The truth about Palestine: Occupation
[googlevideo=http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=1259454859593416473]
Many of us tend to think that Palestine is a “Muslim issue”. But it is not. Do you know, for instance, that Bethlehem, the birth-place of Jesus Christ, lies in Palestinian territory? In any case, it shouldn’t matter what religion the Palestinians are.
It is a question of humanity and basic justice. A question of Occupation: 60 years since the Nakba.
If you want to know the real situation in Palestine, check out this documentary by award-winning journalist John Pilger - Palestine is still the issue (2002):
John Pilger returns to the Occupied Teritories of the West Bank and Gaza where he filmed a documentary with the same title, about the same issues, in 1974. He finds the basic problems unchanged: a desperate, destitute people whose homeland is illegally occupied by the world’s fourth biggest military power. He hears extraordinary stories from Palestinians, though most of his interviews are with Israelis whose voices are seldom heard, including the remarkable witness of a man who lost his daughter in a suicide bombing. This film was nominated for a BAFTA, a British Academy Award.
Meanwhile, amidst widespread indifference to the siege of the Gaza Strip, the UN has warned that its food aid to about 860,000 residents will have to be suspended within days if Israel’s blockade continues. Check out Glasgow-based John Hilley’s revealing write-up of Israel’s friendly network even as he demands to know why the major powers are “standing idly-by while a crisis siege in Gaza continues to inflict death and suffering on innocent people”.
- NO! to M’sia’s FTA with police state, USA - Remember, 1.2 million dead in Iraq
- Aliran Monthly contributor John Hilley arrested near Glasgow
- Misguided Christian Zionists
- Return the denarii to Caesar
- West Bank: Checkpoints, teargas and other daily oppressions
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Anil,
Even in the Herald you do this, apart from your occassional Bush bashing. You just cannot resisit it. The opression of Christians in Malaysia you do not see and yet you want to champion the cause of Palestinian Terrorists. There are 57 countries championing the Palestinian Terrorists on this earth.
Here you are :
What has been the situation for Christians in Israel/Palestine?
In the last census conducted by the British mandatory authorities in 1947, there were 28,000 Christians in Jerusalem. The census conducted by Israel in 1967 (after the Six Day War) showed just 11,000 Christians remaining in the city. This means that some 17,000 Christians (or 61%) left during the days of King Hussein’s rule over Jerusalem. Their place was filled by Muslim Arabs from Hebron.
During the British mandate period, Bethlehem had a Christian majority of 80%. Today, under Palestinian rule, it has a Muslim majority of 80%.
Few Christians remain in the Palestinian-controlled parts of the West Bank. Those who can - emigrate, and there will soon be virtually no Christians in the Palestinian Authority controlled areas. The Palestinian Authority is trying to conceal the fact of massive Christian emigration from areas under its control.
- from PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS (Prime Minister’s Office ) November, 1997
As a result of unceasing persecution, the Christians are forced to behave like any oppressed minority which aims to survive. Christians in PA-controlled areas have taken to praying in secret. The wisdom of survival compels them to assess the “balance of fear”, according to which they have nothing to fear from Israel but face an existential threat from the Palestinian Authority and their Muslim neighbours.
They act accordingly: they seek to “find favour” through unending praise and adulation for the Muslim ruler together with public denunciations of the “Zionist entity.”
- Middle East Digest - Nov/Dec 1997
Time magazine (April 23, 1990): “After years of relative harmony, friction between Christians and their fellow-Arabs [in the disputed territories] has intensified sharply with the rise of Muslim fundamentalism.” (Time went on to cite various examples of Muslims pressuring Christian Arabs).
The Jerusalem Post (May 2, 1991): “Muslim activists have been trying to convert Bethlehem, home of some of Christianity’s holiest sites and once predominantly Christian, into a Muslim town. In contrast to the world-wide fuss over the purchase of a hostel in Jerusalem’s ‘Christian Quarter’ by Jews, this steady and often violent encroachment has met with a thunderous silence in the Christian world. The pattern of increased violence has been unmistakable. Last December 21, a school for nuns was torched. During the first week in March, there was an attempt to break through the wall of the Carmelite monastery, followed by a break-in at a Christian school. On March 3 vandals desecrated Bethlehem’s Greek Orthodox cemetery, removing crosses and disinterring and mutilating corpses …”
La Terra Sancta (A Vatican publication, dated 1991): “The Christians are abandoning the Middle East … [although] the Jewish presence has alarmed the Arabs … more than anything else, the commercial, cultural and technological contacts of recent years have caused a confrontation between Western civilisation and Middle Eastern culture, or, as is commonly known, Islamic culture against Judeo-Christian.”
