"This morning we saw pictures of the bestial Warsaw Ghetto at Yad Vashem, and in the evening we were in the ghetto of Ramallah. It gives one the creeps," said Bishop Gregor Maria Franz Hanke of Eichstaett.

On Tuesday reporters asked Hanke if he'd been correctly quoted. "I just wanted to express my personal grief," he said, adding that the immediate impression had been shocking to him.

But Walter Mixa, the bishop of Augsburg, also provoked ire among Israelis when he spoke of Palestinians facing "ghettoization with almost racist characteristics," the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper reported.

Asked to confirm that statement, Mixa said, "I wanted to say that building the wall between Israel and the Palestinian autonomous areas, as well as the many Israeli settlements, amounts to a degree of provocation from the point of view of the Palestinian population."

Advertisement

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the archbishop of Cologne, who served as bishop of Berlin when it was divided by the Communist-built Berlin Wall, acknowledged that Meisner had said of Israel's security fence, "I never thought I would see something like this again in my life. This wall will also come down, just like the Berlin Wall."

Earlier, when crossing a checkpoint into eastern Jerusalem, Meisner told reporters, "This is something that is done to animals, not people."

The visit of 27 members of the German Bishops' Conference included, in addition to the stop at Yad Vashem, guided tours of Christian holy sites and meetings with Christian congregations.

Israel's ambassador to Germany, Shimon Stein, denounced the bishops' statements. In reply, the Conference of German Catholic Bishops said that the conference chairman, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, had repeatedly endorsed Israel's right to exist.

(Reporting by Ynetnews  and Jewish Press staff)