Father Peter Madros is the director of the Pastoral Biblical Center in Jerusalem. "Christians Overlooked in Holy Land, Says Priest," from Zenit, with thanks to Daryl:
"The West is always talking about human rights toward people from the Middle East," he said. "It is always giving minority groups rights in the West without asking the same from the countries where they have come from."The priest said that European countries do help Muslims in Palestine, but "they have little consideration for the Christians."
"This is unjust," he said, "because the Muslims receive a great deal of help from the Arab countries in the Middle East."
This is so true. Of course this is not news for anyone who frequently visits this site. But this hypocrisy is killing me. But what is worse is all of those people who just accept this hypocrisy while they expect others like myself to get all worked up about the palestinians.
I have heard muslims talking about the injustices suffered about palestinians and it was stated would we care less about these people if they were not muslim? What was implied was that they care about the palestinians because they are people suffering not because they were muslim. but the answer to this is they only care because they are muslim. there is no talk about the christian palestinians. There is no talk about the christians suffering in muslim lands be it turkish occupied cyprus, indonesia, NATO occupied Kosovo, etc.
And there is no condemnation of Jordan the country which is mostly responsible for the palestinians plight. they are suffering because they are professional refugees not allowed to get citizenship in Jordan just so that the world can see them suffer. In fact the palestinians are treated better by Israel than by any other Arab country.
What is also left out of this article is this...the Arab christians also bear a good deal of condemnation when they supported the Intifada, and when their bishops and priests and patriarchs spout the same irrational Jew-hatred that their muslim neighbors scream. That we as Christians in the west are willfully ignoring the plight of our suffering brothers and sisters in the rest of the world is reprehensible. I can walk all over Lancaster county, PA, and see the gleaming mega churches that have grown up here in the last decade, and I bet anyone, that if I go into one of these mall sized churches, I will get a good, highly entertaining show, but not a word on the suffering church in the world. Payback is REALLY gonna be a beyotch.
Read Eurabia by Bat Yeor.
Fr. Madros appears to be off-message with his fellow clergy, who usually spout the Palestinian cause. Most of the clergy from various denominations in the area turn out the same anti-Israel message. I am not sure about the attitudes of the lay Christian Palestians. They must see the hand writing on the wall....the Muslims will rule with an increasingly heavy hand. Their presence is quickly shrinking thru immingration. It is sad, the disappearance of Christians where Christianity was born.
I'm glad someone actually realizes that. However, even if his views by some miracle get public attention, I'm pretty sure the 'secular' Europe will quickly brand him a Christian fundamentalist and an Islamophobe.
It's just so weird to see the Palestinian Muslims whining, while receiving millions in jizya from the developed world every year, isn't it?
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dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org
Perhaps someone knowledgeable on this site could explain who gave the Palestinian authority the control of holy christian sites?
Surely it is obvious that middle eastern christians must continue to exist as dhimmies as they have done since the muslim conquests.
Continue to face humiliation and persecution and the human rights of a lseeser human being.
It seems that the Church has long ago accepted this fate for its followers in muslim lands and does little to oppose it.
It is obviously too busy supporting the "rights" of muslims in western countries, something that requires far less fortitude and courage.
See. See. This divide must be exploited despite what the useful idiots say:
Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr called Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal “a Bedouin on a camel” who presumes to teach Iraq, the cradle of civilization, how to conduct its affairs
October 3, 2005, 12:20 PM (GMT+02:00)
This was his comment Monday Sept 3 on the Saudi prince’s earlier complaint that the US had handed Iraq to Iranian influence and disintegration. He lashed out at an Arab foreign ministers meeting on Iraq in Jeddah.
Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari apologized for his colleague’s invective as “inappropriate and regrettable” and asserted he had no jurisdiction in foreign policy. Jabr denounced Saudi Arabia as “having one god, the king,” and naming a whole country after a family, as well as treating women and Shiite Muslims as second-class citizens. The Iraqi government had hoped the ministerial meeting would help draw Iraq’s Sunni Muslims into its political process, but the Iraq-Saudi exchange bodes ill for this prospect.
Only people like us who've bothered to inform ourselves and read about the history of Islam are not surprised by this.
The priest said that European countries do help Muslims in Palestine, but "they have little consideration for the Christians."
What an understatement. After the carte blanche they gave Arafat's massacre of Christians in Lebanon and the blind eye to his gang's reign of terror in Christian towns they gained control over after the Oslo accords were signed in 1993, "little" has become the euphemism for "no".
pissedoffcanadian
You wrote: . they are suffering because they are professional refugees not allowed to get citizenship in Jordan just so that the world can see them suffer.
Take into account this:
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=960&x_context=7
What is perhaps surprising is that the United Nations also opposed the program, and passed harsh resolutions demanding that Israel remove the Palestinians from their new homes and return them to the squalid camps. For example, UN General Assembly Resolution 31/15 of Nov. 23, 1976:
Calls once more upon Israel:
(a) To take effective steps immediately for the return of the refugees concerned to the camps from which they were removed in the Gaza Strip and to provide adequate shelters for their accommodation;
(b) To desist from further removal of refuges and destruction of their shelters.
Similarly, UNGA Resolution 34/52 of November 23, 1979 declared that:
measures to resettle Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip away from their homes and property from which they were displaced constitute a violation of their inalienable right to return;
1. Calls once more upon Israel to desist from removal and resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip and from destruction of their shelters;
The sadness of watching Christian communities, ancient ones, destroyed, or diminished to virtual nothingness, by the aggression of their islamic neighbours, by islam.
The lack of serious Christian response has been alarming.
Brave this priest, the truth is necessary in times with so blindness.
The issue of the non-Muslim subject peoples in the Islamic-ruled lands has been an issue in world politics since the 19th century. In fact, a lot can be said in criticism of how the Western powers related to their fellow Christians --not to Jews-- in the Middle East. But one subject that has gotten very little attention over the years --since the first Communist govt took over in Russia-- is how the "left" deals with the non-Muslim subject peoples under Islamic regimes. The following post supplies an interesting document from the very beginnings of Communist rule in Russia, demonstrating a pro-Muslim Bolshevik policy as far back as 1917. See the link below:
http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/10/bolsheviks-for-jihad-genocide-stalins.html
I meant to write "not to mention Jews" in the post above.