It's no secret that there's only one country in the Middle East where Christians have not become an endangered species, and where their population has grown over the last 100 years. You guessed it - it's Israel and I've written about it time and time again (search Bethlehem in the blog for some examples).
In Catch the Jew, Tuvia Tenenbaum writes about a meeting he had with a Christian in Bethlehem, who acknowledged that the town's Christian population had declined by more than 90% since 2000, as Christians fled. When he asked her why, she blamed it on... you guessed it: The 'Occupation.'
So what is it that these people don't get? Luma Simms, a Christian who grew up in Iraq tries to explain.
This is not just a Muslim problem. This anti-Semitism trickles down to
minority groups living in Islamic dominated lands. Middle Eastern
Christians manifest a hobbled prejudice since they lack the power to
politically act out against Israel. As I have observed my Middle Eastern
community over the years, there seems to be a Stockholm Syndrome
phenomenon. After being so long under Islamic rule and imbibing Islamic
propaganda, the Christians are apt to parrot their “captors” in the
Islamic authoritarian governments. I hold out hope that a free Arab
Christian culture could break this spell within a generation. But hope
is running out—Christianity may not survive in the Middle East.
Indeed it may not - at least outside of Israel. Simms goes on to explain why Israel is the last hope for Middle East Christians.
Israel is the last hope for Arab Christians; it’s as simple as that.
America is not leading on the refugee issue, especially for Iraqi
Christians. Yet helping them, doing good to the Christians in the Arab
world, would require Israel overcoming her neighbors’ anti-Semitism,
even of those Christians who will not ask for help because of their
prejudices.
Arab Christians in America and abroad feel caught between Muslim
interests on one side and Israeli interests on the other. They are
bitter. They are a weak minority, always overlooked. Arab Christians
have no power to negotiate or threaten, no money to buy arms, and no
land to cultivate and build. Their bitterness makes them miss an
important ally: Israel. As the genocide of Middle Eastern Christians
continues, the only hope of an Arab Christian remnant—a remnant that
would keep and pass on its beliefs, traditions, and customs—is through
help from the state of Israel. It is the humanitarian thing to do.
Israel already exemplifies this humane treatment
of her enemies. They have hospitals and medical units close to their
borders where they discreetly treat the wounded and injured who come to
them for medical help. These people eventually go back to their homes in
Syria. Patients keep the medical care quiet to protect themselves from
reprisal back home for receiving care from Israel. Sometimes the
patients are combatants and other times it is civilians caught in
crossfire; some arrive barely alive not even knowing they are in Israel,
regaining consciousness only to find themselves being cared for by the
very people they have been taught to hate. These doctors and nurses are “sowing seeds of peace.”
Another reason why helping Arab Christians would be good for Israel:
What better way to overcome jihad in the region than for Israel to forge
an alliance with Christians? For their part, Middle Eastern Christians
should see Israel as an ally, support its democratic state, and build an
alliance to combat Islamic terrorists. For too long Islam has used a
divide and conquer tactic on the Christians and Jews. For example, when
Arab Christians living in Nazareth wanted to integrate into Israeli
society and enlist in the Israel Defense Forces, they were harassed,
attacked, and threatened by Arab Muslim groups. What’s worse was the
accusation by Muslims and Christians that they were betraying
Palestine. Anyone thinking clearly can see this for what it is: Muslims
fearing the alliance of Arab Christians with Israel.
...
If Israel will not act, what’s to be done? It’s hard to find exact
numbers, but maybe there are between 200,000 and 400,00 Iraqi Christians
left. They will be killed in Iraq, or die trying to escape. Some, God
willing, may be allowed to emigrate. Elliot Abrams, during an AEI panel
on the Sykes-Picot Agreement, made the most courageous statements I have
heard from anyone regarding the situation:
Most of the Christian communities are dying, will never
be restored….nobody has that feeling toward Christian minorities in Iraq
[speaking of the desire to save the communities]…we don’t even take
Christian refugees…I am really struck by the hostility to the notion
that anything should be done for the Christian communities of the Middle
East…is anybody being persecuted more than the Iraqi Christians? Does
anybody have a more well-founded fear [of persecution]? They can’t even
go to U.N refugee camps safely. And we are doing nothing about that.
