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.
When you
enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph
showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books (e.g.,
"British English", "English Fiction", "French") over the selected years.
Some enterprising person did a search below that I replicated here,
demonstrating how recent the use of the phrases "Palestinian people"
and Palestinian State" actually is -- at least in English.
UNESCO is pursuing a diabolical Arabized geography which opens the
door to a Jüdenrein Judea, a de-Judaized “holy land”, as the
anti-Semitic semanticists call it.
But the attack on language is
more than semantic. If it’s Jewish, then it’s called “Judea and
Samaria”. If it’s “West Bank” or “Palestine”, those are justifications
for saying that “Jews stole it”. And the Palestinian Arabs, whose
members came to the holy land from the Arabian desert in the 7th
century, become the descendants of the long-disappeared, so-called
“indigenous Canaanites” of the Bible.
That's why a few days ago
Irina Bokova, head of UNESCO, sent a message to the Palestinian
Authority “on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with
the Palestinian People”,in which she proclaims the support for "the
Palestinian cultural industry".
Battir, however, is not “a
Palestinian village” with an old irrigation system, it’s the holy site
of the ancient Jewish fortress of Betar, the site of the last organized
resistance of the Jews to Roman rule in 135 C.E. during the historically
documenteed Bar Kochba rebellion.
But in the UNESCO protocols there is no mention of Betar.
According to the UNESCO-Palestinian Authority joint venture, Eretz Yisrael is a myth, a colonialist construct, a Jewish plot.
UNESCO’s
next steps are underto take place under Israel’s nose: very soon the
Temple Mount, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Joseph’s Tomb and the Shalom al
Israel synagogue will be designated as “mosques” by the UN’s agency.
Slapping
history squarely in the face, UNESCO has already adopted the
Arab-islamic propaganda and declared that Rachel’s Tomb and Hevron’s
Cave of the Patriarchs are “Muslim mosques”.
The only good news here is that the United States Congress cut off UNESCO's funding last year, so at least the US isn't paying for this monstrosity. Of course, the Obama administration would like to reinstate the funding, but so long as he doesn't find a trick to circumvent Congress (and he'd have to cancel a vacation to do that), I see little chance of that happening.
A comment by President Obama appears in the Jerusalem Post on Sunday, September 11, the tenth anniversary of the Islamic terror attacks on the United States. Stunningly, the President rewrites history by claiming that mosques around the world offered prayers for the 9/11 victims, 'forgetting' (more likely ignoring) that many Muslims celebrated - openly or quietly - the 9/11 attacks.
We remember with gratitude how 10 years ago the world came together as one. Around the globe, entire cities came to a standstill for moments of silence. People offered their prayers in churches, mosques, synagogues and other places of worship. And those of us in the United States will never forget how people in every corner of the world stood with us in solidarity in candlelight vigils and among the seas of flowers placed at our embassies.
Let's go to the videotape.
The 'Palestinians' did not offer prayers for Americans - they celebrated. In fact, the famous photo of Yasser Arafat donating his AIDS-contaminated blood for 9/11 victims was staged.
Obama goes on to state the platitude that the United States is not and will not be at war with Islam. Unfortunately, Obama believes that the United States is at war with al-Qaeda and not with Islamic terrorists.
We remember that in the weeks after 9/11, we acted as an international community. As part of a broad coalition, we drove al-Qaida from its training camps in Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban and gave the Afghan people a chance to live free from terror.
However, the years that followed were difficult and the spirit of global partnership we felt after 9/11 frayed.
As president, I’ve worked to renew the global cooperation we need to meet the full breadth of global challenges that we face.
Through a new era of engagement, we’ve forged partnerships with nations and peoples based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
As an international community, we have shown that terrorists are no match for the strength and resilience of our citizens. I’ve made it clear that the United States is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. Rather, with allies and partners we are united against al-Qaida, which has attacked dozens of countries and killed tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children – the vast majority of them Muslims.
This week, we remember all the victims of al-Qaida and the courage and resilience with which their families and fellow citizens have persevered, from the Middle East to Europe, from Africa to Asia.
That's right - Obama is remembering 'all the victims of al-Qaeda' - which means he's remembering mostly Muslims. He's minimizing the American victims. They're just a few among many.
Meanwhile, people across the Middle East and North Africa are showing that the surest path to justice and dignity is the moral force of nonviolence, not mindless terrorism and violence. It is clear that violent extremists are being left behind and that the future belongs to those who want to build, not destroy.
Really? Let's go to the videotape.
Doesn't sound much like the good guys are winning, does it?
This President is a disgrace to the United States of America. It's long past time for him to go home.
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
