This week Pope Benedict was in the news exonerating the Jews for murdering Jesus, and he couldn't have been timelier. A millennium later, and I really think someone could get hurt.
Speaking of getting hurt, I have similar problems with accusing Israel of crimes. Every time I accuse Israel of a crime an angry man named David in North Seattle sends me a letter demanding to know why I never say bad things about Palestinians, too. So I end up digging through the archives trying to prove David wrong. I say bad things about everybody. I must have said something bad about Palestinians.
This time I'm going to try to get that out of the way by just going on record here and now as saying Hamas killed Jesus. Hamas launched a rocket into Him. There, I said it. You can't say I never condemned Hamas, David, so don't bother sending me the usual letter this time.
I know how serious the charges of Jesus-killing are, because I've known anti-Semites to do some pretty crazy things because of it. For example, last December I was in a line for a free meal when the man waiting in line behind me announced that he thought our server was Jewish, and that the Jews killed Jesus, and he didn't want to eat food dished out by a Jesus-murderer. Fortunately, he decided to make an exception the one time, as he was hungry.
What bothers me about all the news of the pope exonerating the Jews is that it's all about the pope, again. It's like, the pope says this, and the pope says that. It's like, the pope says they're not guilty, so hooray for the freakin' pope. It's like, "the pope wrote a whole book about how the Jews didn't kill Jesus, what have you done special lately, column boy?"
I mean, originally, everyone knew it wasn't the Jews who killed Jesus, it was the Romans. So why haven't we heard that the Romans killed Jesus for the last 2000 years? Just ask yourselves where the popes all wanted to live. There's your answer. So then this pope says, never mind, it was the Romans, after all, and he gets invited to all the cool parties, and gets to wear hats indoors you could never get away with in a million years.
I want some of that exonerating action. What else aren't the Jews guilty of? Here are a couple of revelations by me,