A Christmas without Christians-Palestinian aggression forces Christians to flee Bethlehem.

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | December 16, 2005 | Abraham H. Miller

[SJackson]

Since the Palestinian Authority’s takeover of Bethlehem in 1995, under the Oslo Accords with Israel, Bethlehem has been transformed from a Christian city into a Muslim city. Bethlehem’s remaining Christians now live in a condition of dhimmitude (a reference to the second-class citizenship Islam imposes on Christians) in the city of Jesus’ birth.

The Palestinians brought with them a political system based on primitive tribal relations, where the power of one’s clan became a substitute for the law. As a consequence, Christians have suffered civil outrage and criminal violence without recourse to justice.

Christians have been refusing to live under these conditions and have been leaving Bethlehem in large numbers.

So who is to blame for the plight of Bethlehem’s Christians and for the birthplace of Jesus being emptied of Christians? Why, the Jews, of course! Who else?

That is the Orwellian message of the American Arab Anti-discrimination Committee (AADC) that held a candle lighting vigil on November 29, 2005 for Bethlehem’s Christians at San Francisco’s Union Square as the Christmas shopping season began.

Muslims in Bethlehem make the lives of Christians unbearable and force them to flee their ancestral homes while Muslims in America hold a vigil to blame the Jews.

To understand how the Christians became a minority and the victims of thuggery in the city of Jesus’ birth, it is important to see just what Arafat did to Bethlehem once he got his hands on it.

In 1995, Yasser Arafat gained control of Bethlehem and immediately expanded its municipal boundaries to include 30,000 Muslims living in neighboring refugee camps. Next, Muslim Bedouins living east of Bethlehem were incorporated into revised municipal boundaries. All this was still not enough for the PA to change the status of Bethlehem as a Christian city. But then Arafat created inducements for Muslims to leave Hebron and the area around it and move to Bethlehem.

With Arafat’s government by clan, by gun, and by terror, a land Mafia developed that began expropriating land from Christians. In 2002, two Christian teenage sisters were found with their throats slit and their genitals mutilated. Muslims claimed the Amer sisters were prostitutes, as if that were justification for torture and murder. But Christians familiar with similar incidents claim the girls were murdered to cover up a gang rape.

Of course, none of this appears in the AADC’s call for the candlelight vigil that is also designed to showcase the AADC’s divestment campaign against Israel.

The plight of Bethlehem’s Christians under the PA’s thuggery has, however, drawn outrage from Christian organizations worldwide. The mainstream Protestant churches in America, however, have been too busy with their divestment campaigns to take the notice of the plight of Christians living under the Palestinian Authority’s tribalism.

Indeed, just this week, the Vatican, in a rare diplomatic move, called publicly on the Israelis to intervene in Bethlehem on behalf of its severely receding Christian population. Now totaling less than 12% of Bethlehem’s population, Christians, who have been the targets of continual PA violence, might leave entirely. The result will be that in the place where Jesus was born there will no longer be a Christian community.

In the West Bank town of Taibe marauding Muslims burned, looted and beat Christian residents in the name of a Muslim family’s “honor,” a family whose father had brutally beaten his daughter to death for wanting to marry a Christian. The violent Muslim mob burned a statue of the Virgin Mary and shouted, “Burn the Crusaders!” PA fire and security forces took their time arriving on the scene, appearing hours later. In the end, the mob was almost immediately released from jail. Meanwhile, the Christian fiancée of the murdered woman was arrested and beaten while incarcerated. The lesson—that of the mob being released while an innocent Christian languished in jail—was not lost on the Christian community of the West Bank!

Father Artemio Vitores, who supervises the holy places in Israel and the Palestinian Authority for the Vatican, recently and publicly, asked Israel’s President Moshe Katsav, “Help us keep Bethlehem.” This appeal represents a sharp and desperate change in Vatican politics. The Vatican has long feared offending the Palestinians far more than offending Israel.

After Palestinian terrorists took over the Church of the Nativity in 2002, and brutalized the priests inside, the Vatican pressured Israel to give the terrorists safe passage and not to invade or destroy the church. Israel eventually complied. For its part, the Vatican refuses to speak of the brutality that occurred inside the church or even to re-consecrate it, for to do so would mean that the Vatican would have to acknowledge how the church was desecrated.

The Vatican is walking a tightrope in the unstable Middle East. The church’s primary concern is to preserve both the Holy Places and its role in administering them. With the outcome of the Palestinian-Israeli war still unknown and unpredictable and with Bethlehem already in the hands of the PA, the Vatican is faced with an unenviable set of difficult choices.

Now the Vatican is further confronted with the realities facing Christians who no longer live under Israeli protection but instead under Palestinian oppression. The Vatican’s direct request for Israeli assistance is a strong indicator of how threatened the Christians are and that the Vatican is well aware that the PA is the cause of and not the solution to the problem.

None of this of course will matter to the AADC’s propaganda machine that will asked people to “light a candle to protect Bethlehem’s Christians from Israeli oppression.” The AADC’s spin is that Christians flee Bethlehem because of Israel’s policies. Isn’t it strange that Christians flee while Muslims stay and grow dramatically in number, and Christian property ownership recedes as Muslim property ownership expands. Muslims oppress Christians over there while here Muslims hold vigils blaming the Jews for the oppression inflicted on Bethlehem’s Christians.

