United States prior to the 1920s and millions upon millions of other immigrants into the US before this time. The fact is that in the 1920s, Americans wanted a break and needed time to assimilate huge numbers of newcomers into America. The pause worked. (That’s why there is little in the way of Yiddish or Italian theater these days.) The quota system did not specifically target Jews. If America let everyone in the world who is suffering today, our population would explode past a billion overnight and most of our citizenry wouldn’t speak a lick of English. Nations have a right to restrict entrance. Israel doesn’t let every refugee or impoverished Third World into its nation and neither should we.

“no Jew was wanted in the Republican party.”

Few Jews wanted to be in the Republican Party. In the Catskills resorts back in the 30s, you would have found many more Jewish Communists–not to speak of mainstream Democrats–than Jewish conservatives. Republicans knew that Jews weren’t their constituency, just as wiser Republicans today understand that Hispanics aren’t likely to lean conservative.

“And no, I will not forgive nor will I forget and yes”

Forgive what? Forget what? What have you personally endured? It reminds me a little of Jewish habit of demanding collective credit for certain things while avoiding blame for others.

Jew: You know we Jews gave the world Einstein.
Me: That’s true, Einstein was a great physicist. Are you also prepared to take the blame for Karl Marx?
Jew: No! He may have been an ethnic Jew, but he wasn’t behaving in a Jewish manner.
Me: Neither was Einstein. He came from a secular household. So do you take the blame for Marx? Do you still want collective credit for Einstein?
Jew: Well…

We can assign credit and blame to individuals. Alternatively, we can assign them to groups. We can’t mix and match without descending into hypocrisy. I prefer to assign credit and blame to individuals. My grandfather accomplished some fine things during WWII. Those are his achievements, not mine. Likewise, the suffering your ancestors endured is their suffering, not yours. The victim mentality may be comfortable, but its not coherent unless you’re also willing to take the blame for the wrong of any and all Jews throughout history and accept than any non-Jew or his ancestor ever wronged by a Jew is right to never forget or forgive the Jewish people.

Thanks again for your response, Noam.

Noam, I don’t know why, but your posts are getting false positives from my spam detection software, and require my personally approving them. I was busy yesterday and Sunday, which is why your comments did not get approved.

Yesterday I extensively addressed this issue and not to my surprise it was not published.

We must take the ‘political’ out of the question of what Jews must do when attacked. As a conservative I never fail to be astonished how my conservative Jewish writers and publishers of weblogs along with the very cream of Jewish movers and shakers of the Republican party are as silent as those liberals we so love to bash. Worse, political correctness amongst ‘webloggers’ is tantamount in my party when it might affect their conservative Christian base. I thought this was just a sickness of liberals but I see there are only a few and I mean a few conservative blogs who take antisemitism serious no matter whose feet they step on.

a few quotes from the ZOA communique:
“ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We strongly and unequivocally criticize this outrageous and anti-Semitic, anti-Israel statement issued by Archbishop Bustros, which shows contempt for the Hebrew Bible and revives the anti-Semitism of the Church which we thought had been finally rescinded decades ago. This has not been the view expressed by Pope Benedict XVI, or his predecessor, John Paul II, or of the Second Vatican Council.”

“The ZOA has written to Pope Benedict a letter stating, ‘How are we to take the Vatican’s word when it can casually revert to past anti-Semitism and discard the laudable effort of recent years to rescind its anti-Jewish theological problems?”

