10. The report allows Palestinians to point out that the way the Israelis built the Separation Wall isolated Bethlehem, Jesus’s birthplace and a city that still is 18% Christian, had made it “an open-air prison.
Faith under Occupation – Book Review
By Ludwig Watzal
(Faith under Occupation. The Plight of Indigenous Christians in the Holy Land, published by EAPPI/JIC/WCC, Jerusalem, February 2012.)
In the West, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is viewed as only a Muslim-Jewish one.
Totally forgotten are the Christians in Palestine who constitute the cradle of Christianity. The study “Faith under Occupation” is published by “The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI)“ together with the “Jerusalem Inter-Church Centre (JIC)” and the “World Council of Churches (WCC)”.
This report does not only aim to expose the grim realities of life under Israeli military occupation, and the impacts that it has on the Palestinian people in general, but it also aims to shed some light on the fact that Palestinian Christians are indigenous to the Holy Land. This report also disapproves of the unfounded Israeli and Christian Zionist propaganda that Palestinian Christians are depopulating due to Muslim fundamentalism in Palestinian society. Even more repelling is the fact that this report shows how Christian Zionist support for Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestine is threatening the existence of Palestinian Christians.
Palestinian Christians think that the international community is not doing enough to relieve their plight. They do not comprehend why so many people around the world, especially in the West ignore the existence of Palestinian Christian communities. These lacks of awareness compounded by the distortions promoted by fundamentalist Christians in the U. S are seen as major obstacles by Palestinian Christians. In such circumstances, appeals by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to Western Christian “brothers in faith” to stop encouraging the emigration of Christians from Palestine, are in vain. As long as Christians all over the world can freely visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem but Palestinian Christians are denied their right to freely worship there, because they need a special permit to enter Arab East Jerusalem, regularly denied by the Israeli occupation forces, there is something fundamentally wrong within the Western value system.
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Christian population of Palestine had greatly diminished. Their proportion in the population decreased from more than 18 per cent in 1948 to 2 per cent today. Once, Christians in Bethlehem comprised more than 90 per cent of the population. Today Christians make up only 15 per cent in the city. The main focus of this study is build around a case study about the impacts of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and how Christians are affected.
The views of the Evangelical pastor Wayne Smith on Israel are revealing. His attitude was initially strongly influenced by the June war of 1967 when allegedly Little David (Israel) defeated the “Arab goliath”. It took him almost 40 years to review his erstwhile attitude. It occurred when he came across the book “Bethlehem besieged” by Mitri Raheb, a pastor serving the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem. Further books by Elias Chacour, Marc Ellis and Mark Braverman opened his eyes for the grave injustices committed by Israel’s occupation regime. The glorious story of the birth of the nation of Israel fell apart by the parallel story of the forced expulsion of the indigenous owners of the land, the Palestinians.
Detailed case studies are presented about cities and villages such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Beit Sahour (a small village adjacent to Bethlehem, which has a long history of popular non-violent resistance), Beit Jalla, Nahhalin, Azzun ( in which only two Christians are left), and Zababdeh. Further Christian communities are presented, including St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church in Burqin, just west of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, or the 700 Christians in Nablus and the communities in Ramallah and its environs.
The report presents excerpts from the “Kairos Palestine ‘Moment of Truth’ document” of 2009 that was drafted after the Kairos South Africa document and presented in Appendix II. In the Palestinian document, the Christians declare “that the military occupation of our land is a sin against God and humanity, and that any theology that legitimizes the occupation is far from Christian teachings because the true Christian theology is a theology of love and solidarity with the oppressed”. It calls on the international community to stop the principle of “double standards” and to insist on international resolutions concerning the Palestinian problem. The document calls for a “system of economic sanctions and boycott to be applied against Israel“. This document has garnered support from churches all over the world but not in the mainstream Western media.
The study also sheds some light on the illegal policy of house demolitions and discriminations against Christian leaders, such as Suheil Dawani, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem. A letter from the Interior Ministry in Jerusalem says: “Bishop Suheil acted with the PNA (Palestinian National Authority L. W.) in transferring lands owned by Jewish people to the Palestinians and also helped to register lands of Jewish people in the name of the Church.” It was further alleged that the Bishop forged documents. The letter also stated that Bishop Dawani and his family should leave the country immediately.
