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Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald makes a modest proposal for Bethlehem, and wonders how some prominent dhimmi Christians will react:
One thing is clear: Christians such as Hanan Ashrawi, Naim Ateek, and Michel Sabbah are not defenders of Christianity but traitors to it. They deserve a special contempt from all Arabic-speaking Christians. If a modern model is sought, Charles Malik, the Lebanese statesman, would do. And so would the Bishop of Beirut, Moubarac, who in 1947, welcoming the nascent state of Israel, saw clearly that the long-term fates of the Maronites and other Christians in the Middle East were indissolubly wedded to the fate of the Jews and the Jewish state. His views continue to make sense. Those of the unpleasant-in-every-respect Ashrawi do not.The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, founded by the Christian Georges Habash, provided an opportunity for Christians to display their devotion to the "Palestinian" cause. It was the act of dhimmis, of course, behaving in the same desperate-for-Muslim-acceptance-and-approval manner that was displayed by Michel Aflaq, that Damascene Christian, when he co-founded the political movement of Ba'athism. Ba’athism began, of course, as a fascistic ideology of "Arabism" that would help make a political space for Christians. In both Syria and Iraq the ruling Muslims (in Iraq) or quasi-Muslims (the Alawites in Syria) found it useful for their own purposes as minorities (the Sunnis being far outnumbered by the Shi'a in Iraq and the Alawites being only 12% of the Syrian population).
The Christians of the Middle East, for their pains, have gotten, and will get, nothing from the Muslims. Only where they have taken a stand, and have been sufficiently powerful themselves, as in Lebanon, or protected from abroad (right now the Copts in Egypt have attracted, at long last, the interest of the outside world), or both, do they stand a chance of being left unpersecuted.
Pretending there is nothing menacing about Islam, as in the case of so many "Palestinian" Christians who thought they could survive by internalizing the Muslim view and promoting the campaign against Israel, has proven to be a disaster. Some of these Arab Christians, when they finally leave Muslim lands, whether for Belize or West Africa, or Montreal or Hoboken (not that many Arab "Palestinians" -- if any -- should be allowed into our societies at this point, given the views that many of them appear incapable of shaking off) actually have begun to reconsider their past coping strategy, their irrational but deep anti-Israel beliefs, and to figure out that the real menace to them always came from Islam. Or at least that is what some of them now say. Be wary, of course, for the amount of lying that goes on to cover tracks, in order to satisfy new neighbors in America or elsewhere, is considerable. Obviously now that it does not pay to express sympathy for the PLO or Hamas or the Arab Jihad against Israel, some of those expressing a change of heart and view may mean it, and others may not meant it at all. After all, their entire lives in the Middle East as Christians have required them to lie and lie in order to get along with dangerous Muslim neighbors; old habits of such accommodation die hard, if they die at all. Only when the slave is squeezed out of them, and they can begin to learn the pleasures of being straightforward, will anyone be able to tell who really thinks what.I hope that some of those Arabic-speaking (not always Arab) Christians will take up the cause of Bethlehem's re-christianization and simultaneous de-islamization, and possible retaking by Israel. Israel should never have agreed to give up Bethlehem. It should have been clear to them that the Muslims would apply pressure inexorably on Christians everywhere -- whatever cynical political use they made of local Arab or Arabic-speaking Christians, those useful "islamochristians" as they have been dubbed. And why not? That is what being true to Islam means. Nowhere have Christians not suffered from pressure at the hands of their Muslim neighbors or masters -- not even in Lebanon, where only the influence of powerful outside forces (France) and the unusual size and stability and self-assurance of the leading Christian group, the Maronites, protected them.
And the same might be appropriate for the rest of the West Bank: empty it of Muslims, fill their places with Christians from the Middle East and outside the Middle East. The latter may possibly come for a limited stay, a kind of service to the church, staking a claim to the Holy Land -- necessarily under Israeli protection. Shocking? No more so than the transfer of populations in Europe after World War II.
