Ireland Sees Growing Opposition to European Constitution

From the Los Angeles Times

By Kim Murphy Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

CANVASSING: Maire Hoctor, right, Ireland’s minister of state for elder affairs, tries to convince a voter in Nenagh to vote “yes” in the June 12 referendum on the EU treaty.

The June 12 vote on the Lisbon Treaty now seems less certain, as opposition groups, some businessmen and farmers raise concerns about sovereignty.

NENAGH, IRELAND — The "Yes on the EU" bus rolled into town blaring a foot-stomping "Galway Girl" from its megaphone one afternoon last week, but what it got was a whole lot of no.

An Irishman has always been a hard sell, and never more so than when issues of sovereignty are at stake. "People died for your freedom," declares one of the signs that have popped up in this agricultural town as Ireland prepares to vote June 12 on the European Union's new constitution. "Don't throw it away."

Farmer Ida McLoughlin isn't sold on the other posters plastered around town: "Vote yes for jobs, the economy and Ireland's future."

"Since the EU, all you see are 4x4s going down the street and big buildings going up. The thatched cottages are gone," McLoughlin said. "You have all these Johnny-come-lately people who were poor and got rich, and they're dreadful people. We've lost our Irish values."

Adoption of the so-called Lisbon Treaty requires ratification by all 27 member states of the EU, which could take a much more prominent role on the world stage under the streamlined diplomacy and beefed-up military readiness the document envisions.

Fourteen nations have ratified the agreement through their parliaments, and the remainder are expected to do so by the end of the year. Only Ireland's constitution requires a referendum -- and that could make or break the long-awaited constitution.

The Irish government, most business leaders and political parties of nearly every stripe have come out overwhelmingly in favor of the Lisbon Treaty, pointing out how Ireland's membership in the EU over the last 35 years has helped transform the Emerald Isle of 4.1 million people from an impoverished backwater dependent on Britain to one of Europe's most robust economies.

But a newly vigorous opposition composed of farmers, a few wealthy businessmen with vague connections to the U.S. defense establishment and the leftist Irish republican party, Sinn Fein, have gained quickly in recent polls, and the outcome is suddenly no longer a sure thing.

It is not clear what happens if Ireland says no -- except that the union would surely be plunged, as it was when France and the Netherlands voted down an earlier EU constitution in 2005, into uncertainty and more tedious negotiations on what EU leaders say is a badly needed framework for decision-making among its suddenly more numerous member states.

"It would put us in the very tortured position of going back to the drawing board," said Marc Coleman, a Dublin-based economic analyst.

The treaty signed in Lisbon in December would help Europe project itself more forcefully on the international stage by creating a European Council president and foreign affairs representative while outlining a framework for EU troop deployments in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.

The treaty would broaden and establish a legal basis for the EU's lawmaking powers in some areas while making them subject much more directly to national parliaments and citizens initiatives. It would set out voting weights between large and small countries, improve cross-border cooperation in areas such as crime fighting and climate change and streamline the European Commission to a manageable decision-making body of 18.

Under the treaty, member nations still would retain their historic veto power in crucial areas such as defense, foreign policy, taxation and social security, but not on issues like immigration and energy policy.

Voters in overwhelmingly Catholic Ireland worry that the nation would be forced to expand abortion rights (no), forfeit its long tradition of military neutrality (no) or give up the holy grail of the Celtic Tiger economic miracle, Ireland's 12.5% corporate tax rate (probably not, though some in Europe would like to try).

Treaty opponents say the government is too smoothly dismissing what may be legitimate fears and is too quick to warn that Ireland would incur the wrath of the rest of Europe if it voted no.

"People always say Ireland is in very good standing at the European level. But why wouldn't we be? We haven't invaded one of the partner countries, we haven't partitioned them. But we're also a small member state, and in the power structure that is the EU, small states have to be very careful in how they protect their status and institutions," said Mary Lou McDonald, a member of the European Parliament with Sinn Fein.

