Text 16639, 141 rader
Skriven 2005-12-17 16:13:06 av Alan Hess
Ärende: Christmas with Christians
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Isn't "peace" with the Palestinians grand?  Doesn't sound like it to me.

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A Christmas without Christians
By Abraham H. Miller
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 16, 2005

Since the Palestinian Authority's takeover of Bethlehem in 1995, under the Oslo
Accords with Israel, Bethlehem has been transformed from a Christian city into
a Muslim city. Bethlehem's remaining Christians now live in a condition of
dhimmitude (a reference to the second-class citizenship Islam imposes on
Christians) in the city of Jesus' birth.

The Palestinians brought with them a political system based on primitive tribal
relations, where the power of one's clan became a substitute for the law. As a
consequence, Christians have suffered civil outrage and criminal violence
without recourse to justice.

Christians have been refusing to live under these conditions and have been
leaving Bethlehem in large numbers.

So who is to blame for the plight of Bethlehem's Christians and for the
birthplace of Jesus being emptied of Christians? Why, the Jews, of course! Who
else?

That is the Orwellian message of the American Arab Anti-discrimination
Committee (AADC) that held a candle lighting vigil on November 29, 2005 for
Bethlehem's Christians at San Francisco's Union Square as the Christmas
shopping season began.

Muslims in Bethlehem make the lives of Christians unbearable and force them to
flee their ancestral homes while Muslims in America hold a vigil to blame the
Jews.

To understand how the Christians became a minority and the victims of thuggery
in the city of Jesus' birth, it is important to see just what Arafat did to
Bethlehem once he got his hands on it.

In 1995, Yasser Arafat gained control of Bethlehem and immediately expanded its
municipal boundaries to include 30,000 Muslims living in neighboring refugee
camps. Next, Muslim Bedouins living east of Bethlehem were incorporated into
revised municipal boundaries. All this was still not enough for the PA to
change the status of Bethlehem as a Christian city. But then Arafat created
inducements for Muslims to leave Hebron and the area around it and move to
Bethlehem.

With Arafat's government by clan, by gun, and by terror, a land Mafia developed
that began expropriating land from Christians. In 2002, two Christian teenage
sisters were found with their throats slit and their genitals mutilated.
Muslims claimed the Amer sisters were prostitutes, as if that were
justification for torture and murder. But Christians familiar with similar
incidents claim the girls were murdered to cover up a gang rape.

Of course, none of this appears in the AADC's call for the candlelight vigil
that is also designed to showcase the AADC's divestment campaign against
Israel.

The plight of Bethlehem's Christians under the PA's thuggery has, however,
drawn outrage from Christian organizations worldwide. The mainstream Protestant
churches in America, however, have been too busy with their divestment
campaigns to take the notice of the plight of Christians living under the
Palestinian Authority's tribalism.

Indeed, just this week, the Vatican, in a rare diplomatic move, called publicly
on the Israelis to intervene in Bethlehem on behalf of its severely receding
Christian population. Now totaling less than 12% of Bethlehem's population,
Christians, who have been the targets of continual PA violence, might leave
entirely. The result will be that in the place where Jesus was born there will
no longer be a Christian community.

In the West Bank town of Taibe marauding Muslims burned, looted and beat
Christian residents in the name of a Muslim family's "honor," a family whose
father had brutally beaten his daughter to death for wanting to marry a
Christian. The violent Muslim mob burned a statue of the Virgin Mary and
shouted, "Burn the Crusaders!" PA fire and security forces took their time
arriving on the scene, appearing hours later. In the end, the mob was almost
immediately released from jail. Meanwhile, the Christian fiancee of the
murdered woman was arrested and beaten while incarcerated. The lesson-that of
the mob being released while an innocent Christian languished in jail-was not
lost on the Christian community of the West Bank!

Father Artemio Vitores, who supervises the holy places in Israel and the
Palestinian Authority for the Vatican, recently and publicly, asked Israel's
President Moshe Katsav, "Help us keep Bethlehem." This appeal represents a
sharp and desperate change in Vatican politics. The Vatican has long feared
offending the Palestinians far more than offending Israel.

 

After Palestinian terrorists took over the Church of the Nativity in 2002, and
brutalized the priests inside, the Vatican pressured Israel to give the
terrorists safe passage and not to invade or destroy the church. Israel
eventually complied. For its part, the Vatican refuses to speak of the
brutality that occurred inside the church or even to re-consecrate it, for to
do so would mean that the Vatican would have to acknowledge how the church was
desecrated.

 

The Vatican is walking a tightrope in the unstable Middle East. The church's
primary concern is to preserve both the Holy Places and its role in
administering them. With the outcome of the Palestinian-Israeli war still
unknown and unpredictable and with Bethlehem already in the hands of the PA,
the Vatican is faced with an unenviable set of difficult choices.

 

Now the Vatican is further confronted with the realities facing Christians who
no longer live under Israeli protection but instead under Palestinian
oppression. The Vatican's direct request for Israeli assistance is a strong
indicator of how threatened the Christians are and that the Vatican is well
aware that the PA is the cause of and not the solution to the problem.

 

None of this of course will matter to the AADC's propaganda machine that will
asked people to "light a candle to protect Bethlehem's Christians from Israeli
oppression." The AADC's spin is that Christians flee Bethlehem because of
Israel's policies. Isn't it strange that Christians flee while Muslims stay and
grow dramatically in number, and Christian property ownership recedes as Muslim
property ownership expands. Muslims oppress Christians over there while here
Muslims hold vigils blaming the Jews for the oppression inflicted on
Bethlehem's Christians.

 

In San Francisco, of course, where President Bush is equated with Hitler and
the American military is considered a terrorist organization, reality doesn't
matter. We have to give the AADC's organizers credit. They could not have found
a more susceptible audience or a ritual more reminiscent of Hitler's torchlight
parades than by lighting candles against "Jewish oppression" in San Francisco's
Union Square full of Christmas shoppers.

Abraham H. Miller is professor emeritus, University of Cincinnati and has
published extensively on the subject of political terrorism.

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