West Bank Update - Christian Community Part 1

A contact from the Emmaus group in the UK recently returned to Bethlehem to assess any changes in the status of the Christian community there.

Below is part 1 of his report.

 Since my last visit in 2012 there have been some notable changes. An overwhelming sense of fear and anticipation now pervades the Christian community, fuelled by their belief there is little they can do to change anything. They are now a minority representing just 4.8% of the population living among a Moslem majority of 95.2%, with a fragile constitution built on Sharia that affords them less rights or equality. It would be unfair to say they have given up hope, but there is a growing sense of hopelessness.

Palestinian society as a whole seems to be deteriorating with increasing levels of debt, violence, discrimination and lack of interest in even trying to explore ways forward with the Israel. Many are just too tired and weary.

Fear:

Fear was present in most conversations as was anger. There is deep frustration with the Palestinian Authority who, in their opinion, has failed them completely. Basic infrastructures are absent or of poor quality with no credible law and order, health service, social services or education.

This is despite the vast amounts of aid flowing in over twenty years. While I was there, three days of shootings occurred with gunfights in the street at night, and a police officer killed. Hospitals and medical facilities are avoided for fear of catching disease and government schools are seen as incubators of radicalism.

It is unsafe for Christian women to walk in parts of some cities and although not a new phenomenon, the areas in which women will now not walk has widened. Kidnapping is a growing concern, exacerbated by the very recent attempt to take two young female Christian schoolteachers on their way to work. Christian schoolchildren will not travel in taxis unless the driver is a Christian and known personally to the family. There are rumours (unconfirmed) of young children being kidnaped in Beit Sahour, a neighbouring town to Bethlehem, for the harvesting of body organs. Even school Facebook pages are warning parents to be vigilant. It is believed that Beit Sahour is being targeted because it has a higher proportion of Christians.

“Israel is holding us together, otherwise radical Islamists groups like Hamas would have taken us over” 27yr old Hebron Resident

Pilgrims Progress in Israel

A recent film issued on Al Jazeera http://tinyurl.com/ndsuesc depicts passionate views from Palestinian priests, a Christian tour operator and a British writer as they speak out against the obstacles facing pilgrims visiting sacred sites today, particularly Bethlehem and Nazareth.

As with many such programmes, the arguments seem convincing. I passed it on the a friend who is a professional tour guide and surprise, surprise, there is a different story.

She writes:-

Thank you for this. I watched that film twice and I must say, it is a good piece of propaganda, filled with half truths and lies.

As a tour guide working with pilgrims (and other groups) I must say, that none of my pilgrims ever visit Yad Vashem. It simply does not exist in these itineraries. Also Eilat is never included, as a proper pilgrim tour takes 8 days maximum.

Further, Qasr el Yahud is included in every pilgrim tour since the place is open to public. However, many Christians prefer to get baptised in Yardenit as the water quality at Qasr el Yahud is very poor. But there are groups baptising there as well. I see them all the time; Ethiopians, Russians, South Americans, Indians etc.  

Bethlehem; Only few Israeli tour guides and few Jewish bus drivers (all Israeli Arab drivers enter!) are entering the site, as we need special permit to Shetach A. There, a Palestinian Tour Guide, mostly connected to one of the shops, enters the bus and brings the pilgrims to one of the Restaurants, then to the Shop, then to the Church and the Shepherd Fields. 

Some visit the Caritas Children Hospital. This takes all in all about 4 hours, depending on how many people standing in line at the birth place of Jesus. By the way; there are absolutely no spiritual feelings in Bethlehem, but a lot of pressure and most of my groups are happy to return to Jerusalem. They simply hate to be fed with propaganda. They want (and they have the right to) to hear different sides of the conflict, that means different views of Israelis and the different Palestinian point of views. That is our duty.  There is no black and white and that is obviously what they get there. (a Messianic Jew tour guide might be an exemption, but I doubt that)

Some groups stay overnight and tour next day to Herodion and other places. 45 minutes will never do!

