Hard times for the dhimmis in the West Bank. This article attempts to portray the Christians as suffering equally at the hands of Muslims and Jews; however, it is not Jews who are beating up monks, uprooting trees, and painting obscene graffiti on monastery walls. “Holy Land’s Christians caught in midst of conflict,” from Reuters, with thanks to Clark:
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) – A 76-year-old Greek Orthodox monk is beaten up by villagers, his carefully tended olive trees are uprooted and his isolated West Bank monastery is defaced with graffiti depicting nuns being raped.
The land of Jesus’s birth is not always an easy place for Christians to live in 2006.
The population of Christians in the Holy Land, particularly in the Palestinian territories, is dwindling as more and more leave for a better life abroad, turning the community into a tiny minority squeezed between Muslims and Jews….
Caught in the midst of conflict, Churches have sought to help local Christians quietly by not rocking the boat and being careful over criticizing the Palestinian Authority, which might be seen by some as tantamount to supporting Israel….
Exasperated at the failure of the Palestinian Authority to act and the reticence of churches to speak up, a group of Christians in Bethlehem drew up a list of grievances that included theft of their land by Muslims, attacks and desecration of Church property.
The Christians passed the list to Church leaders, saying local authorities had done little to help.
These days Christians face extra uncertainty from the rise of the militant Islamist Hamas group, whose charter calls for the establishment of an Islamic, rather than a secular, state — a goal that causes many Christians to have misgivings about remaining.