Christmas in Bethlehem and video of the annual parade in the Palestinian city south of Jerusalem is standard holiday fare on television news. Since the days of Yasir Arafat the Palestinian Authority has made a big deal out of the Christmas celebration, and the media’s need for footage suitable for a day on which little news is made has always been a bonanza for Fatah. The result is that along with quaint pictures of Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity Western viewers are given the impression that Christianity is both protected and cherished by the PA. PA leaders also use the occasion to try and make the argument that the Palestinians, rather than the Israelis, are the true descendants of the Jewish nation that produced Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago.
Both assertions are equally false. Modern day Christians face harassment and exclusion throughout a region where the Arab Spring has brought Islamists to power, and nowhere is that more true than in the West Bank and Gaza. Moreover, the assertion that Jesus was a Palestinian, first aired by Arafat and often repeated by his successor Mahmoud Abbas as well as moderate Salam Fayyad, is nothing less than an attempt to delegitimize the Jewish people and to steal its history. Western news organizations should know better than to fall prey to these propaganda points.
As Britain’s Telegraph reports in a timely feature, Christianity is “close to extinction” in the Middle East. While the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt who face the prospect of life under the Muslim Brotherhood has garnered some attention in the past few months, Palestinian Christians have already been subjected to this sort of situation under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and the result is the decimation of their community.
Bethlehem is a case study, since the once predominantly Christian town has become a Muslim stronghold ever since Israel ceded control of the area to the PA under the Oslo Accords. Christian villages in the area like Beit Jala also have suffered since the PA let terrorists use it as a launching point for shooting attacks on the adjacent Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem during the second intifada. Should the PA launch a third such offensive against Israel this year, you can bet that Palestinian Christians, who have fled their old homes in large numbers in the last 20 years, will pay a disproportionate price.
Of course, it should be admitted that Palestinian Christians are often the most virulent critics of Israel, since they have seen secular nationalism to be a way of fitting into an Arab world where Muslim faith is the principle source of identity. Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch demonstrated that factor again this year when he told the world that this Christmas would be a celebration of “the birth of Palestine” as well as of that of the Christian savior. But no one should be fooled into thinking Christians are equal partners with the Muslim majority that treats them as nothing more than dhimmi–a protected but unequal minority. For all of the tension between Jews and Arabs, it is only in democratic Israel that Christians have complete religious freedom in the region.
As for the “Jesus is a Palestinian” meme, it is a risible misuse of history that few people take seriously, but it ought not to be ignored. Denying the historical ties between the Jewish people and the land of Israel has always been integral to anti-Zionist propaganda. The point is to depict Israelis as foreign thieves who have stolen Palestinian land rather than as Jews who have returned to their ancestral homeland. The use of this lie is a reminder that the ultimate goal of Palestinian moderates as well as the Islamists of Hamas (who have made the lives of Christians in Gaza untenable–a warning to the Coptics who will have to live under the thumb of their Muslim Brotherhood allies) is to destroy Israel, not to live in peace alongside it.
What have they not stolen? n nWhat a crime that Dayan and the areligious kibbutzniks who ran Israel in the decades after 67 allowed the Muslim authorities not only to administer to the Temple Mount, but to excavate it and trash the Jewish antiquities buried there. n nThere is now a political price to be paid for their arrogant dismissal of Jewish history in the name of 'sensitivity' to Muslim feelings: Where are the Jewish antiquities? Where is the proof of history? n nWe now have to content ourselves with a few pot shards or seals with archaic Hebrew script. n nOf course, it did not stop Dayan and others from pilfering artifacts for their personal collections.