The study concludes by saying that Palestinian Christians are “disproportionately affected by the occupation”. A further Christian emigration not only from Palestine but also from other Middle Eastern countries could transform a political conflict into a religious one between Islam and Judaism. The West bears heavy responsibility for the exodus of the Palestinian and Arab Christians because its one-sided alignment with Israel’s occupation and its attacks on Iraq has led to a mass flight of Christians. If the West keeps trying together with its Arab allies to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the consequences for Christian and other minorities will be catastrophic.
When things are wrong for Palestinian Christians or the other Christian communities in the Middle East, they are wrong for all Palestinians and all Arabs. The root of Palestinian sufferings is founded in Israeli military occupation of their homeland and the occupation of Arab land by Western occupation forces helped by their Arab allies.
The value of the study lies in the fact that it has shed some light on the difficult conditions of Christians who live under regimes dominated by Western proxies that instigate sectarian division.
- Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany.
God On Our Side
…while Joshua was there near Jericho: He looked up and saw right in front of him a man standing, holding his drawn sword. Joshua stepped up to him and said, "Whose side are you on—ours or our enemies'?" He said, "Neither. I'm commander of God's army. Joshua 5:13-14a (The Message)
We believe this verse is still true today, that God does not take sides with certain people groups, nations or agendas. Rather He is for all people. Throughout history, those who have claimed God was on their side have used it to justify atrocities done in the name of Jesus. We believe once again certain Christians are approaching the people in the Middle East claiming God is on their side in a way that disregards human rights and gives unilateral support to a secular State, elevates one people group over another while using the Bible as justification. We believe there is a better way, a way of justice, peace and love for Jews and Palestinians. One that is inclusive, not exclusive. That is the heart of God.
Some Truth About Christians In The Middle East
The press is full of stories this Christmas season about the negative effects on Middle Eastern Christians of the Arab upheavals of 2011. This “vale of tears” approach does profound injustice to the actual reality of the Arab Christians. The discourse of the persecution of a helpless Christian minority serves Orientalist purposes, intimating that the West has yet another hapless object of pity and reason to intervene in the Middle East, and blaming Muslims as a whole for intolerance instead of acknowledging cross-religious alliances. The Egyptian revolution against Hosni Mubarak , for instance, was an ecumenical affair, with many of Egypt’s 8-million-strong Coptic Christians joining their Muslim compatriots in protests (Christians are about 10 percent of the Egyptian population). Christians no less than Muslims were fed up with Mubarak’s dictatorship. They were convinced that the regime fomented sectarian tensions so as to divide and rule. They were under disabilities imposed by the Mubarak state.While Egyptian Christians are understandably nervous about the strong showing of Muslim fundamentalists in the first two rounds of the elections for the lower house of parliament, they are not mere bystanders.
Egypt’s Christians have protested courageously for their rights, incurring casualties at the hands of the army, and were among the first to call forcefully for the military to step down.
They are not without resources– there are many Coptic attorneys and businesspeople, and the billionaire Sawiris family is from this community. Many Coptic Christians support the Wafd Party (in the emergence of which, as a standard-bearer of Egyptian nationalism in the teens and twenties of the last century, they played a role).
It is likely the Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood will seek a parliamentary alliance with the Wafd Party, so that far from boycotting the Brotherhood’s party, the Copts in the Wafd may well be its partners in rule. Instead of seeing them as a helpless minority and special object of pity on the part of the Christian West, we should see them as inexorably interwoven with Egyptian society and as important social actors in their own right. They face challenges, as do others (Mubarak persecuted certain kinds of Muslims, too). But that meeting of challenges is just ongoing politics, not the end of the world.
Likewise, in Lebanon, Christians are self-confident and have formed political alliances with non-Christians. Indeed, a major Christian faction is allied with the Shiite fundamentalist group, Hizbullah, an alliance that underpins the current cabinet. Other Christians are allied with the Sunni-led March 14 coalition.
In recent years, a Christian general has typically been president, and this is true at the moment. Lebanon saw impressive economic growth in the years prior to 2011 but was hurt by the upheavals in the region. Growth is expected to tick up in 2012. Lebanon is a country of about 4 million, and it is estimated that 40 percent of the voting-age population is Christian (though the over-all percentage is lower because Muslims predominate in the next, youth, population bulge).
Where Christians are in a truly difficult situation, as in Iraq, the proximate cause is actually American intervention, which was conducted in such a way as to heighten sectarian tensions.
