How Yasir Arafat Drove Christians from Bethlehem

Mosaic mag ^ | Dec. 28, 2020 | D. Weinberg

[Conservat1]

..the real reason for Christian decline in Bethlehem: the Palestinian Authority and radical Islam.

It started with Yasser Arafat. Arriving from Tunis, Arafat immediately set out to suppress the Palestinian middle class across the West Bank, which he understood could be the only real opposition to his planned dictatorial authority. He nationalized most business sectors and squeezed Palestinian small businessmen out of business. Especially hard hit were middle class businessmen of Bethlehem, mainly Christian.

Arafat then sidelined the long-time Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, and Arafat’s henchmen led a campaign of terror and intimidation against Christian institutions and families in the city. Land theft, beatings, and intimidation of Christians in Bethlehem by PA security services and other gangs became routine. Forced marriages between Christian women and Moslem men were reported. In 2002, Arafat’s terrorists even took over and defiled the Church of the Nativity for 39 days, holding 200 priests as hostage as the terrorists sought to escape Israeli justice.

The result was an inexorable and ongoing Christian exodus from Bethlehem; a city captured by the PA and taken over by a very intolerant strain of Islam.

... the radical Islamic assault on Christians across the Middle East, often with government encouragement and support.

According to a report commissioned in 2019 by then-British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, pervasive persecution of Christians “sometimes amounting to genocide” is ongoing in parts of the Middle East. Millions of Christians in the region “have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against,” the report finds.

It also highlights how states, and state-sponsored social media, incite hatred and publish propaganda against Christians, especially in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. “The governing AKP in Turkey depicts Christians as a “threat to the stability of the nation. Turkish Christian citizens have often been stereotyped as not real Turks but as Western collaborators.”

Iraq has lost at least two-thirds of its Christians over the past two decades. More than 600,000 Syrian Christians have been displaced or fled Syria since the civil war began. Other Christians have been massacred and buried in mass graves.

In Gaza, Islamic militants have bombed churches, killed prominent Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox), and forced others to convert to Islam. In the West Bank, Arab Christians are better off than almost anywhere in the region, but only an estimated 50,000 live there – about two percent of the population, down from 10 percent in 1920.

Overall, Christians now make up only four percent of the population of the Middle East, down from 20 percent a century ago.

[sauropod]

Bkmk

[DIRTYSECRET]

i don’t know too much about Bethlehem. I will say this: That man was so ugly I’d leave.

[Paperpusher]

Sounds like what is happening here in the USA

[ebb tide]

Thanks, JP II.

[silent majority rising]

The first time that I went to Bethlehem in 1980, it was 40% Christian, at least. Since the PLO and PA took over, it is down to 3%. I had a Christian Arab friend tell me that everyone moved out because Arafat demanded a 25% Jizya tribute to stay. Exactly the same as “Protection” money paid to the Mafia, which operates the same way as Islam.

[Rurudyne]

There isn’t radical Islam, there is only Islam. Mohammad is the example for Islam and he went out robbing, killing, raping and enslaving from the moment he had enough followers to get away with it.

[Conservat1]

“That man was so ugly I’d leave.”
___

Someone once said of his looks,, kinda like / look alike the 72 Virgins myth x-rated paradise of jihad...

[Conservat1]

Yup.

[mosesdapoet]

Really surprised that Arabs who are Christian haven’t confronted Pope Francis.

[silent majority rising]

It is a mystery. Most still have pictures of JP on their walls..