Here in County Tipperary, the "Yes on the EU" bus was stopping in front of village cafes and bakeries; young activists from the majority Fianna Fail party trailed out in yellow T-shirts. They smiled and passed out leaflets touting EU membership as a bonanza for Ireland -- the country received 58 billion euros in European funds for agriculture, infrastructure and other programs from 1973 to 2003. Its exports to other EU states increased from 45 billion euros in 1997 to 87 billion in 2006.

Maire Hoctor, a Fianna Fail lawmaker and a minister of state from Nenagh, strolled the sidewalks, stopping for hugs, handshakes and an occasional tongue-lashing. She was joined by party colleague Jim Casey, mayor of North Tipperary.

"They're not going to give us anything. They're going to take it away, for sure," said Bernie O'Brien, an elderly woman who resisted their overtures.

"I remember when we had nothing in this county: We had a one-way ticket to Britain, and that was our lot," Hoctor told her.

Much of the opposition in rural Ireland involves an issue that has nothing to do with the EU treaty at all: agriculture proposals submitted last month to the World Trade Organization by the European trade commissioner, who is Britain's former envoy to the British province of Northern Ireland.

Irish farmers say the trade proposals could put 50,000 cattle farmers in Ireland out of business by easing importation of Brazilian and Argentine beef and driving down prices. The Irish Farmers Assn. says it will urge its members to vote "no" on the EU treaty if Ireland doesn't exercise its EU veto to block the trade proposals.

"It's just going to decimate farms," McLoughlin told Hoctor. "Sure, we've gotten subsidies from the EU. We got the check in the post, like everyone else. We were bought. We were humiliated. My husband has been told what to grow, when to grow it."

Casey said the issue shouldn't be used to block a treaty that will be good for Ireland.

"We've always negotiated good deals for the farmers in Ireland in Europe, and I'm convinced that will continue," he said. "The EU has provided well for farmers. Since we entered Europe, everything has gotten much, much better." T

he other main source of opposition has come from a group called Libertas, fronted by two wealthy businessmen who have had extensive contracts with the U.S. military. This has caused some in the Irish media to speculate that the group is advancing the agenda of U.S. conservatives, some of whom worry that a stronger, united Europe would undermine U.S. interests on the continent.

But Ulick McEvaddy, a former military intelligence officer whose company has contracts for aerial refueling with the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps and who is one of Libertas' biggest supporters, said he was worried about threats to Ireland's independence.

"We're handing over direct responsibility and huge issues of sovereignty to the Brussels parliament," McEvaddy said. "If they believe in this great experiment, put it to all the people of Europe."

Even in County Tipperary, some are willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

"Europe hasn't let us down yet," said Mick Connell, a member of the local council in Templemore, not far from Nenagh. "That should be good enough."

Buchanan and Churchill

From Chronicles Magazine
by Thomas Fleming

Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, by Patrick J. Buchanan. New York: Crown. 544 pp. $25.95

A Review published in The Wanderer . Since this is my unedited text, any errors are the fault of the author and not of The Wanderer. Check out their website at http://thewandererpress.com/.

In his latest book, Patrick J. Buchanan has confronted one of the dominant historical myths of the 20th century, the myth of “the last good war” and the heroic British Prime Minister who not only rallied his nation to victory but, unlike Franklin Roosevelt, refused to be taken in by the schemes of Joseph Stalin. In describing this consensus of history teachers, editorialists, and History Channel watchers as a myth, I do not mean to say that it is entirely or even predominantly untrue. Myths usually include more than a little truth, but myth-makers whittle and polish the rough edges of reality in order to produce a fable that can be easily learned and repeated. Inevitably, reality is further distorted with every retelling until we are left with a simplistic morality play in which virtuous Yankees defeat wicked Confederates, or high-minded cowboys and frontiersman defend their women from murderous thieving redskins—though this latter example, like so many American myths, has been turned upside down, converting the thieving redskins into peace-living Native Americans, whose superior civilization was destroyed by greedy and violent capitalist exploiters.