The Jerusalem Post (May 6, 1994): In April 1994, Israel’s Hebrew press reported that Christian Arabs had accused activists of Arafat’s Fatah faction of the PLO of harassing Franciscan nuns in the Aida convent near Bethlehem. One nun described as a “reign of terror” the behaviour of the activists, who allegedly regularly invaded the convent, vandalised graves, destroyed equipment and painted graffiti.
CNN (December 20, 1995): “Today, Bethlehem is a predominantly Muslim town. At Friday prayers, they spill into Manger Square [the traditional site of Jesus' birth], so crowded are the mosques. Christians complain they’re publicly harassed and harangued for their faith. The Christian cemetery has been desecrated and vandalised … this Christian boy said the Muslims are fascists, bad people. Muslim families of 10 and 12 children leave smaller Christian families awash in an Islamic sea, afraid they will be overwhelmed by the refugee camps and Muslim villages around Bethlehem. Many of the town’s Christians are afraid to talk openly now.”
The Times (London, December 22, 1997): “Life in [PA-ruled] Bethlehem has become insufferable for many members of the dwindling Christian minority. Increasing Muslim-Christian tensions have left some Christians reluctant to celebrate Christmas in the town at the heart of the story of Christ’s birth”. http://www.peacefaq.com/christians.html
So you still want to bury your head in the sand.
Oh my… such an angry response just because I had the temerity to mention the “O” word - Occupation.
You might be interested to read this report that shows that even inside Israel, Christians “have come to comprise an ever-smaller proportion of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. In 1948 they were nearly a quarter of that minority (itself 20 per cent of the total Israeli population), and today they are a mere 10 percent. Most are located in Nazareth and nearby villages in the Galilee.”
How do you explain that? For the real reasons for the dwindling Christian population in the region, check out this article by the Nazareth-based British journalist Jonathan Cook:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/cook.php?articleid=10297
Also, it might interest you to note that one of the leading critics of the Occupation is the Latin Archbishop of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah. (But of course, the major western media ignore him most of the time.) He is the Christian leader on the spot. He should know. Listen to him:
“In the international vision, especially today after the 11th of September, the current vision for this place is security for the Israelis and trouble and terrorism for the Palestinians. The vision is wrong. As long as we have it we will never see peace. The true vision is that there are here a people oppressed. The Palestinians are under occupation and that gives birth to terror and oppression and to insecurity for Israelis. The cause is simply the Occupation. Therefore if you want security for Israelis, it is simple. We have to take away the cause which makes and produces this insecurity. The oppressed react in many ways; some of them are reasonable, acceptable; some of them are not, like terrorist reactions. We want you to convey the message to the American administration that they are responsible…it is in their hands. It is in the hands of the Israelis as well. It is in the hands of the stronger to make peace. If we have no peace, it is because of the Israeli actions and the American administration supporting them. The Palestinians are living under occupation; they are waiting only to be free from this Occupation. Once the Occupation is over, then the violence will be over. The Israelis are insisting first security and then freedom. With this position, there will never be security. They must first put an end to the oppression and that means the beginning of security for all.”
http://www.eappi.org/eappi.nsf/index/rep-ms-05011001.html
Peace.
Look at what happened in Gaza after the Israelis withdrew. Anyway John Pilger and Jonathan Cook are in the same class as Robert Fisk, that is ….. A loser in war is a loser. Why not the Indians claim back Pakistan, after all it it was most recent or for that matter Constantinople by the West. There are many other cases. You get my drift. The Arabs keep this festering, they just do not want puny and only Jewish state on earth amongst them. Anyway, Palis are taught to hate the Jews from young, it is not the occupation. By the way Yasir Arafat was the “Father of Terrorism”. His uncle the Mufti of Jerusalem helped to set up the “Sabre Division” to cleanse Eastern Europe of Jews. I am sure you know that. Arafat was an Egyptian. The Arabs just cannot bear the humilation of being defeated repeatedly with audacity at will by the Israelis. Go read, “O Jerusalem” by Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre, for what happened then, for what it is now. I read that book in 1977.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0671662414/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-8881752-0204706#reader-link
Anyway, I respect your opinion, there are people like me who would beg to defer.
Peace unto you too.
I respect your right to differ.
I hope you recognise there are other views out there as well. Perhaps you should refer to other independent analyses apart from those found in the mainstream media and others produced by interests close to the US/UK establishment, the parties backing Israel.