Nazareth; indeed, there is a point of truth that pilgrims visit the Church of Annunciation and that’s it. There is much more to see, but due to the itinerary, there is simply no time for more. Some operators include a walk through the village and a view point on Har Hagfiza.

Jenin and Nablus are never included in a pilgrim’s program. It would be much more expensive, as bullet proofed buses have to be arranged and which Israeli tour guide wants to visit these places? I would not go and I think, we are not insured there, as we are not when we enter Bethlehem, even with permits!

I checked on the internet that British Reverend talking in the film. He has an anti-Semitic record! Unfortunately, many people do not know how to differentiate between truth and propaganda when they hear people of the public talking, like these different priests and reverends. It’s a disgrace! Films like these make me very angry and sad.

Just another "Snow" story

Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance assisted in tackling the snow and Ice near Bethlehem by the IDF. Just another area of cooperation!!

Can Co-existence Work?

With thanks to an associate who publishes "Good News" weekly (GN)http://www.angloraanana.com/goodnews.html, one item caught my attention. Peace talks are going to go through a stop-go phase until the trees that have been climbed are cut down to size. Meanwhile all sorts of projects in co-existence are proceeding

As it has been said before, says GN, and it bears repeating without so much as blushing, in the rough and tumble of relationships in our neck of the woods we sometimes get the impression that our nearest neighbors spend their entire day plotting our demise without so much as a half hour break for lunch.

Nothing could be further from the truth. A few examples: Collaboration on nature conservation; patronizing and working in, our up market shopping malls; a wide range of sports including the newly established Kraft American football league boasting Israeli and Palestinian players.

Of course, in the medical field and business and trade a lot is quietly going on .

And last but by no means least and this is not a joke, the belly dancer of the moment at up scale affairs in Bethlehem is a Jewish lady from Ashdod who charges and gets NIS1600 ($440) for a fifteen minute dance routine. So there you have it folks, it’s just that we do things a little differently here

Bethlehem, Not According to the BBC

In spite of the fact that many media organisations want to focus on the negatives of the Israel Palestinian conflict, the signs are good in Bethlehem

Tens of thousands of visitors are expected to arrive for Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem this week, an influx that will push tourism to Israel to a record high of three million visitors in 2008.The town of Christ’s birth is busy readying for a crush of Christian pilgrims in Manger Square next week, following years of dismal figures during the holiday season. Local hotels are reporting 100% bookings and as many as 60,000 visitors are expected by Christmas Day next Thursday.

Today, Bethlehem is an Arab city of over 100,000 that has lost its Christian majority. The city council has been dominated in recent years by loyalists of Hamas, whose suicide bombing campaign earlier this decade forced Israel to encircle the town with a security wall.

Bethlehem has high unemployment and relies heavily on tourism, which normally peaks around the Nativity celebrations. Thus, Israeli authorities have made extra efforts to ease the entry of pilgrims into Bethlehem this Christmas."There is not just an atmosphere of peace, but an atmosphere of trust for the whole world to see… We believe, when it comes to tourism, there are no borders," said senior Deputy Director General of the Tourism Ministry.

According to statistics released this week, the three million visitors who will have entered Israel this year marks an all-time high and represents a 30% increase over 2007. Some two-thirds of the tourists who arrived in the Holy Land this year, totaling two million travellers, were Christians. Roughly half of them were Catholics and the other half various Protestant and Orthodox denominations.The USA accounted for 625,000 visitors in 2008, (20% of all incoming tourism), followed by Russia, France the UK and then several other European countries plus Canada.

For 58% of tourists in 2008, this was their first visit to Israel, whereas 42% had previously visited the country.

Christians Still Under Threat

Bethlehem, the centre of Christianity is looking decidedly cheerful this holiday season. Hotels are booked solid through til January and Manger Square is bustling with tourists, and Israeli and Palestinian forces are working to make things go smoothly.

With calm gradually returning to the West Bank, Bethlehem has once again become a magnet for Christmas pilgrims.

These facts, however, bear no relation to the lies and distortions being related in various areas of the world.

