Would Goebbels have been proud???

Irish politician thinks he understands Goebbels...

AN Irish politician refused today to apologise after a Jewish rights group expressed outrage over his comments comparing a Jewish colleague to a Nazi propagandist.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre urged Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen "to publicly condemn" a remark by Aengus O'Snodaigh and to apologise to fellow lawmaker Alan Shatter, who is Jewish, on behalf of the Irish government.

At a parliamentary committee hearing on Thursday, Mr O'Snodaigh attacked Mr Shatter and Israel's ambassador to Ireland for trying to justify the Israeli offensive on Gaza.

Mr O'Snodaigh, Sinn Fein's international affairs spokesman, compared their defence of the Israeli campaign to the arguments of Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister.

"Perhaps it is no coincidence that ... Shatter is the only Jewish member of the Irish parliament," said the Paris-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre in a public letter to the Irish premier.

"This incident is in clear violation of Irish commitments to anti-racism and the Holocaust banalisation provisions of the Council of Europe and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe", concluded the letter.

Mr Shatter and Ambassador Zion Evrony had argued that the Gaza war would not have happened if the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers Hamas had not fired rockets at Israeli civilians.

Mr O'Snodaigh said "Goebbels would have been proud of the twisted logic and half-truths" of the two men's arguments.