Latest News
- sWho’s Attacking Palestinian Christians? by Bassam Tawil
- aAustralian Jewish Group Says Proposed Swastika Ban Doesn’t Go Far Enough by Benjamin Kerstein
- Ehud Olmert: Nothing has changed since last election
- Build, Bibi, Build by Caroline Glick
- Local Newspapers Are Dying Because They Don’t Represent America
- UCLA Under Investigation for Anti-Semitism by Sara Dogan
- Expanding Settlement Construction Now Will Pay Dividends Later
- המסע היהודי לחלל: עשר עובדות על “העולמות העליונים”
- New Approach to Fight the New Antisemites
- sUS seeks normalization of ties between Israel, Arab states By OMRI NAHMIAS
sWho’s Attacking Palestinian Christians? by Bassam Tawil
The plight of Christians living under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is one that is often ignored by the international community and foreign journalists based in the Middle East.
- It is worth noting that that the Christian population in the Bethlehem area has dropped from 86% in 1950 to less than 12% today. Across the West Bank, Christians now account for less than 2% of the population….
- In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the situation of Christians is even worse.
- Instead of raising their voices against the persecution of Christians by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, these Christian leaders are busy trying to blame Israel. They want the world to believe that Christians are fleeing Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip because of Israeli security measures against terrorists, and not because of the brutalities perpetrated by the Palestinian authorities and Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If their claim were true, why aren’t Muslims also fleeing as a result of the purported Israeli measures?
| While Christian leaders are busy condemning Israel and spreading blood libels against it, Christians in Bethlehem (pictured) are again being targeted by hoodlums and punks. (Image source: Daniel Case/Wikimedia Commons) |
While Christian leaders are busy condemning Israel and spreading blood libels against it, Christians in Bethlehem are again being targeted by hoodlums and punks.
The latest victim of this anti-Christian violence is Dr. Salameh Qumsiyeh, a gynecologist from Bethlehem who was brutally attacked by unidentified thugs as he was driving his car in the center of the city on February 18.
Four masked assailants intercepted Qumsiyeh’s car, eyewitnesses said, and beat him with clubs and sharp tools before fleeing the scene. Qumsiyeh was rushed to hospital, where medics said that the wounds he had suffered were serious.
The doctor’s family, one of the biggest Christian clans in the Bethlehem area, issued a statement harshly criticizing the assault, dubbing it a “sinful and despicable attack by a group of cowards and violators of laws and national and social norms.” The clan went on to express shock over the attack and was careful to claim that it had been carried out by “mercenaries.” It urged the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces to do their utmost to “arrest the cowards and bring them to justice.”
Palestinian factions in the Bethlehem area also denounced the “brutal and cowardly” attack on Qumsiyeh. “We strongly condemn this cowardly and suspicious act, which is alien to our traditions,” the factions said in a statement.
The Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem further condemned the assault on Qumsiyeh and urged the Palestinian security forces to apprehend the perpetrators and bring them to justice.
The attack on Qumsiyeh came only weeks after a Christian woman from the town of Bet Jala, near Bethlehem, died when Palestinian police officers raided her home to arrest her son, Yusef, for unpaid debts. The woman was identified as 63-year-old Terez Ta’amneh.
Ta’amneh’s daughter, Marian al-Hajal, accused the Palestinian security forces of “killing my mother” and said that as a Christian, she has no confidence in the Palestinian law and police. “The seven police officers who raided our home,” she said, “were led by Jamal Hmeid, a nephew of Kamel Hmeid, the Palestinian governor of Bethlehem.”
On the eve of last Christmas, 76-year-old Fairouz Ijha, a Christian woman from Bethlehem, complained that she has been in court for the past two years, fighting to attain family-owned land illegally seized by Muslims. “Each time I ask the judge for permission to speak, he tells me, ‘it’s not your turn yet,'” Fairouz said. “If I were a Muslim, I would have been treated differently.”
A Christian schoolteacher who identified herself as “Diana” emphasized that discrimination against Christians was not new and has in fact increased. “The [Palestinian] police have separate rules for Muslims and Christians,” she maintained. “If, for example, there’s a car accident involving a Christian and a Muslim, the police always side with the Muslim.”
The plight of Christians living under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is one that is often ignored by the international community and foreign journalists based in the Middle East.