Christians were flourishing in Iraq in 2000 and 2001, and there was no al-Qaeda extremism. The instability provoked in Iraq by George W. Bush is far more important as an explanation of their difficulties than a supposed eternal and essential Muslim hostility to them (if that were the case, why are they better treated in some times, places and governmental systems?)
Chaldean Christians in northern Iraq have cancelled private Christmas celebrations this year, restricting themselves to church services. Alsumaria reports that Chaldean Archbishop Louis Sako said, “the continuous targeting of Christians in Mosul, incidents of Badinan of Kurdistan in addition to other situations in Iraq led Christians to cancel Christmas celebrations…” It isn’t just Arab Muslims who have tensions with Iraqi Christians, but also the Kurds, who are largely American allies.Likewise, continued massive rightwing Israeli land and water theft in the Palestinian West Bank, and the separation barrier built by the Israelis that crowds in on Bethlehem, have hurt the Palestinian Christians , who are for the most part in solidarity with the Palestine Liberation Organization. The some 12 million Arab Christians (out of some 350 million Arabs ) are active agents in their own fates. They make alliances with Muslim fundamentalist forces as well as with secularists, and sometimes switch alliances. They fight back against repression, as they did at Maspero in Cairo this year, risking death or injury. And the Christian West and its Jewish-nationalist allies can sometimes be their worst enemies, not sympathetic rescuers. Christian Persecution in Israel
When we think of Christians being persecuted, we normally think of countries such as Afghanistan, China or North Korea but seldom do we think about Christians getting persecuted in the holy land itself. I went to Israel a few years ago (by the way, I would recommend every Christian go there at least once in their life) and went down to the Wailing Wall where many of the orthodox Jews gather to pray. Even though there was a part of me that had the utmost respect for these Jews, the other side was sad that they were still blind and waiting for the Messiah when he has already come in the person of Jesus (Yeshua) Christ.
Below are some videos to give you an idea of what some of the Jewish Christians have to live with in Israel
VIDEO
As Romans 10:1 says, please pray for the nation of Israel that they may be saved
If you are a Jew and you are not a Christian (you can be both), click HERE to see how you can receive salvation
Anti-Christ laws being enforced in Israel!
Every time we (Christians, Messianic Jews, our family or friends) are caught with a table, chair or any other type of equipment outside our storefront we are being fined 430 shekels.
We have a Jewish friend who spent 17 yrs in a Siberian Work Camp who likes to play chess outside; he doesn't like confined spaces. We have a couple of Holocaust survivor friends who like to play dominos outside in the open air, all year around.
The rest of the guys are mostly retirees. I'm 61 and I'm the baby of the group! These guys are mostly Jews from Russia. Evidently Moscow, St Petersburg, Siberian, Ukraine, etc are cold places... they love to play outside in Israel, most think playing indoors is not as healthy and at their ages this is a concern.
In essence, what does outside our storefront entail? The whole city of Arad is outside our storefront. All of Israel is outside our storefront. Does this mean that they have passed a law that Christians, Messianic Jews, our family and friends can't sit outside anywhere in Israel or is it just in the city of Arad?
Zionists attack Christian tourists visiting the holy land
In every place in the world the state assigns police officers to protect tourists, especially in holy places, but Israel assigns Zionist settlers to attack Christian tourists in the holy land.
How the Jews Treat Christians in Israel - It's Serious!
Christians are the most hated people in Israel! I guess they think they are superior breed? Well soon they will get to know what they have missed all their life.. Without JESUS and his Love for them... ONLY JESUS SAVES... Wake up!!!
Israeli zionists insulting Juses - wait till he speaks english
Israeli Soldiers Threaten Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron
Mocking Jesus on Israeli TV
From the show "Toffee VeHa-Gorillah" - WARNING!!! Explicit and offensive anti-Christian material contained.
Israeli Propaganda Preys on American Christians for Financial Support
What One Christian say about God's Chosen People
CADC Calls on Obama and McCain to address Israeli Intimidation and Violence against Christians
June 06, 2008
Even though Israel signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that says in Article 18, "Everyone has the right to...change his religion...and freedom...to manifest his religion or beliefs in teaching, practice, worship and observance," persecution of Christians and Jewish converts to Christianity, continues in Israel.
John McCain and Barack Obama just met with American Israel Public Affairs Committee in an attempt to garner Jewish support by asserting their support of Israel.
