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Every Christmas I make the 15-minute drive from my Jerusalem home to Bethlehem for a reality check on the beleaguered town five miles away. This year, contrary to the customary gloomy reports from the international media, things were bustling in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve. Bright blue skies and comfortable temperatures help make things more pleasant than in previous years when a cold, grey drizzle dampened spirits. Driving up to the Rachel’s Passage checkpoint in my car with Israeli plates, a quick check of my press credentials is all that’s needed to get waved through. Tour buses and private cars get...

The Patriarch of Jerusalem's Roman Catholic Church declared Christmas is also a celebration of … the birth of the state of Palestine.” The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Jerusalem has added something new this year to the liturgy: Patriarch Fouad Twal declared the holiday of "Christmas is also a celebration of … the birth of the state of Palestine.” The Jordanian-born Twal made the statement during a procession to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, where he is due to lead midnight mass at the Church of the Nativity. The church in Manger Square and Bethlehem itself are today...

The Foreign Ministry has launched a probe into the posting of a Facebook message by the Israel embassy in Ireland that said if Jesus and Mary were alive today in Bethlehem, they would probably be lynched by local Arabs. Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said, "We all agree that it was improper, inappropriate." He said Tuesday that it wasn't clear who posted the message. The post included a picture of Jesus and Mary accompanied by a message saying, “A thought for Christmas ... If Jesus and Mother Mary were alive today, they would, as Jews without security, probably end up being...

An Italian study carried out on the Basilica’s wooden beams has revealed that the cedar was carved between the 6th and 7th centuries In the next few days, as is the case every year, all eyes will be on the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. But the deeper the studies on this ancient church go, the more surprises it seems to have in store. This is what transpires from a report published yesterday in the last edition of the Journal of Cultural Heritage and on Terrasanta.net.The report presents the results of a long study carried out on the Basilica’s...

There is more to the story of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula than what we are told by the media. Court documents reveal that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin, a Palestinian Muslim from Beit Sahour in the Palestinian district of Bethlehem. To prove my claim, I revealed Eiad Salameh long before this whole fiasco erupted—in 2008 and the first real reportage of Eiad and Nakoula was revealed on September 14th, 2012. Now do I have your attention? The narrative that circulates the media fails to answer crucial...

There is more to the story of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula than what we are told by the media. Court documents reveal that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, producer of the movie Innocence of Muslims, partnered in a scheme with Eiad Salameh, my first cousin, a Palestinian Muslim from Beit Sahour in the Palestinian district of Bethlehem. To prove my claim, I revealed Eiad Salameh long before this whole fiasco erupted—in 2008 and the first real reportage of Eiad and Nakoula was revealed on September 14th, 2012. Now do I have your attention? The narrative that circulates the media fails to answer crucial...

Islamo-"Christian" anti-Jewish "Palestinian" Hannan Ashrawi, racist-Arab, ugly liar #OpPalestine @FoxNews what is this nonsense by Geraldo & Ashrawi that the #Palestinians have 1000 year history? They formed in 1964! - http://twitter.com/PatriotJackiB/statuses/222161526239399937 http://friendfeed.com/oppalestine/31baafbe/foxnews-what-is-this-nonsense-by-geraldoFact, "Palestinians" were formed as a "distinct" group, no earlier than in the early 1960s. And as author warned in 1964 as the "Palestine entity" was stil forming... Noted 1940's Jurist: "the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Palestine... are not the descendants of the conquerors." Ernst Frankenstein in "Justice for my people," (Dial Press, 1944), p. 88 Even most anti-Israel sect, the Islamic Arab Hamas, admits: "Half of the Palestinians...

The Palestinians on Friday persuaded the U.N. cultural agency to list the Church of the Nativity—the place where Christians believe Jesus was born—as an endangered World Heritage site despite misgivings by churches in charge of the basilica.The Palestinians hailed the nod by UNESCO as a step forward in their quest for global recognition of an independent Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967. The centuries-old basilica is located in a part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank where the Palestinians have self-rule. UNESCO's decision was seen by them as validation of their rights to...

JERUSALEM – Israeli archaeologists have discovered a 2,700-year-old seal that bears the inscription "Bethlehem," the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday, in what experts believe to be the oldest artifact with the name of Jesus' traditional birthplace. The tiny clay seal's existence and age provide vivid evidence that Bethlehem was not just the name of a fabled biblical town, but also a bustling place of trade linked to the nearby city of Jerusalem, archaeologists said. Eli Shukron, the authority's director of excavations, said the find was significant because it is the first time the name "Bethlehem" appears outside of a biblical...

