A few loyal blog readers are triggering a debate regarding my last entry on the sentencing of the noxious and toxic Bishop Richard Williamson, now convicted for uttering Holocaust denial in Germany – something that would be legal in the United States. (“An Evil Bishop” http://blogs.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/neilrubin/hes_an_evil_bishop/) 

The question: Isn’t the conviction a violation of freedom of speech? As evil as his words were – no Jews were burned in Nazi ovens and no more than 300,000 Jews were murdered by the Nazis—isn’t his right to expound such mental midgetry something we Jews and Americans should protect and even cherish? After all, we’ve always been told that when free speech is squashed, democracy itself is endangered, and that’s never good for minorities.

The easy answer, and the very Jewish one, is “yes, but…” That is, yes this is a violation of freedom of speech. But one argument that I make with a very thoughtful friend who raised the issue is that context is everything.

For example, according to the famous 1919 case Schenk v. United States, the courts here ruled that one does not have the right to enter a crowded theater and shout “fire”. However, one can scream “fire” as much as he or she wants out on the streets (and likely look like an idiot with no consequence other than what other people will think about you).

Similarly, one cannot deny the Holocaust in Germany – or even sell Nazi paraphernalia – because of the context of venue. That’s because we know where such actions could (and did) lead. One, however, can sell Nazi items all over the United States (been to a flea market lately?) because a massive, extended genocidal campaign did not turn an entire society (and continent) into those who abetted humanity’s most documented crime, or at a minimum were passive bystanders. (A few heroes aside, the Shoah was a massive failure of everyone at every level.)

The interesting question is how such laws will hold up in Germany the coming decades. When the great-grandchildren of former Nazis and Holocaust survivors rise to positions of power in 20-30 years, will they seek to change it as something now outdated?

(Please share your thoughts to this ethical dilemma. If reading this via e-mail, click this web version and go to “comments” at the end. http://blogs.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/neilrubin/screaming_for_nazis/ . Otherwise, click on “comments.”)

As a veteran of interfaith dialogue, I’m somewhat loathe to judge another person’s religious beliefs by my standards. But the fact that Bishop Richard Williamson can call himself a believer in God’s love is unfathomable.

In fact, by now one is hard pressed to describe him as anything other than evil. How else can one approach the news that the Catholic bishop – denounced by his own Roman Catholic Church – will appeal last week’s court ruling that found him guilty of Holocaust denial?

Williamson, a bishop from the breakaway Society of Saint Pius X, keeps defending absurd declarations about how no more than 300,000 European Jews could have been killed in the Shoah. In 2008, he even told a Swedish reporter in a recorded broadcast that there is no way any Jew was murdered in Nazi gas chambers. Such claims, he said, were “lies, lies, lies.”

In displaying a remarkable level of stupidity in rejecting the world’s most documented genocide, Mr. Williamson also made the mistake of giving that interview in Regensberg, Germany. In that country, Holocaust denial is illegal. So on Friday, April 16 a court there found him guilty of denial and upheld a $22,473 fine. While the sum is paltry, the message was large: No person is immune to the consequences of denying the reality of six million corpses.

For the record, members of the Saint Pius group have made rejecting sanity twisted theological truth. The group was founded to oppose the reforms of the 1965 Second Vatican Council; its liberalizations included absolving Jews from the death of Jesus of Nazareth; prior to that, Christian anger unleashed centuries of anti-Jewish persecution, blood libel and outright murder.

Sadly, as a nod to internal Church politics, in January 2009 Pope Benedict XVI welcomed Mr. Williamson and three other Pius Society bishops back into the fold. The pontiff has unequivocally denounced Holocaust denial. Still, the latest news only bolsters claims – including voices within the Church – about how noxious it is to give any respect to such haters of humanity.

The good news is that I’ve had too many conversations with Catholics to think that the Church is a bastion of anti-Semitism. Rather, it is a huge bureaucracy in which the American contingent is vastly more liberal – and at a minimum more open to conversation – than those in Rome for whom the Middle Ages are not quite over.

Iran might want nuclear weapons, but would it really use them – which would invite massive retaliation?