Like the liberals we so love to bash you see ZOA unafraid to say what is on their minds…unlike many conservative bloggers:

“The ZOA has criticized the statement as a return to past anti-Semitic Catholic positions denying Jewish chosenness as recorded in the Hebrew Bible and condemning Israel with the falsehood that it is an occupier that displaced Palestinians, rather than the victim of a seven Arab nation 1948 attack designed to destroy the fledging Jewish state on its first day of sovereign existence, without which no Palestinian refugees would have been created and without which there would exist a Palestinian Arab state today. It has also criticized the statement for its anti-Semitic focus on alleged Israeli wrong-doing, despite the Synod’s purpose having been ostensibly to discuss the problems faced by dwindling Catholic communities in the Middle East. ”

Who said these were a bunch of ME synod members? “In yesterday’s communiqué from the Synod, Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros, Greek Melkite Archbishop of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Boston, MA, and president of the ‘Commission for the Message,’ said that, “The Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians, to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands … We Christians cannot speak of the ‘promised land’ as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people. ”

Please I beg to have my post from yesterday printed along with this one. If we are truly conservatives we must act like it even if it makes “others” feel bad. This is Antisemitism (with a capital ‘A’) we are talking about, after all.

“Jews have faced only minor challenges in the United States….”

Well we were not gunned down or gassed but we lived through our share of antisemitism that is for sure. Not being able to go to many of the resorts in the 40’s – 50’s and even early 60’s because signs told us, “NO JEWS OR DOGS ALLOWED” was no picnic. Living through university quota system against Jews was not fun either. Nor was the quota system fun which barred many Jews from entering the U.S post Shoah. Having difficulties borrowing money from banks because certain people looked too Jewish was no walk in the park. As for those country club dances, forget it. And in some cities across America, no Jew was wanted in the Republican party. This is just a taste of what Jews had to endure in America, excuse me! As for this country not bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz, I will never forgive it. They didn’t do it, thank you because a Jew is not worth it. They didn’t stop the Shoah because of an innate hate within them. Thank you Mel Gibson.

Look, you can meld every moral equation you choose together but nothing not even the ill spoken words of the haughty ill tempered, ill mannered Rabbi Yossef can compare to what Jews to this very day have had to endure. To argue about this with me proves my point. And no, I will not forgive nor will I forget and yes, I remain ever diligent to respond to those who tell me, “forget it already, you are making way too much of it.” (which in your own way that is what you are saying) I mean look at the suffering of poor Christians at the hands of ruthless Jews. Get my point?

In closing even conservative Jews are afraid to stand up to Catholic antisemitism. To them the worst hypocrites are liberals because they say nothing. What about a very conservative Israeli ultra orthodox run web blog who when reporting on the Synod libel,begs the following question to his readers”I leave it to my Christian readers to figure out whether the Catholic Church is just doctrinally unable to accept the concept of a Jewish state in Israel.” If a liberal framed a question like that he or she would be slammed for not having the guts to call a spade a spade, meaning accuse the synod of far more than being politically anti Israel. The owner of that said weblog just like many liberals did not want to upset his base. (ka-ching ka-ching) Well thank you very much Yourish.com for not being politically correct about a subject that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the oldest hate for mankind ever. May G-d bless you and keep you. (and your precious cats as well)

Thank you. Few had anything to say.

For sure the left in Israel was all over that story.

Irrelevant.

Tell me how many millions died from the verbal diarrhea of Rabbi Yosef?

Tell me about the catastrophe caused by Mel Gibson? (And since when have Jews only denounced antisemites when millions of lives, or even a single life, were at stake? Antisemitism is bad in theory and practice. Anti-gentile sentiments are only bad when acted upon.) Still, this is a very common argument in Jewish circles: our history of numerical and political inferiority spells our moral superiority. Andaman Islanders have not been responsible for any major atrocities in modern times either, but this doesn’t necessarily imply that Andaman culture is superior to any other. Jews have faced only minor challenges in the United States and they now have a country to call their own, but you’d never know it by the way many Jews talk. It seems the glass is always half empty.

The problem is that Rabbi Yosef is a harbinger of Haredi attitudes toward non-Jews, whether those gentiles are hostile or friendly. Nothing he’s said about the goyim is anything I haven’t encountered among the Haredim and Hasidim on previous occasions. Demographic changes in both Israel and the United States mean we are facing a curious situation whereby a considerably softened Western opinion of Jews is being met by an increasingly inflexible, anti-gentile attitude in the Jewish world. Go figure.

