The Real Palestinian Christmas Show: Jonathan S. Tobin, Commentary, Dec. 23, 2015 — As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Christmas even tomorrow, their television screens will be filled with the usual images from Bethlehem. Mideast Christians Deserve U.S. Refuge: Abraham Cooper & Yitzchok Adlerstein, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2015— Donald Trump’s bizarre proposal to bar all Muslim immigrants from the U.S. has overshadowed a more legitimate concern regarding religion and immigration: Middle East Christians who are desperate to escape the genocidal campaign against them by Islamic State.
For Many, Faith Comes at a High Price: Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Dec. 19, 2015— AS we celebrate the holidays, let’s remember that this is one of those savage epochs when some families must choose between their faith and their lives.
Who’s Oppressing Palestinian Christians? Georgetown Lecture Blames Israel: Cinnamon Stillwell, Jihad Watch, Oct. 21, 2015 — Amid widespread and ongoing Islamist attacks against Christians in the Middle East, Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, co-founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, informed an audience at Georgetown University that “the government of Israel” and Israeli “settlers” pose the greatest threat to Palestinian Christians.
"One Christian Slaughtered Every Five Minutes": Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 14, 2015
This Christmas, Israel Celebrates New Trend of Israeli Arab Christians Joining IDF: Abra Forman, Times of Israel, Dec. 23, 2015
Groundbreaking Documentary “Sounds the Alarm” on Christian Genocide Worldwide: Tsivya Fox, Breaking Israel News, Dec. 20, 2015
But ISIS Kills More Muslims Than Non-Muslims!: Raymond Ibrahim, Frontpage, Dec. 18, 2015
THE REAL PALESTINIAN CHRISTMAS SHOW
Jonathan S. Tobin
Commentary, Dec. 23, 2015
As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate Christmas even tomorrow, their television screens will be filled with the usual images from Bethlehem. We won’t hear much if anything about how that city’s once largely Christian population has been driven out by a rising tide of Islamist fervor and the Palestinian leadership’s desire for continued conflict rather than peace with Israel. Palestinians leaders will, as they do every year, speak of their suffering and recycle myths about Israeli persecution of Christians that are eagerly lapped up by credulous journalists. Then they will promote their own bizarre version of replacement theology in which the historical Jesus becomes, as Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas likes to call a “Palestinian messenger.” The whole point of the show is to damage Israel’s reputation in the West and justify its isolation. But the real Palestinian Christmas show involves behavior that won’t be part of the Christmas Eve broadcasts.
Today, as they have virtually ever day for the past three months, individual Palestinian terrorists struck in attempts to kill random Jews they encounter on the streets. In this instance, it took place at the Jaffa Gates to the Old City of Jerusalem, a site familiar to tourists. Two Jews were killed after being set upon by two Palestinians who were killed by police that tried, in vain, to save the victims. That raised the toll to 24 Jews slain in this so-called “stabbing intifada.” More than 100 Palestinians, the vast majority of them terrorists cut down during the course of their attacks have also died.
Yet the same Palestinian leaders like Abbas who will speak tomorrow of Jesus’s message and of a desire for “peace on earth” and “justice” have also played a principle role in inciting these bloody attacks. It is the same Abbas who spoke just a few months ago about the need for Palestinians to prevent “stinking Jewish feet” from polluting holy places sacred to all three monotheistic faiths and who praises those who try to butcher Jews as “martyrs” that will be allowed to grandstand on international television tomorrow. And it is also the same Abbas that refused multiple Israeli offers of peace and statehood, in spite of his claims that this is what he wants.
But, of course, Abbas isn’t the only source of Palestinian leadership. Though they will not put on a Christmas show for the world, Hamas is also making its presence felt. Unlike Abbas’s Fatah Party, those Islamists make no pretense of respecting Christianity. But it is fear of competition from the rulers of Gaza that impels Abbas to continue to stoke the fires of conflict when not preening for the foreign press.
