http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2000/04/01/current/opinionpage_8.htm
Jewish article was offensive
Letters
OVER the past 20 years I have regularly contributed to this newspaper. I considered it of distinguished reputation with high editorial standards. However, the offensive tone and content of TP O�Mahony�s article, March 25, compel me to break a personal rule not to write letters to the press.
The papal visit to the Holy Land was an historic and moving occasion for people of all faiths in the region and elsewhere.
I know that it meant much to myself, as a Catholic, to witness this great moment of reconciliation and repentance during a jubilee year.
After all the Pope is enfeebled and may be close to death.
My Jewish friends have spoken of seeing the Pope at Yad Vashem as a moving experience.
Mr O�Mahony quotes John Paul II, speaking of the Holocaust: �No one can forget or ignore what happened �. no one can diminish its scale.� I am confounded by Mr O�Mahony�s next sentence: �There was no need for the Pope to say this��.
The only reason O�Mahony can provide for this glaring non sequitur is that: �Zionists � have milked this tragedy in a barefaced and arrogant fashion�.
Without wishing to make any comment upon the question of Zionism, I fail to see why the Pope, who is Polish � a fact not without significance or relevance in this context � should not have felt the need to issue such historic words. Mr O�Mahony�s argument makes no sense at all to me.
I also find his use of the phrase �holocaust peddlers� deeply offensive.
Let me also draw attention to the headlines on the article in question. Here the parameters of his thesis are shifted with little evidence of subtlety. There are no quotation marks (I repeat, no quotation marks) around the headline which reads: The Holocaust gives the Jews no monopoly on pain and suffering.
Is this the view of the newspaper itself, or a paraphrase of the thesis and the article? The headline is not qualified in any fashion. Is it now �the Jews� and not �Zionists� who have �no monopoly on pain and suffering�?
The strapline on the article then goes on to state: TP O�Mahony says the Jews are masters at exploiting international guilt for the Shoah. I fear that an unqualified, and highly offensive, statement of that kind does not, in my view, belong in an Irish national daily which has, as its proclaimed objective, the discovery of truth.
Professor Dermot Keogh,
9, Tara Court,
Glasheen Road,
Cork.