But thank you for your response, Noam.

First of all I would like to say very clearly, Ovadia Yosef was wrong to say such things and many like myself on the right spoke out against it. For sure the left in Israel was all over that story. (As for the matzav.com, that is an ultra right blog, period.) Most importantly Jews fight moral equations day in and day out, yours included. Jews have paid dearly for the vicious libels and lies bestowed upon them by the Catholic Church. We paid a price no other people ever paid. Tell me how many millions died from the verbal diarrhea of Rabbi Yosef?

Today is Monday. Still I search for the smallest amount of condemnation from the right in weblogs and print media of the libel from the Catholic Synod. this absence is moral hypocrisy at it’s very best. Fruthermore to the person who made some excuse why they did it, I don’t care. As a Jew I am tired of the Catholic Church.

#9. You ask what libel. Did you not read the title story on this weblog “Christians telling Jews what to do” which prompted my replies?

To respond to the final statement by #9 who said:”When Obama is putting pressure on Israel to turn East Jerusalem over to the Palis as a “confidence building measure” you’ll see what the difference between him and Dubya is.” Are you serious?? Bush promised in his first campaign for President that in his first week of office he would sign the embassy act. Do you know what the embassy act is? Do you know what that pen to paper would have meant to Israel? Do you know that would have removed the U.S embassy from East Jerusalem to Jerusalem proper giving Israel what every other country has, an American embassy in their capital city. Bush squandered that promise which told the world, Jerusalem ‘is not’ the undivided capital of Israel!! That is why he did not sign the embassy act! He had 8 chances to do it, sir. He lied. Then to rub salt into the wound of Jerusalem he refused to send even a low level representative of his administration to the all important ceremonies of the Anniversary of the Reunification of Jerusalem. So who paved the road to pressure who to give up what? Worse, every time Bush axed the embassy act he signed the renewal of the lease for the PLO office in the U.S. Each time he axed the embassy act the Saudi government praised it, along with the EU, UN and Russia who btw, Bush placed on his administration formulated, quartet for peace who have been nothing but a royal pain in the neck for Israel ever since.

The legacy George Bush left on Israel was that upon leaving he told the Kenneset, “Take good care of Olmert.” He left statements which you can find all over the internet that while on speaking tours admonished Israel time and time again for the “daily humiliation of the Palestinian people.” You can find statement after statement from Bush telling Israel that Palestine had to be “contiguous,viable and not resemble swiss cheese.” He ripped Israel every chance he had concerning settlements. And no, that moral hypocrisy then is no different than the moral hypocracy being blasted toward Israel now. ZOA begged Bush to not call a holocaust denier a man of peace, for he was not a man of peace. They begged Bush to reign in Abbas who santioned a poster which showed all of Israel, Palestine. For that Bush brought Abbas to the rose garden and lavished false praise upon him not to mention billions of tax payer dollars. (you might look up the number of dollars for yourself and you will be ashamed this came from a friend.) This sir was all done, post 9-11 and after Israel suffered one of the worst most bloody intifada’s of all time.

Obama is openly hostile to Israel. Bush purported to be a friend who was no friend. Nor were many of our supposed friends who during that time barely made a squeak.

Sure, but then most Jews were entirely silent when Ovadia Yosef, former chief Sephardic rabbi of Israeli, went off the rails and declared that “goyim were born only to serve [Jews]” just a few days ago. I didn’t see any real coverage of his pronouncement outside the Israeli media. (Congratulations to the Israeli media for being more frank than its American counterpart, BTW.) There was little said in the Jewish or pro-Israeli blogosphere. The few sites that chose to cover the story were those angry at the ADL for denouncing Yosef’s comments: matzav.com and theyeshivaworld.com. Many of the comments left suggested that many of the posters on these sites agreed with Yosef.

I can say I saw more condemnation of Gibson, a man of little influence, in conservative circles than I saw of Yosef in Jewish and Israeli ones.