"Will McCain and Obama turn a blind eye to the suffering of Christians in Israel?" asked Rev. Gary Cass, of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission," adding, "Both Obama and McCain say they want change, but do either of them have the courage to challenge the powerful Jewish lobby in America? Will either of them demand true religious liberty for Christians and all faiths in Israel as a condition of American support of Israel, including the right of Christians to share their faith with Jews?"
According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, "Israel has an estimated 8,000 so-called messianic Jews. In effect they are crypto-Christians, practicing their faith discreetly for fear of stoking hostility among mainstream Jews. Reprisals can sometimes be violent."
The intimidation and violence against the Jewish population who are Messianic was recently seen in a vicious attack on a Jewish Messianic pastor's home. CNN's Mark Bixler reported that the teenage son of a Messianic pastor was severely injured when a package delivered to his home exploded.
In May, hundreds of New Testaments were burned in Israel. The New Testaments were distributed by Messianic Jews in Yehuda. The town's mayor, Uzi Aharon, had Jewish religious students gather the New Testaments and burn most of them next to a synagogue.
Barbara Ludwig, a Christian student from Germany, was scheduled for deportation from Israel June 30 because the Israeli government accused her of "missionary work." Ludwig was taken to jail and told she must leave Israel by May 30.
Gurvitz on ‘Israel’s not-so-stellar record on treatment of Christians’
by Annie Robbins on April 27, 2011
Christian clergy in Jerusalem are often spat at by yeshiva boys (Photo: Yossi Gurvitz)The 2010 State Department report on religious freedom in Israel and the occupied territories found that the Israeli Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is harassing Christian priests by demanding they renew their visas time and time again. It limits the number of visas Christian religious workers receive, and makes onerous demands on them. The visa application process, when successful, takes months. During 2010, the MOI refused to renew the Jerusalem Anglican bishop’s residency permit, claiming that he was involved in forgery. The bishop denies the claim, and it is noteworthy that he was not indicted. The MOI further refuses to grant recognized legal status to several old churches in Israel, all of them Protestant. Four Christian churches are waiting years for recognition of their legal status: the Ethiopian-Orthodox Church, the Coptic-Orthodox Church, the Evangelic Lutheran Church, and the United Christian Council.
The MOI, left for many years to the Orthodox parties, is collaborating with a hate organization, “Yad Le’Achim,” which has a clear anti-Christian agenda (Hebrew ). The MOI sends “queries” about Israeli citizens and tourists to Yad Le’Achim, for it to decide whether they are suspected of “missionary activity.” Now, Israeli law does not forbid religious preaching: it merely prohibits a conversion made in exchange for goods, and the conversion of minors without the permission of their parents. Yet, when your country is officially termed Jewish and your Minister of the Interior is an Orthodox Jew, the law matters little. In 2009, according to the State Department report cited above, 30 percent of the tourists who were stopped for questioning in Ben Gurion Airport were questioned about their religious beliefs, at the instructions of the MOI. This was probably an attempt to intimidate them from proselytizing. Possibly the most fantastic event in the relations of the Jewish state with a Christian church is the controversy surrounding the appointment of the Greek Orthodox patriarch. During the Sharon and Olmert governments, in a scene seemingly taken from a medieval chronicle, the government delayed its recognition (Hebrew ) of Theophilius as Patriarch until the latter would give his consent to some shady land deals of the radical ultra-Orthodox Jewish right. Minister Tzachi Hanegbi admitted he demanded Theophilius refrain from torpedoing a deal with the extremist yeshiva Ateret Cohanim as a condition to his appointment. Hanegbi’s successor in dealing with the church, minister Raffi Eitan, was suspected of coercing the patriarch into agreeing the church would suspend a lawsuit against Himnuta, the JNF’s dirty-tricks department, which buys lands for settlements. Himnuta would later demand Theophilius fulfill his part of the deal – which he quickly denied making. Bear that in mind the next time they tell you Israelis enjoy freedom of religion. The situation of the Messianic Jews, a sect of Jews who accept a version of Christianity – ironically, re-creating the most ancient Christian community – is even worse. They suffer from endless molestations, both by the MOI (aided, again, by Yad Le’Achim) and by the general Jewish Orthodox population. In 2008, one such family suffered a terrorist attack – a real one, Ambassador Oren, bomb and all (Hebrew ) – and Jewish terrorist suspect Jack Teitel is suspected of carrying it out. Unlike other Jewish families which fall victim to terrorist attacks, this family did not become the focus of media or official attention. During the same year, Yad Le’Achim managed to prevent a Messianic Jewish girl, Bat El Levi, 17, from participating in the International Bible