Christians worldwide should demand that there be a place for both Middle Eastern Christians, and Christians from elsewhere, in Bethlehem and elsewhere in Judea and Samaria, as those places were called by Jesus and by Western Christendom for two thousand years -- until the Jordanian Arabs decided to rename the area under their control as "the West Bank." And those Christians -- for example, the Christians now leaving Iraq -- should be established in places from which, necessarily, Muslim Arabs will be expelled. Only thus can Christianity retain its hold in the Holy Land, in conjunction with the benign and protective Israel. The bet that was made, that appeasement of the Arabs and Muslims would work, has failed. The years of dutiful islamochristians working to support the Muslim agenda has blown up in the faces of the Arab Christians, and not only the Arab Christians.
Start with Bethlehem. Arab-speaking Christians everywhere should demand the re-Christianization and de-Islamization of Bethlehem. They should be supported in this by other Christians. And let us see how the remaining "islamochristians" still busily spouting their anti-Israel propaganda -- such as Ateek, Sabbah, and Ashrawi -- react to this request. Will they come down on the side of Christianity, or will they in the end show even here that they are really indifferent to Christian interests and wish only to promote the Muslim agenda?
A question that deserves to be put to them.
Posted by Robert at February 6, 2006 9:20 AM
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The compromising Christians are doomed. Islam is slowly gaining ground and Hamas' victory is just a foretaste of what the future of Arab Christians will be in their "own" land.
It is no coincidence that the flag of Hamas looks like the flag of Saudi Arabia. Soon all those 'Palestinian' territories will be off-limits for non-Muslims.
The only language Islam understands is war. That is how Christian Spain got rid of Islam.
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at February 6, 2006 9:47 AM
Christians such as Hanan Ashrawi, Naim Ateek, and Michel Sabbah are not defenders of Christianity but traitors to it.
Revealing my ignorance, I viewed Ashrawi as a talented spokesperson for Arafat, talented meaning -one who could captivate the press by repeatedly transforming tired propaganda into pragmatic appeals for sympathy. The msm repeatedly showed her in close proximity to Arafat so I simply assumed she was muslim. I had no idea that Hanan Ashrawi was Christian until reading this piece by Hugh.
As for that creature Michel Sabbah - I can only utter contempt. Again, only recently did I become familiar with Sabbah through a video I purchased during the holidays called Holy Land: Christians in Peril VHS , a film by Pierre Rehov. Sabbah's disgusting exhibition of unabashed dhimmitude is clearly visible in this film. "Thou shalt not lie" is a commandment that clearly escapes this man of the cloth. I am bewildered that Msgr. Michel Sabbah, the same Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem,who declared in April of 2002 that the 200 clearly armed Palestinians who seized the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem were not armed and were willingly accepted into the church & were given asylum, continues to wield any crediblity - anywhere.
There should be a stronger identifier than 'traitor'. These two gutless wonders have gained enormous recognition and respect for 'themselves' through their dhimmitude.
Posted by: justamomof4
at February 6, 2006 11:01 AM
Excellent post, and timely too (considering the level of harassment Christians presently face in the Middle East thanks to the cartoon circus).
I don't think the world is ready for it, although the level of western tolerance for Muslims is going down the drain as we speak making Hugh's solution more appealing by the day.
Posted by: cruzado at February 6, 2006 11:42 AM
About 2 years ago there was a visit at my uni. by Naim Ateek. I was debating whether to go see the crazy Nazi of our times or not. I decided not to go as Nazi speeches make me physically ill and I don't think I would have lasted.
Posted by: Ibn Rushd at February 6, 2006 11:44 AM
Here's what the Christians under the Muslims need to do- stage the NEW theatrical opus:
"MO!- The Musical!
A light-hearted look at the life of the "prophet" Mohammad and his struggle to decide whether to marry a rich old widow, rape a 6 year old girl, and -if he was just hearing insane voices in his head or if it was the angel Gibreel, instead.