According to the myth of the World Wars, the United States entered World War I to stop two evil and militaristic German Empires from conquering and subjugating the peace-loving peoples of Europe. The noble Woodrow Wilson, at the end of the war, proclaimed the lofty principles of world peace and self-determination that were invoked to destroy the Prussian war machine and break up the Austro-Hungarian Empire into happy little states inhabited by contented peasants. Ignored in the blissful recitations of the myth are several inconvenient facts: Neither Slovak nor Croat peasants were especially content to be included in states run, respectively, by Czechs and Serbs; the Prussian war machine was no more a threat to world peace than the war machines created by their enemies; and many European and American statesmen viewed the Versailles Treaty as the direct cause both of the rise of Hitler and the second World War. Equally ignored is the Wilson administration’s shaky legal basis for entering into a conflict that appeared to concern the United States very little and in which both sides were guilty of violations of international law.

In this wonderful book, which should be read by all Americans who love their country, Patrick Buchanan has launched a devastating attack on the myth. Because the author makes no assumptions about the historical literacy of the United States, people who have not recently boned up on the history of 20th Century can use this volume as a refresher course that narrates the big events and portrays the leading figures. Buchanan makes the period come alive, as he highlights the ambiguous character of many eminent statesmen of the 20th century. The central figure, of course, is the brilliant and mercurial Winston Churchill, who changed sides so often that hardly anyone trusted him. Rejoining the Conservative Party in 1924, which he had abandoned for the Liberals 20 years earlier, Churchill quipped, “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.” Churchill was nothing if not ingenious.

Buchanan is quite right to emphasize the political influence of Churchill’s family—he was directly descended from John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough–but he might well have devoted a few pages to pointing out that Marlborough was a glory-seeking general and statesman, who betrayed the king who had relied on him and spent much of his career jockeying for power. Winston, who wrote a massive biography of his famous ancestor, modeled his own career on Marlborough’s.

The Churchills tended toward melancholy and dissipation: Winston’s father Randolph was like his son an unreliable maverick, whose irregular habits may have caused the illness (probably syphilis) that took his life at an early age. Winston’s son Randolph is best remembered as the binge-drinking companion we meet in Evelyn Waugh’s diaries. It is remarkable that Winston, who suffered from his family’s predilection for alcoholism, accomplished as much as he did.

Unlike many revisionist historians, Buchanan does not demonize Winston Churchill or deny his excellent qualities: the keen intelligence that early on discerned the Soviet menace, the battlefield valor that would be translated into the moral courage to take unpopular positions, and the political astuteness that enabled him to hold the reins of power throughout most of the War.

He does, however, draw up a formidable set of charges against him: recklessness as the First Lord of the Admiralty who clamored for war with the German empires, folly in arguing for military retrenchments in the dangerous period between the two wars and in urging capitulation to U.S. demands to put and end to the alliance with Japan, an action that served to justify the Japanese attack on Britain’s far-eastern passions, arrogance in securing sanctions that gave Mussolini, by now fearful of Hitler, no choice but to cement his alliance with Germany, obtuseness in writing the entirely unnecessary blank check to Poland, guaranteeing her security and making the Second World War inevitable and giving international legitimacy to Stalin, and finally, his stubborn intransigence toward Nazi Germany that prevented any possibility of a negotiated settlement that would have eliminated or reduced the slaughter of the war and possibly saved the lives of millions of European Jews. When these charges are added to Churchill’s apparent inability to understand Stalin’s plans to take over Eastern Europe, they make a serious indictment of an allegedly great statesman’s career.

The net result of Churchill’s blundering and blindness was the loss of the British colonial empire, the enslavement of Eastern Europe, and a Cold War the weighed heavily on American taxpayers for four decades. Churchill does not bear the burden alone. It goes without saying that equally grave mistakes were made by colleagues like Anthony Eden and by Franklin Roosevelt and his successive cabinets, but the debunking of Churchill’s infallibility is an important step toward recovering a sane and balanced view of the world wars.