Quiz, even though she won her way fair and square through the quizzes in the secular school system (Hebrew ). The words of Martin Luther King – ” when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she cannot go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her little eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people” – come to mind. Reportedly, the Minister of Education – Labor’s Yuli Tamir – publicly boasted that all of the participants in the quiz were checked and found to be Jews. The spitting by yeshiva boys on priests has become a Jerusalem phenomenon, recognized by the courts (Hebrew ), who deplored the police’s inaction. The police hotly denied this claim: it proudly replied it deported from Israel priests who refused to turn the other cheek and slapped those who spat at them. Should you happen to speak with priests in Jerusalem, you’re likely to hear of another lovely habit of our ultra-Orthodox brethren: urinating and defecating on churches. From time to time, a church is set on fire: the last noted case was some 18 months ago (and cited in the State Department report above). The police reacts to this with even more than usual indolence. Usually, when Jewish violence and discrimination against non-Jews is reported, the defenders of Israel often argue this is the result of the conflict. But Israel is not in conflict with the Christian world: it couldn’t survive without it. This hatred, this violence, is the result of thousands of years of anti-Christian hatred by a radical stream within Orthodox Judaism that wishes to create a theocratic state based on Jewish law (which crept into its daily liturgy – the infamous “informers’ blessing”). It blows up not because of some cause, but because it can, and the weak response of the authorities is the result of their understanding that a large segment of the population supports such acts. The evangelists who signed a devil’s pact with radical ultra-Orthodox Jews fail to understand that those extremists are their preferred target; that they don’t hate the Palestinians merely because the latter happen to live here, but their hatred of Christianity is the real thing, which sometimes bursts to surface.
And then everyone pretends it never happened.
Israeli government: Violation of religion and worship freedom to Palestinian Christians
During the Holy Week, Jerusalem has a special spiritual connection for Christians all around the world as it is the time of the year when pilgrims visit the Old city.
However, that period also represents a time of new restrictions for Palestinians, especially for Christian Palestinians who experience a number of obstacles to visit the holiest places that violate their freedom of religion and worshiping.
During Easter, Palestinian Christians living outside of Jerusalem in the West Bank and Gaza are required to apply for permits to access their holy sites in occupied East Jerusalem. It is estimated that of those, only 2,000 - 3,000 Palestinian Christians receive permits.
In 2011 Israel restrictions prevented Palestinian Christians from attending Holy Fire Saturday in Jerusalem. Israel allows only 8,000 pilgrims and just a few hundred Palestinians.
On this edition of the show we will be looking at the obstacles that Christian Palestinians face and how these restrictions affect them.
See Video From Link Below:
Canada's pseudo-Christian bigot aids Israeli oppression in Jesus' name
Khalid Amayreh , Tuesday 7 Jun 2011
Stephen Harper, Canada's eccentric prime minister, claims to be conducting politics, including foreign policy, according to the "way of Jesus." However, it is amply clear that this man and his policies represent the exact anti-thesis of every sublime Christian ideal.
A few weeks ago, Harper, having received a telephone call from Israel's hawkish Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, insisted that no mention of Israel's pre-1967 borders be made in the G8 Summit leaders' final communiqué.
Harper's "intervention" collided with the views of all other leaders who wanted the border line to be specifically mentioned. It also contravened the positions of the rest of the international community.
One European diplomat reportedly remarked that "Canadians were really very adamant, even though Obama expressly referred to the 1967 borders in his speech last week."
Canada used to be a decent state that jealously safeguarded human rights and international law.
For many years the North American country represented a main destination for individuals and groups seeking redress after being wronged by despotic and tyrannical powers.
However, thanks to the monomaniac discourse of Mr Harper and the coteries of obscurant evangelicals around him, Canada has effectively become a zealous supporter of apartheid in Palestine-Israel, a defender of ethnic cleansing and justifier of scandalous human rights violations.
Harper and cohorts claim, obviously mendaciously, that supporting Israel's systematic oppression against defenceless Palestinians is a religious duty mandated by the Bible, since Israel allegedly represents God on earth and that standing against or even criticising the Jewish nation-state goes, therefore, against the will of the Almighty.
For those who really understand the message of Christ, this is an obscene distortion of true Christian ideals, which urge Christians to stand for justice, to be on the side of the poor, the weak and the oppressed.