That Arabs who call themselves “Palestinians” are liars, spouting Soviet propaganda. The name “Palestine” has meant “land of the Jews” and “Palestinian” has meant “Jew” from the time that the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 135 A.D. (approximately 100 years after the death of Jesus), after defeating that last Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba, renamed Judea “Palestina” in order to forever eradicate all memory of Judea and the Jews. (He outlawed Judaism and renamed Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina,” “Aelius” being his gens name.) That is why after World War I, Great Britain was awarded the “Palestine Mandate” to be “the homeland of the Jews.” (Incidentally, Jorday – as Transjordan – was supposed to be included in the “Palestine Mandate,” but Great Britain handed it over to the Arab Husseini to be a king as a reward for having fought on the side of Britain in World War I.)r nIn 1964, in Cairo, Gamal Nasser, ruler of Egypt, and the Soviet Union, both haters of Jews, invented the “Palestine Liberation Organization” (P.L.O.). It came to fame when it murdered the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972, and one consequence of this was that Arabs – haters of Jews – became called “Palestinians.”r nThe so-called “West Bank” is the ancient Judea and Samaria, whence came the Jews.
I have twice tried to post a comment about the misuse of the name "Palestinian" for Arab, since the name "Palestine" has meant "land of the Jews" and "Palestinian" has meant "Jew" since the Roman Emperor Hadrain in 135 A.D. changed the name of Judea to "Palestina" after he had defeated the last Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba. (He outlaws Judaism and renamed Jerusalem "Aelia Capitolina," "Aelius" being his gens name.) nWhy has my comment not been posted?
So now you've posted it, so what? This challenge to the name "Palestinian" has been made countless times, but the fact still remains that millions of Arabs call themselves Palestinians and so does the world, including Israel. Harping on this point is not going to make these people disappear, drop their grievances or make those grievances any less or more valid.
And overlooking their genocidal aspirations, pretending that their lies are true or taking the trool's habitual stance of moral equivalence is not going to make them any less genocidal or increase the chances of peace — it will do the opposite.
(continued" The names "Palestine" and "Palestinian." After World War I, Great Britain was awarded the "Palestine Mandate" to be "the homeland of the Jews" (but handed over Transjordan to the Arab Husseini to be king, as a reward for having sided with Great Britain in World War I). nIn 1964 in Cairo, Gamal Nasser, ruler of Egypt, and the Soviet Union, both haters of Jews, invented the "Palestine Liberation Organization" (P.L.O.) which came to fame by murdering the Israeli athletes at the Olympic games in Munich in 1972. One consequence of this act of terrorism was to call Arabs – haters of Jews – "Palestinians." nThe ancient name of the so-called West Bank is Judea and Samaria,
Is there no one who understands that "decimation" means a 10% reduction? I would imagine that the Christian community in the Palestinian territories has been hit with a much greater reduction that that.
Prediction for 2013: Poopystinians will continue to live in their own poopy, sitting around whinging and moaning.r nJews will continue to lead the world in business, high-tech and medical innovation and make the world a better place for everyone.
The Israelis ARE foreign thieves who have stolen Palestinian land. That's exactly it.
You can't steal what is yours
The Zionist notion that losing two wars nearly 2000 years ago gives a title deed to the putative descendants of the unsuccessful rebels, is absurd, just as is the resort by atheists to.Biblical authority as a land title. n nIf you say "right of conquest," fair enough. The Israelis took the land and developed it quite effectively in certain ways. Just do us the favor of admitting the Arabs got screwed in the process and don't bore us with ethnocentric mysticism that no one believes. n nAnd the US shouldn't care if the Israelis keep their loot or not, as long as we can bow out of this interminable squabble that concerns us not.