Buchanan has made a strong case for the prosecution, though he may not have quite secured a conviction. It is not easy to evaluate Hitler’s motives, and, while he might have been content to have left Britain alone, it is in the nature of ideological empires to expand. One emergency after another is required to justify the assumption of so much power, and the wealth brought by conquest is the fuel that permits the total state to continue functioning. Mussolini may have allowed himself to be driven into the Fuhrer’s arms, but he had his own imperial ambitions that would have sooner or later dragged Italy into imperial adventures the Italian army was not prepared to sustain.

Sober or drunk, Churchill made more than his share of mistakes, and while his admirers have painted altogether too flattering a picture of their hero, one should beware of trusting too much to the judgment of his sometimes envious rivals. David Lloyd-George and Stanley Baldwin had good reason to be suspicious of Winston, but neither Lloyd-George’s hysterical bellicosity nor Baldwin’s pacifism, in retrospect, evince much deeper wisdom or patriotism than Churchill’s own ad hoc approach to foreign affairs, as helter-skelter as his policies sometimes seems. In his diary Count Ciano, who was Mussolini’s son-in-law and foreign secretary, compared the Duce with Churchill, and envied the British their possession of a prudent diplomat who (unlike his own boss) did not make a fool of himself in his public performances.

Mr. Buchanan’s title would suggest that the scope of his book is limited to what historian John Lukacs has called “the duel” between Churchill and Hitler. In fact, half of the book is devoted to events that took place before the outbreak of the war and nearly one fourth to the origins of World War I, the conduct of the war, and its aftermath. While this broader canvas permits the author to paint his anti-myth with broader strokes, it means that he cannot go into the documentary details that would render his arguments more persuasive to careful readers of history. On the other hand, by beginning his tale in the early 20th century (apart from a few broad references to earlier decades), he is unable to set the Great War in its proper context, which certainly includes France’s burning desire to get revenge for her defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

These are minor quibbles. Buchanan is not an historian but a journalist and polemicist, using an historical backdrop for contemporary political debate. He states his aim directly, even bluntly in the introduction:

“There has risen among America’s elite a Churchill cult. Its acolytes hold that Churchill was not only a peerless war leader but statesman of unparalleled vision whose life and legend should be the model for every statesman, To this cult, defiance anywhere of U.S. hegemony, resistance anywhere to U.S. power becomes another 1938. Every adversary is “a new Hitler,” every proposal to avert war “another Munich.” Slobodan Milosevic, a party apparatchik who had presided over the disintegration of Yugoslavia—losing Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia—becomes the Hitler of the Balkans for holding Serbia’s cradle province of Kosovo. Saddam Hussein, whose army was routed in 100 hours in 1991 and who had not shot down a U.S. plane in forty thousand sorties, becomes “an Arab Hitler” abut to roll up the Persian Gulf and threaten mankind with ‘weapons of mass destruction.’”

So, to undermine the neoconservative campaign for U.S. global hegemony, Buchanan has set out to destroy the myth of the “necessary war” that justifies our latter-day imperialism. It is a bold thesis, one that needs stating, and it would be churlish, probably, to point out that when Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia in June of 1991 and Croatia in September, the President of the Federal Executive Council was a Bosnian Croat Ante Markovic, not Milosevic, who was then only Prime Minister of Serbia. And, while Sadddam’s war machine may not have amounted to much in the second Gulf War, he had provoked the Iran-Iraq War in which he used chemical weapons that killed vast number of Iranian civilians. If Saddam represented no direct threat to the United States, he was, nonetheless, a violent dictator who threatened not only Iran but also Israel.