[Regarding the conundrum of liquidating Christianity from the area] It
would be like saying, in 1940, surely a 1000 years of Jewish history in
Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, we don’t want to kill it by taking
those people as refugees. They died. The Christians will die, or many of
them will die. So I think we don’t have the right to say, ‘Stay there
and maintain your churches,’ when they’re being killed.
Israel, rise up and lead that region of the world. You are the hope
for Iraqi Christians. Let it always be said: In the dark age of ISIS,
when desolation and despair covered the Arab world, Israel was the house
of light. Like the prophet Jonah whom God commanded to go to Nineveh
and offer redemption to the Assyrians, may Israel go and redeem
Assyria—redeem the Nineveh plains once again.
I have many Christian followers on Twitter. There are two in particular that I follow. Every time I tweet a link like this one, I tag them. One retweets me every time. The other never does. Why? I wish I knew.
At the 2012 and 2014 conferences, speakers
blamed radical Islam’s violence against Christians in the Middle East on
Christian support for Israel, as if Muslims had no moral agency of
their own. Speakers condemned Jews for having rejected Jesus as the
messiah, suggesting that this rejection rendered Jews unfit to run a
sovereign state of their own.
On a more practical level, speakers
falsely reported that the security barrier completely surrounds
Bethlehem, the city of Christ’s birth, in an attempt to portray the
Jewish state as an obstacle to God’s purposes for peace in the Middle
East.
I was stunned that the speakers defamed the
Jewish people so brazenly and that the audience of 600 Evangelicals from
North America and Europe listened so happily to it all.
Similar messaging was broadcast at the 2016
conference. I should be in a high dudgeon about what I heard, but
instead I feel pity.
Spreading lies about the Jewish state, as
unsavory and self-destructive as it is, is the price Palestinian
Christians pay for staying in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. It’s
what they have to do.
Jews stay in the land through the force of
arms and diplomacy. Palestinian Christians stay in the West Bank by
shilling on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, one of the most corrupt
and incompetent set of elites in the world.
Palestinian Christians have to pretend that their fellow Palestinians are ready for statehood, jihadism
in the Middle East is not the fault of Muslim radicals but the West,
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all Israel’s fault and that
Palestinian leaders can be trusted to make peace with the Jewish state
even though they can’t be trusted with the money thrown at them by
Western governments.
Repeating these messages is the tax, or jizya
Palestinian Christians must pay to maintain peaceful relations,
precarious as they are, with their Muslim neighbors in the West Bank.
In
previous epochs, Christians paid protection money to Muslim rulers to
ensure their safety, but today they pay the jizya by telling lies to their fellow Christians in the West.
Orthodox Rabbis call on US government to save historic Middle East Christian communities
In a Wall Street Journal editorial, two Orthodox rabbis, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, have called on the United States government to step up and save the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East, which are now threatened with extinction.
Islamist terror attacks like the ones in Paris
and San Bernardino, Calif., have underlined the need for more and better vetting
of refugees from the Middle East who seek safety in the U.S. But with tens of
thousands pushing at the gate, who should to get first preference?
In our view, as rabbis, any immediate admissions
should focus on providing a haven for the remnants of historic Christian
communities of the Middle East. Christians in Iraq and Syria have been suffering
longer than other groups, and are fleeing not just for safety but because they
have been targeted for extinction. In a region strewn with desperate people,
their situation is even more dire. Christians (and Yazidis, ethnic Kurds who
follow a pre-Islamic religion) have long been targeted by Muslim groups—not only
Islamic State, or ISIS—for ethnic cleansing. Churches have been burned, priests
arrested.
In the worst cases, Christians have been
tortured, raped and even crucified. Mosul, Iraq, which was home to a Christian
population of 35,000 a decade ago, is now empty of Christians after an ISIS
ultimatum that they either convert to Islam or be executed. In Syria, Gregorios
III Laham, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, said
in 2013 that “entire villages” have been “cleared of their Christian
inhabitants.”
Unlike some others, Middle East Christians have
nowhere else to go. As a result of turmoil not of their making and beyond their
control, these Christians are the region’s ultimate homeless. Should some sort
of peace ever return, the likelihood is that maps will be redrawn, carving up
the pie among larger ethnic groups. There will be no place for Christians among
hostile Muslim populations.
