Israel Matzav

Little town of lies

In this post, you will see a trailer for a movie called Little Town of Bethlehem. Here's part of what the film's web site gives as a summary.

Sami, Ahmad, Yonatan come from radically different backgrounds in a land of unending war. Yet, against all odds, including some within their Israeli and Palestinian communities, they are able to find common ground. They walk a path of nonviolence struggle in lockstep with Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi. For them courage is found not in taking up arms, but setting them down once and for all and extending a hand in peace.

From the award-winning team that brought you End of the Spear (2006) and Miss HIV (2007) comes director Jim Hanon’s latest documentary, Little Town of Bethlehem. Unscripted and unrehearsed, discover the humanity lurking behind an ancient cycle of violence.

The idea that this is a 'documentary' is comical. A docudrama - playing fast and loose with the facts - is more like it.

Let's watch the trailer and then I'll explain to you why I react so harshly to this film.

Let's go to the videotape.



What's wrong here? Well, there are several things wrong. First, the comparison between the 'Palestinians' and Martin Luther King's non-violence is odious. King's campaign was genuinely peaceful. The 'Palestinians' consider throwing stones and Molotov cocktails 'non-violent,' and they consider suicide bombings to be justified. Moreover, King was not planning the overthrow of the United States government and its replacement with a black-dominated government. The 'Palestinians' are planning the destruction of the Jewish state and its replacement with yet another Arab Muslim state (or that state's incorporation into one or more of Syria, Jordan, Egypt or Lebanon).

Second, we are presented with different narratives as being 'equally valid.' They are not. Only one side sought to conduct a campaign of extinction - the 'Palestinian' (Arab) side. And the very idea of the existence of a separate 'Palestinian' (as opposed to Arab) ethnicity is, as I have pointed out many times, a fraud. Every action the Arabs have taken for the last 100 years or more has been designed to do one thing: To prevent the establishment and then to vitiate the existence of a Jewish state.

What are this film's messages? The friend who sent me the link says that film maker Sami Awad has four messages:

(1) Jewish settlements and Occupation are pushing Christians out of the Holy Land. I consider this the Christian equivalent of Mark Perry's blood libel that building in Ramat Shlomo is getting American boys and girls killed in Afghanistan. It's that serious.

(2) Palestinian resistance is Christian resistance, i.e. the Muslims are behaving non-violently and comporting themselves to Christianity (he actually goes so far as to say that he's proselytizing while standing with them at protests, as if that could be true without him getting killed)

(3) Muslim and British rule saw Christians, Jews, and Muslims living together in harmony.

His goal, as he explicitly articulates it, is that de facto one-state equality ("one-state" my description; "equality" his) should precede a negotiated settlement.

Let me answer those points.

First, the fact that Israel is the only country in the region where the Christian population has increased over the last 100 years and continues to increase puts the lie to the claim that Jewish 'settlements' and 'occupation' are pushing Christians out of the Holy Land. Look at what's happening to Christians in Egypt, in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Syria and in Iran, and compare that to the status of Christians in Israel. We're the only country in which Christian lives are not in constant danger because they are Christians.

As to my friend's second point, see the first paragraph after the video. The differences between the 'Palestinian' suicide bombers and Martin Luther King's philosophy of non-violence are obvious to anyone who has their eyes open.

Third, Muslims, Jews and Christians did not live together in peace under Muslim or British rule. See, for example, Hebron 1929, or the riots of 1936 and 1937. Under Muslim rule, Jews were treated as dhimmis and could not get too close to the Western Wall or enter Hebron's Machpeila Cave - the two holiest sites to Jews in Israel.

As to the possibility of everyone living together in one state, there are 22 Arab Muslim states in this region, but only one Jewish state. Why should we ever agree to allow the one Jewish state to become a non-Jewish hodgepodge?

Yisrael adds:

The "Hagana attacks" and a "sniper kills" but not a word, at least in this trailer, that the Arabs had been conducting a violent terror campaign against Jewish civilians since 1920, killing hundreds and ethnically-cleansing several residency locations. Nothing about the Mufti, the pre-eminent local Arab leader, collaborating with Hitler. Not a word that the violence of 1947-49 was initiated by the Arabs, first by rejecting any compromise as proffered by the UN's Partition Plan, second by engaging again in violence directed at civilians beginning on December 1, 1947 and last by the invasion of Israel by seven Arab states on May 15, 1948. Not a word about that 1950s' fedayeen and that the PLO's Fatah began in 1964.

Scenes of Israeli police breaking up Arab demonstrations are paralleled to and almost superimposed on police in the American South beating Blacks during the 1960s. The film claims there's a "Palestinian no-violent struggle for liberation". Really? Where? Every single Friday, at a half-dozen locations, Arabs gather to protest and - yes, throw rocks and there are Western media sympathizers who describe that as non-violent.

I hope my Christian readers and friends will not be taken in and will respond critically to this pack of lies.

Labels: Arab obsession with Israel, Arab terrorism, Christians in Israel, Christians in Muslim countries, Little Town of Bethlehem, Martin Luther King

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:33 PM