I cite these two examples, especially the former, to give some idea of the difficulty of writing historical essays without a very firm grasp of the evidence. If there is a serious flaw in Buchanan’s book, it is the heavy reliance on secondary sources—recent biographies and history books—and the neglect of primary sources, even when they are easily available in published form. An egregious omission is Warren Kimball’s edition of the Churchill/Roosevelt correspondence, but the correspondence and papers of most of the major statesmen he discusses are accessible. These are minor matters, perhaps, and they should not distract us from Buchanan’s accomplishment.

In examining the career of Winston Churchill, Patrick Buchanan has made a highly valuable contribution to American political debate. In praising and recommending the book, I should be less than candid if I did not acknowledge my friendship with the author and my profound agreement with his overall point-of-view. When Christian conservatives seek to understand the revolution that has devastated the world of their fathers, they cannot do better than to turn to Pat’s spirited defense of old republican principles and his relentless attack on the sacred cows who have too long monopolized the pastures of the American conservative mind.

Maureen Hegarty -- "Sweet Heart of Jesus"

Two Very Different Bush Presidencies

Having served in the administrations of both Presidents Bush, I can assure you that those two administrations could not be more different. Many see the former as a failed presidency because it was rejected after one term. However, on most issues it was guided by solid conservative principle. Many of its most senior appointees were held over from the Reagan administration, and one had confidence that seasoned professionals were in charge. They were, for the most part, ladies and gentlemen who loved America, respected the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, made sacrifices to serve, had a spirit of servant leadership, class, good manners and human decency. In the campaign of 1992, when many of us wished the President would tell the American people what he knew about the personal life of Bill Clinton, a sense of gentlemanly decorum prevented him from doing so.

In the vicious and coordinated attacks on Scott McClellan, we see the stark contrast between the father and the son and their two administrations. In the most senior positions of this administration is a cabal of arrogant and ruthless Texans whose highest value is power. They are not "movement conservatives," as so many in the senior Bush administration had been. They simply use conservative rhetoric to "secure the base." Those of us who actually believed the rhetoric and believed that this White House cares about such things as parental rights and school choice, were quickly disabused of any such notions.

In this Bush White House, the Constitution, law and civility take a back seat to the need to attain and wield power. McClellan's claims that there is a 24/7 campaign mode is absolutely correct. Even the Secretary's Regional Representatives in the U. S. Department of Education were told in 2003 that all of their activities, information gathering and weekly reports were to be done for the benefit of the 2004 presidential campaign.

The question is asked as to why McClellan did not speak up and raise his concerns with more senior White House staff in policy meetings; but this administration is not one that values independent thought. McClellan surely knew that to question in any way would raise questions about his loyalty, put him outside the circle, and on a plane back to Texas.

The bitter experience of this failed administration should be a reminder to conservatives that settling for the lesser of two evils yields evil. If this Administration, which gave lip service to conservative ideals, has presided over the largest growth in government and government spending since the Great Society, has run roughshod over civil liberties, has disregarded the Constitution, the division of federal power and states' rights, and has made preemptive global warfare our foreign policy, what should we expect from a Republican candidate who doesn't even bother to speak as a conservative?

Perhaps, as Pat Buchanan suggests in the following column, the good news is President Bush just doesn't matter any more.

Is Bush Becoming Irrelevant?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

After losing both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, Bill Clinton expostulated: The president of the United States is not irrelevant!

On learning his trusted aide from Texas Scott McClellan has denounced as an “unnecessary war” the same Iraq war McClellan defended from the White House podium, George Bush must feel as Clinton did.

The synchronized savagery of the attacks on McClellan as turncoat suggests he drew blood. For what he has done is offer confirmation to the president’s war critics, from within the White House inner circle, that Bush’s motive in going to war was not a clear and present danger of attack by Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, but to advance a Bush crusade to impose democracy on the Middle East.

Neoconservative ideology, not U.S. national interests, McClellan is saying, motivated Bush to launch one of the longest and most divisive wars in U.S. history.