The animosity toward Christians is illustrated
by a horrific incident earlier this year off the Italian coast. In April,
Italian police investigating events on a boat that had departed from Libya said
12 Christian refugees who were attempting to cross the sea to Europe were thrown
overboard by Muslim migrant passengers, and drowned.
The U.S. can do much good for Christian
refugees. Their religious heritage establishes an important basis of commonality
in the many Christian communities in our country.
When Secretary of State John Kerry
announced in September that the U.S. will accept as many as 100,000 refugees by
2017, many of them Syrian, the State Department provided a list of more than 300
agencies in 190 locations that would assist on the local level. Of those
agencies, no less than 215 are Christian. It makes sense to play to the
strengths of those agencies.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems to disagree.
Tragically, present policy does not take into
account the uniquely precarious situation of displaced Christians. Instead of
receiving priority treatment, Christians are profoundly disadvantaged. For
instance, the State Department has accepted refugees primarily from lists
prepared by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, which oversees
the large camps to which refugees have flocked, and where they are registered.
Yet endangered Christians do not dare enter those camps.
George Carey, the former Archbishop of
Canterbury, wrote in the Telegraph in Britain in September that a similar
protocol in the U.K. “inadvertently discriminates against the very Christian
communities most victimised by the inhuman butchers of the so-called Islamic
State. Christians are not to be found in the UN camps, because they have been
attacked and targeted by Islamists and driven from them.”
But the world is too busy focusing on the 'Palestinians,' who themselves have driven Christians out of towns like Bethlehem. Where are the Christian demonstrators on behalf of their brethren in the Middle East? Darned if I know.
If Joseph and Mary were trying to reach Bethlehem today.... UPDATED
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
Here's a great comment in the Washington Post from the Volokh Conspiracy's David Bernstein. What would happen to Joseph and Mary if they were trying to reach Bethlehem today, before Jesus' birth?
How
would that carpenter and his pregnant wife have circumnavigated the
Kafkaesque network of Israeli settlements, roadblocks and closed
military zones in the occupied West Bank? Would Mary have had to
experience labour or childbirth at a checkpoint, as one in ten pregnant
Palestinian women did between 2000 and 2007?
Well,
since Joseph and Mary were Judeans, i.e., Jews, from Nazareth, they
wouldn’t need to be afraid of Israeli roadblocks needed to combat
Palestinian terrorism, but of being murdered by terrorists from Hamas or
Fatah.
Seriously, this sort of historical revisionism, treating
ancient Jewish Judeans as if they were Palestinian Arabs, and then
analogizing modern Israel to the oppressors of Jesus and his family, a
common trope in the UK, would be laughable if it were not so
pernicious. Pernicious not simply because it’s a ridiculous distortion
of history, and not simply because it’s often accompanied by a large
dose of anti-Semitism, with Palestinians playing the role of Jesus and
the Israelis being the foreign oppressors crucifying him. But
pernicious because it goes to the true heart of the Arab-Israeli
conflict–the failure of the Arab side to recognize that the “Zionists”
are not the “European settler-colonialists” of Third Worldist
imagination, but a people with a three thousand year plus tie to the
Land of Israel, whose religion was born there, who ruled two separate
kingdoms there, who have prayed toward Jerusalem for two thousand years
in their ancient Hebrew language, and so on.
First of all, on the approach to Bethlehem, they would encounter a
sign telling them that as Israelis, it's illegal and unsafe for them to
continue to Area A (under full control of the Palestinian Authority, of
which Bethlehem is part according to the 1990s Oslo agreement).
If
they proceeded anyway, whether by foot, bicycle, car or donkey—given
the current state of affairs—they would likely be met with problems from
the get go, including possibly being stoned, firebombed, shot at or
lynched. Recent instances of Israeli Jews going into or near other
Palestinian Arab communities have played this out.
Yes, the town
in which an Orthodox Jewish boy was born a little more than 2,000 years
ago has become hostile and inhospitable—and, in fact, dangerous—to Jews
today. Yet as much as Jew hatred is common in the region here today,
it's not much more hospitable to Christians.
Recently the Pope decried
the situation that Christians face from throughout the Islamic Middle
East as did the Vicar of Baghdad. Bethlehem is no better.
The 2002
siege of the Church of the Nativity by Palestinian Arab terrorists,
desecrating the place and the faith, is a distant memory. However, the
ideology and thugery behind that remains.