Curtain rises on a German Expresionistic type stage set, ala "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", showing an angular desert oasis, cubist watering well, Mohammad, and his favorite camel "Yes-Sir".
(The camel will be a recycled old vaudeville "dromedary" costume, with one guy in the head and another in the rear end, who both speak seperately.)
Spotlight on MO, as he lowers a ladle into the well's bucket, wipes his wet henna beard, and begins to sing a whimsical tune to his camel.
MO: O' camel, my camel, please let me know...
Should I marry, o' marry that rich old widow?
O' camel, my camel, yes do tell me true.
(last line done sotto voce, and merely intoned, not sung, with some dejected regret:)
She loaded but STILL a virgin at 72(!).
CAMEL (FRONT END):
(in the same basso-profundo two-note tune of fog-horns)
Oy!
CAMEL (REAR END):
Vey!
MO:
(debating himself in sing-song counterpoint)
72! A virgin!
(My uncle will heckle!)
72! A virgin!
(But rolling in shekels!)
72! A virgin!
(But who else would have me?)
72! A virgin!...
THE CAMEL INTERRUPTS TO ANSWER HIS QUANDRY.
CAMEL (FRONT END):
Just grab her!
(MO pulls out a scimitar to threaten the CAMEL's butt.)
CAMEL (REAR END):
Don't stab me!
ENTER MO's UNCLE.
UNCLE:
(holds his head as if in pain and yodels)
Are you singing again to that flea-bitten beast!
Just make up your mind, and I'll throw you a feast!
A 6 year old GIRL CHILD walks across the stage with a doll in he hands and EXITS.
MO watches her with a little too much interest.
MO (TO HIMSELF, WISTFULLY):
Ah, there's more the age
Which I find most appealing!
(MO SHEATHS HIS SCIMITAR 'SUGGESTIVELY')
And what that cute khaftan of her's
Is revealing!
(IN THE SAME DEEP FOG-HORN TONES AS BEFORE)
CAMEL (FRONT END):
Ak!
CAMEL (REAR END)
Bar!
MO PULLS OUT HIS SWORD, ANNOYED AT THE BEAST AND SWINGS AT IT CLUMSILY.
CAMEL (FRONT HEAD) DUCKS UNDER THE SWISHING BLADE.
UNCLE (GRABS MO'S ARM):
Save that sword for necks to come
That shall then mock your faith "Islum".
MO (ANNOYED):
Is-LAM!
UNCLE (SHRUGS):
Lamb! Mutton. Whatever!
**********************************************
The only reply to the constitutionally-humorless is the sublime weapon aimed at such bloated self-aggrandizing beasts: the sharpened lampoon.
(A harpoon with a light bulb in the tip?)
Posted by: profitsbeard at February 6, 2006 1:31 PM
Nice one.
Posted by: Interested at February 6, 2006 1:39 PM
Michel Sabbah was the first ever Arabic Latin Patriarch, a Vatican experiment that many people in Rome now regard as an utter failure. I know that his abjectitude was so open and outrageous that I regarded him as no better than a Kapo for the Muslims, from the moment I first heard him speak - and that was years ago. The first duty of a bishop, any bishop, is to protect his people, and the proudest of their titles is Defensor Civitatis. Sabbah would be better described as Iniuria Populi.
OT: Good news from Italy. Both the Government and and the Opposition have spoken in unusually forthright terms about the cartoon controversy. From Reuter Italy (my translation):
Gianfranco Fini, Foreign Secretary and deputy Prime Minister, regards the situation of religious intolerance brough to attention by the Muhammad cartoons affair as "explosive".
"It is not rhetorics to say that we are sitting on gunpowder" he said on the popular RAI-TV First Channel program "Porta a Porta".