Hamas is observing the cease-fire that has for the most part been preserved along the border with Gaza since the 50-day war with Israel ending in the summer of 2014. It doesn’t want another all-out battle such as the one that devastated the Strip after they initiated a new round of fighting with terrorist murders and by launching several thousand rockets at Israeli cities, towns and villages. But it is also mindful of the fact that Israel is equally wary of having to launch another ground assault on this heavily fortified terrorist base that is for all intents and purposes an independent Palestinian state.
But Hamas is not content to let the conflict be put on a back burner. It is actively seeking to foment terrorism in the West Bank ostensibly run by Abbas as well as within Israel itself. That’s the motivation for the terror cell and bomb factory that was uncovered by Israeli security forces in East Jerusalem and announced on Wednesday. The cell was swept up before it could be put into operation, but the implications of its existence are far-reaching. It consisted of at least the 25 Palestinians that have been arrested, the majority of whom apparently were students at Al Quds University in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis. The group operated a laboratory for making explosives and was reportedly under the direct control of the Hamas leadership in Gaza.
The goal of its operations was to transform the stabbing intifada into an even more bloody wave of terror. Suicide bombings reminiscent of the second intifada that raged in the last decade would have untold consequences for Palestinians as well as Israelis.
Apologists for the Palestinians will say that Israeli intransigence and a refusal to stop building settlements in the West Bank or relinquish territory is the reason for both the stabbings and Hamas plans. But that is a story line that only those who haven’t been paying attention to events in the region can believe. Abbas has boasted of his refusal to accept Israeli offers, and Arafat did the same. Though the PA speaks of its acceptance of a two-state solution, they’ve proven over and again that they refuse to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. As for Hamas, it makes no pretense of wanting anything but Israel’s destruction and the slaughter of its people.
Though their methods differ and the PA is ironically dependent on Israeli security for its continued rule in the West Bank, neither has any intention of making peace in the foreseeable future. That’s why Israel continues to be stuck with its “occupation” of the West Bank even though the vast majority of its people would accept a division of the country in exchange for real peace. The problem is that they know pulling back from the West Bank, even including the dismantling of settlements, would produce the same results as in Gaza where every Jew, soldier, and settlement was withdrawn.
Those are the key facts to remember when you see tomorrow night’s Christmas show from Bethlehem that will be repeated in an endless loop the following day on the news channels. The reality of Palestinian Christmas isn’t the prayers of victims for freedom. Rather it is of a continued determination to wage a terror war against the descendants of the real Jesus as opposed to the Palestinian myth.
MIDEAST CHRISTIANS DESERVE U.S. REFUGE
Abraham Cooper & Yitzchok Adlerstein
Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2015
Donald Trump’s bizarre proposal to bar all Muslim immigrants from the U.S. has overshadowed a more legitimate concern regarding religion and immigration: Middle East Christians who are desperate to escape the genocidal campaign against them by Islamic State. 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. Success in dealing with the first wave of immigrants will help build bipartisan support for other refugees from the Middle East to come to America.
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.” U.S. missteps and missed opportunities in the region contributed to the crises that disproportionately affected Christians. America’s policy should immediately be amended to include these refugees at the top of the list. Opening America’s doors to them first is the right thing to do.
FOR MANY, FAITH COMES AT A HIGH PRICE
Nicholas Kristof
New York Times, Dec. 19, 2015
AS we celebrate the holidays, let’s remember that this is one of those savage epochs when some families must choose between their faith and their lives. It is an echo of when Nero burned Christians alive, or when self-described Christians unleashed pogroms against Jews.
Partly because of allergies about religion, the international response has been utterly ineffective. Liberals are sometimes reluctant to champion Christians who are persecuted for their faith. And conservatives are too quick to champion only Christians, neglecting other religious minorities — such as the Yazidis — who suffer even worse fates. One result of this “God gulf” is that the Western response to atrocities against religious oppression is pathetically inadequate.
The Islamic State in October released a video that is a stomach-wrenching glimpse of the worst kind of religious repression. Three Syrian Christian men, one a doctor, are made to kneel in the desert in orange jumpsuits and state their religion. Behind each is an executioner who then uses a handgun to fire a bullet into the back of each Christian’s head.