As a result, the town
that is not just the birthplace of Jesus but arguably of Christianity,
has seen a decrease in its Christian population from 70 percent just
decades ago to about 30 percent today. This is not because of Israel's
"occupation" or other problems blamed on Israel, but because life in
Bethlehem as a Christian is hostile and inhospitable at best, and even
downright dangerous.
...
So glaring is Jesus' absence from Bethlehem this season, one ministry
paid to put up a "radical" billboard celebrating Jesus. But they also
had to rent a generator and full-time security people because no private
companies would provide electricity to light up the sign, and for fear
that someone would deface it or burn it down.
What's behind all of
this? How is the situation going from bad to worse? I asked a Christian
friend who had spent considerable time in Bethlehem until called in by
police and told he was at risk and they couldn't protect him. He packed
and left, and I drove him to my home where he couldn't be threatened.
Hamas has finally hit something. The Jewish Press reports that the alarm that went off in Jerusalem at 6:57 pm this evening was caused by rockets hitting the Gush Etzion area. Two of the rockets hit something... the 'Palestinian' parts of Hebron and Bethlehem.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
UPDATE SUNDAY 12:46 AM
Israel's Channel 1 (television) is reporting that Hamas hit the 'Palestinian capital' of Ramallah.
Pope's 'man of peace' says murdering Jews not a crime
At the same event at which Pope Francis I called 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen a 'man of peace,' the peaceful man had some choice comments about murdering Jews. This is from Tom Gross.
(4) There is also concern in Israel that the Pope called Palestinian
Authority Leader Mahmoud Abbas a “man of peace” today at an event where
Abbas, in the Pope’s presence, repeated his demand that any Palestinian
who murders an Israeli must not be punished at all.
Gross also has some comments about the infamous picture of the Pope praying at the 'security fence.'
But none of the Western media I have seen have drawn attention to the
exact spot that the Pope chose to pray: in front of large graffiti
comparing Bethlehem to the Warsaw Ghetto.
The photo above is from the main EU-funded Palestinian media outlet,
the Maan news agency.
(There is another version of this photo below.)
A few comments:
(1) Comparing Israel with Nazi Germany forms part of the working definition of anti-Semitism formulated by the EU and others.
...
(2) Bethlehem is a relatively prosperous town where restaurants and
juice bars are packed, and BMWs, Mercedes and Humvees compete for
parking spaces in the center or town. By contrast, 400,000 Jews were
herded into the Warsaw Ghetto and those who weren’t beaten or starved to
death there, were taken to be exterminated at nearby camps.
(Yes, there is of course a political problem between Israel and the
Palestinian Authority, and one day, one hopes, the security barrier can
be removed without its removal leading to increased terrorism, but this
has nothing to do with the Warsaw Ghetto. One wonders why the Pope’s
Vatican handlers were eager to choose that spot – or are so insensitive
as to allow the Palestinian Authority to guide the Pontiff to that
spot.)
(3) The Pope represents an organization, the Vatican, which even
today, after seven decades of repeated appeals, is still refusing to
make public its wartime archives detailing the full extent of its
collaboration with the Nazis before, during and after the Holocaust.
Brussels police have released three videos of Saturday's terror attack at the city's Jewish museum. The videos came from security cameras. All three of them are below.
An Israeli tourist couple and a French woman died from gunshots to
the face and neck after a man apparently acting alone fired two
successive rounds into the museum on Saturday afternoon before escaping
minutes later on foot.
A fourth victim, a Belgian who did volunteer work for the museum, was critically injured and later pronounced dead.
...
Belgian police on Sunday released chilling video footage of the attack. The man, whose face is not clear under a dark baseball cap, can be seen entering the building, taking a Kalashnikov automatic rifle from a bag and opening fire through a door on his victims -- an Israeli couple, a French woman and a young Belgian man.
Police described the man as of medium height and athletic build. He carried out the attack deliberately and unhurriedly, leaving the scene on foot.
French President Francois Hollande, who along with Netanyahu had a
phone conversation with the Belgian premier, said he had no doubt about
the "anti-Semitic character" of the attack.
Netanyahu, welcoming Pope Francis in the Holy Land, hailed the
pontiff for his "determined stance against anti-Semitism, especially in
light of the growing hatred of Jews that we are witness to in these
days."
How does our Prime Minister reconcile that last sentence with the Pope's warm embrace of 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen on Sunday?