It is worth noting that that the Christian population in the Bethlehem area has dropped from 86% in 1950 to less than 12% today. Across the West Bank, Christians now account for less than 2% of the population, though in the 1970s they were 5%.
In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, the situation of Christians is even worse. The number of Christians living there has dropped from 4,200 in 2007, to only a few hundred today.
“The Hamas people took over my house and turned it into a war room,” said Kamal Teresi, a Christian who recently fled the Gaza Strip.
“I was put in a number of prisons, and the Hamas prison is nothing but beating and psychological torture. We Christians are not bystanders in Palestine; we have been in Palestine for 2000 years; we are not guests. They [Hamas] are harassing and hurting the Christian public and Christian institutions, churches and associations. I can’t go back to Gaza; returning would be a death sentence.”
While ordinary Christians are saying they no longer feel safe living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, their leaders continue to lie to the world about the predicament of their community. Instead of raising their voices against the persecution of Christians by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, these Christian leaders are busy trying to blame Israel.
These Christian leaders, possibly to avoid being targeted themselves, seem to want the world to believe that Christians are fleeing Bethlehem and the Gaza Strip because of Israeli security measures against terrorists, and not because of the brutalities perpetrated by the Palestinian authorities and Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
If that were true, why aren’t Muslims also fleeing as a result of the purported Israeli measures? Israel’s security measures, by the way, are usually not directed against Christians but against Palestinian Muslims for their involvement in terrorism. If anyone has good reason to flee from Israeli security, it is the Muslim terrorists and their families, and not peaceful and vulnerable Christians, most of whom are not involved in anti-Israel activities or terrorism.
What are Palestinian Christian leaders doing to defend their community? Unfortunately, nothing. Some even join the Muslims who spread blood libels against Israel.
One such cleric is the head of the Sebastia Diocese of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, Archbishop Atallah Hanna, who recently claimed that Israel had “poisoned” him in an apparent failed assassination attempt. Hanna, who is known for his vicious anti-Israel incitement, alleged that he had inhaled a dangerous amount of poison when a gas canister was fired through the window of his room at the church.
It later turned out that Hanna’s accusations were completely unfounded and simply the continuation of a despicable defamation campaign against Israel.
An investigation by the Israeli authorities revealed that the church had invited an Israeli company to spray the church with pesticide. “We expect a clergyman to adhere to the truth,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry responded to Hanna’s blood libel, “and that clergymen around the world denounce these outrageous false proclamations and refrain from distributing this libel.”
Hanna, like other Palestinian Christian leaders, is not just a liar; he is a traitor to his own community. Hanna has not spoken a word against the attack on Qumsiyeh and other Christians in Bethlehem. He does not care about the suffering of his people under the oppressive Islamist rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
By ignoring the real reason why Christians are fleeing from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, leaders such as Hanna are emboldening the anti-Christian Muslims and allowing them to continue their attacks on Christians living there.
As for the international community and Christian institutions around the world, it is their most far-reaching duty to look into these blood libels by Palestinian Christian leaders to check if there is factual accuracy. If they fail to do so, the day will come when not a single Christian will be left in Bethlehem, the Gaza Strip, and most likely the Middle East, with the exception of Israel, where numbers are on the rise.
Related articles
More in this category
OUR SITES אתרי מבט
Poland’s forgotten civil strife and the struggle for Jewish statehood
Menachem Begin in December 1942 wearing the Polish Army uniform of Gen. Anders’ forces with his wife Aliza and David Yutan; (back row) Moshe Stein and Israel Epstein
(photo credit: JABOTINSKY ARCHIVES)
During the inauguration of a memorial to the victims of the Siege of Leningrad in Jerusalem’s Sacher Park on January 24, 2020, before the climax of Holocaust remembrance events at which Russian President Vladimir Putin was given a central platform, we were stunned to hear a rendition of The Blue Kerchief (Siniy
Belgian carnival to double down on antisemitic displays
Giant figures are seen during the 87th carnival parade of Aalst February 15, 2015
The annual carnival in Aalst, Belgium, is expected to take place on Sunday with even more antisemitic elements than in previous years.
