[AFP/Yahoo] - The Israeli ambassador in Berlin, Shimon Stein, on Tuesday criticized comments by a German bishop in which he compared the situation of the Palestinians to Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. The bishop of Eichstaett, Gregor Maria Hanke, was quoted by German media Monday as saying after a visit to the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, "In the morning we saw photographs from the inhumane Warsaw ghetto, in the evening we drove through the ghetto in Ramallah....It is infuriating." In 1940, months after invading Poland in September 1939, the Nazis forced some 500,000 Jews into the Warsaw ghetto, surrounding it with a high wall. About 100,000 died inside from hunger and disease, and over 300,000 were sent to death camps. Stein said the bishop had "demonized" Israel in the conflict and used double standards to attack its policies. "A fence or a wall built by people as a security measure can, when the political conditions change, be dismantled," he said.
2007-03-07 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive