Local support for Palestine

Last night I went to an event at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center in which two locals were to convey their experiences about going to Hebron. 

When I first entered the room I could quickly tell that it was an odd group of people who were there. They appeared to be the typical tin-foil hat wearing types who at the drop of a dime would protest anything and everything. Maybe it was just me. The first person to greet me was one of the speakers that night, Mary Anne Grady Flores, and she quickly move from “Where are you from?” to “This is my mother” and “Do you speak Arabic?” Many of them were really looking forward to practicing their newly learned language skills.

As I grabbed a chair and sat down I was able to notice the demographics. The group that had assembled were almost all women and mostly over the age of 50 (I’m being nice). An older gentemen was operating the powerpoint slide show on a laptop while wearing an end the occupation tshirt. I over heard a women speaking to Mary Anne about how they smuggled two posters of ‘Palestine’ out of the region. Of course to them, the entire region was Palestine. I sat next to a Jewish woman who was eager to talk about her daughter who is now working/volunteering with the Ma’an News Agency.

The room is humid, some windows had been opened and a fan was on, but their effects were not felt until late into the presentation. Immediately before Beth Harris, an Ithaca College professor, began speaking about the fragmentation of Palestinian geography and culture the younger crowd came in. Again, mostly young women. There are almost 30 people when things get settled and it would balloon to 45 by the end. Almost all know each other, this appears to be a dedicated group.

Beth starts out with some very bad Arabic. “A lawn wah salon.” Oh I should have seen the signs. Beth mentions something about Native Americans and African Americans before quoting “The Meaning of the 4th of July for the Negro” by Frederick Douglas.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour

For a professor she seems nervous, shaking with anxiety it seems while speaking to this group of like-minded citizens. She emphasizes the fragmentation of the geographic area. I was waiting for her to use terms like apartheid and segregation, but was left wanting. She spoke of ‘Jewish only’ settlements and ‘Jewish only’ roads built in the West Bank. The information she put forth was not anything that was not known by the crowd. I was disappointed with her lack of thought, she simply repeated the same words in different order.

Mary Anne was next to speak and the religious overtones became more apparent. She had worked with the CPT - Christian Peacemaker Team. She had mentioned drinking water from “Jacob’s Well” and looked at her mother sitting directly in front of me and began to cry over her words. She obviously cares about her religion, but I was wary of her support for the Palestinian cause. As she continued it became apparent that her viewpoints were formed through a ‘love they neighbor’ type aspect. While I do not doubt that her semester in Hebron gave her a first hand view of the people, the culture and the oppression it simply came off to me as a missionary type event.

They spoke about their work with orphanages and they spoke of how they are getting their churches involved. How we should pass resolutions on the local level and how people can get involved.

They were idealists and I was not in a place to crush their dreams. They care about the causes, they care about the people they met. That in itself is more than the average citizen can claim, but sitting in that room I could not help by feel out of place.

Treatment of Christians in the Holy Land

Jpost

Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in a religious Israeli town.

Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.

After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.

The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.

The Israeli Maariv daily reported Tuesday that hundreds of Jewish religious school students took part in the book-burning. But Aharon told The Associated Press that only a few students were present, and that he was not there when the books were torched. Not all of the New Testaments that were collected were burned, but hundreds were, he said.

He said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a “commandment” to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.

“I certainly don’t denounce the burning of the booklets,” he said. “I denounce those who distributed the booklets.”

Calev Myers, an attorney who represents Messianic Jews, or Jews who accept Jesus as their savior, demanded in an interview with Army Radio that all those involved be put on trial. He estimated there were 10,000 Messianic Jews, who are also known as Jews for Jesus, in Israel.

Police had no immediate comment.

Israeli authorities and Orthodox Jews frown on missionary activity aimed at Jews, though in most cases it is not illegal.

And here is video showing how Christians are treated.

St. George Day, where my Christians and Muslims at!?

Our boy St. George is the patron Saint of both Palestine and Beirut! Given the fact that his martyrdom took place at Lydda, Palestine, testified to by two early Syrian church inscriptions and by a canon of Pope Gelasius I, dated 494, in which St. George is mentioned as one whose name was held in reverence, he is also a Muslim saint and the Patron Saint of Palestine; there is not one town in costal Palestine that doesn’t have either a church dedicated to St. George, or a mosque dedicated to Al-Khadr, the latter being his Muslim name.
So here is a shout out to our man (even to us atheists)!!

The grave of St. George in Lod, Israel

The one in my mothers house (can we say needlepoint!?)

Special shout outs to all my “born-again” Christian bloggers who will contend that St. George was really a suicide bomber or some other bigoted response.

All Christians are created equal

Not in the eyes of Israel, especially during Easter.