Aalst’s organizers have sold hundreds of “rabbi kits” for revelers to dress as hassidic Jews in the carnival’s parade. The kit includes oversized noses, sidelocks (peyot) and black hats. The organizers plan to bring back floats similar to the one displayed in 2019 featuring oversized dolls of Jews, with rats on their shoulders, holding banknotes.
Pope Appears to Give Thumbs Down to Trump’s Mideast Peace Plan
Pope Francis waves as he arrives at the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in the southern Italian coastal city of Bari, Italy February 23, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli.
Pope Francis on Sunday warned against “inequitable solutions” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying they would only be a prelude to new crises, in an apparent reference to US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace proposal.
Francis made his comments in the southern Italian port city of Bari, where he traveled to conclude a meeting of bishops from all countries in the Mediterranean basin.
Israel, Palestinian Authority Agree to End Trade Dispute: Officials
Palestinians walk past a shop selling fruits in Ramallah, Feb. 20, 2020. Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have reached an agreement to end a five-month long trade dispute, officials said on Thursday.
The dispute, which opened a new front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, began in September when the PA announced a boycott of Israel calves. The PA exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank under interim peace deals.
Disturbing Images Emerge of Astounding Antisemitism at Belgian Carnival
Antisemitic caricatures on display at the annual carnival in Aalst, Belgium. Photo: Raphael Ahren via Twitter.
Disturbing images emerged on Sunday of the annual carnival at Aalst, Belgium, showing an astounding number of antisemitic themes, costumes, displays and statements.
Israeli journalist Raphael Ahren documented people dressed as caricatures of Orthodox Jews, a fake “wailing wall” attacking critics of the parade, blatantly antisemitic characters and puppets wearing traditional Jewish clothes and sporting huge noses.
News
New column!
KEN COHEN :UN Sinks to a New Low with BDS-Inspired Blacklist
The stench of anti-Semitism always hovers over Switzerland’s Lake Geneva when the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is meeting there. The foul emanations reached a new nadir last week with UNHRC’s publication of a “database” of companies doing business in the disputed territories in Israel.
Following the publication of the list, Bruno Stagno Ugarte, deputy director for advocacy of NGO Human Rights Watch, stated, “The long-awaited release of the U.N. settlement business database should put all companies on notice: To do business with illegal settlements [sic] is to aid in the commission of war crimes.”
David Suissa : Bad Globalism: China Controls our Meds
One of the many things that annoys me about politicians is how sure they are of themselves. Everything is black and white. Every idea is good or bad. Take globalism, for example. You either love it or hate it. It works or it doesn’t.
Another thing that annoys me is how so much of a politician’s life revolves around power: Do everything you can to get it, and everything you can to keep it.
Why am I ranting? Because, while our politicians have been consumed with power and the media with the fights over power, a threat to our nation has been virtually ignored.
Alex Traiman : Challengers Gantz and Lapid Attack Netanyahu-Trump Relationship
Blue and White Party leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid are establishing their diplomatic credentials in the immediate run-up to Israel’s March 2 election with an insult to a U.S. administration that has arguably provided Israel with more diplomatic gains than any previous administration.
The Times of Israel reported that at a campaign stop in front of English-speaking Israelis, Gantz accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “of neglecting bipartisan ties in favor of exclusive support from U.S. President Donald Trump’s Republican Party,” under the headline “Gantz pledges to mend ties with U.S. Democrats if elected.”
CLIFFORD D. MAY : The Return of the Monroe Doctrine
Bipartisanship was in short supply at the State of the Union address earlier this month—with one notable exception.
Nancy Pelosi had been looking dyspeptic, shuffling the papers she would later rip to shreds, when President Donald Trump reminded his audience that “the United States is leading a 59-nation diplomatic coalition against the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.”
Suddenly, the House Speaker applauded. Trump then introduced “the true and legitimate president of Venezuela: Juan Guaidó.”
Melanie Phillips : Sanitizing Soros through Guilt by Association
The law professor Alan Dershowitz has thrown a legal hand-grenade into America’s political civil war by claiming to have evidence that former President Barack Obama “personally asked” the FBI to investigate someone “on behalf” of Obama’s “close ally,” billionaire financier George Soros.
He made his cryptic remark in an interview defending U.S. President Donald Trump against claims he interfered in the prosecution of his former adviser, Roger Stone.