When loyalists defect and seek to profit from that defection, it is usually a sign of a failing presidency. And, indeed, events suggest that history is passing Bush by.

Despite the administration’s designation of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and of Syria and Iran as state sponsors of terror with whom we do not negotiate, America’s clients are ignoring America.

Israel has ignored Bush’s demand that it stop building and expanding settlements on a West Bank that is to be the heartland of a Palestinian state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been secretly negotiating with Syria for the return of the Golan Heights in exchange for peace.

When America refused to play honest broker between Jerusalem and Damascus, Turkey, at Israel’s request, stepped into the role.

The pro-American Lebanese government of Prime Minister Siniora has negotiated a truce and power-sharing arrangement with Hezbollah, giving that militant Shiite movement and party veto power in the Beirut government. Egypt is negotiating with Hamas for a truce in the Israeli-Gaza war and to effect the exchange of a captured Israeli solider held by Hamas for Hamas fighters held in Israel.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, designated a terrorist organization by the Senate, helped to arrange the ceasefire between government forces and the Mahdi Army in Basra and Sadr City. While the United States has used the roughest of language to denounce Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president has been received as an honored guest by the Iraqi government we support and by the Ayatollah Sistani, who has yet to meet a high-ranking American.

When Bush went to the Middle East to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel as the Zionist he has become, he was criticized by a Palestinian leader who survives on U.S. aid. When he went to Riyadh to plead for an increase in the flow of oil, he got a token concession from the king.

In Pakistan, the new government has been negotiating a truce with the radicalized frontier provinces, which would leave the Taliban with a privileged sanctuary from which to prepare their annual offensives to overthrow the government in Kabul and expel the Americans, as their fathers expelled the Russians.

As Russia and China move closer together to oppose U.S. missile defenses and the U.S. presence, military and economic, in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Latin America seems to be going its own leftward way. The halcyon days of the Alliance for Progress are long gone.

The world seems to be waiting for Bush to depart and for the next American president. For the foreign policy differences between John McCain and Barack Obama are as real and stark as they have been since the Reagan-Carter election of 1980, or the Nixon-McGovern election of 1972.

Looking back on the years since 9-11, it is hard to give the Bush foreign policy passing grades. We pushed NATO eastward and alienated Russia. We have 140,000 Army and Marine Corps troops tied down in Iraq in a war now in its sixth year, from which our NATO allies have all extricated themselves. We have another war going in Afghanistan, where the situation is as grave as it has been since we went in.

The Bush democracy crusade was put on the shelf after producing election triumphs for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, after Iraq, appears to be headed there, as well.

America remains the first economic and military power on earth. But after seven years of Bush, we no longer inspire the awe or hopes we once did. We are no longer the world hegemonic power of the neocons’ depiction. And the reason is that Bush embraced their utopian ideology of democratic empire and listened to their siren’s call to be the Churchill of his age.

Of Bush, it may be said he was a far better politician and candidate than his father, but as a statesman and world leader, he could not carry the old man’s loafers.

The Conservative Movement's Grandest Lady -- Congratulations, Dr. Schlafly!