Title was secured 3400 years ago (not every clock started in the year zed, 2000 years ago was as the Romans say, already in medias res)–not to mention that claims were ratified in contemporary times by numerous conventions, treaties, deeds of sale, and etc. etc. summarily ignored by Arabs precisely so bent on conquest. Or the natural born population whose title is birth. n nbtw, "unsuccessful rebels"–yeah yeah yeah, besides the same old same old obnoxious vituperation is that supposed to have some sort of, well, historical reference? Yes it came out as the usual pidgin but was their somehow a glimmer of rationality behind the witticism going in? n nRebels to what? Unsuccessful by what measure? By Biblical accounts they were temporary sojourners oppressed and led to their freedom by the hand of God, neither rebels nor rebelling. The connection to "hapiru" at least semi-intelligible candidates for rebellion never proved through. And the latest super dooper progressive anti-Zionist mopery has them them three thousand year old ancient covenanters possibly in some sense "rebels" but the cause freedom for an emergent coalition of indigenous … Canaanites–that's right the original "Palestinians" are… Israel. n nBut why quibble? Forget Rames, Papa Moses, the burning bush. By all known historical measures organized Jewish sovereignty in Israel extended de minimus 1,000 years, throwing in the Second Commonwealth and calling it quits with the Roman legions and Bar Kochba's failure. n nThat would be about five times the run so far of the "successful rebels" and their United States. n nNot too shabby.
Maybe you could describe to us, where exactly is 'Palestinian" land? n n( And how does one recognize a 'Palestinian'? Language? History? Literature? Culture? How does one recognize a 'Palestinian"?) n nDoes that include parts of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Arabia? n nOr only the land where now JEws live? n nand Happy Christmas to you Grumps, as you celebrate the Jew who you think dies for all your sins. n nEver understand how nauseatingly creepy that is? n nIs that why you hate those arrogant living Jews?
"Maybe you could describe to us, where exactly is 'Palestinian" land? " nLet's see. In 1964, the Palestinian National Covenant said it was the land within the Green Line, and only that land; the land annexed by Syria, Egypt and Jordan, said the Covenant, was not Palestinian land but rather integral parts of those states. n nThen, in 1967, Israel came into possession of land beyond the Green Line as a result of repelling a genocidal attack by the armies of those states and behold — now those lands also magically became part of 'historic' Palestine. n nSo one can only conclude that ''Palestinian" land" is land in the middle east that meets one or more of the following criteria: n1. Jews live on it, inside or outside the green line. n2. Jews purchased it from the lawful record title holder, inside or outside the green line. n3. Jews developed it, cultivated it, or otherwise made it productive or fit to live on. n4. An Arab designates it as Palestinian land. n5. Someone who is ignorant of history and geography, or hates Jews, or both, designates it as Palestinian land.
what an anti-semitic maroon. not only has history, the diaspora, the law of return, the derivation of the modern Palestinians, or the difference between the Ashkenaziim and the Sephardiim passed him by; the facts of life are too difficult for his goykopf. Sabras? Birds and bees? Natural increase? All over the head of this knuckle dragger. It's all foreign to him. n nThieves, this from a guy who's never done anything more constructive than cash his disability checks. n nBut we'll spell it out. 70% of the Israeli Jewish population are no more foreign to the land than its stones, springs, hills, and valleys. And the remaining 30% has as much right to be there as some fourth generation Lebanese with their latch-key. n nThe great one trick of the anti-Semite: the Big Explanation and Der Jude as the Diablo spinning the BE's cogs and wheels. n nA simple, if maleficent, universe for the simple minded.
"this from a guy who's never done anything more constructive than cash his disability checks. " nAnd who probably lives on Iriquois or Shawnee ancestral hunting grounds.
… as I recollect the matter those Arab fellers didn't exactly sweet talk the Byzantine Greeks out of their land holdings either
They sweet talked the Greeks the same way they sweet talked the Syrians, the Lebanese, and the rest of the former Aramaic speaking Christians in what later became the Ottoman Empire: "Hey, you look like you've got a good head on your shoulders — want to keep it there?" n nBut we're talking about Grumpy here. How about it, Grumpy, are you going to get off the ancestral lands of whatever tribal people you are currently occupying?