Delight at Pope's stop at Wall. "He is trying to tell the world what is happening to Palestinians is so unfair" says Belinda Shamma if jlm.
— Karl Vick (@karl_vick) May 25, 2014
Tomorrow, we will undoubtedly see side-by-side pictures with the Pope praying at that other wall. But the real quid pro quo is supposed to be the Pope laying a wreath at Herzl's grave, something that has infuriated the 'Palestinians.' In the meantime, they're getting about $1 billion worth of free advertising for their cause.
Pope to drive around Bethlehem in open car, declare himself Che Guevara of 'Palestine'
Does it get crazier than this? Pope Francis is coming to Israel later this month, and he says that he will drive around Bethlehem with no security in an open top car. Rumor also has it that he will declare himself the Che Guevara of the 'Palestinian Authority.'
Pope Francis apparently feels very at ease over his visit to
Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled areas during his May 24-26 visit
to Israel. The Vatican reported on Thursday that he will ride in
open-top non-bulletproof cars in Bethlehem.
The pope's predecessor, Benedict XVI, rode in a bulletproof "popemobile," an armored car introduced after
the attempted assassination of John Paul II in 1981. The current pope
has in the past shown his preference for non-bulletproof cars.
"It's a program that he (the pope) himself has approved," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told AFP.
Some may doubt Francis's decision, given the animosity towards Christians in Bethlehem which was on display last week, as Christian Arab residents of a village near the city were savagely attacked by local Muslims with stones as they celebrated a Christian holiday at Saint George’s Monastery. Indeed, most Christians have reportedly been driven out of the city by Muslims.
A possible indicator to the pope's feeling of ease may be found in reports from February by
Rabbi Sergio Bergman, a member of the Argentinian parliament and close
friend of Pope Francis, who said that the pope intends to define himself
as the "Che Guevera of the Palestinians" and support their "struggle and rights" during his visit.
Once upon a time, Bethlehem was overwhelmingly Christian. Not any more. I think he's off his rocker to do this.
On Tuesday, the Palestinian Authority,
which controls the historic Biblical town of Bethlehem, barred Israeli
journalists from covering Christmas festivities. Palestinian journalists
asked for the Israeli journalists to be expelled from Manger Square;
the Israeli journalists thrown out of Bethlehem include reporters from
Ha’aretz, i-24 News, Channel One and Arutz Sheva.
This move follows a long campaign from Palestinian journalists to stop
Israeli reporters from entering Palestinian-controlled territories in
the West Bank at all. Israeli reporters have even been beaten by
Palestinians in attempting to cover events in the West Bank. The purpose
of such exclusivity: “isolating the Israeli media, which is
contributing to misinformation and relaying a false and harmful image of
the Palestinian reality.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas released a message
this week in which he stated that Jesus was “a Palestinian messenger
who would become a guiding light for millions around the world.” He
added, “As we Palestinians strive for our freedom two millennia later,
we do our best to follow his example.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor shot back that Abbas
“should have read the Gospel before uttering such offensive nonsense.”
Jesus, of course, was a Jew living in Talmudic-era Israel.
We wouldn't want the truth about the 'Palestinian Authority' to be too widely publicized, would we?
Time for 60 Minutes and Jeff Fager to Correct Bethlehem Falsehood
In April, a 60 Minutes report on Christians in the Holy Land made a number of false claims about Israel's treatment of Christians in general, and in Bethlehem in particular. Among other things, the report claimed that Israel's 'security fence' (they called it a wall) completely surrounded the town of Bethlehem.
CAMERA is now trying to gently persuade 60 Minutes to correct its report. You can help. Here's how.
The 'Palestinians' are planning a special greeting for President Obama when he comes to Bethlehem on Friday. They gave a preview on Monday.
Palestinians in Bethlehem on Monday set fire to pictures of US President Barack Obama, saying he was not welcome in their city.
Scores
of protesters gathered near Manger Square and threw shoes at a US
diplomatic vehicle as it arrived at the scene in the context of
preparations for Obama’s visit to the city later this week.
The
protesters also set fire to signs posted in the city earlier this week
and reminding Obama that Palestinians still don’t have 3G communications
technology.
Similar anti-Obama demonstrations are expected to take place in Ramallah and other Palestinian cities in the coming days.