Italy's Foreign Secretary, speaking of the Islamic world's reaction to the publication of the cartoons by some Western newspapers, explained: "Beware, this is not a spontaneous reaction. It is very likely that this show has a producer... Those who, in some way, weave the web of fundamentalism, are deliberately blowing on the flames".
Fini then went on to say that "unfortunately, in veryu, very many [Muslim] countries, Christians have no freedom of worship" - such as, he said, Muslims are guaranteed in Italy.
Francesco Rutelli, leader of the opposition Margherita party and former mayor of Rome, took part in the same program. He declared that, in front of the recent displays of intolerance in some Muslim part, "We must, for our part, demand and require that, just as we recognize the right of any Muslim living in Italy to be free from threats, so Christians all over the world must be guaranteed the same right."
About the murder of Don Andrea Santoro yesterday in Turkey, Fini said that he spoke this morning on the telephone with his Turkis counterpart Abdullah Gul.
"They tend to believe that it was a maniac, an extremist, a religious fanatic. Certainly Father Santoro did nothing but good in his work. Gul described him as a benefactor".
The Vatican's Nuncio to Turkey, rev. Antonio Lucibello, tends to believe that the priest's murder was connected with the cartoons affair: "some minds have been rather impressed by this campaign".[end of the article]
Notice that Rev.Lucibello describes the cartoons affair as a "campaign", a word used in Italian mostly for advertising drives and press campaigns. Evidently the Vatican, like the Italian government, does not believe that the mobilization of Muslim masses is in any way spontaneous.
Posted by: Paolo at February 6, 2006 2:07 PM
*Humanity* building from the 6th floor to Heaven or a.k.a. jumping without parachute
I believe we have substituted a compromise,Quantity for Quality, socialism and Marxism for logic and foresight.
Question: A not-so-educated uncontrolled hungry massive growing third world population, a cancer of sanctified traditional habits and the consequences of its residues, Is this the driving factor that *You*, perhaps, want to catch up with and educate and then sustain?
Question: Do *You* really think there is a long and rewarding future or destiny, when not directly confronting the philosophy, first root cause of the unsustainable legacy of Easter Island Syndrome, the residues of prosperity?
It takes quality time, which we have very little of, to institute a quality sustainable program and population, quality resources to grow food and a forest, etc. self control to do more with less. How we do, well determine the amount and quality of destiny. We first must recognize we have a No Quarter World War, a very mobile disease of demographics, hate, rape, theocracies breeding martyrdom, an evil without compromise.
at February 6, 2006 2:16 PM
well done, O Profit!
More seriously. The history is rather complicated. We also have to take into account the interference by Britain, France, Russia, and other Western powers, such as the Vatican. Shortly after the British conquest of Israel in WW One, by General Allenby, certain British officials on the ground, began to organize Muslim-Christian Associations throughout the country in order to oppose the official British policy in support of the Jewish National Home. In other words, these British officials [Allenby, Bols, Storrs, Richmond, Waters-Taylor, I believe, and others] wanted the Christians to work together with Muslims against the Zionists. Skipping over several decades, at the time Rabin was assassinated, Arafat only controlled the Gaza Strip and Jericho areas, although he regularly sent agents/thugs into Bethlehem and other places officially under Israeli rule to make sure that the Arabs in those places would submit to his dictates. Indeed, the harassment of Bethlehem Christians began when Arafat set up his govt in Gaza and Jericho --if not earlier. Cases of such harassment, including kidnappings, taking individuals prisoner to the PLO jail in Jericho, beatings, etc., were reported in the Israeli press.
