The Simon Wiesenthal Center has written to Argentine President Carlos Menem, asking him to repudiate the age-old Christian claim that the Jews killed Jesus.
The center learned that the Argentine president had read a liturgical text Easter Sunday containing that canard.
Menem was participating in a mass led by Monsignor Emilio Ognonovich, who was described in a separate statement by the Wiesenthal Center as “a well-known `ultra conservative Catholic’ and far-night activist.”
In an April 20 letter to Menem, the Wiesenthal Center dean, Rabbi Marvin Hier, and associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, urged him “to repudiate the charge of decide, to sanction the staff member who prepared the material and to disassociate [himself] from those Catholic leaders who insist on continuing to incite religious hatred and intolerance.”
The rabbis wrote that the decide charge is “baseless” and “has led to the death, suffering and persecution of Jews the world over and continues to serve as a primary source of anti-Semitism till this day.”
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