It’s so easy to pick up those lying propaganda phrases helpfully offered by Christian Arabs, among others. It’s so easy to declare that Bethlehem is a ghetto, or that Israelis are the new Nazis, or that their defense barrier against terrorists is an ‘apartheid wall’. The repetitious chant of these lies may brainwash the unthinking listener into believing that they are true.

We need a few more people to stand up and shout, breaking into the chant with cries of: “That’s a lie!”

Is Australian priest Fr Frank Brennan stupid? He is certainly ignorant of history and deeply insensitive. He is probably prejudiced, too, or he would not have accepted these lies without question. They simply don’t make sense – as Melbourne Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence pointed out.

During a Holocaust memorial ceremony to mark Kristallnacht, Brennan referred to the "ghetto-like conditions of Bethlehem". Insensitive? Certainly. Ignorant and stupid? Well, what do you think?

Ghettos were established by the Nazis during World War II to confine Jews into tightly packed areas, resulting in the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

It was "singularly inappropriate and distasteful" to make "a parallel between Hitler's persecution of the Jews and Israeli policy to Palestinians", Rabbi Lawrence wrote. "That suggestion is grotesquely offensive".

A statement issued by the CCJ this week said it "deplores the analogy drawn between Israel and Nazi Germany. Israel is a democratic state with an enfranchised Christian and Muslim population, represented in the Knesset. In Nazi Germany, Jews were disenfranchised, denied permission to work and were rounded up for systematic slaughter."

The Nazis were not defending themselves from suicide bombings and massacres by the Jews when they shut them into ghettos.

Brennan does not really seem to understand the inappropriateness and dishonesty of his words.

"I am apologising for any hurt which was caused by the phraseology in my text," he said.

But he can’t see anything wrong with it really.