Jewish Agency official slams bishop rehabilitation

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A senior official in Israel's Jewish Agency on Sunday slammed a decision by Pope Benedict XVI to rehabilitate a British bishop who denied the existence of the Holocaust. "I think it's a scandal," said Amos Hermon, head of the Task Force Against Anti-Semitism at the Jewish Agency. "It is something we cannot understand." The pope's decision to rescind the excommunication of four bishops came just days after one of them, Richard Williamson, told Swedish TV that evidence "is hugely against 6 million Jews being deliberately gassed." Hermon told a news conference that Richardson's rehabilitation insulted Israel and more than 200,000 Holocaust survivors who live in Israel. "For us, it's (the Holocuast is) events" and commemorations, he said. "For them, it's their whole life."