Melanie Phillips: on Israel’s Remembrance Day
It’s something like our Memorial Day, and it’s today. In her article, Phillips quotes at length from a recent interview with Itamar Marcus, head of Palestinian Media Watch. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, but here’s an interesting excerpt that has to do with the treatment of Christians in the Middle East:
The Christians of Bethlehem and the West Bank thrived under Israel. Under Israel, Christians made up approximately 70 per cent of the population of Bethlehem. The PA’s Islamic supremacist ideology, which it passes on to its people even though it denies this internationally, has led to so much anti-Christian hate and terror that Christianity is being decimated in the Palestinian areas. The Christian population of Bethlehem today is close to 10 per cent. All the rest have run away to South America and Europe. Of course, Christians in the West Bank have to blame Israel for the destruction of the Christian population because to openly blame the criminal PA could mean their death sentences. There are Palestinian Muslims who PMW works with who agree completely with PMW’s messages because they sincerely want peace with Israel, and they can tell only their very closest friends that they want true peace with Israel. They are afraid they will be arrested and tortured if the PA police ever finds out about their real opinions…
Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians thrive in every aspect of life and enjoy equal rights. If you look at Muslim countries in the Middle East or Africa, it can be seen how Christians are persecuted and massacred on a monthly basis.
Palestinians are highly adept at propaganda, and have been for many decades. That is probably their most successful export.
Certainly a lot of folks eat it up. Same cohort which thinks the US is an awful place.
They also went to Nazareth.
There is an Israeli Christian who is working to get Israeli Christians to integrate better into Israel. He successfully sued to get “Aramean” added as an option to the Israeli identity cards. He also is working to revive Aramaic as a spoken language. Basically, he’s working to distance the Israeli Christian identity from an Arab identity.
When I learned more about the native Christian population of the middle east, I wondered why they didn’t emulate the Israeli Jews more: reviving their language as a starter. I did meet Christians from Iraqi some forty years ago in Greece. They were speaking Aramaic and I looked at them strangely because I could kind of understand what they were saying. One of them asked me why I was looking at them and I told them. He seemed rather surprised. He told me that they were Iraqi Christians, NOT Arabs, and they were speaking THEIR language, the one that spoke at home and with each other.
Anyhow, going back to Nazareth…
There are Christians there who, despite all of the horrible treatment of Christians by Moslems in the middle east, are still antagonist towards Israel. But they can afford to be as they are in Israel and not in the PA like the people in Bethlehem were.
Forty years ago, Bethlehem was nice.
Don’t forget the Assyrian Christian population of the Assyrian Nineveh Plain region in Iraq. The oldest Christian population group in the Near East, older even than Egypt’s Copts — Assyrians were the first non-Hebrew people to convert en masse to Christianity — and, along with the Copts, the last. I’ve been working with them for the past ten years, helping with their efforts to build a defense force. I’m not military but I work with people who are, and who are spearheading this effort.
For more info click on this link: Near East Center for Strategic Engagement (NES-SE)
Typo, above: should be NEC-SE
For a contrary view, namely that Christians, like Muslims, are actively persecuted by Israel’s extremist right wing government, see:
https://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/freedom-of-religion-and-other-lies/
A Jewish state in Palestine is not possible. The solution has to be a secular, nonsectarian state.
bob sykes:
The usual out-of-context propaganda.
Do you wonder why the number of people were limited at the church, for example? There actually was a valid reason:
That’s just one example of a correction of the stuff you linked. As I said, Palestinian propaganda is highly developed, and there are many sites disseminating it.
Arab propaganda is not that adept. It is aimed at the susceptible, like bob sykes. The susceptible are quite common in Europe, less so in the U.S.
Bob Sikes seems rather gullible, or perhaps merely anti-semitic.
Fun editorial in WSJ today for those of you who subscribe.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-75-year-odyssey-from-left-to-right-jabotinsky-begin-bibi-religion-zionism-3f63d8fe?st=9i8kd0j3bf1g1g1&reflink=article_copyURL_share
The Palestinians greatest export to the world is terrorism followed by propaganda. Too bad so many churches in America are run by atheist leftists who are rabidly anti Israel.
Bob Sykes
“A Jewish state in Palestine is not possible. The solution has to be a secular, nonsectarian state” – you are an anti-Semite if you believe that. Right because the the Arab world is loaded with secular, non sectarian states. How did that work out in Lebanon?
Bob Sykes: I could not get past the first line in that link:
“The United States government, in its incessant bullying of foreign nations to get them to see the world the way that the cabal that runs Washington sees it . . .”
I honestly do not understand how anyone could read that first line and even remotely think the rest of the article could be worth reading.
Israel has the resources to destroy its enemies, yet has chosen not to.
Men have the resources to retake society from women, yet have chosen not to.
“Red” Americans have the resources to retake American society from “Blue” Americans, yet have chosen not to.
Yet.
I spent a couple of years in one of the nearby Muslim-majority states, Egypt, and I can tell those easily fooled, like commenter “Bob Sykes,” that Christians face significant repression and sometimes violence there. Jews who used to live in Egypt, families who had been in Egypt for many generations, were evicted following the establishment of the State of Israel. I visited the historic medieval synagogue in Old Cairo, but there are no Jews there to pray in it.
