Hundreds of New Testaments torched in Israel

[DogPoundPup]

(CNN) -- Police in Israel are investigating the burning of hundreds of New Testaments in a city near Tel Aviv, an incident that has alarmed advocates of religious freedom.

Investigators plan to review photographs and footage showing "a fairly large" number of New Testaments being torched this month in the city of Or-Yehuda, a police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said Wednesday.

News accounts in Israel have quoted Uzi Aharon, the deputy mayor of Or-Yehuda, as saying he organized students who burned several hundred copies of the New Testament. The deputy mayor gave interviews to Israeli radio and television stations after word of the incident surfaced about two weeks ago.

Soon he was talking with Russian, Italian and French television stations, "explaining to their highly offended audiences back home how he had not meant for the Bibles to be burned, and trying to undo the damage caused by the news (and photographs) of Jews burning New Testaments," The Jerusalem Post reported.

Aharon told CNN on Wednesday that he collected New Testaments and other "Messianic propaganda" that had been handed out in the city but that he did not plan or organize a burning. Instead, he said, three teenagers set fire to a pile of New Testaments while he was not present. Once he learned what was going on, he said, he stopped the burning.

The episode has worried defenders of Israel's minority population of Messianic Jews, who consider themselves Jewish but believe in the divinity of Jesus, as do Christians. It also has concerned evangelical Christians in North America, Europe and Asia, who visit Israel by the hundreds of thousands.

Read more http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/05/28/bible.burning/index.html

[hobbit709]

1. Pick a religious fanatic from any religion-they're all the same.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Like to see Joe Lieberman explain this to Rev. Hagee.

[hobbit709]

3. That would almost be too funny.

[notfullofit]

4. Thank goodness

it was 'only' the New Testament and not the Koran.

[subsuelo]

5. Care to explain what you are trying to insinuate?

[notfullofit]

6. That there would have

been riots all over the world in protest.

[subsuelo]

7. Thanks for explaining your interesting view.

[notfullofit]

8. Double standard?

Apology after US soldier shot at Koran for practice

Date: 19 May 2008
By KHALED AL-ANSARY
IN BAGHDAD
US MILITARY commanders have apologised to community leaders in Iraq after a US soldier used a copy of the Koran for shooting practice, fearing an outburst of anger among US-allied tribesmen.

Bloody protests have sometimes broken out across the Muslim world when the Islamic faith has been insulted. The swift apology by the US commanders appeared aimed at avoiding similar violence in Iraq.

The US military said yesterday that the soldier, who was not identified, had been disciplined and ordered to leave Iraq after a copy of the Muslim holy book was found riddled with bullet holes at a shooting range near Baghdad on 11 May. Pictures show the Koran with at least ten bullet holes.

snip
The US television news network CNN said Major-General Jeffery Hammond, the commander of US troops in Baghdad, was met by hundreds of protesters when he went to Radwaniya to deliver the apology on Saturday.
http://news.scotsman.com/world/Apology-after-US-soldier-shot.4095838.jp

[subsuelo]

10. So you're trying to say that ... ?

[notfullofit]

12. The folks

who burned the New Testament have no respect for Christianity.

[pelsar]

11. actually israel is a bit different...

after the "koran in the toilet" incident with the US and all of the publicity....some muslim prisoners in israeli jails made the same complaint....it didnt go very far. One police official went on TV and basically said, that they can complain all they want...maybe it fell in, maybe it was put there, maybe it never happened....

either way, we're not going to waste our time on it.....

end of story, end of "incident"....

[shaayecanaan]

9. Why the need for police?

Free speech is free speech. They can burn whatever they like.

[notfullofit]

13. Perhaps

the police thought the Christians would take to the streets in violent protest.