From the Daily News-Record

Honoring Mrs. Schlafly

Boorish Students Ruin Ceremony

It's a funny thing about free speech. As Americans, we are obliged to honor the concept embedded in our Bill of Rights. And it's well that we should — and not only in the breach, or when the "speech" in question pleases our sensitivities. It is with this in mind that we dare to comment on a form of expression that dishonored longtime conservative advocate Phyllis Schlafly at a solemn ceremony last week in St. Louis. Much to its credit, Washington University decided to bestow an honorary doctorate in humane letters to Mrs. Schlafly, who already holds two degrees from the school. Segments of the faculty and student body urged university officials to rescind the degree. They declined, again much to their credit. As Margaret Bush Wilson, a retired civil rights attorney who volunteered to introduce Mrs. Schlafly, said, "It is Phyllis Schlafly's persona — not her politics or views — which is being recognized here today." Hear, hear. Still, when the time came to award the degree, a number of students, their families, and, disgracefully, faculty — already wearing white armbands in protest — turned their backs on Mrs. Schlafly. Three faculty members even walked off the stage. Here's our point: Given our tradition of free speech, these people were well within their rights to make such a demonstration. But, likewise, we are well within ours to describe it as rude, boorish, and totally lacking in class and good taste. We are similarly entitled to note the arrant hypocrisy of certain members of an academic community that spouts its commitment to "tolerance" and "diversity." Apparently such virtues are to be lavished only on folks who espouse the same opinions and world-view. Some "diversity." By the way, the 83-year-old Mrs. Schlafly refused to be flummoxed. Of her degree, she said, "It's the highest honor a university can give to anyone." And, in a barb aimed directly at her student detractors, she added, "I'm not sure they're mature enough to graduate." And, as we see it, that would go for those faculty members — adults acting sophomorically — as well.

New Testaments Torched in Israel

With all of President Bush's talk about bringing democracy, freedom and tolerance to all the peoples of the world, it is important to remember that Israel, one of the largest recipients of US aid over the past half century and one of this country's closest allies, persecutes Christians, has presided over a diaspora of Christians who lived in Palestine since the time of Christ, and imprisons Christian missionaries for simply giving away Bibles and religious tracts. The following story from CNN is a reminder that President Bush might want to begin his "democracy crusade" with those nations over which we should have some influence.

From CNN
By Mark Bixler

(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.

Messianic Jews in Israel, told CNN he plans to file a formal complaint Thursday with the national police at the request of the United Christian Council in Israel, an umbrella organization for a few dozen Christian organizations outside Israel.

"I hope the people who are responsible for breaking the law will be indicted and prosecuted," he said.

About 200 New Testaments were burned, Aharon said, but he saved another 200.

His goal was to stop attempts to distribute Christian literature in the city, he said.

Myers, however, said he doubts that Messianic Jewish missionaries distributed the New Testaments. He said it's not clear how the volumes found their way into homes in Or-Yehuda.

The deputy mayor told CNN he respects the New Testament and would not do what has been done to the Jews in the past -- a reference to Nazi burning of Jewish and other books in the 1930s, and other occasions when Jewish texts, including sacred ones, were burned.

Myers said his complaint will ask the authorities to investigate possible violations of two Israeli laws. One forbids the destruction or desecration of any religious icon or item that a group holds sacred. Another bans people from speaking publicly in a way that offends or humiliates a certain religion.

Both laws are meant to prevent people from inciting religious violence, he said.

The burning controversy has unfolded against the backdrop of other instances that Myers cited as examples of discrimination against Messianic Jews in Israel.

About two months ago, the teenage son of a Messianic pastor was severely injured when a package delivered to his home exploded, Myers said. In addition, several rabbis urged students to boycott further participation in a Bible competition after they learned that one winner -- a high-school student in Israel -- was a Messianic Jew, he said.

Groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have sharply criticized the burning of New Testaments.

"We condemn this heinous act as a violation of the basic Jewish principles and values," said Rabbi Eric J. Greenburg, director of interfaith policy for the Anti-Defamation League. "It is essential that we respect the sacred texts of other faiths. The Jewish people can never forget the tragic burning of sacred Jewish volumes at many points in history."

"While there may be legitimate concerns of proselytizing, these matters must be addressed through the proper legal channels," Greenburg said in a statement. "It is unacceptable and not legitimate to burn someone else's sacred texts."

Thomas Sowell on "Mascot Politics"

Thomas Sowell has written a superbly insightful column, "Mascot Politics," about the hypocrisy of liberals and the injustice of their "affirmative action" schemes. In addition to the examples Sowell cites, contrasting the everyday brotherhood, fair play and humanity of many conservatives with liberals "who use blacks as mascots," he might have also mentioned the late Charlton Heston, a conservative who quietly participated in the civil rights marches of the 1960's.