Palestinian Authority policemen did not intervene to stop the Bethlehem protesters from burning Obama’s pictures.
A PA security officer said that the PA would not act against demonstrators who seek permission to protest against Obama’s visit.
There were even indications that the PA leadership was encouraging or initiating some of the protests.
And in case you think Ramallah will be any better....
Meanwhile, US helicopters landed in the PA presidential compound in
Ramallah on Monday in the context of preparations for Obama’s visit.
PA
officials said that the helicopters were rehearsing the arrival of
Obama in Ramallah. The officials denied that the helicopters were
carrying US security guards.
The arrival of the US helicopters
in Ramallah drew strong protests from some Palestinians, who said they
too were opposed to Obama’s visit.
As one of the helicopters
hovered over the compound, a woman standing near the area shouted:
“Allahu Akbar! Obama is not welcome in Palestine. He is an Israeli
agent.”
Earlier, PA officials said that the Americans would be in
charge of security arrangements during Obama’s visit to Ramallah and
Bethlehem.
At least the Americans are smart enough not to let the 'Palestinians' be in charge of security. That would be a real potential disaster.
Video: Islamist 'Palestinian' leaders warn Obama not to visit Temple Mount
Here's a video collection of Islamist 'Palestinian' leaders (including one Israeli Arab) warning President Obama not to visit the al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount. Of course, Obama has no intention of doing so, with or without Israeli guards.
Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.
Herb Keinon writes that every location Obama visits has been specially chosen and drips with symbolism. He points out that both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush passed on visits to the Western Wall (below the Temple Mount) on their trips here as President, although both Bush (1998) and Obama (2008) visited there as candidates. Obama is devoting the same amount of time to meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu as he is devoting to meeting 'Moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen: Five and a half hours.
There are also rumored to be some changes to the schedule. Obama may not be going to Ramallah (forgive my cynicism, but it would be difficult to get to Ramallah without seeing Jewish towns on the way - an issue which Bethlehem doesn't really have - and Obama may not want to put a human face on the residents of the Jewish towns, or at least on their homes). And although he will visit Iron Dome, it won't be a real installation. One of the Iron Dome systems is being moved to the airport for a photo opportunity.
President Obama may skip Ramallah during his trip here next week. He will be meeting 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen in Bethlehem.
US President Barack Obama could skip Ramallah during his upcoming visit
to the region, a Palestinian Authority source said Wednesday.
Obama
will meet President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem and will spend only four
hours in the West Bank during the trip, which will include a visit to
the Nativity Church, said the government official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity.
A spokesman for the US consulate in Jerusalem did not immediately return a call late Wednesday.
Washington
has not yet released a schedule for the trip, but Obama is expected to
arrive in Israel on March 20 and depart two days later after visiting
the West Bank.
Of course. It's the Israelis he wants to pressure while he's here.
Thousands of Christians from the world over packed Manger Square in
Bethlehem on Monday to celebrate the birth of Jesus in the ancient West
Bank town where he was born.
For their Palestinian hosts, this
holiday season was especially joyous, with the hardships of the Israeli
occupation that so often clouded previous Christmas Eve celebrations
eased by the United Nations' recent recognition of an independent state
of Palestine.
Christmas has become an occasion to bash Israel because Christians are fleeing Bethlehem. Leaving aside the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East in which the Christian population has grown over the last 50 years, it's simply not Israel's fault that Christians are leaving Bethlehem or any other city (Ramallah used to have a large Christian population) in Judea and Samaria.
In a particularly vicious piece of this genre in al-Guardian, Harriet Sherwood tries to create the impression that Christians are leaving Bethlehem because Jews are setting up 'settlements' on abandoned plots of land across the city line in Jerusalem, thereby 'choking' Bethlehem.
Amid plastic bags snagged on gorse bushes, rusting hulks of cars in a
breakers yard and a few shabby trailers, traces of a biblical landscape
are still to be found on a hillside between the ancient cities of
Jerusalem and Bethlehem. A couple of donkeys are tethered to a gnarled
olive tree; nearby, sheep and goats bleat as they huddle against the
chill December air.
But this terrain will soon be covered in
concrete after the authorisation last week of the construction of more
than 2,600 homes in Givat Hamatos, the first new Israeli settlement to
be built since 1997.