Some Christian leaders in America want President Obama to declare that a genocide is underway against Christians in the Middle East. I don’t think I’d call it a genocide, but it is absolutely the religious version of an ethnic cleansing. In 1910, Christians made up 14 percent of the population of the Middle East. Today they are about 4 percent, the result of emigration, lower birthrates — and religious repression that threatens the viability of Christianity in much of the region where it was born. The United States bears some responsibility, for in Iraq our invasion in 2003 led to a drastic worsening of this ethnic cleansing. The number of Christians in Iraq has fallen by half since 2003, and a religious minority called the Mandeans says that almost 90 percent of its members have been killed or have fled Iraq, according to an indispensable report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The most repressed group in the Middle East may be the Yazidis, an ancient group with their own monotheistic religion. In August 2014, the Islamic State invaded Yazidi areas, immediately killing some 5,000 people, mostly men. About 3,000 women and girls were kidnapped and, in many cases, turned into sex slaves. One was just 9 years old and handed over to an ISIS fighter to be raped; no one knows what happened to her.
Laila Khoudeida, a Yazidi woman who came to the United States in 1999 and is now a social worker in Nebraska, spends her evenings offering long-distance counseling to Yazidi women and girls who have escaped their captors. She told me of Hedya, who was 16 when ISIS fighters seized her family. ISIS fighters first shot Hedya’s father in front of her, and then turned Hedya and her mother into sex slaves, Khoudeida says. Hedya’s mother managed to escape, but Hedya was caught and badly beaten. Eventually, after more than a year of sexual slavery, Hedya escaped a few weeks ago. But because of the beatings and rapes, Hedya suffers head injuries and internal pelvic pain. The psychological trauma is also devastating: She spends much of her time sobbing.
It’s not just ISIS that is the problem. Iran goes out of its way to persecute its Bahai minority. Many nations persecute Ahmadis as heretics. In many countries, including Egypt, with its large Coptic Christian population, Christians and other minorities feel newly insecure. And the most common targets of persecution in Muslim countries are Muslims themselves, in part because of the de facto civil war between Shiite and Sunni factions. Some of the greatest venom in the Middle East is from Sunni groups disparaging Shiites.
While the villains are often Muslims, so too are the heroes. When Iran charged a Christian pastor with apostasy, it was a brave Muslim lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, who defended him and won his acquittal — but Iran then sentenced Dadkhah to prison on vague political charges for nine years. He is a model of leadership in speaking out against the religious persecution of people of another faith…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
WHO’S OPPRESSING PALESTINIAN CHRISTIANS? GEORGETOWN LECTURE BLAMES ISRAEL
Cinnamon Stillwell
Jihad Watch, Oct. 21, 2015
Amid widespread and ongoing Islamist attacks against Christians in the Middle East, Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, co-founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, informed an audience at Georgetown University that “the government of Israel” and Israeli “settlers” pose the greatest threat to Palestinian Christians.
A Palestinian Anglican priest now living in the U.S, Ateek’s claims are typical of Sabeel, an organization that advocates “resistance to the Israeli occupation” by blaming the plight of Palestinian Christians on Jews rather than Islamic supremacism in Palestinian society.
The recent lecture sponsored by Georgetown’s Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU) was titled “Christians in the Holy Land” and included Jonathan Kuttab, co-founder of the Mandela Institute for Palestinian Prisoners. About fifteen students, faculty members, and activists, including School of Foreign Service Professor Yvonne Haddad and Kathy Aquilina, program director of the non-profit organization Initiatives of Change, attended the discussion.
In keeping with ACMCU events, Ateek and Kuttab were in agreement on almost all of the issues and no alternate point of view was represented. Despite strong evidence of media bias against Israel, particularly in coverage of the current crisis, Ateek claimed that the American media is hiding “what’s really happening” from the public.
The news is terrible when you’re looking at what the settlers are doing, what the government of Israel is doing. . . . It’s very extreme. I think people need to know and the news does not reflect the reality of the situation back at home. . . . If they [Americans] would see what’s happening there, I think they would begin to change but they are not able to see.