At Rabin's funeral, in early November 1995, Clinton met acting pm Peres and asked him when he was going to withdraw from Bethlehem and other towns that were supposed to come under the "palestinian authority." It was agreed that Israel would soon begin to withdraw from the towns designated for the PA, starting with Bethlehem, so that yasser a. could get his mug on TV and in the press by hosting Christmas celebrations in December 1995. This decision was heedless of the danger to the Israeli population, a danger that everyone honest and rational knew of, since the PA had already violated the terms of Oslo many times in many ways, and some very murderous bus bombings and the like had already occurred. It was also known that yasser was collaborating with Hamas. As regards Bethlehem specifically, Rabin had agreed to give it to arafat [in the Oslo II agreement], heedless of the presence there of Rachel's Tomb. When the religious people heard about it, they were outraged and Rabin backed down [especially because of the Haredim] and decided that Rachel's Tomb had to stay under Israeli control, which it is to this day, although soldiers guarding it have come under attack and at least one was shot to death by the Abayat clan who ran Bethlehem under arafat's sponsorship. The old tomb is now covered by special defensive walls etc.
Since December 1995, things have gone from bad to worse for the local Christians. As you may know, the Fatah shot at the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem from Beyt Jallah. Thus, any retaliation for the shooting endangered the mainly Christian population of Beyt Jallah who seldom took part in the shooting. Most of the shooting was directed by Fatah members who belonged to the Abayat clan.
Before closing, US diplomacy in the early 1970s shot down efforts to annex Bethlehem to Jerusalem [which has had a Jewish majority since the 1850s], which most of the Christian leadership in Bethlehem seems to have wanted at that time. So the State Dept created the conditions which eventually led to the town being taken over by arafat and the PLO.
Posted by: Eliyahu at February 6, 2006 2:24 PM
Eliyahu-
Maybe you would know... is it true that Moshe Dayan implored the "Palestinians" ...who were packing up and ready to leave post-6 Day War 1967 Israel en masse.... NOT TO GO, and, because of his efforts, they remained?
If it is so, is there a better definition of planned suicide?
Posted by: profitsbeard at February 6, 2006 3:15 PM
Hugh,
Three minor points here...
1. The Vatican has subtly revealed its view of Sabbah by the very fact that while he is the LATIN !!! Patriarch, he has never been made a Cardinal. On the other hand, the Maronite and Chaldean Patriarch are almost immediately given the red had. As a matter of principle, the Melkite Patriarch refuses to accept the honour as inconsistent with his role as an "Orthodox in communion with Rome".
2. Hanan Ashrawi is a creature of the Western news media and has virtually no influence within Palestinian politics. While a student at the American University of Beirut, she was the girl-friend of Peter Jennings. This influence was useful to Fatah when Arafat used her to front for him to her friends in the English speaking media. Today, she is so irrelevant that she deserves simply to sink into obscurity.
3. The reasons Christians gravitated to the PFLP was that its semi-Marxists ideology prevented it from being a haven for Islamists. It was this open denial of any role of Islam in society that was one of the reasons that Jibril split from Habash. Jibril was also the first old-guard Palestinian militants to embrace the aid of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad. Unlike George Habash, a Greek Orthodox Christian, Jibril was able, as a Muslim, to correlate Islamic radicalism and his Marxist ideology.
Habash was moving in the other direction, rejecting Marxism while affirming an anti-Islamist secularism when his health problems took him out of politics. By the late 1990s, Habash's medical illness had become so advanced that he was no longer mentally lucid. In 2000, he was removed from the post as Secretary-General,and succeeded as head of the PFLP by long-time opponent Abu Ali Mustafa. Today, the PFLP has all but ceased to exist.
Now is clearly the time to organize an explicitly Christian nationalism that will demand the de-Islamization and re-Christianization of Bethlehem, Ramallah, and all of Judea and Samaria. As I wrote before, the is the Christian Palestinians only hope for survival and it will be good for Israel's future security as well.
Posted by: Provoslavni at February 6, 2006 3:27 PM
If it is so, is there a better definition of planned suicide?
The EAD would be one candidate for a better definition of that.
Posted by: Alarmed Pig Farmer at February 6, 2006 3:37 PM
Regarding Moshe Dayan, he is far from popular here in hindsight to many people.
