When Israel
relinquished control of Bethlehem to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian
Authority as part of the Oslo Accord agreement in 1995, 85% of this prosperous
town were middle class Christians. Business and life was good when it was part
of Israel.
By Christmas
2019, Christians are less than 10% of the population in an economically
stricken town.
How did this
come about?
In 1995,
Elias Freij was that the last Christian mayor of Bethlehem. He appealed to Israeli
Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, not to withdraw from the city as part of the
Accords due to his fear for the future of Christians in Bethlehem. Rabin wanted
an official and public statement from the mayor to that effect to take into his
negotiations. Freij and the church authorities refused Rabin’s request. The rest is a tragic page in Christian history.
The
Palestinian leadership blame the “security wall” for the current
situation. They talk of Israel turning Bethlehem into “a prison.”
The British
artist, Banksy, has advanced his reputation in left-wing circles by promoting
propaganda graffiti scrawled on walls throughout Bethlehem. He has even built a
hotel in Bethlehem called the Walled-Off Hotel which is full of imagery of
Israeli negativity such as a nativity scene in front of a section of security
wall with a shattered bullet hole which he calls “The Scar of Bethlehem.”
All this
propaganda scandalizes Israel and projects Palestinians as oppressed victims.
Nowhere in Banksy’s
work is there a mention of Palestinian terror promoted and rewarded by the
Palestinian Authority, a prolonged terror campaign that has murdered hundreds
of Israel and made the security barrier a necessity, or the threatening
behavior of Palestinian Muslims that has driven out most of the town’s
Christians.
Today, at
Christmas 2019, Bethlehem is a once Christian town, with important churches,
holy relics and sanctuaries, and a few Christians that live in fear not of
Israel, but of Muslim Arabs.
There has been an Islamization of Bethlehem and the West has closed its eyes to this truth, prefering to blame Israeli security for the tense situation in that small town.
There has been an Islamization of Bethlehem and the West has closed its eyes to this truth, prefering to blame Israeli security for the tense situation in that small town.
The
Christians I once knew had businesses such as tourist shops selling olive wood
carvings and religious symbolism to tourists. They are gone. Their homes and
the shops now occupied by their Muslim neighbors.
The
Palestinians will tell you it’s all Israel’s fault. They are, after all, the
perennial victim. It’s become and industry for them. This image sells as much
as Banksy’s souvenirs in Bethlehem.
But is this
the truth?
The
Palestinians wanted a separation from Israel and when Israel gave it to them,
they used the vacated territories to relaunch their terror campaign against
Israeli civilians, killing thousands.
In the name
of peace, Bethlehem was the sixth town that Israel vacated and put under
Palestinian rule following its withdrawal from Jericho, Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus
and Kalkilya.
Initially,
there was a free flow of people. Palestinian Arabs worked in Israel. Israelis
visited the Arab towns to buy and enjoy the services of the local Arabs.
Everything was cheaper than in Israel and the interchange was buoyant and good
for everyone.
That was
until Arafat commanded his troops to engage in what they called “the Second Intifada,”
a brutal terror campaign. This was a repeat of an earlier Arafat-inspired
killing spree against Israelis civilians that killed and injured many thousands
of Israeli Jews.
The Oslo
Accords was but a way-station on the road to the total destruction of Israel
according to the Palestinian plan of Jewish elimination by stages.
After the
slaughter, Palestinians complain when Israel put up barriers to prevent the
incursion into Israel of Palestinian suicide bombers, gunmen, and other forms
of crude terrorism.
I am witness
to the change, the division, between Israelis and Arabs who want to call
themselves Palestinian. In the past, we also enjoyed visiting Tulkarm to buy
household goods and enjoy their cafes. I even had Palestinian Arabs work on
upgrades to my apartment. That was before Tulkarm became a hotbed of competing
Palestinian terrorism.
Killers
representing the PLO, Tanzim, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even Lebanese
Hezbollah have emerged from the hellhole that once was peaceful Arab Tulkarm to
kill Israelis, including women and children.
I know. I became the co-founder of the Netanya Terror Victims
Organization. Over 50 Netanya victims
were killed, many more injured, some badly, in my small hometown.
Since Israel
constructed a security wall bordering Tulkarm, no Israeli has been blown up by
Palestinian suicide bombers.
The
Palestinians of Tulkarm, Nablus, Hebron, and Bethlehem can complain about
restrictions as much as they want. They have only themselves to blame.
Peace was
once an option. They killed it. Deliberately. Let them blame their leaders, not
ours.
One
deceptive fable Palestinians tell the world is that they are trapped in
Bethlehem behind oppressive walls and checkpoints, that it is a prison with no
exit, that it is a form of apartheid, ethnic cleansing. Yet, it is a strange
sort of ethnic cleansing prison in which the Christian population has fallen
dramatically while the Muslim population has increased exponentially! It’s a
checkpoint where Christians leave and Muslims enter.
Some ethnic
cleansing! Some apartheid!
Palestinians are not trapped in Bethlehem. They can go through
checkpoints after an obligatory security clearance. Israelis, on the other hand,
are advised not to enter Bethlehem. Road signs warn Israeli drivers that it is
dangerous to travel on certain roads under Palestinian control, and are
prevented from doing so in certain sensitive areas.
Contrary to
Palestinian claims of Israeli “oppression,” in Bethlehem the major
problem still facing the few remaining Christians is the duress posed by
Islamic extremists and Palestinian bullies. They are the ones that are driving
them out of that town.
