Facist Fruits: James Carroll yet again has written an exquisite article entitled "Tullia Zevi's 'fruitful dialogue'" in the Op Ed of the January 31, 2011 The Boston Globe. I urge you to read it if you have not already done so. I attach it below. When it comes to the Jewish people and our sad tortured history this one time prospective Catholic priest turned author, teacher and lecturer gets this history of his Church and the Jewish people absolutely correct. Tullia Zevi and I have something in common. We both selected our political stance based on the reality of the worst right wing extremist nightmare ever perpetrated in the history of man.

He is spot on when he talks about the history of the Catholic Church he still loves and its connection to the Nazi period and the Holocaust. Mr. Carroll pulls no punches. He indicts his beloved Church through its own edicts and/or sins of omission by various priests and popes, for their complicity in the Shoah. Many, including this Pope, Benedict the XVI, will offer tepid acknowledgment of the Church's collective guilt for the world's longest hatred and its role in the greatest genocide of the 20th century. The Church, though, even today welcomes with open arms those reactionary clearly anti-Semitic forces within it which spew the same noxious fumes which have been so well documented over the centuries.

When I read Mr. Carroll's editorials I can only marvel at their accuracy and swoon over his perfect prose. At the same time as a Jew I am in perpetual mourning for my people who must continuously suffer these slings and arrows that sting no less than they did decades, centuries and even millennia ago. The Arab world at this moment may be set to unleash its fury against the Jewish state if not today then next week, if not next week then next year, if not then than at some other hour yet unknown. As I write this the die is being cast. The Jewish people, yet again, face millions who would love nothing more than to see them gone from Israel, gone from the Middle East, and, indeed, many who want to see us gone from planet earth.

I am both happy and eternally sad when I read Mr. Carroll's articles because he gets the Jewish historical experience exactly correct and indicts the players of power no matter where they lie. Then I ask: Who reads Mr. Carroll's excellent works? Certainly few today who are poised to turn the Arab world on its head. When I see a protest poster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak with a star of David on his head I remain, as a Jew, perpetually in mourning for my people and always vigilant!

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/01/31/tullia_zevis_fruitful_dialogue/