In San Francisco, of course, where President Bush is equated with Hitler and the American military is considered a terrorist organization, reality doesn’t matter. We have to give the AADC's organizers credit. They could not have found a more susceptible audience or a ritual more reminiscent of Hitler’s torchlight parades than by lighting candles against “Jewish oppression” in San Francisco’s Union Square full of Christmas shoppers.

Abraham H. Miller is professor emeritus, University of Cincinnati and has published extensively on the subject of political terrorism.

[rbg81]

Yet the Palestinian Christians continually take the PA side over Israel in every dispute. No doubt this is out of fear, but at some point you have to think they got what they asked for.

[SJackson]

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Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking the keyword Israel.

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[Mr. Keys]

I really believe it's just a matter of time until the muslims destroy the Christian sites, knowing that they can without fear of retaliation.

[NYer]

O Little Town Of Bethlehem
words by don hinchey (from amos trust christmas leaflet)


o little town of bethlehem
how still we see thee lie
above thy deep and restless sleep
a missile glideth by
and over dark streets soundeth
the mortar's deadly roar
while children weep in shallow sleep
for friends who are no more

how silently how silently
their hope has gone away
no laughter rings no choir sings
in shepherds fields this day
the angels in the heavens
are hushed in sad lament
back in exie the holy child
finds herod won't relent

o holy child of bethlehem
descend to us we pray
your love bring down on david's town
drive fear and hate away
awake the ire of nations
let justice be restored
rebuild the peace in silent streets
where once your love was born


O Little Town Of Bethlehem
words by wendy ross barker (from uspg resource 'born among us')


o sad and troubled bethlehem
we hear your longing cry
for peace and justice to be born
and cruel oppression die
how deep your need for that
great gift of love in human form
let Christ in you be seen again
and hearts by hope made warm

while morning stars and evening stars
shine out in your dark sky
despair now stalks your troubled streets
where innocents still die
and Jesus child of mary
whose love will never cease
feels even now your pain and fear
longs with you for your peace

amazingly and lovingly
jesus the child has come
and brought to birth through human pain
makes broken hearts his home
he comes to comfort all who weep
to challenge every wrong
and living with the weak and poor
becomes their hope, their song

Catholic Ping - Please freepmail me if you want on/off this list

[kittymyrib]

No Christians allowed in Bethlehem...another of legacy of Bill Clinton and Maddy Albright. Arafat is giggling in his grave.

[x5452]

I second it, I say we use US military might to capture all the Holy Places, and knock over any mosques that get in the way.

[sauropod]

TROP /s

[SQUID]

First of all, the Vatican does not represent ALL of Christianity. The Vatican separated from the Eastern Orthodox Church. If anything, Orthodoxy has been impacted a 100 times more because of Islam than any Catholic.

Second, people do what they think is going to preserve their interest. They are fools for actually thinking you can count on a Muslim not to bother you if you side against Israel. This is to say that Muslims actually have a conscience when it comes to infidels of any type. But this is the mistake they made and all of Christianity, including the Vatican, has to live with it or must do something about it. The reality is, when the Muslims take complete control over the city, Christian relics will be wiped from the face of the earth. At this point there will indeed be war with Islam. AGAIN!

[.cnI redruM]

Herod Agrippa rides again!

[SQUID]

Truth is life.

[Cinnamon Girl]

How about the Christians speaking up for themselves? How is the Vatican helping by pretending the islamic arabs aren't the source of oppression?

[monday]

JUst the tip of the iceberg. Muslims won't be happy until all non Muslims are dead.

[Sam Gamgee]

Sadly, the Orthodox people did bear the brunt of the Moslem horde’s incursion into Christian Europe. For their thanks their glorious empire was sacked by stupid and greedy tyrants from Christendom. When the Moslems finished off Constantinople, their barbarity was something that would have shamed the Mongols. Decapitating bishops. Raping Christian women. (Not surprising for a religion that is all about rape and theft) It saddens and angers me even thinking about it now.

[Sam Gamgee]

It seems it is an infection of this age that has come upon all Christian communities. Political correctness is rampant within the Church whether it is admitted or not. Even here in the safety of North America, pastors and their people seem hesitant to condemn Islam. Some see it as simply a monotheistic religion not unlike Judaism that rejects the Trinity. Somehow they don’t see that failing to condemn Islamic regimes for their tyrannies is a parallel of Church men preaching pacifism in the midst of World War II (although there were some – Patton called them pulpit killers)

[SQUID]

See, all of this is why we need to come together. Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox. We are not that different from each other. Maybe we can have 3 Popes. I don't care. The Eastern church is getting wiped out and the Western brothers are watching. The fact is, when they are done with the East they will move West and there is no paper, promise, trade treaty, peace treaty, dialog, diplomacy or whatever that will stop them from attaining this goal.

There will come a time when some people will need to either deny the Cross or fight for it without shame.

[SJackson]

Seems to me most have. Worldwide, the support tends to be for the palestinians.

[Convert from ECUSA]

I wish Israel would go back into Bethlehem, take it back, and toss out the Amakelstinians. When Israel ruled Bethlehem, the Church of the Nativity was never trashed or treated as a latrine, and Christians could visit Bethlehem without fearing Muslim terrorism, bullying, or indimidation. Give me Israeli rule over Christian holy places over Muslim rule of them any day of the week!

[montag813]

Yet the Palestinian Christians continually take the PA side over Israel in every dispute

To hell with all Arabs