The former
Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, reported a few years back, “I have
spent two days with fellow Christian leaders in Bethlehem. There are signs of
disturbing anti-Christian feeling among parts of the Muslim population, despite
the constant traditions of co-existence. But their plight is made more
intolerable by the tragic conditions mads by the security fence.”
Both of
these tragedies are the responsibility of the brutal and uncaring oppression of
the Palestinian leadership and the emboldened Muslim population who have
exploited the Palestinian-inspired turmoil.
In a
televised report for Fox News by Pete Hegseth called “The Battle in
Bethlehem,” Hegseth found it difficult to find a Christian willing to go on
camera to tell him what they told him privately. He had several booked to appear.
They all backed out at the last minute, even after he promised to hide their
identity.
When Hegseth
mentioned this to law professor, Eugene Kontorovich, the professor smilingly
told him, “They are not going to tell you they live in danger, because they
live in danger.”
Among the
Palestinian Christians there are a radical minority that perpetuate an
anti-Semitic Kairos doctrine of replacement theology. They help generate a
relatively new Palestinian lie – that Jesus is a Palestinian.
Jesus has
been hijacked by the Palestinian cause. Obscene conferences are held in
Bethlehem including ‘Christ at the Checkpoint’ in which Jesus is
presented as a Palestinian messenger.
In my role
helping our terror victims I sadly recognize a Palestinian messenger when I see
one. They usually come attached to an explosive belt, carrying a rifle or a
hatchet. They also have a penchant for sending their messages attached to a
rocket or mortar shell. We are still waiting for them to come with a message of
peace. These Palestinian messengers are the antithesis of Jesus.
Kairos Christians are in the camp of their real enemy. They slander Jews as the Christian population in territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas dwindle to nothing. During the same period the Christian population in Israel has grown by 56%. Kairos Christians should rediscover their moral compass.
Kairos Christians are in the camp of their real enemy. They slander Jews as the Christian population in territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas dwindle to nothing. During the same period the Christian population in Israel has grown by 56%. Kairos Christians should rediscover their moral compass.
Hegseth went
in search of what is going on with Jesus in Bethlehem.
He sat with
Adnan, owner of the StarB Coffee shop. “Jesus
is a Balestinian.” Most Palestinian Arabs cannot pronounce the letter “P.” “If
you study all three books,” referring to the Old and New Testaments and the
Koran, “he is a Balestinian.”
When Hegseth
protested by saying, “But, for Christians, Jesus in the New Testament is a
Jew and he went to the holy temple,” Adnan smiled and said, “He was born
here and the Jews tried to kill him.”
Hoping for a
more intelligent answer, Hegseth went to speak with Bethlehem University
professor, Mazin Qumsiyah. According to
the professor, “the word ‘Jew’ and the religion came in the 3rd
Century AD, long after Jesus. I am Judaic,” said this Palestinian academic explaining
it thus, “The Judaic people came from Judea. This is Judea. Jesus is not
from Judea. He came from Nazareth two thousand years ago which was not a
religious place.”
Continuing
the myth, and contradicting himself in the process, Qumsiyah told Fox News, “If
you are asking if Jesus was a Jew from a geographic designation, the answer is
no. If you talk from a religion, only in the 3rd century AD does
Judaism as a religion come.”
Astonishingly,
or maybe not, this is what professors are teaching students in Palestinian
universities.
Hegseth took
this anecdote to Dr. Naim Khoury from the First Baptist Church of Bethlehem who
shook his head.
“That is
not true. You cannot find this anywhere in the Bible. How can you deny that
Jesus is born from Mary of Nazareth and that her family was known as Jewish
people?”
Everyone
knows the pastor is right. Everyone except the Palestinians and their obsessed
supporters. And maybe UNESCO and the majority of the UN General Assembly.
This then is
part of the Palestinian conflict.
Hegseth
asked Dr. Khoury why they deny the truth.
“Politics.
It’s a very dirty game. When bad people play politics they can say what they
want.”
Dr. Khoury
is a courageous Christian. According to his bio, he has been shot four times
and the Palestinian Authority refuse to grant his church authority to function
as a religious institution, but the brave pastor continues to care for his
dwindling congregation. His church has
been firebombed and defaced, his members attacked, not by Israelis but by
Palestinian Muslims.
The pastor’s
son, Steven, told the 700 Club, “Christians are leaving because they are
seeing that nobody is standing with them. They are seeing that extremism is
growing, that an anti-Christian agenda is growing. Their ultimate goal is to
put fear and submission into the heart of every Christian in the Middle East.”
First they
came for the Saturday people. Then they came for the Sunday people. And
shockingly, they are supported by radical elements among the Sunday people and
a few of the Saturday people.
In a
hundred-year conflict, ever since the anti-Semite Haj Amin al-Husseini set out
on an incitement rampage exhorting Muslims to kill Jews. He was followed by
Mahmoud Abbas his “Pay to Slay” incentive to kill Jews, Hamas and Palestinian
Islamic Jihad.
We cannot
build a path to peace, or a future, on the assumption that the Palestinians
will stop their lies, their hate campaign, and their obsessive desire to kill
Jews, and persecute Christians.
In
Bethlehem, they are doing to the Christians what they did to the Jews. They are
driving them out.
The dominant building in Manger Square are not the Christian churches. It is the Mosque of Omar with its tall minaret. This is a metaphor for what has taken place in Bethlehem.
The lies
that Palestinian tell at Christmas is an indication of the root cause of the
conflict.
Barry Shaw
is the International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for
Strategic Studies. He is the author of ‘Fighting
Hamas, BDS and Antisemitism.’