Bethlehem Christians Break Their Silence Over Muslim Treatment by Khaled Abu Toameh, himself a Palestinian Muslim.
Rowan Williams -
our favorite archidiot - loves to blames the Jews for the condition of the Bethlehem Christians, but Jews do not appear to be in the forefront here, as Bethlehem Christians break their silence over their treatment by Muslims.
According to the families, many Christians have long been afraid to complain in public about the campaign of "intimidation" for fear of retaliation by their Muslim neighbors and being branded "collaborators" with Israel.
But following an increase in attacks on Christian-owned property in the city over the past few months, some Christians are no longer afraid to talk about the ultra-sensitive issue. And they are talking openly about leaving the city.
...Fuad and Georgette Lama woke up one morning last September to discover that Muslims from a nearby village had fenced off their family's six-dunam plot in the Karkafa suburb south of Bethlehem. "A lawyer and an official with the Palestinian Authority just came and took our land," said 69-year-old Georgette Lama.
The couple was later approached by senior PA security officers who offered to help them kick out the intruders from the land. "We paid them $1,000 so they could help us regain our land," she said, almost in tears. "Instead of giving us back our land, they simply decided to keep it for themselves. They even destroyed all the olive trees and divided the land into small plots, apparently so that they could offer each for sale." When her 72-year-old husband, Fuad, went to the land to ask the intruders to leave, he was severely beaten and threatened with guns.
"My husband is after heart surgery and they still beat him," Georgette Lama said. "These people have no heart. We're afraid to go to our land because they will shoot at us. Ever since the beating, my husband is in a state of trauma and has difficulties talking."
...
A Christian businessman who asked not to be identified said the conditions of Christians in Bethlehem and its surroundings had deteriorated ever since the area was handed over to the PA in 1995.
"Every day we hear of another Christian family that has immigrated to the US, Canada or Latin America," he said. "The Christians today make up less than 15 percent of the population.
People are running away because the Palestinian government isn't doing anything to protect them and their property against Muslim thugs. Of course not all the Muslims are responsible, but there is a general feeling that Christians have become easy prey."
Labels: Bethlehem, Christianity, Palestinians
Is This Carter's Source For His Recent Book?
Melanie Phillips has a new column about British perception of the severely deteriorating situation of Bethlehem's Christian, which we discussed
below. In the course of her column, Phillips mentions a book that appears to have misinformed top members of the British clergy about the situation in Bethlehem, including Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has stated publicly that he believes the situation is the fault of the
Jews Israel.
Speaking of which, isn't it wonderful to have Christians now lecturing Jews about the treatment of Christians and Christian sites.
In any case, Phillips description of the book, to follow, made me wonder if this was the source of Jimmy Carter's recent book on Israel as well, as it seems to incorporate many of the same buzzwords and specious arguments that he utilized.
Here is
Phillips' description of the book, Bethelehem Besieged, by Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Christian pastor in Bethlehem:
Recently, a cleric of the Church of England sent me — as an apparently pointed rebuke — a truly wicked book, Bethelehem Besieged, by one Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian Christian pastor in Bethlehem. With a jacket garlanded by encomia from Hanan Ashrawi, George McGovern, James Zogby, Desmond Tutu and others, this book presents a picture of Bethlehem’s Christians suffering under a yoke imposed by the cruel and belligerent Israelis. Page after page is devoted to claims about the ‘apartheid-like wall’; unwarranted ‘invasions’ of Bethlehem by overwhelming Israeli military might; the siege of the Church of the Holy Nativity when Israeli troops ‘clearly had instructions to go in and destroy’ (doubtless that’s why there was a stand-off for days while the Israelis tried to persuade the Arab gunmen inside, who were trashing the church, to surrender) — a scandalous misrepresentation with more than a whiff of old-style theological prejudice, when the author compares his family locked inside the parsonage for safety to ‘the first disciples after the crucifixion of Jesus’; the ‘devastating impact’ of the closures and the curfews under the Second Intifada; and so on and dishonestly, virulently, sickeningly, on.
Labels: Bethlehem, Christianity, Palestinians
The Daily Mail Reports on the state of Bethlehem
And amazingly for a British paper, gives an accurate account of the current desperate situation in Bethlehem for its small remaining Christian population.
"As Christians, we have no future here," [one Christian inhabitant] says...
"I would rather have a beautiful dream in my head about what my home is like, not the nightmare of the reality."
And what is the nightmare of the reality? Here is an anecdote that gives a pretty good synopsis of the lives of Christian Palestinians in Bethlehem.
Jeriez Moussa Amaro, a 27-year-old aluminium craftsman from Beit Jala is another with first-hand experience of the appalling violence that Christians face.
Five years ago, his two sisters, Rada, 24, and Dunya, 18, were shot dead by Muslim gunmen in their own home.
Their crime was to be young, attractive Christian women who wore Western clothes and no veil. Rada had been sleeping with a Muslim man in the months before her death.
A terrorist organisation, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, issued a statement claiming responsibility, which said: "We wanted to clean the Palestinian house of prostitutes."
Jeriez says: "A Christian man is weak compared to a Muslim man.
"They have bigger, more powerful families and they know people high up in the Palestinian authority."
This desperate situation has been well known for a long time, so it is about time it is finally reported in Britain.
Meanwhile Jimmy Carter, for example, is blaming the Moslem treatment of the Christians on the apartheid Israelis.
Labels: Bethlehem, Christianity, Palestinians
