The Vatican on Friday condemned as "unjustified and inopportune" a claim by a church official that pressure from Jewish organizations is delaying the beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who critics say didn't do enough to stop the Holocaust.

"What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know an answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life." - Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querido Verlag, 1934. A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the 'Universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. - New York Post, 28 November 1972

An elderly white supremacist opened fire with a rifle inside the crowded U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum early Wednesday afternoon, fatally wounding a security guard before being shot himself by other officers.

Ministers and MKs on the Right expressed outrage on Thursday at US President Barrack Obama's comparison of the suffering of the Palestinians to what Jews endured in the Holocaust.

Israeli Ambassador Gideon Meir makes no apology for his government's hard-handed approach towards the Palestinians. He tells Kurt Sansone that Israelis are fed up with ceding land for peace and getting war in return.

Israeli drivers on Sunday were urged to honk their horns in protest of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Yad Vashem.