It lies between two existing settlements:
Gilo, home to 40,000 people, sits atop one hill; to its east, on another
hill, stands Har Homa, whose population is around 20,000, with further
expansion in the pipeline. Both are largely built on Bethlehem land.
Givat
Hamatos will form a strategic link between these twin towns, further
impeding access between Bethlehem and the intended capital of Palestine,
East Jerusalem, just six miles away. Israel
considers these and other settlements across the Green Line to be
legitimate suburbs of Jerusalem, which it claims as the unified,
indivisible capital of the Jewish state. Prime minister Binyamin
Netanyahu and official bodies have announced a spate of expansion plans
in recent weeks.
In the birthplace of Jesus, the impact of Israeli
settlements and their growth has been devastating. In a Christmas
message, the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Bethlehem was
enduring a "choking reality".
He added: "For the first time in 2,000 years of Christianity
in our homeland, the Holy Cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem have been
completely separated by Israeli settlements, racist walls and
checkpoints."
By the way, when Christianity started in this area, it started in Israel during the existence of the Jewish Temple which is denied by Abu Bluff.
But it's also important to point out that much of the land in question has actually been owned by Jews since long before 1948. Take Gilo, for instance.
The majority of Gilo, however, is built on
land legally purchased by Jews prior to 1948. In the 1948 war, Jewish
lands in Gilo were captured and confiscated by the Jordanian government.
From 1948-67, Jewish landowners did not relinquish ownership to their
land in Gilo, and when Israel recaptured the land in the Six-Day War,
Gilo was built - not because of war victories, but because of
longstanding legal land purchases.
Gilo lies within Jerusalem's
municipal boundaries and is geographically contiguous to surrounding
Jewish neighborhoods that pre-dated the 1967 reunification of the city.
You could never figure that out from reading Harriet Sherwood, could you?
Then there's the inevitable discussion of 'the wall.'
The wall already snakes around most of Bethlehem, its 8m-high
concrete slabs casting a deep shadow, both literally and metaphorically.
At the Christmas Tree restaurant, where there are almost no takers for
the "Quick Lunches" on offer, business has slowed to a standstill since
the wall blocked what was once the main Jerusalem-Bethlehem road. Scores
of shops along the closed-off artery have shut down altogether.
A
few hundred metres along from the empty restaurant, a long steel-caged
corridor leading through multiple turnstiles to a checkpoint is the main
exit from the city for Palestinians wishing to go to Jerusalem. The
Israel Defence Forces issues thousands of extra permits to Christian
Palestinians to allow them to visit holy sites in Jerusalem over
Christmas, but the lack of routine access has had a dire impact on
businesses and employment rates.
The 'wall' (which is really nothing more than a fancy fence in much of
the country) is there because it has reduced terror attacks outside it
by a huge percentage over the last four years despite the fact that it
is not yet complete. The reason
it's a wall and not a fence in the Bethlehem area is because
'Palestinian' terrorists used Bethlehem's suburbs to shoot at the Jews
of the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo during the early part of this decade,
and that in Gilo they also have a wall where the 'Palestinian' gunfire
most often hit. It's much easier to shoot through a fence than it is to
shoot over a wall, although shooting over a wall is also not impossible.
Just go visit Gaza.
But the most vicious libel here is the implicit one that Israel is somehow responsible for the declining Christian population. That's an out-and-out lie.
Since
assuming control in 1995, Arafat has Islamized Bethlehem by changing
the municipal boundaries of Bethlehem and its twin towns Beit Jallah and
Beit Sahour. Together, they used to constitute the Christian enclave in
Judea and Samaria. Arafat transformed the demography there by
incorporating into the town three neighboring refugee camps, Dehaisheh,
El-Ayda and El-Azeh. Thus 30,000 Muslims were added to the 65,000
residents in Bethlehem's municipal boundaries. He intensified the
Islamization of Bethlehem by adding to its population a few thousand
Bedouins of the Ta'amrah tribe, located east of Bethlehem, encouraging
Muslim immigration from Hebron to Bethlehem, and inducing Christian
emigration/flight away from Bethlehem. The Christian population has been
reduced from a 60% majority in 1990 to a 20% minority (23,000) in 2001.
As
a result, more Beit Jallah Christians reside in Belize (Central
America) than are left in Beit Jallah itself! A similar process has also
afflicted the Christians of Ramallah, now down to 20,000.