IIRC n nAlaska
Jewish presence in Palestine goes much farther back than most Palestinians, as well as Arabs and Muslims in general, would be willing to admit. n nBefore 1948, Palestine was ruled by a series of empires. Before that Palestine was Judaea—a Jewish country. Jews have lived in Palestine continuously for more than 3,300 years. "Palestine" was the name given to the Jewish homeland in the second century by the Romans, in an attempt to break the Jewish adherence to the land. This was a century after the Jewish temple was destroyed and more than a million Jews were massacred. n nThe Jews stopped fighting the Romans only after they had no more fighting men standing. As Evangelist William Eugene Blackstone put it in 1891, “The Jews never gave up their title to Palestine… They never abandoned the land. They made no treaty, they did not even surrender. They simply succumbed, after the most desperate conflict, to the overwhelming power of the Romans.” n nThe Jews persisted through the centuries under the various empires, after the Arab invasion of 635AD (which they fought alongside the Byzantines), and after the Crusade massacres of the 11th Century, which decimated much of their population. n nFew Palestinians realize that Jewish customs, religion, prayers, poetry, holidays, and virtually every walk of life, documented for thousands of years—all revolve around Judaea/Palestine/Israel. For thousands of years Jews have been praying for Jerusalem in every prayer, after every meal, in every holiday, at every wedding, in every celebration. The whole Jewish religion is about Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. Western expressions such as “The Promised Land,” and “The Holy Land,” did not pop out of void. They have been part of Western knowledge and tradition dating back to the beginning of Christianity and earlier. n nAfter the Crusades, the Jews—including many who have returned over the centuries—lived peacefully with Arabs, often in the very same villages, as in Pki'in, in the Galilee, until the Zionist immigration of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Article 6 of the PLO Charter specifically calls for the acceptance of all Jews present in Palestine prior to the Zionist immigration. These Jews were simply another ethnic group in a region composed of Sunnis, Shiites, Jews, Druz, Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Circassians, Samarians, and more. Some of these groups, like the Druz, Circassians, Samarians, and an increasing number of Christians, are actually loyal to the Jewish State. n nIncidentally, genetic studies consistently show that Zionist immigrants (a.k.a., Ashkenazi Jews) are closely related to groups that predate the Arab conquest, like the Samarians, who have lived in Palestine for thousands of year. n nPalestinian denial of these facts may lead to events such as the ones brilliantly depicted in Jonathan Bloomfield’s award-winning book, “Palestine,” in which actual history and predicted events are thinly veiled as fiction. n nIf, as the current Palestinian narrative goes, the Jews are not a people indigenous to Palestine but rather an invading foreign colonialist body, then they must be fought until they are removed from this land. Anything short of that, by any standard, would be injustice. n nThus, war and bloodshed will continue until the Palestinians start acknowledging the Jewish narrative, and the fact that Jewish roots in Palestine date back thousands of years, long before the Arab invasion.
nPro-israelis (like Commentary) absolutely LOVES to trash the meme "Jesus was a palestinian". And it's true: it is just a meme. And not many palestinians hold it as a central argument. n nHowever, it does not mean that the christian palestinians are not opressed by Israel. They are, just talk to them and you'll see.
"Western news organizations should know better than to fall prey to these propaganda points." Really? Western news organizations have become pure propaganda points. That is the real "cliff" we are heading over. n
continued…. n nOf all the states resulting from the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and created by the Allies, only the state designated as the JEWISH homeland is continually attacked- n nas if the Ottoman lands did not have Jewish population from Biblical times-preceeding the Turks and the arabs- and who have been demonized and subjugated by the muslim arabs, the colonial masters whose methods (to this day) include forceable arabization, forceable conversion and violent elimination of cultural and replacement and absorption of religious history of the conquered peoples.. n nAnd look how successful these arabs have been-almost eliminating Christinity in the very place it was born… and somehow convincing useful idiots that Jews do not beling in Jerusalem. n n…..tell that to Jesus
Would things be better if the Ottoman Empire were still in existence?