Fact-finding or fiction-finding pilgrimages?

The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF) invites you to travel with members of Market Square Presbyterian Church this summer on a Christian pilgrimage and fact-finding mission to see the holy sites in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel and to meet with Christian communities in the Holy Land

Propaganda and racism combined in one sentence here: Notice that no opportunity is offered to observe the impact of terrorism on Israelis, only their efforts to defend themselves from it.

There will be many opportunities to observe firsthand the full impact of the occupation on the indigenous Christians living in Palestine.

‘Indigenous’ Christians – this is a racist term, which implies that the Christians have been there from the time of Adam and Eve, while the Jews are foreigners.

Beware any Christian pilgrimage which includes a ‘fact-finding mission’! ‘Fact-finding missions’ and propaganda campaigns feature in no Christian pilgrimages anywhere except the Holy Land. Lourdes, Guadalupe, Santiago de Compostela, Fatima, Walsingham – no politicized ‘fact-finding’ or exposure to ‘indigenous’ Christians there. When I visited Walsingham, many of my fellow pilgrims were of African origin, and an offer of a chance to meet ‘indigenous’ (presumably white English) Christians in the area would have looked like racism.

Here is the latest exercise in propaganda disguised as pilgrimage.

Propaganda and racism combined in one sentence here: Notice that no opportunity is offered to observe the impact of terrorism on Israelis, only their efforts to defend themselves from it.

There will be many opportunities to observe firsthand the full impact of the occupation on the indigenous Christians living in Palestine.

‘Indigenous’ Christians – this is a racist term, which implies that the Christians have been there from the time of Adam and Eve, while the Jews are foreigners.

Arafat liked to pretend that Jesus was the first Palestinian, not a Jew. Both Arafat and Hanan Ashrawi have used this lie as a way of pretending that the Arabs have prior claim to the land.

The Muslims who invaded Judea in 636, to be sure, were not the Jebusites of Biblical history. And the Palestinian Arabs are about as closely related to the Canaanites, who in any event disappeared 2,500 years ago, as they are to the Hebrew "invaders" — to whom the Palestinians also claim kinship at times. Both Arafat and Ashrawi have publicly claimed that Jesus, in fact, was "Palestinian." In July 2000, under the headline "Nazareth: The City Where the Jews Murdered the First Palestinian of Her Sons," Al Hayat Al Jadida opined, "The forces of the Zionist occupation did not succeed in altering the face of the Palestinian Nazareth, and she did not forget and will not forget her first son who the Jews betrayed and handed over to the Roman emperor, and persisted until he was taken out to be killed."

Forget the lies manufactured as though from the Protocols of the Elders of Palestine. A few years ago I recall reading in an annual report by Aid to the Church in Need (report not online – or at least I can’t find it there) that most Christians in the Holy Land are descended from Turkish Christians who were allowed in by the British during the Mandate Period, in order to escape Muslim persecution. Meanwhile, the Jews have had a continuous presence there for thousands of years. In other words, they are more indigenous than some Turks who arrived less than a century ago.

So, good Christians would be wise to avoid such pilgrimages, as they teach lies and encourage hate. They are not good for you.

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