Jesus Sides with the Romans and Hitler?

VATICAN CITY (RNS) A special Vatican meeting on the Middle East ended Saturday (Oct. 23) with a flare-up in Catholic-Jewish tensions, after an American bishop declared the Bible does not give Jews privileged rights to the land of Israel. "We Christians cannot speak of the 'promised land' as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people," said Archbishop Cyril Bustros, a native of Lebanon who is currently a Melkite Greek Catholic bishop in Newton, Mass.

Never Again? ...





2000 years ago we, the Jews were occupied by Rome.  We .. the Jews.  Most of the Jews of that era, even more than today, lived in the diaspora .. in Rome, England, Spain, Greece, Alexandria .... but our home as a people was Judea, occupied Judea.

There was resistance to the occupation.  Some, like Jesus, took the side of peace, insisting on the Jews sticking to our religion and traditions while obeying the ruling Caesars.  According to the Roman version of the Christian story, the Jewish leadership killed the God-man for preaching just this. 

Of course, the Roman version reflected the efforts of non Jewish Christians to assume the mantle of Pontifex Maximus .. to become the state religion of Rome.  How could Rome accept the blame for killing its own God?

After the crucifixion of Jesus, forty years after, the effort at peace failed and we fought a war with Rome.  Rome won.  Rabbi Akiba, the religous leader of the Jews, was captured and skinned alive .. by Rome.   Rome destroyed the Temple, banned us from living in Jerusalem, renamed the city "Aelia Capitolina" and renamed Judea Phillistia (Palestine in English).

Of course, as far as the church was concerned, two hundred and fifty hundred years later when Constantine appointed the Bishops to offices of state, their God, their Jesus must have been on their side, the Roman side.

Today, only sixty years after the Holocaust and the refounding of Israel, the same church that claims its right to absolute truth, the same church, that launched the crusades and expelled the Jews from Spain and England, the church that stole Jewish babies and whose current pontifex maximus wore a nazi uniform, THAT ROMAN CHURCH still asserts that GOD wanted the destruction of Israel!

Never again?