Rev Stephen Coulter in London has decided based on Palestinian propaganda that his congregants could not, truthfully sing the carol’s line, “How - still - we see thee lie” in the preparation for Christmas.

So much wool is being pulled over the eyes of the world that many can’t see the wood for the trees. Rev Coulter intimated that a crib set he used in his church had to be “smuggled“out of the West Bank and that the producers of communion wine could not export their produce.

But let’s confuse this issue with facts

1) There is no hold up of wine coming out of the Cremisan winery in Beit Jala -- this has been confirmed by a spokesman at the winery who says they ship out the wine daily (there was a short temporary hitch of a few days) . These shipments go direct to Haifa and Ashdod to be shipped abroad. It is true it is going via Hebron as that is where the most up-to-date modern crossing point.

2) Israel has not banned exports of olive wood models of any type.

3) Tourism into Bethlehem – including of course Christian pilgrims- is up an astonishing 96.5% in the first nine months of 2008, thanks to the significant improvement in the security situation in the last two years.

4) The Palestinian economy in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) has shown signs of strengthening since the beginning of the year, according to a recent analysis by the Civil Administration. The analysis was based on data gathered by the Civil Administration as well as publicly available figures.

There have been large increases in the passage of commercial goods as a direct result of the increase in employment licenses and trade permits issued to Palestinian merchants and business owners by the Civil Administration since the beginning of 2008.

A full report of the progress of the Palestinian economy can be found at http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Communiques/2008/Palestinian_economy_West_Bank_strengthens_2008+8-Sep-2008.htm

Let me also try to remove more of the wool from eyes. Having previously desecrated the Nativity Church, Muslim terrorists confiscated Christian property, burned shops and attacked Christians, so that many have fled, thus the once mainly Christian 60% of the population has become a small, fearful minority of approx 20%

Israels critics are so busy belabouring Israel, perhaps they don’t notice what is going on.
Jeff Alper, another fierce critic of Israel currently touring Scotland has been given free range to his agenda where according to Halper, http://www.honestreporting.com/israel's%20inhumanity.pdf due to Israel, Palestinian Christians are:

“being driven out, very systematically even targeted perhaps. If you eliminate this population, then you will weaken the Palestinian society. So they are being forced out, out of their homes, off their land and out of the country completely.”

The truth is very different. The parlous position of Palestinian Christians, indeed the difficult position of most Christians across the Arab world, is a consequence not of Israeli aggression but of growing Islamist influence. Israel goes out of its way to honour sites and traditions sacred to other faiths while the radicals who are driving Palestinian politics seek to create an Islamist state in which other faiths, if they survive at all, do so with the explicit subject status of dhimmis. But when it comes to Israel's position in these matters it's still a case of “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see them lie”

It is quite remarkable that the Western media is totally ignoring a systematic campaign of persecution of Christians is taking place in the Gaza Strip, and to a lesser extent in the West Bank. The general silence surrounding this campaign aids its perpetrators.

The perpetrators are a variety of Islamist groups, all of which are manifestations of a process of growing Islamic militancy and piety taking place across the region.

Jonathon Spyer in the Jerusalem Post Dec 11th http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1228728163698&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull reports that :-

a) A recent article in the Palestinian Al-Ayyam newspaper drew attention to the long-simmering issue of "compulsory purchase" of land owned by Christians. This trend has been particularly noticeable in the Bethlehem, Ramallah and al-Bireh areas. Individuals with close links to the Palestinian Authority security forces, or to powerful clans, have adopted a variety of means to lay their hands on Christian-owned land. These have included false registration documents, squatters, and the involvement of senior PA security officers.

b) The Al-Ayyam columnist who raised this issue, Abd al-Nasser al-Najjar, lamented that no "constructive action" by the authorities to protect the Christians has taken place. Najjar listed the PA authorities, the Palestinian political factions, and the myriad of NGOs present in the West Bank among the bodies who might have been expected to take an interest in this situation, and who have not done so.

c) The official bodies of Palestinian nationalism continue to claim that the Palestinians are a single nation, with harmony between Christians and Muslims. The official leadership of Palestinian Arab Christianity repeats this claim.

d) These events reflect broader regional processes. Their failure to become known is also part of a larger trend. The foreign media, NGOs on the ground and some Western political leaderships prefer to foster a version of events in the West Bank and Gaza based on illusion and willful ignorance of the evidence. The slow death of an ancient community is one of the fruits of this.

