“No one defends Islam like Arab Christians,” said the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch, Gregory III Laham, a couple of months ago, and apparently his indefatigable defense of the religion whose adherents have destroyed his churches and decimated his people extends even to his rewriting history to further the “Palestinian” jihad narrative.
“Christ was born in Palestine!” exclaims the Patriarch here, joyfully heedless of the fact that Christ was born in Judea, around 134 years before the Romans expelled the Jews from Judea after the Bar Kokhba revolt and renamed Judea “Palestine,” a name they took from the Hebrew Scriptures as a further jab at the Jews, for it was a name derived from that of their ancient enemy, the Philistines, a long-vanished people.
Christ was not born in Palestine. Palestine did not exist when Christ was born. Patriarch Gregory decries the “way of the cross” being trod by people “in Iraq, in Syria, in Palestine, in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Yemen.” Conspicuously omitted is Israel. The Patriarch has never deigned to say a word against the genocidal incitement of Muslim clerics and “Palestinian” media, which relentlessly exhort “Palestinian” Muslims to murder Jews. He has not deemed worthy of his attention the numerous stabbing attacks by “Palestinian” Muslims against Israeli civilians.
His charity, in other words, extends only to the perpetrators of jihad, and not to its victims: he never even dares to explain why his own people are suffering, or at whose hands, or why.
This is the Patriarch who blamed “Zionists” for jihad attacks on Middle Eastern Christians. This is the Patriarch who walked out of a Ted Cruz speech in a rage over Cruz saying he stood with Israel. He appears to have thoroughly imbibed the “Palestinian” jihadis’ hatred of and contempt for Israel, despite the fact that it is a more hospitable place for his own people than the Muslim countries he weeps over and offers a better life for Christians than the Islam he so ardently defends.
Patriarch Gregory III is not alone in selling out his people and aligning with jihad murderers. Much of his clergy in the U.S. as well as in the Middle East cowers before jihad killers and pretends their cowardice is “respect.” The contemporary Catholic hierarchy in general is making nice with the jihad force, and thereby enabling its advance. And it will reap what it is sowing.
From Patriarch Gregory’s 2016 Paschal Letter:
…Christ was on the road to Damascus to find Saul the persecutor, in order to change his mode of being and outlook, his vision and his life … and Saul met Christ risen from the dead, on the road to Damascus, just as the two disciples, Luke and Cleopas, met him on the way in Palestine. The Palestine Road goes to Damascus, and the Damascus Road is the way to Palestine, and the way to Jerusalem.
Jesus invites us to walk with him on every road, not only on the road to Emmaus, or Jerusalem or Palestine or Damascus.
Christian life is a journey, walking along the way! The Holy Bible beatifies the person who does not follow the path of sinners but the road of the saints, of righteousness and holiness.
God is going, and wants to go on the road of all persons, all people, and every human being, because he is the light that enlightens every human being who comes into the world. Even those who are not on the path of Jesus, and do not know Jesus, and do not know him to be the way – he goes to them to follow in their paths, to be on their way. As we read in the Akathist to the Mother of God (Oikos 22) “Wishing to forgive the ancient debts of all mankind, the Creditor himself [Jesus] came and dwelt among those who had departed from his grace, and tearing up the written charge he hears from all.”
Salvation on the way
Through the roads and paths of our lives, God is on the road! Jesus sent his apostles on the road, on the roads of the people, in order to meet people. The apostle Philip in the south of Palestine is told by the Spirit, “Go near to this chariot.” (Acts 8: 29)…Today, we feel that the way of the Resurrection passes via Damascus, Syria, and from there to the East, and to the whole world. With regret after five years of violence, war, destruction and bloodshed, the world discovers the road to Damascus, the Jerusalem road, and the road to Palestine….
“Come, O faithful, to receive the Resurrection,” as the liturgical prayer summons us. This is our hope for our suffering Eastern region as it emerges from the painfully long Way of the Cross – especially in Iraq, in Syria, in Palestine, in Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Yemen -for this whole wounded region, resurrection joy!
Christ was born in Palestine! Christianity was born in Syria, in our East….
No, it wasn’t. Christianity, like Christ himself, was born in Judea.