What Would Jesus Say To Those Who Defame His People?

At every Christmas,just like clockwork the dinosaur media runs articles on the decline of Arab Christians in the Holy Land. Normally written by Palestinian apologists working for the wire services, they all have a common thread...they blame Israel and the `separation wall' for the steadily declining numbers of Palestinian Christians.

Many of the stories focus on the the plight of Bethlehem,the birthplace of Jesus and a symbol to Christians around the world. Here's a typical sample, by one of `Newsweak's' so-called contributing editors. Kenneth L. Woodward.

"A mere nine kilometers separates Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, from Jerusalem, where he was crucified, died and was buried. Pilgrims can easily visit both the Church of the Nativity and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in half a day -- as long as they are not Palestinian Christians. Israel's security wall, its restrictive exit permit system, roadblocks and military checkpoints now make it impossible for most Holy Land Christians to visit the shrines that, for all Christians, make the Holy Land holy.

Like East Jerusalem, Bethlehem is part of the West Bank, not the State of Israel. Temporary exit visas to go from one to the other to worship -- or see a doctor or even visit relatives -- are hard to come by, of brief duration even when granted, and always subject to the whims of Israeli soldiers.

The squeeze is economic as well as religious. Few producers in Bethlehem can get their goods to markets in Jerusalem. Fewer buyers can get to Bethlehem to sustain its markets. Tourism, a huge segment of the city's economy, is up since 2004, but it is still far from robust. {...}

Indeed, Bethlehem has historically been one place where Muslim-Christian relations have been remarkably friendly. Now, however, urban Bethlehem finds itself encircled by Israeli settlements, and where the settlers go, there follows the concrete wall, topped in places by razor wire and snipers' towers.

For example, the wall is being completed around Beit Jala, separating this Christian village from 70% of its lands, which are mostly owned by Christian families. Some of the families are attempting to contest the confiscations in court, but construction -- and the confiscation -- goes on.

In Bethlehem itself, the wall severs the city from nearly three-fourths of its western villages' remaining agricultural lands, as well as water resources that have served the region since Roman times. This area contains much of Bethlehem's remaining room for development and its nature reserve, where city dwellers took their children."

I have to admit, it takes real chutzpah (unmitigated gall) to tell so many lies in such a small space. And for that matter, to publish it.

Bethlehem is not `surrounded by a wall', and any `friendly relations' between Muslims and Christians mostly ended after Oslo when Arafat took over, which is when the exodus of Palestinian Christians already underway since the area was controlled by Jordan turned into a flood.

If you traveled to Bethlehem today, you would find that Israel did indeed build a fence in the area where northern Bethlehem abuts Jerusalem...although the rest of Bethlehem is freely accessible from the Palestinian side. And a tiny segment of that security barrier between North Bethlehem and Jerusalem is indeed a concrete wall. But what bald-faced liars like Mr. Woodward neglect to mention is that this small concrete segment directly faces a major Israeli highway and was specifically designed to prevent Palestinian snipers from shooting at civilian Israeli cars and homes, something that happened numerous times before the concrete barrier was built. During just one month in 2002 before the barrier was built, two Israelis were murdered and a score wounded by sniper attacks carried out by the Bethlehem branch of Fatah's al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade.

A favorite spot for these attacks was in civilian homes in the hilltop mostly Christian village of Beit Jala, which gave the snipers a clear line of fire at the highway and at southern neighborhoods of Jerusalem like Gilo. And that's why the security barrier was built, Mr. Woodward.


And let's talk, shall we, about those `friendly relations' between Muslims and Christians in the Palestinian Authority, which has ruled Bethlehem since 1995 under the Oslo Accords.

The truth? More than 60% of the native-born Palestinian Christians had already fled the Arab controlled part of the Holy Land land long before the fence started going up in 2002. And most of the Palestinian Christian emigration occurred prior to Israel's entry into Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) in 1967, when the area was under Jordanian occupation. The last British census in Jerusalem, for example, found 28,000 Arab Christian residents in 1948, while Israel's first official tally after 1967 registered only 11,000. For those of you who are math challenged, those figures represented a 60% decrease in less than 20years.

When Arafat and his thugs took over, they accelerated the process in all th eregions of the Holy Land they controlled.

One of the first things Arafat and the mafiosos known as the Palestinian Authority did after the Israelis handed them control of Gaza and a large chunk of the West Bank was to adopt Islam as its official religion, put sharia Islamic law codes into place and allow officially appointed Palestinian Muslim imams and clerics to demonize both Christian and Jewish `infidels' in its mosques and the media. And Arafat and the Palestinian Authority took steps to eliminate any Christian majorities where they still existed.

Since the Palestinian Authority took over Bethlehem in 1995 under the Oslo Accords with Israel, Bethlehem has been transformed from a majority Christian city into a Muslim city. The few Christians left in the city now cling to their homes at the sufferance of the majority Muslim population.

In 1996, as an example, Arafat fired Bethlehem's Christian mayor and totally redistricted Bethlehem, redefining its municipal boundaries so that they included many nearby Muslim villages. Overnight the Christian population found itself reduced from an 80 percent majority to a minority, with little control over anything. Arafat placed Christian sites like the Church of the Nativity under the direct control of the Islamist Palestinian Authority rather than under the control of Palestinian Christians.

Bethlehem has gone from an 80% Christian population to less than 8% since the Palestinian Authority took over.

More mobile and generally better educated than their Muslim neighbors, the Christians are fleeing in droves and have simply gone elsewhere. Some are now living in Israel, where they have full freedom of worship and a growing community. Others found new homes in places like Toronto, Santiago and Sydney...and the US.

Of course, one of the most infamous cases of anti-Christian violence was when Palestinian terrorists in 2002 holed up in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity and refused to release the religious staff inside. Members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade looted the facilities, desecrated the church and even reportedly used the Bible as toilet paper.

One document later captured by the Israelis in Ramallah during the siege of Arafat's headquarters in the Muqatah showed that the terrorists also extorted money out of Bethlehem's Christians by threatening to destroy the church.

That kind of intimidation explains the hypocritical dhimmitude of clergy men like Michael Sabah, the Latin patriarch who recently had the nerve to criticize Israel,where Christians and Muslims have full freedom of worship for wanting to be recognized as a Jewish state - speaking from Palestine, where Jews are not allowed, Christians are persecuted and the Palestinian Authority's Basic Law dealing with its Legislative Council declares that "Islam is the official religion in Palestine"!

All over the Middle East in one of the great ignored stories of our time,Christians are being driven out of `Muslim Lands', and places like the Church of the Nativity, where Jesus was born, may soon be converted into mosques with no regard for the sensibilities or rights of non-Muslims, just as Jewish Holy places were desecrated in places like Gaza and the West Bank as soon as the Muslims got their hands on them.

But you'd never guess that reading today's dinosaur media.

What would Jesus say to those who defame the Jews of Israel?