Charges that Jewish leaders use the Holocaust as a club to oppress others drew an angry response from a spokesman for the Canadian Jewish Congress during an ecumenical conference to help North Americaan Christians better understand the plight of Palestinian Christians.
OTTAWA
Charges that Jewish leaders use the Holocaust as a club to oppress othersdrew an angry response from a spokesman for the Canadian Jewish Congress duringan ecumenical conference to help North Americaan Christians better understandthe plight of Palestinian Christians.
“I stand here in amazement and some outrage that this conference, which is supposed to be looking at voices of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, has become a forum for the holocaust,” said Eric Vernon, director of the advocacy office of the CJC in Ottawa.
“We don’t need to be told that we are abusing the Holocaust, an intellectually dishonest argument which, in my opinion, falls into the camp of the most vile Holocaust denial.”
| Vernon Ellis Ateek
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Marc Ellis, head of Jewish studies at Baylor University, had told the audience of predominantly Christians and Muslims that the past 50 years of Jewish history “has taken us from a helpless, suffering people to being an empowered and sometimes abusive people.”
It’s a great tragedy that the Jewish “establishment” uses the Holocaust as a form of abuse, he added. “What it is being used for today is to dispossess and dislocate people and to permanently oppress people, and that’s where I say No.”
Another panelist, Canon Naim Ateek, founder and director of Sabeel, an ecumenical centre for Palestinian liberation theology in Jerusalem, also said the Holocaust has been used “to silence criticisms of the unjust policies of Israel.”
Mr. Vernon, however, said a discussion of the murders of six million Jews had no place at the conference, entitled Truth and Reconciliation: Voices for Peace in the Holy Land. “And there is no excuse for this audience to be told that the Jewish community is perverting the memory of the Holocaust by using it for its own ends.”
But Mr. Ellis, referring to the building of public Holocaust museums in Canada and the U.S., drew applause from many of the more than 100 delegates by stating, “When you make the suffering of the (Jewish) community public and invite others – and sometimes demand others – to pay attention to it, and use it to support power within those countries and outside of them, then it is a public discussion.”
During a break, Anglican Bishop John Baycroft reminded Mr. Vernon that those at the conference were speaking out of their own experience and what they believe to be the truth.
“You had an opportunity to speak the truth as you saw it too,” he said.
“Bishop, with all due respect,” Mr. Vernon replied, “you can argue the truth until the cows come home. The fact is that I heard, quite clearly, one of the people up there talk about the Holocaust in a way that I found unconscionable and a desecration.”
At the end of the conference, delegates agreed to establish a Canadian chapter with links to the U.S. branch. The Sabeel (Arabic for “the way” or “a spring of life-giving water”) Centre was founded in 1990 by a group of Christians to raise awareness of the political situation in Jerusalem.
Art Babych is an Ottawa freelance writer who works primarily from Parliament Hill.
=”1″ hspace=”10″> “I stand here in amazement and some outrage that this conference, which is supposed to be looking at voices of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East, has become a forum for the holocaust,” said Eric Vernon, director of the advocacy office of the CJC in Ottawa.
“We don’t need to be told that we are abusing the Holocaust, an intellectually dishonest argument which, in my opinion, falls into the camp of the most vile Holocaust denial.”
| Vernon Ellis Ateek
|
Marc Ellis, head of Jewish studies at Baylor University, had told the audience of predominantly Christians and Muslims that the past 50 years of Jewish history “has taken us from a helpless, suffering people to being an empowered and sometimes abusive people.”
It’s a great tragedy that the Jewish “establishment” uses the Holocaust as a form of abuse, he added. “What it is being used for today is to dispossess and dislocate people and to permanently oppress people, and that’s where I say No.”
Another panelist, Canon Naim Ateek, founder and director of Sabeel, an ecumenical centre for Palestinian liberation theology in Jerusalem, also said the Holocaust has been used “to silence criticisms of the unjust policies of Israel.”
Mr. Vernon, however, said a discussion of the murders of six million Jews had no place at the conference, entitled Truth and Reconciliation: Voices for Peace in the Holy Land. “And there is no excuse for this audience to be told that the Jewish community is perverting the memory of the Holocaust by using it for its own ends.”
But Mr. Ellis, referring to the building of public Holocaust museums in Canada and the U.S., drew applause from many of the more than 100 delegates by stating, “When you make the suffering of the (Jewish) community public and invite others – and sometimes demand others – to pay attention to it, and use it to support power within those countries and outside of them, then it is a public discussion.”
During a break, Anglican Bishop John Baycroft reminded Mr. Vernon that those at the conference were speaking out of their own experience and what they believe to be the truth.
“You had an opportunity to speak the truth as you saw it too,” he said.
“Bishop, with all due respect,” Mr. Vernon replied, “you can argue the truth until the cows come home. The fact is that I heard, quite clearly, one of the people up there talk about the Holocaust in a way that I found unconscionable and a desecration.”
At the end of the conference, delegates agreed to establish a Canadian chapter with links to the U.S. branch. The Sabeel (Arabic for “the way” or “a spring of life-giving water”) Centre was founded in 1990 by a group of Christians to raise awareness of the political situation in Jerusalem.
Art Babych is an Ottawa freelance writer who works primarily from Parliament Hill.