Surely the view of the United Nations should carry a lot of weight. Check out the UN resolutions on the Palestine issue that the US and Israel have vetoed.
“But the UN resolution was — the veto of the UN resolution is standard. That goes back decades. The U.S. has virtually alone been blocking the possibility of diplomatic settlement, censure of Israeli crimes and atrocities.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10577
Or the International Court of Justice’s ruling on the illegality of the “separation wall” - built by the Israelis - that is suffocating the Palestinians.
Consider the views of Chomsky, widely recognised as the world’s leading public intellectual.
And those of Michel Sabbah, Latin Archbishop of Jerusalem.
They are not all losers, you know. Robert Fisk and John Pilger, for instance, are both multiple award-winning journalists/foreign correspondents.
Peace.
Does Israel stand a chance with 57 OIC countries stacked against her? The rest of the non OIC countriesto suck up for their petroleum interests. Look at the previous chairs for Human Rights. Were they paragons of Human Rights? The UN is biased. Look at the previous UN Sec Gen and his own involvement with the Oil For Food Scandal, where Kofi Junior was involved. I have no faith in the UN where israel is concerned. Chomsky pleez, that is a nut case. That’s why. Were you a Reuter’s reporter before, you sound like one?
Peace
What about Michel Sabbah, Archbishop of Jerusalem?
Have you heard of the Stockholm Syndrome ? ”If there’s a state of one religion, other religions are naturally discriminated against, ” Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah He is a victim of the Stockhol Syndrome. So tell me why only Israel? 57 OIC countries, their minorities are treated equally? You stay in Malaysia.
“In the impoverished Gaza Strip, festivities in the tiny Christian community of 3,000 were decidedly muted. Christians kept a low profile following the killing of a prominent Christian activist in the wake of the Islamic militant group Hamas’ takeover of the area. Hamas has denied involvement.” http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hcRKGqMwVdm40GTKNsNpliik_HaQD8TO4V380
This is John Pilger:
John Pilger does not pretend to deliver an objective view of his subject matter. In fact, he scoffs at the whole notion of journalistic impartiality. “Impartiality and objectivity now mean the establishment point of view…” he declared derisively in a 2002 interview with the Progressive. Those journalists who claim to be objective, according to Pilger, only “channel the official truth,” and thereby “simply cipher and transmit lies.” He sees himself, by contrast, as an anti-establishment crusader and has acknowledged that if he were American, he’d be accused of advocacy journalism (Independent, March 23, 1998).
One of Pilger’s more notorious advocacy campaigns — a 1982 sensationalist exposé for the Daily Mirror about child slavery in Thailand — resulted in accusations that he fabricated the identity of a young girl sold into slavery by her parents, in order to strengthen his conclusions. Pilger claimed to have been duped by his Thai intermediary.
Pilger responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks against America with an op-ed blaming his usual villains. He wrote:
If the attacks on America have their source in the Islamic world, who can really be surprised?…
…The attacks on Tuesday come at the end of a long history of betrayal of the Islamic and Arab peoples: the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and 34 years of Israel’s brutal occupation of an Arab nation…
…It is only a few years ago that the Islamic fundamentalist groups, willing to blow themselves up in Israel and New York, were formed, and only after Israel and the US had rejected outright the hope of a Palestinian state, and justice for a people scarred by imperialism. Their distant voices of rage are now heard; the daily horrors in faraway brutalised places have at last come home.” (The Herald [Glasgow], September 13, 2001).
So he is still your reference?
This will be my last post on this thread. Read this , Human rights of Christians in Pali Society http://www.jcpa.org/text/Christian-Persecution-Weiner.pdf
Gaza is under siege!
Of course, many mainstream journalists today have to be cautious that they don’t stray too far away from the “party line” (whether it is their newspaper owners, their political masters, the interests of advertisers, etc). So they are hardly “objective” or “impartial”. Just look at the Malaysian media. For an analysis of media spin, check out: http://www.medialens.org
If you are interested in knowing more about Islamic fundamentalism, blowback, CIA etc, have a look at the work of American scholar Chalmers Johnson. Johnson is the author of the prophetic book, Blowback, written before Sept 11:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1984/chalmers_johnson_on_the_cia_and_a_blowback_world
Would love to continue this discussion, but I have to get back to work. Have a good day.
The Palestinians screwed themselves by remaining loyal to the corrupt Arafat as long as they did. He failed the Palestinians by failing to create a viable state that stamped out groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He kept them around as muscle, and they’ve since devoured the Palestinian Authority and its claim to stand for Palestinian Nationalism that renounces terror.