Is The Pope Also Barred From Entry Into Israel? – OpEd

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By Caroline Pinder Cracraft

The Gunter Grass case:

On Sunday, Israel’s interior minister Eli Yishai used a law permitting a bar on entry to former Nazis to declare Grass persona non grata for his “attempt to fan the flames of hatred against the state of Israel and its people, and thus to advance the idea to which he publicly affiliated in his past donning of the SS uniform”.

Grass was conscripted into the Waffen SS.

Pope Benedict XVI was born in Bavaria, with the name Joseph Ratzinger. Young Ratzinger, according to Wikipedia:

Following his 14th birthday in 1941, Ratzinger was conscripted into the Hitler Youth—as membership was required by law for all 14-year-old German boys after December 1939[9]—but was an unenthusiastic member who refused to attend meetings, according to his brother.[10] In 1941, one of Ratzinger’s cousins, a 14-year-old boy with Down syndrome, was taken away by the Nazi regime and killed during the Action T4 campaign of Nazi eugenics.[11] In 1943, while still in seminary, he was drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps as Luftwaffenhelfer (air force child soldier).[10] Ratzinger then trained in the German infantry.[12] As the Allied front drew closer to his post in 1945, he deserted back to his family’s home in Traunstein after his unit had ceased to exist, just as American troops established their headquarters in the Ratzinger household.[13] As a German soldier, he was put in a POW camp but was released a few months later at the end of the war in the summer of 1945.[13] He reentered the seminary, along with his brother Georg, in November of that year. —


Caroline Pinder Cracraft lives in Chicago.

This article was published at Mondoweiss.net here: http://mondoweiss.net/2012/04/is-the-pope-also-barred-from-entry-into-israel.html

Mondoweiss

Mondoweiss is a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective. Mondoweiss is maintained by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Weiss lives in New York state and Horowitz lives in New York City.

One thought on “Is The Pope Also Barred From Entry Into Israel? – OpEd

  • April 11, 2012 at 1:58 pm
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    We are living at a time Governments will not live like they represent we as individuals are even preparing to eventually die and go heaven.
    The uS got 5th in capital punishment because they had executed that many individuals in comparison to everyone else.
    Ezra would have eventually gone to everyone and required they make a sacrifice due to the large number of widows that suddenly appeared and the individuals that too took on too many wives, like more than one.
    The Pope’s life is endangered every time he gets even near the united States.But of course if you had been keeping close watch everyone else is to…due to the police departments law enforcement agencies running around and bumping into the wrong type of eventual crime…themselves if they looked into a mirror…it would be them that was suffering.
    Everyone be kool there…just like the trees and the leaves eventually make electricity with the pure light of the sun shining down upon everyone. That is a good standard to live by…that light.But beware if the uSA standard for steeling away you inventions and ideas!

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