European Jewish (click title to entry - thank you) leaders furiously condemned a German court's ruling outlawing circumcision as the "worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust" yesterday and demanded that Chancellor Angela Merkel's government intervene to protect the practice as a religious rite.
The damning remarks came amid growing European Jewish and Muslim outrage over a ruling by a Cologne court last month declaring that the circumcision of young boys could be considered a criminal offence because it caused bodily harm and infringed a child's right to integrity.
Yesterday, Moscow's Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis who made the Holocaust comments, added: "I see no future for Jews in Germany if the ruling is upheld"....
...Of course, it is not just a British problem: (click here) the poison of Islamophobia has infected Europe's political mainstream. According to a Pew Research Center survey , nearly six out of 10 Europeans believe that Muslims were "fanatical", and half believed they were "violent". As here, the European far-right aims fire at Muslims above all other groups. In the Netherlands, an anti-Muslim party led by Geert Wilders is the third largest in parliament. Wilders compares the Koran to Mein Kampf, calls Islam a "Trojan Horse" in Europe and demands that the country's 850,000 Muslims be paid to leave the country. Wilders doesn't languish on the fringes: the current Dutch cabinet depended for two years on his party's support....
In some ways these were the mad ranting of Anders Breivik....The attacks (click here) “were a pre-emptive strike,” the 33-year-old said in a final statement. “I acted on the principle of necessity on behalf of my culture, my people and my country. I ask to be acquitted of the charge....
The concession Norway has to build a new facility to house Breivik is interesting. He is not the usual in Norway. He is dangerous. Breivik is a problem for Europe's youth culture. He is a scary guy. He was never sorry for what he did.
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Posted Wednesday, June 27, 2012, at 2:24 PM ET
...The Associated Press reports that Norway’s Health Directorate (click here) on Wednesday signed off on a plan to build a new psychiatric ward inside the prison specifically to house the right-wing extremist in the event he is found to be insane, as they hope he will be....