Israel, for the third year in a row, enforced a curfew on the West Bank and Gaza preventing the Christian populations from leaving their homes. The Churches in Israel were full of tourists, but you would be hard pressed to find a single native Christian. They could not go to the churches, could not practice their religion. In Israel, you aren’t a Christian Arab, you are the enemy.

Israel has put its best foot forward in recent years to attract Christian tourists. Often they stress the security measures that have been put in place to ensure the safety of their Abrahamic brothers. These measures, for all intents and purposes, are simply aimed at keeping “the Arabs” out. The problem with this policy is that it, like other Israeli policies, is collective punishment. Israel has the right to ensure the safety of its civilians (not just the Jewish ones) but at what cost?

The truth is that the Christian Palestinian population has decreased at steady pace since the foundation of Israel as a Jewish State. Before 1948 Christians accounted for upwards of 30% of the population, now estimates hover between 2% and 5%. People would like you to believe that this diaspora of Christians is due to ” Radical Islamofascists” who attack Christians and Jews because they Koran tells them so. Obviously the facts state the opposite.

If you look back upon the recent history of Palestine you will notice a trend. No Christians were killed. No attacks upon Christians around the holidays. You may even remember when some militants took refuge in a church in Bethlehem and, to the shock of the Zionists, were fed and warmly greeted by the priests. In reality the only enemy to Christians in the Middle East are the Zionist and their not-so Christian supporters.

On a regular basis Fundamentalist Christian churches advocate support for the Israeli state while overlooking their fellow Christian. It is not as though Christian Palestinians have been absent from the world stage either. Some of the most prominent names in Palestinian history have been Christian ones:  Hanan Ashrawi, Edward Said, Emile Habibi, George Habash, Afif Safieh, Nayef Hawatmeh, and Rifat Odeh Kassis.

Hawatmeh wasn’t even allowed to leave Gaza for 40 years. Was he a security threat? Was he going to blow him self up for 72 virgins? The policies of Israel can truly be seen for what they are in these instances. Racism. This is not an attempt at security but an attempt to religiously homogenize the region.

So ask yourselves if you saw any Arab Christians walking through Jerusalem today. I can tell you they were not in Bethlehem, not when its surrounded on three sides by a cement wall. They were not in Nazareth because of the curfew and travel restrictions. They were as they always have been, in their homes alongside their Muslim neighbors coloring eggs and waiting for their fellow Christians to raise their voice.

Clash of civilizations or simply democracy failing

In Hebrew

In English

In Arabic

When you actually speak to the people you find out what they truly want, its not what the media feeds you or what some blogger writes about, it is the people. So when you hear that a majority of Israeli’s want to have meetings with Hamas and a majority of Palestinians want to meet with the Israeli’s one would think that this would make the news, even influence their leadership.

When you read blogs from either side of the spectrum you feel as though peace is not achievable, these are the extremes. They represent the same fundamentalism that first brought on the world’s problems and do nothing to change it.

How can we as a nation advocate the spread of democracy in other countries when our own elected officials publicly declare that public polls mean nothing to them.

HILLARY CLINTON IS AN ANTI-SEMITE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE WHO WILL EAT YOUR CHILDREN!!!!!!!

 Hillary must be a terrorist sympathizer! I mean look at how she is dressed? I wonder if she went to a madrassa in afghanorabiastan. I bet she was behind 9/11 and the USS Cole. She hate Israel and is a an anti-semite, the nazi!!!

 (Lets see if this works)

Gaza’s Christian Community—Serenity, Solidarity and Soulfulness

AS THE SUN rises in the east on the first day of Advent, the bells of Gaza’s churches fill the air, mixing amicably with the Muslim call to prayer. There is an air of quiet serenity spiced with excitement as the faithful walk to their churches and mosques, the doors swinging open, and Christians and Muslims bid each other good morning on yet another Sunday.

Gaza’s oldest church, the Greek Orthodox St. Porphyrus, dates back to the 16th century. The majority of Gaza’s Christians are served by the Roman Catholic Church on Al Zayotoun St. and the Gaza Baptist Church, which offer living room prayer groups, interfaith outreach, several schools, and humanitarian/medical Christian charities staffed by both locals and internationals. Today Gaza is home to approximately 3,000 Christians, the majority of whom live near these Gaza City churches.

Until November 1947, when the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 181 partitioning Palestine, Palestinian Christians lived peacefully among the Muslim and small Jewish populations of the area. With the passage of the nonbinding resolution, however, Zionist forces began their ethnic cleansing campaign in earnest. At the time Christians represented 18 percent of Palestine’s population, with many families tracing their ancestry back to the time of Christ. Today Christians comprise less than 2 percent of Palestinians, with the loss of Jerusalem’s Christian community being the most profound-plunging from a peak of 51 percent in 1922 to just 4 percent today. By the time of the Deir Yassin massacre in early April 1948, over a quarter-million Palestinians-many of them Christian-had been displaced, either killed or made refugees.

