Lies

There are two different and disturbing stories in the press today. One gets little coverage and the other hardly any. They share a common theme that is not, at first, obvious.

During the Gaza battles it was globally and hysterically reported that Israel had intentionally shelled a United Nations school in which civilians were sheltering. This was vociferously condemned both by the Secretary General of the United Nations and the local head of that organization. It did not happen.

In Europe Pope Benedict XV1 caused controversy by reinstating the excommunicated bishop, Richard Williamson. This is a man of the cloth who does little to hide his anti Semitism. This is most clearly evidenced by his Holocaust denial. Williamson states that the Nazis did not kill 6 million Jewish people, he puts the number at 300,000.

The Vatican, by inviting Williamson back into the fold appears to condone the bishop making a blood libel that we, the Jewish people have taken part in the biggest con trick in the history of mankind.

Just for the record my own family, bishop, lost some 63 of its number to the Nazis. My paternal grandmother’s entire family was wiped out. I am not imagining this, they didn’t all go on holiday and not return, they were shot, gassed, starved and tortured to untimely deaths because they were guilty of being Jewish. There are exhaustive records for millions more who were similarly massacred and these are available to everyone.

In war, the saying goes, "the first victim is the truth." Now there has been an in-depth investigative report about the Gaza UN School shelling conducted by the Canadian Globe and Mail's Middle East correspondent, Patrick Martin and he has proved that the incident at the United Nations school did not take place.

Like the supposed “Jenin Massacre” of a few years back, the last time Israel felt compelled to foray into Gaza to stop terrorist missiles from landing on their civilians, it has proven to be a publicity relations fabrication by Hamas and their fellow travelers.

Martin’s front-page investigation of the Israeli shelling of Hamas terrorists near a UN school that led to the tragic deaths of 43 civilians. His conclusion is that the facts don't support the accepted story that the school was shelled.

According to Martin who witnessed the physical evidence and conducted interviews with several eyewitnesses, including a teacher who was present when the shelling took place: While a few people were injured from shrapnel landing inside the white-and-blue-walled UNRWA compound, not a single person in the compound was killed. The 43 people who died in the incident were all outside, on the street, where three mortar shells did land. No shells landed inside the schoolyard.


Martin corroborates the Israeli accounts that the IDF accurately returned fire to the location from which it was being shelled by Hamas terrorists. The killing of 43 civilians on the street as a result may be a good reason for investigation, but this clearly is not the same as an intentional shooting into a schoolyard crowded with refuge-seekers. Any such investigation must also ask why the Hamas mortar team were embedded with the civilians.

Martin states that the incorrect public pronouncements by the UN helped allow "the misconception to linger" that Israel had committed a war crime.

Palestinian civilians were milling around the area where Hamas was firing rockets at Israel. This cannot be Israel's fault, but points out that Hamas fired from an area frequented by civilians, engaging in what former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calls a double war crime: "Attacking [Israeli] civilians and hiding behind [Palestinian] civilians."

However, during the conflict, John Ging, UNRWA's operations director in Gaza, condemned the Israeli attack, as "horrific" and stated Israel knew it was targeting a UN facility.

"We have provided the GPS co-ordinates of every single one of our locations," he told the BBC. "They are clearly marked with UN insignia, flags flying, lights shining on the flags at night. It's very clear that these are United Nations installations."

During the Globe and Mail investigation, Ging totally reversed his previous announcements and acknowledged that all three Israeli mortar shells landed outside the school and that "no one was killed in the school. "I told the Israelis that none of the shells landed in the school," he said.

A European Member of Parliament, Paul van Buitenen submitted a parliamentary question based on the Globe & Mail's investigation. The MEP points out that UNRWA's John Ging admits in the article that Israel didn't attack the school but then blamed the confusion on the Israelis. Van Buitenen says that that the EU, which is UNRWA's single largest donor, wrongly condemned Israel for attacking the UN school.

Will the EU now apologize to Israel for wrongly condemning it without checking the facts?

Will the EU investigate Mr. Ging’s dissemination of misleading information concerning the supposed attack on this UNRWA school and whether this was politically motivated?

We return to the issue of the Pope welcoming bishop Richard Williamson into the Roman Catholic fold. This reeks of the lowest form of self-serving expediency as the church has stated that their action does not mean that the Holy See shares the bishop’s views. Put another way, the Pope doesn’t agree with the anti Semitic stuff but the unity of the church is apparently more important than upsetting a few Jews.

Germany’s Central Council of Jews broke off their ties with the Catholic church to protest the Vatican’s ill considered move to reinstate the bishop and three more of his ultra traditionalist fellow bishops who are all part of the ultra conservative Pius X sect of the infamous French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

The German nation, led by their Chancellor Angela Merkel, has taken the moral high ground by demanding that the Vatican make a public very clear rejection of Holocaust denial. “The Pope and the Vatican should clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial and there must be positive relations with the Jewish community overall. This should not be allowed to pass without consequences, “ she added, “This is not just a matter, in my opinion, for the Christian, Catholic and Jewish communities in Germany.”

Other German bishops have expressed dismay and “a loss of faith in the Pope.” Whilst Cardinal Walter Kesper, who is in charge of Roman Catholic relations with the Jews admitted that the episode had been mishandled by Rome.

Bishop Williamson is on record as stating that Jews are seeking world domination and further has claimed that the Americans planned the 9/11 attacks on their own people and finally that the Freemasons have corrupted the Vatican. He seems like he might make a perfect future candidate for Pope himself, or perhaps the nearest lunatic asylum for some obviously needed treatment.

It appears to be open season for people seemingly in moral authority, such as bishops, cardinals and the Secretary General of the United Nations to either lie about Jewish people, or just as bad, to allow others to lie on their behalf protected by their mantle of power, in some of the most rampant and obvious anti Semitism witnessed since the Nazis.

None of us should allow such lies, distortions or injustices to go unchallenged or we will be doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.