Casinos are not like Starbucks stores: You really can’t have one on every corner. That’s the word from David Cordish, whose company is opening a huge new casino next month in Maryland. Yet Cordish warns that the expansion of casino gambling can’t go on unchecked forever. A big problem is the attitude of politicians nationwide who view casinos as free money. “I don’t know how we can control the politicians; they certainly don’t understand the word ‘oversaturation,’” Cordish said Thursday. “They think you can have casinos like Starbucks.”If that attitude continues, Cordish said, “it’s going to implode on them.” That...

Ten years have passed since the end of the 39-day IDF siege of the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, where 39 terrorists had holed up. The siege was ended through an agreement that involved exiling the terrorists to other countries. Bethlehem-based news agency Ma'an says the terrorists now feel "abandoned by the Palestinian Authority and all political factions." They have not been allowed to return to their families in Judea and Samaria, the agency notes. Deportees had planned to demonstrate on Thursday but canceled the protest to support the terrorists on hunger strike in Israeli jails, a spokesman for the...

The governor of Bethlehem signed an order, on Sunday, banning the entry of Israeli agricultural products into the city, effective from May 1, Ma’an News Agency reported. Abdul-Fattah Hamayil gave orders to security services to enforce the ban and monitor all agricultural imports. Hamayil has also sought to ensure PA produce is not brought into the 47-year-old St. George Landmark Hotel in eastern Jerusalem. The decision follows the ban on Israeli-grown watermelons, onions, strawberries and potatoes implemented by PA Minister of Agriculture Ahmad Majdalani earlier this month, a press statement said. The ban, only the latest in a series of...

A writer tells the members of the Christ at the Checkpoint organization that they really must be more consistent - and also accept the resulting conclusions. Dear Committee of “Christ at the Checkpoint” Conference, I recently read the written materials of your latest conference in March and was thunderstruck by the assumption (...it is not an assumption any more, but a dogma, in which everyone in your community has to believe) that Jewish people never lived here, and that the whole history of this land is Palestinian history. Mitri Raheb, in his article, plays with the idea of DNA matching:...

By Ryan Jones.. The First Baptist Church in Bethlehem was ordered closed by the Palestinian Authority on Saturday, according to Rabbi Russell Resnik of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations. Resnik reported the incident after meeting with Pastor Steven Khoury, the son of First Baptist’s head pastor, Naim Khoury.

The Palestinian Authority declared a Baptist Church in Bethlehem to be unlawful and said that it will no longer receive rights as a religious institution, Algemeiner reported. This decision comes a week after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told an audience of Evangelical Protestants that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities. “They said that our legitimacy as a church from a governmental point of view is not approved,” said an assistant pastor at the First Baptist Church. “They said they will not recognize any legal paper work from our church. That includes birth certificates, wedding certificates and death...

The church in Bethlehem had survived more than 1,000 years, through wars and conquests, but its future now seemed in jeopardy. Spray-painted all over its ancient stone walls were the Arabic letters for Hamas. The year was 1994 and the city was about to pass from Israeli to Palestinian control. I was meeting with the church's clergy as an Israeli government adviser on inter-religious affairs. They were despondent but too frightened to file a complaint. The same Hamas thugs who had desecrated their sanctuary were liable to take their lives.

An extraordinary brawl between clergymen broke out yesterday at the very site where Jesus is said to have been born. The annual cleaning of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem descended into a battle between the rival Christian denominations that share it. Brooms, fists and vicious insults flew in all directions between 100 priests and monks dressed in their traditional robes. The fight ended only after Palestinian police, bending their heads to squeeze through the church’s low ‘door of humility’, rushed in with batons to restore order. The row is believed to have begun after a clergyman of one...

The video below is sad and disturbing. More on that in a minute One of the more surprising, and personally saddest things I have encountered in my trips to the Holy Land, is the encounter with Orthodox clergy. While I had been trained to expect tensions between Jews and Arabs, my experience involving the Orthodox clergy was actually the most tense and shocking. It also surprised me since, speaking for myself, I have always had great admiration for the beautiful liturgies of the Orthodox. And, while I know little of the internal realities of those Churches, I have always hoped...

Prof. Justus Reid Weiner discusses the situation regarding Christians living in Palestinian Authority controlled Bethlehem as opposed to those Christians living in Nazareth, Israel.

Another anti-semitic invention to exploit the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem to propagate a lie:["More than a billion Christians around the world are about to celebrate Christmas, commemorating the birth of Jesus, the promised Messiah. There is one thing the Palestinian Arabs hope you all remember during those celebrations - that Jesus was, in fact, a Palestinian (Arab).It is nothing new for the Palestinians to claim that Jesus was a Palestinian. The Palestinian leadership gets in on the action all the time. Yasser Arafat used to openly declare as much as he kicked off Christmas from Bethlehem every year.Arafat...