today

THE Archbishop of Canterbury turned his sights on a new political target yesterday, accusing Israel of hindering pilgrimages to Bethlehem, the town where Jesus was born.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, who is with Williams on a pilgrimage to the Middle East, said he and his fellow archbishop shared concerns.

The Jews in Israel are certainly not presenting well, and I've heard bad stories about learned Jewish intellectuals planning, perhaps naively, to live in Israel and they have had to come back to the UK. It is certainly not the 'promised land' for those guys. But Israel now seems to see non Israeli Jews as foreigners, almost as bad as non-Jews. And certainly I have spoken to Indian Jews refused admission to Israel as they claim they were considered 'not rich enough'. Dame Shirley Porter, the well-known rich London asbestos poisoner, was very welcome though, as she had a lot of money. The term 'cretins' used towards ''Christians' by Jews is one I've also heard frequently in the past.

Unfortunately Israelis neglect Bonhoeffer's admonishments when these apply to themselves, shame on them. It is now as hard to get poor honest Jews into Israel, some say, as it used to be to get them out of Hitler's Germany. And yes, sadly the holocaust does seem to have happened. Iran is wrong, perhaps intentionally, on that. But Adolf Hitler does sound like a really nice chap, holocauster or not. More than can be said of some.

IMO: Israel is not yet presenting such a sick face to the world as Iran, but it is, literally, little short of that. It is all such a pity but many things are.