1- in answer to the question. I have heard that the Arabs in Qalqilyah were fleeing towards the Jordan river during or right after the Six Day War. Qalqilyah is an Arab town on the Green Line. Shooting from there at nearby Israeli Kfar Saba was frequent from 1949 to 1967, during the so-called armistice before the Six Day War. These Arabs were fleeing because they feared Israeli revenge. Dayan, at that time defense minister, learned about it and sent emissaries to ask them to come back to their town. So it seems that Dayan's appeal had to do with the denizens of Qalqilyah, not all of the Judea-Samaria Arab population.
2- another action by Dayan that was resented by many Israelis was that he ordered soldiers to take down the Israeli flag that they had placed on top of the Dome of the Rock when Israeli forces took the Old City of Jerusalem in June 1967. Many see this order by Dayan as the beginning of our decline.
Dayan was given a big build up in the American press in the summer of 1967 as the great war hero, although Dayan had little to do with winning the Six Day War. He only became minister shortly before the war during the crisis that preceded it. Levi Eshkol, the pm, had done a lot to build up the army before the war.
Posted by: Eliyahu at February 6, 2006 4:41 PM
to supplement my previous post.
I think you're right. Dayan did implore the Arabs in general to stay, although he sent special emissaries to those from Qalqilyah.
at February 6, 2006 4:48 PM
Christians in Bethlehem and Nazareth, once Christian majority towns, are now sadly no more.
Christians compromised, turned the other cheek, negototiated special deals - all to no avail. At the end they face the mark of the dhimmi or eviction. Let that be a lesson to us.
Muslims are growing in number and with that, their confidence grows even faster. They think nothing of threatening another 7/7 on Britain while withdrawing dole money as their rightful due.
We cannot continue to tolerate within the realm those whose allegiance lies elsewhere.
Posted by: DP111 at February 6, 2006 6:57 PM
Provoslavni posted
Now is clearly the time to organize an explicitly Christian nationalism that will demand the de-Islamization and re-Christianization of Bethlehem, Ramallah, and all of Judea and Samaria. As I wrote before, it is the Christian Palestinians only hope for survival and it will be good for Israel's future security as well.
I just cannot see the erstwhile Christian West supporting such a nascent Christian state, certainly not when opposed by muslim states. In this case it would be doubly difficult for the West will have to acknowledge that it is taking a stance based on religion.
For the last 40 years at the least, the US and to a certain extent the UK, have consistently sided with muslim states in any conflict with non-muslim states or groups.
at February 6, 2006 7:06 PM
DP111,
You're correct that there is no history of Middle Eastern Christians getting Western support. The UK and France shamefully siding with the Muslims goes all the way back to the Crimean War. The creation of Pakistan is another example as well as Britian's active role in the destruction of Biafra. The list goes on an on.
Still, I think the Christian Palestinians should take the route anyway, especially if Israel will support them (unfortunately, Israel also has a poor record here, perhaps because she is so dependewndent on US foriegn aid).
I think the Christian Palestinians could gain support from Armenia and Serbia and, through them, from Russia. Then there is hope that the current situation in Europe could force at least Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands to cause a shift in European policy. This would be especially possible if the Vatican took the lead in pressuring countries like Ireland, Slovakia, and Poland.
Posted by: Provoslavni at February 6, 2006 7:42 PM
I just cannot see the erstwhile Christian West supporting such a nascent Christian state, certainly not when opposed by muslim states. In this case it would be doubly difficult for the West will have to acknowledge that it is taking a stance based on religion.For the last 40 years at the least, the US and to a certain extent the UK, have consistently sided with muslim states in any conflict with non-muslim states or groups.
In a way, your statements can also imply the exact opposite. . .by having sided with the muslim states, these governments have actually taken a stance based on the religion of islam.