It doesn’t seem to matter to Harper and his government that Israeli policies and actions Canada is asked to support are decidedly evil, immoral, illegal and, in many cases, go beyond the pale of human decency.
It doesn't matter that some of these acts would be absolutely and totally viewed as felonious and criminal according to Canadian laws. In the final analysis what is important for these fanatical Israel-firsters is to support Israel, whether right or wrong, no matter what Israel says or does. This abhorrent fanaticism has a name: moral blindness - and it is done in Jesus’ name.
I would like to remind Mr Harper, if he is prone to logic, that no previous Canadian governments recognised the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation that started in 1967. Even today, the Canadian Justice System refuses to recognise East Jerusalem as part of Israel. So, why this mindless, unethical and evil embrace of Israeli recalcitrance?
Interestingly, Harper’s government’s real stance on the 1967 borders has nothing to do with any objective viewpoint pertaining to the conflict.
Under the Harper administration, Canada doesn't even say where the future borders between Israel and a putative Palestinian state should lie. In fact, Harper's Canada doesn't even believe in the two-state solution, whereby a viable Palestinian state, with contiguous borders, could be established on the West Bank.
Canada’s true, undeclared stance under this pseudo-Christian bigot is actually the evangelical stance, namely that those non-Jews, including thousands of Christians, have no right to human rights, political rights, dignity and civil liberties in Israel.
And in case one tries to challenge Canada's premier on his manifestly oblique understanding of Christian values, let alone his scandalously skewed understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he doesn't hesitate to quote from the the Old and New Testaments of the bible.
Within a minute he can produce a text proving that non-Jews, presumably including thousands of Christians, living under the Jewish rule have to resign to a status of "wood hewers and water carriers" in the service of the Master Race, or Chosen People. So, here we have a classical example, vintage Canada, of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, being used to promote Israel's lebensraum policies.
Indeed, in light of the ideological underpinning of his foolish embrace of Israeli fascism and jingoism, one can safely conclude that Mr Harper is effectively adopting the most racist policies of the Israeli right, including that of the settler groups, which openly offer Palestinians, including Christians, three choices: Enslavement as water carriers and wood-hewers, expulsion or Old-Testament-style physical extermination.
In his ostensibly infinite ignorance of the basic tenets of Christianity, Harper claims that the Almighty wholeheartedly supports the nearly genocidal geopolitical goals of the Israeli government. According to him, the Lord, who is portrayed as an avaricious real estate dealer, is an enthusiastic advocate of Israeli "lebensraum" policy in the West Bank and beyond.
Under this light, Christians have to back Israel unhesitatingly and under all circumstances, irrespective of the crimes against humanity Israel is committing non-stop against the virtually defenceless Palestinians.
Of course, Harper may continue to invoke Jesus to justify his un-Christian and immoral policies toward the Palestinian plight; policies that Christ would never support if only because they contradict basic morality.
Indeed, Jesus Christ, who some settler leaders openly and shamelessly refer to as the "Hitler of Bethlehem," would be hounded and perhaps killed by the very same people Mr Harper is now supporting heart and soul.
But, alas, fanatics don't hold ideas, they are held by them.
Besides, invoking Jesus doesn't mean that one is really following Jesus' ideals. Throughout history, many evil men, who were notorious agents of inequity and oppression, thought or gave the impression that they were serving the Lord when, in fact, they were doing just the opposite.
I have no doubt in my mind that Harper and his government are doing just that.
Here is an article by a Palestinian Christian who can speak for himself. It was originally published on the Huffington Post and republished by 972 Magazine, an Israeli publication, on their blog. Please read it from the original published sources if you prefer. The article on the recent 60 Minutes show on Christians in the Holy Land is also of interest. Here is the link to the recent "60 Minutes" program on Christians in the Holy Land. Please pass on to interested parties and especially Christians.
ReplyDeleteEdward C. Corrigan
Barrister & Solicitor
and Immigration and Refugee Protection
Palestinian Christians do not tolerate life under occupation
http://972mag.com/palestinian-christians-do-not-tolerate-life-under-occupation/44344/
Other related articles and videos
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7406228n
Christians of the Holy Land
The exodus from the Holy Land of Palestinian Christians could eventually leave holy cities like Jerusalem and Bethlehem without a local Christian population. Bob Simon reports.
The last Christian village in the Holy Land
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-57418048-10391709/the-last-christian-village-in-the-holy-land/
Christians of the Holy Land
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57417408/holy-land/