Pointing to Israel’s demographics, Kuttab, a human rights attorney, argued that the government is not pluralistic: “Israel thinks if they become less than 51 percent they would be totally squashed, and as long as they have the 51 percent majority, they can squash the non-Jews. The problem is with the basic premise that Israel is and was intended to be a Jewish state for Jews rather than a state for Jews and Arabs who happen to be indigenous.”
To the contrary, Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, currently has thirteen Arab members, while the country is one of the few in the region where Arabs, including women, have the right to vote. Moreover, according to the U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report for 2014, Israel’s Supreme Court has “repeatedly held that the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty protects freedom to practice religious beliefs.”
Yet, to hear Ateek tell it: “Almost at every level of life, almost every level of life, the situation is getting bad. If we’re looking at Israel, not the occupied Palestine, Israel itself, the question of the Christian schools – they are having a hard time now. Israel is cutting off the funding which the government gives to the private schools.”
In fact, Israel recently began funding private Christian schools following a month-long strike. Public schools, regardless of religious affiliation, have always received full government funding.
Ateek then used one incident to paint a picture of widespread anti-Christian persecution: “They see some of these right-wing settlers or extremist Jews targeting Christians. For example, the church in Tiberias near the Sea of Galilee is burned because it is a Christian Church and Israel has not done much about it. They’re now trying to pay for it, but in the beginning they said they were not going to pay for it, so things are worse than what people think.”
Israeli authorities indicted two Jewish suspects in connection with the June, 2015 arson attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes in Tabgha, while Israel’s Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein overruled the tax authority’s denial of payment of damages. In addition to the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee donating funds to help rebuild the church, thousands of people attended a June 21 solidarity rally and church officials have reported an upsurge in support from Israelis of all faiths.
Undeterred by the facts, Ateek continued: “You’re really dealing with people who are very extremist Jews who do not want to see Christians – that’s it’s a Jewish country and it’s only for Jews. It’s against democracy, which means everyone has a place, and I think that’s becoming less and less back home.”
From such statements, one would never know that “extremist Jews” make up a tiny portion of the population and that their acts have been condemned by both Israeli authorities and American Jewish groups. This is in marked contrast to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, both of whom employ genocidal language, incite violence against Jews as a matter of course, and have never apologized for doing so. Attempting to portray Christians and Muslims as victims of Jewish aggression, Ateek concluded, “They don’t differentiate between a Christian and a Muslim. We are in the same boat together in this.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
"One Christian Slaughtered Every Five Minutes": Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institute, Dec. 14, 2015—Throughout September, as more Christians were slaughtered and persecuted for their religion — not just by the Islamic State but by "everyday" Muslims from all around the world — increasing numbers of people and organizations called for action. Meanwhile, those best placed to respond — chief among them U.S. President Barack Obama and Pope Francis — did nothing.
This Christmas, Israel Celebrates New Trend of Israeli Arab Christians Joining IDF: Abra Forman, Times of Israel, Dec. 23, 2015 —As Christmas approaches, an Israeli priest is spearheading a program to dramatically increase the number of Christian Arabs enlisting and serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. The Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, led by Greek Orthodox priest Father Gabriel Naddaf of Nazareth, aims to double the number of Christian Arabs enlisting and serving in the Israeli Defense Forces.
Groundbreaking Documentary “Sounds the Alarm” on Christian Genocide Worldwide: Tsivya Fox, Breaking Israel News, Dec. 20, 2015 —In nearly every Islamic country worldwide, religious minorities are being persecuted at unprecedented levels. Hundreds are murdered each day and already thousands have become refugees fleeing from religious persecution. Places of worship have been torched or raised and yet, there is no world outcry.
But ISIS Kills More Muslims Than Non-Muslims!: Raymond Ibrahim, Frontpage, Dec. 18, 2015 —With the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or IS), an old apologia meant to exonerate Islam of violence has become prominent, again. Because ISIS is killing other Muslims, so the argument goes, obviously, its violence cannot be based on Islam, which bans Muslims from killing fellow Muslims in its name.