Posted by: justamomof4 at February 7, 2006 7:35 AM
dp111 is basically right about the US & UK. Actually the UK policy, most likely unbeknownst to most of the UK people, was pro-Muslim before the US was and has been more consistently so all along, in my opinion. It seems that the State Dept talks a good game of being pro-Israel, but we have always felt that it was in fact pro-Arab. Read back issues of Near East Report going back to the 1950s on this question. Bush 1 & 2 are not considered reliable friends of Israel. You all heard the first response of the State Dept to the cartoon affair. The second reponse was better, no doubt because of the complaints from Americans.
The UK has been blatantly pro-Islamic and pro-Arab in disposing of its colonies. India was divided; the UK helped the Arabs in 1947-48 against Israel; the UK gave Sudan independence as a unitary Muslim-dominated state, overlooking the rights and needs of the tribal Africans in the southern Sudan; Cyprus too was divided; British diplomacy intensely urged Lebanon to join the Arab League, which most of the Lebanese leadership at that time [approx 1945-46] did not want to do, etc. So I think that dp111 is basically right, although someone could no doubt find some exceptions.
Posted by: Eliyahu at February 7, 2006 7:49 AM
Note that the relevant UN resolutions during the late 1940s insisted on the internationalization of "Jerusalem," an area whose boundaries were deemed to include Bethlehem for these purposes.
A reminder, if any is needed, that the Arabs only cite selectively from UN resolutions, cherry-picking the portions that appear to be consistent with their aims.
Posted by: Ben F at February 7, 2006 10:03 AM
justamomof4,
"... one who could captivate the press by repeatedly transforming tired propaganda into pragmatic appeals for sympathy."
because you did not have the facts and context to expose the spin.
So much easier to accept nicely accented and fluently expelled words than to work one's mind over a guttural but factually correct explanation.
The Arabs cottoned onto the American acceptance of smooth talkers without contextual analysis early on that made Ashrawi such a success on the networks.
The boon to serious thinkers was access to MEMRI's translations in cold black and white.
It is amazing that a society can be so dumbed down by their media that they can give an animal like Arafat a pass after his murderous rampage through Lebanon in the 70s where his PLO slaughtered, maimed and ravaged the Christian community.
Bad enough that Hilarion Cappucci, a Vatican "operative" aided and abetted Arafat and so enabled the situation in Bethlehem, Beit Jala and other Christian towns to deteriorate.
Could their hatred of the Jew been so strong as to override their concerns for their flock?
When the State Department went along with the Arab League and the Europeans and declared the PLO the only legitimate representative of the Palestinians that Arafat's thugs started their mafia tactics of cowing and killing those Christians and more moderate muslims, looking for a bit of quiet.
Even today most MSM will not give Brigitte Gabriel or Nonie Darwish a platform which would undercut their agenda and expose the injustices perpetrated against both Cristian Arab and Jew.
Just look at the manner in which they covered the standoff with Arafat's thugs in the Church in Bethlehem whitewashing their behaviour.
And the European cities that provided a haven for those thirteen thugs; what did they care for their co-religionists who had suffered at the hands of them.
at February 7, 2006 12:05 PM
Eliyahu: Cyprus too was divided
Actually, Cyprus was created as a single state. It became divided only after the Turkish invasion in 1974.
Posted by: Liggett at February 7, 2006 3:18 PM
Hugh
the Bishop of Beirut, Moubarac, who in 1947, welcoming the nascent state of Israel, saw clearly that the long-term fates of the Maronites and other Christians in the Middle East were indissolubly wedded to the fate of the Jews and the Jewish state. His views continue to make sense.
at February 7, 2006 3:28 PM
Liggett,
you are right that Cyprus was divided in 1974 as part of the Turkish invasion. However, the UK worked out an agreement to give Cyprus "independence" which gave Turkey the right to intervene militarily in Cyprus. By the way, two British air force bases on Cyprus occupy about 10% of the island. These bases are under British sovereignty. The British forces did not intervene against the Turkish invasion.
at February 8, 2006 7:06 AM
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