After all, remember that as a huge thank you for sitting out of the 1991 Gulf War, Germany and the United States basically gave Israel a few Dolphin class submarines, which were reportedly modified to carry nuclear-armed cruise missiles. That gave the Jewish state “second strike” capability. That means that Israel now has underwater boats that can launch a series of missiles at the Republic of Iran even if – God forbid – the State of Israel were seriously damaged or basically wiped out from nuclear attack.

So would Iran really hit Israel, let alone Eastern Europe (already in its missile range) and Western Europe (which technological advances show will be in range within a few years at most)? Would Iran be willing to absorb the certain nuclear response?

Yes, it would.

Let’s look at several scenarios in which the worst could happen and what that means:

*Iran’s leaders – let alone a rogue agent with Iran – could sell nuclear technology to third parties, such as Al-Qaeda or others. Why do we think this could occur? That’s exactly what happened after Pakistan went nuclear. Former top Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan admitted a few years ago that on his own he sold nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea and Iran. We already know that Syria wants nuclear ability. What if western-oriented Arab leaders (a relative term) in Egypt and Syria are overthrown by their much more radical Islamic opposition – while not a likely scenario, definitely a realistic one?

*If Iran’s leaders feel that their revolution is threatened to a point where it will unquestionably be overturned, they could launch a going away present at the West – say at the U.S. Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, or Saudi oil fields, or Tel Aviv. Suicidal people act that way when pressed into a corner.

*Nuclear technology is obviously highly advanced, which means that Iranian scientists are gaining tremendous knowledge, which will only lead them down other horrible roads. Do we really want these people, with these leaders, dealing with what is literally the most dangerous weapon yet discovered on the planet?

Those are the main reasons why Iran’s nuclear lust must be either stopped or controlled through real international inspections.

But there’s another issue that must be examined: Israel’s nuclear policy of ambiguity. I hope to cover that in the next posting.

(Please share your response here by clicking “comment” at the bottom: http://blogs.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/neilrubin/would_iran_really_nuke_israel/ )

The quiet talk in Baltimore’s renown interfaith dialogue circles in recent years has often gravitated toward how Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien – while far from an obstacle –seemed uninterested in the rapprochement of the religious communities. That was a sharp contrast to the work of his immediate predecessor, Cardinal William H. Keeler, the Vatican’s respected North American point man on Catholic-Jewish ties. But in recent weeks, Archbishop O’Brien’s actions should be applauded for reversing that notion.

In a candid address to the Baltimore Jewish Council on March 24, he did not flinch when asked about the controversial process toward sainthood of World War II-era Pope Pius XII, whom some criticize for inaction in the face of the Nazi Holocaust. Now with Vatican archives being opened – too slowly for some Catholic and Jewish scholars – “there may have been some lacunas that occurred,” the Archbishop said. That is a rare opening for dialogue from a Church on the defensive on so many fronts.

And this past week, after offensive comments by a high ranking Vatican angered many Jews and others, Archbishop O’Brien responded, unprompted, within 24 hours. That occurred after Pope Benedict XVI’s personal preacher said that he agreed with an unnamed Jewish friend that the scorn heaped upon the Church in child abuse scandals were akin to the collective punishment of anti-Semitism.

Such an absurd notion does not deserve a Jewish response. However, Archbishop O’Brien was a national leader in denouncing his colleague. As he wrote in a statement to the Jewish Times – sent amidst the most sacred weekend on his calendar— the words of Father Raniero Cantalamessa “were unfortunate and reprehensible. They pose harm to Catholic-Jewish relations in Baltimore and around the world and I personally denounce them… Nothing justifies this insensitive, harmful and regrettable comparison.”

Such alacrity in response should be applauded and welcomed. They also should help the efforts of all who correctly recognize that while faith communities obviously have theological differences, they can and must continue to nurture their common bonds and desires to nurse our society’s open wounds.

Another season of self-imposed affliction/liberation is almost over, but lots of weird news took place before and during the holiday. Here’s a few tidbits from my friends at the JTA Wire Service Passover Blog (http://blogs.jta.org/passover/), as well as some of my own commentary:

• Amongst the seder parodies out this year was a “Wizard of Oz” one that offered the line “If I only had some chrain” (that being the Yiddish word for horse radish). (Hey writer of that: I’m guessing if you did have a chrain, you’d be writing real music, eh?)

• The Jewish state’s 120,000 dairy cows received kosher for Passover bedding. You got a beef with that?

