December 25, 2002
WHY AMERICA IS ZIONIST:
The Christian predicament (Jerusalem Post, Dec. 24, 2002)Yasser Arafat, who likes to proclaim himself champion of Christian rights, has repeatedly allowed Christians to be used as human shields in his terrorist war against Israel. Last year, Palestinian gunmen from his Tanzim militias transformed the largely Christian town of Beit Jala, adjacent to Bethlehem, into a base from which to shoot at homes in the nearby Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. Despite repeated pleas from Christian residents to control the gunmen, the Palestinian chairman waited long months before finally ordering his men to stop shooting.Caught in the crossfire of a seemingly endless conflict, the Palestinian Christian community is facing arguably the worst crisis in its long history in this land. No group embraced the Oslo process with as much hope as did the Palestinian Christians, who saw peace as their only chance for the survival of their community. Now, though, emigration has accelerated and an ancient community faces a tragic diminishment.
Within Israel, the prospects for the Christian community are considerably better. Indeed, Israel is one of the few countries in the region where Christian communities have grown and thrived in recent decades. The Arab Christian community maintains among the highest matriculation scores of any population; proportionally, Arab Christians also produce very high numbers of university graduates. That is a mark of pride not only for the Christian community but for the State of Israel.
Remind me again why anyone thinks we should be more balanced as between Israel and the PLO? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 25, 2002 11:24 AM
Because the OT was not a realty deed.
Christians -- not particularly the Palestinian
ones, though -- have a a lot to answer for.
How about making them answer for it?
Name it--we'll answer
Posted by: oj at December 25, 2002 9:47 PMThis article, to put it mildly spins the truth. The growth of Christians in Israel proper is due to two factors: 1. Russian immigrants bringing in Christian relatives and 2. A growing immigrant workforce.
Also, in all the crocodile tears the Post sheds for the Christians in Beit Jala, they forget to mention that Gilo, the "Jewish neighborhood" next door, was built on land siezed (read: stolen) from the residents of Beit Jala and nearby Beit Sahour[?]. The nutball settlers have carried out attacks on Christians just as violently as they have Muslims. If Israel treats its Christian population any better than its neighbors, it's mainly because it has two concerns: a secular tradition and keeping the sugar flowing in from Uncle Sam.
The PLO, for all of its all too evident faults (corruption, thuggery, etc.), is not anti-Christian. An essentially Ba'athist movement, it's historically relied on Arab Christians for its intellectual firepower. In fact, it's far more secular in its approach than even Israel, which outright bans any party that dares to question Israel's Jewish-friendly constitution. They are, obviously, much better than Hamas or Islamic Jihad--both of which, I remind you, started out as Israeli operations.
If Christians hadn't spent centuries making Jews into undermenschen, there would have been no need for a homeland. They could have lived comfortably as distinct small communities within the larger one, the way Parsees did in India.
Even if the Jews themselves yearned for a homeland, no Gentiles would have felt them justified and there would have been no political reason to award them somebody else's land.
It wasn't Jews that made Europe unlivable for Jews, it was Christians. The Jews couldn't stay and they had no place to go.
An insoluble problem. Some mistakes are so bad that no amount of ingenuity can rectify them.
Derek - The PLO is anti-liberty, which amounts to being anti-Christian, as it removes all the space for Christian practice. It's ironic that you cite Israel's limitations upon political parties as a point of inferiority to the PLO, when the PLO allows no opposition and murders its opponents.
Posted by: pj at December 26, 2002 2:05 PMPJ--Being anti-liberty is being anti-Christian? Boy, that would come as a surprise to most of the Christians who lived throughout history, and without what you would consider liberty. At any rate, I do agree that the PLO has some serious problems. That's really not my argument. My main point was that they are not specifically anti-Christian. My main beef, though, is with the article's assumption that Israel is some kind of saint when it comes to dealing with native Christians. She ain't. At best, she's better than her neighbors within Israel proper, but utterly indistinguishable, if not worse at times, within her occupied territories.
Posted by: Derek Copold at December 27, 2002 9:29 AMI'd like to know more about Christian Slavs moving to Israel. First I've heard of it.
Posted by: Harry at December 27, 2002 12:54 PM