Aware
of what was likely to happen under Arafat, Christian leaders had sought
to prevent the transfer of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority.
Between the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords and the 1995 transfer of
Bethlehem to the PA, Palestinian Christians lobbied Israel against the
transfer. The late Christian mayor, Elias Freij, warned that it would
result in Bethlehem becoming a town with churches but no Christians. He
urged Israel to include Bethlehem in the boundaries of Greater
Jerusalem, which had been the Jordanian practice until 1967. On July 17,
2000, upon realizing that then Prime Minister Barak recklessly proposed
to repartition Jerusalem, the leaders of the Greek-Orthodox, Latin, and
Armenian Churches sent a letter to Clinton, Barak, and Arafat,
demanding to be consulted before such action was undertaken. Barak's
proposal triggered a flood of requests for Israeli I.D. cards by East
Jerusalem Arabs, who dreaded PA rule with its oppressive track record.
Setting
out to "religiously cleanse" Bethlehem, in 1995 Arafat, defying
tradition, slapped Christians in the face by appointing a Muslim from
Hebron, Muhammed Rashad A-Jabari, as its governor. Arafat fired the
Bethlehem city council (nine Christians and two Muslims) replacing them
with a council equally balanced between Christians and Muslims. The
entire top level of bureaucratic, security and political officials have
been cleansed of Christians. The area is run by the local Muslim Fatah
leader and his thugs, along with Tanzim gunmen, mostly Ta'amrah
Bedouins. The PA has seized control of the Church of the Nativity, and
has tightened the pressure on the Greek-Orthodox, Armenian, Latin,, and
Franciscan Order in East Jerusalem. The Abraham's Oak Russian Holy
Trinity Monastery in Hebron was seized by the PA on July 5, 1997, which
then violently evicted its monks and nuns.
In addition, Arafat
and the PA embarked on a campaign of physical and psychological
intimidation of Christians. During anti-Israel PA rallies the chant is
heard: "After we do away with the Saturday People, we shall take care of
the Sunday People." Mosques have mushroomed adjacent to--and usually
taller than--churches, implementing the tradition of Saladin, who
constructed two taller mosques, Al Khanqa and Abdul Malek, contiguous to
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The curriculum at church schools has
been altered, adding Islamic--and reducing Christian--studies. Loudly
magnified Muslim sermons have been aired during Christian services,
including the April 2000 address by the Pope in Bethlehem, which had to
be recessed until the purposely-loud Muslim sermon was concluded.
Abusing Church tradition, the PA has transformed a Greek Orthodox
monastery, located next to the Church of Nativity, into Arafat's
official residence in Bethlehem.
...
There has been
congressional testimony on Arafat's oppression of Christians. According
to former Senator Connie Mack (R-FL), "[The Palestinian Christian] was
arrested and detained [by the PA] on charges of selling land to Jews. He
denied the charge, since he owned no land. He was beaten and hung from
the ceiling by his hands for many hours. After two weeks, he was
transferred to a larger prison where he was held for eight months
without trial... These Christians conveyed to me a message of fear and
desperation." (Senate speech, March 3, 2000,
www.senate.gov/~mack/issue/statement.htm).
The PA has imported to
Gaza, Judea and Samaria in general, and most especially to Bethlehem,
its oppressive legacy of Lebanonization. The Christians of Bethlehem,
Beit Jallah, Beit Sahour and Ramallah are now undergoing the experiences
of Lebanese Christians from 1970 to 1982. They are perceived by the
PA--as were Lebanon's Christians--as a potential Fifth Column. Accused
of wearing "permissive" Western clothing, Bethlehem Christian women have
been intimidated by PA personnel. Rape of Christian women has occurred
frequently (especially in Beit Sahour) as was the case in Lebanon.
Islamic hostility, disregard for civil liberties and economic jealousy
have been harnessed by Arafat and his 20,000 terrorists imported from
Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon in their campaign
against the Christian infidel. Christians who dare oppose PLO oppression
are accused of "collaboration" with Israel and face execution.
I think those numbers speak for themselves.
But then, we've come to expect out and out lies from al-Beeb, haven't we?
This video was made by the 'Palestinian Authority.'
But here are facts overlaid on top of a propaganda video made by the Palestinian
Authority for Christmas 2012. They don't want you to know that
Christians are fleeing Palestinian-ruled areas because of harassment and
discrimination.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