• Then—and how does a mind conjure this?—there was a “Flinstones” parody with this theme song: “Moses, he’s our Moses/ he’s the man that took us on a tour/ out of, Pharoah’s Egypt,/ Went the children that he soon would lure…” (Does this mean that Fruity Pebbles are kosher for Pesach if you are a Sephardi Jew? After all, they can eat just about anything else other than bread.)

• There was a U.S. military “Seder Ready To Go” kit (similar to MRE’s—meals ready to eat) from the Armed Services. Each recloseable box included one disposable seder plate, eight horseradish packets, one juice bottle, two cans gefilte fish and one white kippah. Dare I offer the line about the soldier’s needing to be “their brother’s kippah?”

• Finally, among actor Sandra Bernhard’s Twitter tweets: “getting ready for Pesach in the city @chabad always in good taste. never met a Chabad rabbi I didn’t want to hug. but let’s not go there.” Yes Sandra, let’s not.

Feel free to offer your weird Passover news here:  http://blogs.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/neilrubin_comments/9078/

So much for Jimmy Carter’s recent brief love affair with Yom Kippur and the Jewish people. America’s most naïve former president – who had some real foreign policy triumphs (and disasters) while in office – is at it again.

The newest anti-Carter complaints come after a speech at an Atlanta conference last week. The peanut farmer turned president accused this country of being “much more attuned to the sensitivities of the Israelis” and of having “yielded excessively to the circumstances in the Holy Land as Israel has confiscated several lands within Palestine,” according to the JTA Wire Service. Likewise, he labeled the Obama administration’s shuttle diplomacy efforts “feeble.”

Heightening disappointment in Mr. Carter is that in December 2009 he publicly sought an al chet—the traditional Yom Kippur prayer seeking God’s forgiveness – due to perceptions that he was anti-Israel. In a letter this week to Mr. Carter, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Foxman went so far as to write, “I do not believe further discussions between us will be fruitful. I continue to hope the day will come when you have truly repented of your insensitive views of Israel and the Jewish people.”

But instead of offering a knee jerk response, let’s look at Mr. Carter’s claims. America is indeed more attuned to Israeli concerns, and it’s for valid reasons:

A) both being democracies (meaning, unlike with Arab states, tomorrow’s ruler is bound by today’s treaties);

B) both having shared historical Judeo-Christian values, which gives cultural frames of reference;

C) Israel’s being a stable ally where one can forward position military equipment (in Haifa port) in case of a regional conflict that threatens vital U.S. interests (read: oil and Russian/central Asian wars);

D) Israel’s having an outstanding and western-oriented intelligence operation;

E) and, finally, the bind reflects the domestic electorate’s concerns (indeed, there is a roughly four to one approval among all Americans for Israel over the Palestinians in the conflict, according to successive Gallup Polls).

Now as I’ve written before, Israel can indeed be loose when it comes to taking Palestinian lands for state interests. It’s fair to criticize that, but be specific – such as areas along the security barrier (which is necessary, as the plunge in suicide attacks has shown in the past few years). It cuts up some Palestinian fields. There should be financial compensation and/or new lands granted to these multi-generational farming families. And guess what? Israeli human rights advocates have pushed that issue and the Israeli Supreme Court has forced the barrier to be moved in some locations.

Meanwhile, let’s start a collection to have someone read Mr. Carter the news. Clearly he’s mixed the many reports of tensions between the Obama/Netanyahu administrations over Israel’s East Jerusalem building plans. Meanwhile, U.S. envoy George Mitchell deserves much credit for laboring to create an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue.

Not only that Mr. Carter, but the U.S. government and successive Israeli ones keep testing Palestinian intensions with peace offers. No, it’s not easy and there’s zero trust. Still, isn’t it the Israelis who are willing to negotiate without preconditions as the Palestinians refuse to sit down and see where the process goes? (Do it their way – get everything up front first – and there’s no need to talk, now is there?)

A final note: Mr. Carter’s right to criticize Israeli policies should not be questioned, nor do those words brand him an anti-Semite (a label some in our community too casually toss around). Yet, his newest words give strength to the long-held allegations of his naiveté. This conflict needs context and candor in conversation.

But there’s good news for our former president: There are still five plus months until the real Yom Kippur for him to get it right. He has his work cut out for him.