I don’t know whether it’s just me being paranoid…but I get a strong feeling that references to the holocaust are increasingly used in political statements from Germany when actions of the U.S. or Israel are addressed.
Remember the awful article in Germany’s daily FAZ from feminist Alice Schwarzer, equating Abu Ghraib and Auschwitz? Well, you might say Schwarzer is a left-wing nut and not to be taken seriously. You have a point here.
Yet here is another example of holocaust labeling techniques in current Germany, this time leveled against Israel from prominent catholic representatives:
Bishops equate Israel’s actions to Holocaust
Hours after historic visit to Jerusalem holocaust museum, group of German bishops tour Palestinian Authority, say Israel behaving like Nazis
“This morning we saw pictures of the Warsaw ghetto at Yad Vashem and this evening we are going to the Ramallah ghetto.” Several hours earlier on Sunday you probably would not have heard German Bishop Gregor Maria Franz Hanke choose such a divisive analogy. But then on Sunday morning he was still in Israel and the rhetoric was considerably different than the one elected by the German Bishops’ Conference once they crossed over in to the Palestinian Authority on Sunday evening.
The visit of 27 members of the German Bishops’ Conference to Israel included a historic first-time visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem as well as guided tours of sites holy to Christianity and meetings with Christian congregations in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority.
During their time in Israel the bishops uniformly made moderate and balanced statements, but once in the PA they provided German reporters accompanying them with a plethora of harsh proclamations against Israel. Their criticism received widespread coverage in the German media on Monday.
While crossing one of the checkpoints into East Jerusalem the Archbishop