Two Tales of Education

Two reports below show two faces of the complex problem of education in the Palestinian curricula. I wonder which one will succeed? No prizes for guessing.

From a report in Palestinian Media Watch http://www.pmw.org.il/ we now see a new character on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa television station to “continue” the legacy of its star martyr, Farfur – the Mickey Mouse lookalike who was "beaten to death" by an Israeli on the previous program. The new character on the children’s show Tomorrow’s Pioneers, a bee named Nahool, tells the hostess he is Farfur’s cousin and that he wishes to “continue the path of Farfur… the path of martyrdom, the path of the Jihad warriors… and in his name we shall take revenge upon the enemies of Allah, the murderers of the prophets...” The expression "Murderers of the prophets" is an Islamic expression used by the Palestinian religious leaders to refer to Jews. Defining the Jews as the enemies of God is common in their religious broadcasting.

Without apparent regard for the sensitivities of their child viewers, the show’s creators killed off the Farfur character in a particularly violent way that allowed them to continue the show’s rabidly anti-Israel messages.It is now clear that these messages will continue through the new Nahool character.

The following is an excerpt from the program:Hostess Saraa’: “Who are you? And where did you come from?”Nahool: “I am Nahool [the bee], Farfur’s cousin.”Saraa’: “And what do you want?”Nahool: "I want to continue the path of Farfur, the path of “Islam is the solution”. The path of heroism, the path of martyrdom, the path of the Jihad warriors. Me and my friends shall continue the path of Farfur. And in his name we shall take revenge upon the enemies of Allah, the murderers of the prophets [i.e. the Jews], the murderers of innocent children, until Al-Aqsa will be liberated from their filth.”Saraa’: “Welcome! Welcome Nahool.”

On the other side of the coin, a recent report of educational cooperation reveals that Palestinian high school students from Ramallah, Bethlehem and east Jerusalem are working on technology projects alongside their Israeli counterparts from Beit Shemesh, Mevaseret Zion and west Jerusalem in the MEET (Middle East Education through Technology) program being taught at the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus.

"I didn't realize they must serve in the army when they graduate from high school until we once spoke about it. I was shocked to hear they have to serve until the age of 21."

This sentence might not sound so surprising if it was coming from an overseas visitor. But the speaker is Anwaar, a 17-year-old Palestinian from east Jerusalem. She was talking about Amit and Nadav, fellow participants in MEET whom she has known for two years. "I don't know yet what I'll do in the army, I just know it's something I have to do," said Nadav. Amit added, "And we're happy to do it."

Most of MEET's funding comes from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

When Anwaar and Manal, also from east Jerusalem, get together with Amit and Nadav, who both study at Leyada high school, also located on Givat Ram, they seldom, if ever, talk politics.

During this summer's school vacation they are busy writing commercial software for GHOST (Global Hosted Operating System), a Palestinian start-up company, developing a compatible task management application that will be accessible to users from any computer.

"I think being here while not talking politics really helps you to get to know each other. This situation helps with rearranging our ideas and minds about the other side," said Anwaar. "I will still be a Palestinian when it ends, but I'll have more experience and I'll get to know the person regardless of his citizenship."

MEET is in its fourth year; all 85 participants receive a scholarship that covers tuition, transportation, food and even the notebooks.

It's difficult to get into MEET. Thirty new students are chosen each year from about 440 applicants, after a selection process that includes a written exam, group dynamics and a personal interview.
Wissam Jarjoui, a 17-year-old Palestinian from Beit Hanina in north Jerusalem, completed the MEET program last year. This fall, he enters MIT with a full scholarship.

While Jarjoui works on his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering or nuclear physics - he hasn't decided which - his friend Lior Kastel, 18, also a graduate of MEET, will be serving in an IDF intelligence unit.