Like their Muslim neighbors, Christian Palestinians sought to find a safe refuge following the establishment of Israel. Because Gaza came under Egyptian rule in 1948, Palestinians of all faiths fled there. As the Zionist militias advanced-razing entire towns, massacring families and confiscating all property in their wake-many Christians fled to Jerusalem, a divided yet still international city. For a time, Christians and Muslims in East Jerusalem, which was under Jordanian control, remained relatively safe.

In 1967, Israel chose to further expand its borders, attacking Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Within six days all three nations had been defeated and Israel had tripled its territory, rendering millions of Palestinians homeless or living under occupation or, in Israel, under martial law. Along with its Muslim neighbors, Gaza’s small Christian community found itself imprisoned between Israel and the sea, and the land swollen with additional refugees. But Gaza’s Christians also discovered they were invisible: unacknowledged, dismissed, denounced or forgotten by fellow Christians throughout the world, especially in the United States.
The Bookseller’s Murder

It is well known that one of the most effective tools for rendering a society subservient is the tactic of divide and conquer. Thus the October kidnapping and murder of Rami Ayyad, the manager of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, presented a dangerous challenge. Speculations about the motive still abound: was it a hate crime or simply a random tragedy?

Father Manuel Musallam, the senior Roman Catholic priest in Gaza, doubts the attack was religiously motivated.

“Rami was not only Christian,” the priest explained. “He was Palestinian. Violent acts against Christians are not a phenomenon unique to Gaza.”

Immediately upon hearing of what he described as a “murderous crime,” Ismail Haniyeh, Palestine’s elected prime minister, ordered the Ministry of Interior to dispatch an investigative committee to “urgently look into the matter.”

“We are all one people who suffer together for the sake of freedom, independence and restoration of our inalienable citizenship rights,” Haniyeh said publicly. “We are waging a single struggle and refuse to allow any party to tamper with or manipulate this historical relationship [between Muslims and Christians].”
Muslim and Christian Students Speak

“My life is normal and I’ve never felt oppressed,” said Ali Al Jeldah, a 17-year-old Christian student attending a dual faith school. “Being Muslim or Christian is never an issue,” he emphasized, adding, “I have many Muslim friends. We hang out and study together with no differences at all.”

Lelias Ali, a 16-year-old Muslim who attends Holy Family School, agrees. “We have a unity of struggle, a unity of aim-to live under the same circumstances,” she stated. “This land is for both of us, and being a Christian or Muslim should not separate us.”

“I have lots of friends,” said Diana Al Sadi, 17. “Being Muslim or Christian is not an issue. I go to my friend’s homes for happy and sad occasions, including Christmas and Easter,” she elaborated. “They visit mine during Eid.”

Asked if Christians in Gaza are being harassed by Hamas or the Palestinian police, all the students agreed that this is not the case.

“Every society has extremists,” Ali observed. “Like sometimes I’m criticized for not wearing my hijab. But that has nothing to do with being Muslim or Christian. Those people don’t represent our Palestinian society.”

Pausing for a moment to consider the international media’s portrayal of strife between Muslims and Christians, she concluded, “We should not let such ideas sneak into our minds. If we don’t unite, then we lose.”
The Thoughts of Clergy

Father Musallam explained why Christians in Gaza do not feel singled out or oppressed. “Palestinian Christians are not a religious community set apart in some corner. We are part of the Palestinian people,” he asserted. “Our relationship with Hamas is as people of one nation. Hamas doesn’t fight religious groups. Its fight is against the Israeli occupation.”

When asked about Western media reports that Gaza’s Christians are considering emigrating because of Islamic oppression, Father Musallam sighed. “If Christians emigrate, it’s not because of Muslims,” he emphasized. “It is because we suffer from the Israeli siege. We seek a life of freedom-a life different from the life of dogs we are currently forced to live.”

Archimandrite Artemios, the top clergyman in Gaza of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, chooses to live and minister in Gaza. Though Greek by birth he is Palestinian by heart, he insists. Asked what Christians in Gaza pray for, given the circumstances Palestinians must live under, he replied gently, “We pray for peace, wisdom and improvement of the situations in Gaza.” He added that he anxiously anticipates the day when all Christians and Muslims will have free access to all parts of Palestine: “Then we’ll go together to Bethlehem and celebrate Christmas and Eid Al Adha.”

The Christian leader was not optimistic about the effect of the Annapolis conference on Gaza’s current situation, however. “We all know that Gaza is out of the game,” he said sadly. “I pray God will give the wisdom to President Abbas and the Israeli side to find a solution.”

As church pews and mosque prayer halls filled on the first Sunday of December, a pensive hope prevails as faith in God endures. For in Gaza there are no Jews or Gentiles, no Muslims or Christians. In Gaza there are only Palestinians.

Mohammed Omer, winner of New America Media’s Best Youth Voice award, reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org> .