The idea that Israel could survive as a “secular, nonsectarian state” in a part of the world where no such thing exists is impossible propaganda.
I have seen “Bob Sykes” on Instapundit and I can assure you that he is not exactly a fan of the Jewish people. I could say something more harsh but I do not want to tickoff the owner of this blog.
Philip Giraldi whom he links to is a rabid mad dog anti-Semite.
I would be a devoted reader of Unz Review but for the anti-Semitism.
Kate: “Jews who used to live in Egypt, families who had been in Egypt for many generations, were evicted following the establishment of the State of Israel. I visited the historic medieval synagogue in Old Cairo, but there are no Jews there to pray in it.”
Thank you Kate – When I hear people talk about the “right to return” in reference to Palestinians “kicked out of” Israel; I say “sure, let’s support the right to return, but make sure that it is a 2-way street.” In other words, the right to return (or financial compensation) shouldn’t just be about Palestinians who fled Israel but also Jews who fled across the Middle East, and elsewhere, to the safety of Israel.
There is also a reason why there are no Jewish refugee camps like there are Palestinian refugee camps in that the neighboring Arab countries, despite all the clamoring for the Palestinians, don’t really care enough to help take them in; Israel did and continues to take in Jewish refugees where ever they come from. These refugees to Israel become viable, integral, welcomed members of Israeli society. The Israeli attitude is very much a “whatever you have been through, where ever you have come from, you are home now. Welcome home!”
Aside from Jordan, the neighboring countries won’t do the same for Palestinian refugees.
Anybody who comments on the Middle East risks being caught up in the propaganda of one side or the other.
Our one and only trip to Israel was in 2018, arriving on the Day of Remembrance and there for Israel’s 70th anniversary. Truly a “pilgrimage”, not just a trip. Though we are Catholic, we traveled with our son’s in-laws, Pastors of an evangelical church, with 38 other people. The manner in which the Jewish people celebrate such occasions was truly “other than”. So respectful–restaurants closed, television only airing programming honoring the subject–public, nationwide moments of silence. And great festivities for the Independence, beginning at evening, throughout the night and all-day in the parks the next day. For our day in Bethlehem, our guide, an orthodox Jew, could not be with us so we were handed off to a Muslim guide of that area. We ate at a wonderful restaurant and shopped in a lovely shop, both owned by Christians. The Christian presence is much diminished from years past. Years ago I read Charles Sennott’s book, The Body and the Blood: The Middle East’s Vanishing Christians and the Possibility for Peace. It was an excellent read and I think still pertinent today.
Kate:
Yes, but “bob sykes” is not interested in promoting the survival of Israel.
Of course he isn’t, Neo. Nor are his news and commentary sources.
Abraxas said:
Anybody who comments on the Middle East risks being caught up in the propaganda of one side or the other.
========
There ya go, twas ever thus it seems. No matter your stance you run the risk of being slammed. I stay out of it.
I was very disappointed in the Catholic church’s lack of reaction to the anti-Christian pogroms in the middle east in the past two decades. As always, there were heroic individuals doing great work, and also independent, Catholic groups, but the Vatican and Church leaders were all too often silent and did almost nothing to assist the centuries old communities driven out, or worse, martyred.
Rufus T. Firefly–agreed. Perhaps some embrace the erroneous replacement theology. Or it can just be the numerous false shepherds that exist (and have always existed) in the Body. We are very close to a wonderful priest from Nigeria who has been “on loan” to the USA for the last 20 or so years. What is going on there is horrible and you do not hear much about it at all. Regarding other issues, this priest has pointed out to me the parable of the wheat and the tares referring to the Kingdom of God. The day will come when the tares are removed.
Neo: “Palestinians are highly adept at propaganda”.
Their propaganda goes worldwide by cooperative media to ignorant people with stupid ideas, like ‘All Jews love money’, or ‘The Jews stole land owned by Muslims to establish Israel’. One does not have to be highly adept to fool ignorant fools. The ignorance of Western civilization foretells its demise.
The WSJ article posted by Mike Plaiss was a pretty good summary – although it gives the “liberal” Left a pass in many areas. In sentences like this he simply repeats the self-flattering potted history of the Labor Establishment:
Stirring, but false.
The vast majority of Israeli Jews did not come to Israel to exchange their Jewish faith and morality for a Marxist utopian dream. The socialists – always political critters at their core – were the extremists, and they grabbed power ruthlessly. Their repeated betrayal and murder of fellow Jews broke a natural taboo deepened by centuries of oppression.
The Left’s condescension and racism towards other Jewish groups – combined with pursuit of Leftie kumbaya political fantasies in a very dangerous neighborhood – has led to their demise. Israelis were raised on the Establishment’s self-serving myths (some of them repeated in the WSJ article) – but have been “red pilled” and grown disenchanted over the years.
The current Leftie efforts to block basic, obvious judicial reforms betray their total lack of commitment to the fundamental social covenants of Democracy. It has always been about power and ideology for them. This is now clearer than ever to a majority of Israelis.
It is most telling that the Lefties imported a contingent of “Handmaid’s Tale” protesters in bonnets and red robes… They are desperately trying to distract people from their own lack of scruples by screeching that without them, Israel will become a benighted theocracy.
But without them Israel will just become freer – as it became more economically free under the Likud – and more democratic.