By JONATHAN COOK, Counterpunch
"A similar pattern can be discerned inside Israel too, where Christians have come to comprise an ever smaller proportion of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. In 1948 they were nearly a quarter of that minority (itself 20 per cent of the total Israeli population), and today they are a mere 10 per cent. Most are located in Nazareth and nearby villages in the Galilee.
Certainly, the continuing fall in the number of Christians in the Holy Land concerns Israel's leadership almost as keenly as the patriarchs and bishops who visit Bethlehem at Christmas -- but for quite the opposite reason. Israel is happy to see Christians leave, at least of the indigenous Palestinian variety.
(More welcome are the crazed fundamentalist Christian Zionists from the United States who have been arriving to help engineer the departure of Palestinians, Muslims and Christians alike, in the belief that, once the Jews have dominion over the whole of the Holy Land, Armageddon and the "End Times" will draw closer.)
"Without Palestinian Christians confusing the picture, it will be much easier for Israel to persuade the West that the Jewish state is facing a monolithic enemy, fanatical Islam, and that the Palestinian national struggle is really both a cover for jihad and a distraction from the clash of civilisations against which Israel is the ultimate bulwark. Israel's hands will be freed."
(Posted by V on Mondoweiss)
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="">"Without Palestinian Christians confusing the picture, it will be much easier for Israel to persuade the West that the Jewish state is facing a monolithic enemy, fanatical Islam, and that the Palestinian national struggle is really both a cover for jihad and a distraction from the clash of civilisations against which Israel is the ultimate bulwark. Israel's hands will be freed."</span></span>
ReplyDeletePalestinian Poetess Fadwa Tuqan
ReplyDeleteTo Christ
Lord, Glory of the Universe
On Christmas Day 1967
Jerusalem's feasts were nailed upon the Cross
Lord, on the day of your feast
The bells were silent
For two thousand years
The bells always rang
On the day or your birth
But not this year
Under the weight of the Cross
On the road of agony
Jerusalem is whipped
The soldier's lashes draw blood
But the world's heart is closed to the tragedy
This stone-cold world, Lord, is Blind
For the eye of the sun has turned to glass
Not a candle was lit
Not a tear was shed
To wash away Jerusalem's grief
Lord, the vineworks killed the heir
And took the vines
The bird of sin
Feathered the sinners of the world
And swooped down to stain Jerusalem's chastity
Lord, Glory of Jerusalem
From the well of grief
From the abyss
From the depth of the night
From the heart of pain
To you Jerusalem's groans rise
Mercy, O Lord
Let this cup pass from her
Yisca Harani, a veteran Jewish interfaith activist who lectures on Christianity to Israeli <span>tour guides</span> at Touro College, likewise says the change for the worse came about 20 years ago. She blames the spitting attacks on the view of Christianity that's propagated at haredi and national Orthodox yeshivot.
ReplyDelete"I move around the Old City a lot," she said, "I come in contact with these people, and what they learn in these fundamentalist yeshivot is that the goy is the enemy, a hater of Israel. All they learn about Christianity is the Holocaust, pogroms, anti-Semitism."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?apage=2&cid=1259231077244&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Iraq's Christians have been have been driven from the country,but I don't believe the Jews did it.
ReplyDelete