In her landmark work “Eurabia,” author Bat Ye’or points out that the most effective agents of dhimmitude are often Christian clerics who defend the excesses of their Muslim overlords, usually at their congregation’s expense. A good example of this phenomenon is Jerusalem Patriarch Michel Sabbah, whose latest Christmas message not only praises the “efforts” of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, but rationalizes the murder of Israelis:
Israeli and Palestinian political leaders must be “builders of life, not death,” Latin-rite Patriarch Michel Sabbah of Jerusalem said in his Christmas message. “Understand, after such a long time of demolition, death and fighting, that these ways could not and will never produce but more demolition, death and fighting,” he said in his message, delivered to journalists Dec. 21.
Injustices such as the Israeli separation barrier, imprisonments and assassinations only “add fuel for violence,” he said. “When injustice – the cause of violence – ceases, violence will stop and security will reign. We hope that we can begin a new period in which all violence will stop on both sides, Israeli and Palestinian alike,” the patriarch said. “Half-measures, half-liberty and half-sovereignty lead nowhere except to fall again in an interminable cycle of violence and insecurity.”
He said that Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has come out against violence, convincing extremist groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad to abstain from violence. When asked about the recent suicide bombing that killed five Israelis in early December in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya, the patriarch said the continuation of Israeli violence provoked once again Palestinian violence. “The solution is very simple. The Palestinian Authority said no to violence”¦ but Israel continues with its own violence”¦ so Palestinians react.
The willingness of Mr. Sabbah to grovel before the Palestinian leadership is hardly an isolated incident among Christian leaders, as explained in detail by Justus Weiner, a scholar at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs who was interviewed for Front Page Magazine today.