A Couple from Debbie
I first found this
WSJ editorial at
Debbie Schlussel. Here it is in its entirety. And check out this
previous post by Debbie.I don't think I need to add any comment except to echo Debbie's query as to the absence of any protest by any of the self-styled "human rights" organizations and any reporting of this deplorable situation by the "speaking truth to power" MSM.
By DANIEL SCHWAMMENTHAL
Bethlehem
Meet Yussuf Khoury, a 23-year old Palestinian refugee living in the West Bank. Unlike those descendents of refugees born in United Nations camps, Mr. Khoury fled his birthplace just two years ago. And he wasn't running away from Israelis, but from his Palestinian brethren in Gaza.
Mr. Khoury's crime in that Hamas-ruled territory was to be a Christian, a transgression he compounded in the Islamists' eyes by writing love poems.
"Muslims tied to Hamas tried to take me twice," says Mr. Khoury, and he didn't want to find out what they'd do to him if they ever kidnapped him. He hasn't seen his family since Christmas 2007 and is afraid even to talk to them on the phone.
Speaking to a group of foreign journalists in the Bethlehem Bible College where he is studying theology, Mr. Khoury describes a life of fear in Gaza. "My sister is under a lot of pressure to wear a headscarf. People are turning more and more to Islamic fundamentalism and the situation for Christians is very difficult," he says.
In 2007, one year after the Hamas takeover, the owner of Gaza's only Christian bookstore was abducted and murdered. Christian shops and schools have been firebombed. Little wonder that most of Mr. Khoury's Christian friends have also left Gaza.
On the rare occasion that Western media cover the plight of Christians in the Palestinian territories, it is often to denounce Israel and its security barrier. Yet until Palestinian terrorist groups turned Bethlehem into a safe haven for suicide bombers, Bethlehemites were free to enter Israel, just as many Israelis routinely visited Bethlehem.
The other truth usually ignored by the Western press is that the barrier helped restore calm and security not just in Israel, but also in the West Bank including Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity, which Palestinian gunmen stormed and defiled in 2002 to escape from Israeli security forces, is now filled again with tourists and pilgrims from around the world.
But even here in Jesus' birthplace, which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Christians live on a knife's edge. Mr. Khoury tells me that Muslims often stand in front of the gate of the Bible College and read from the Quran to intimidate Christian students. Other Muslims like to roll out their prayer rugs right in Manger Square.
Asked about why Muslims would pray so close to one of Christianity's holiest sites, Pastor Alex Awad, dean of students at the Bible College, diplomatically advises me to pose this question to the Muslims themselves. Mindful of his community's precarious situation, he is at pains to stress that whatever problems Christians may have with their Muslim neighbors, it's not the PA's fault.
"Muslims and Christians live here in relative harmony," he tells reporters, only to add that Christians "feel the pressure of Islam . . . There is intimidation and fanaticism but these are little instances and there is no general persecution."
Samir Qumsieh, the founder of what he says is the holy land's only Christian TV station, also stresses that there is no "Christian suffering" and that the Christians' problems are not orchestrated by the PA. Yet his stories of land theft, beatings and intimidation make one wonder why, if the PA doesn't approve of such injustices, it is doing so little to stop it?
Christians have only recently begun to talk about how Muslim gangs simply come and take possession of Christian-owned land while the Palestinian security services, almost exclusively staffed by Muslims, stand by. Mr. Qumsieh's own home was firebombed three years ago. The perpetrators were never caught.
"We have never suffered as we are suffering now," Mr. Qumsieh confesses, violating his own introductory warning to the assorted foreign correspondents in his office not to use the word "suffering."
Always a minority religion among the predominantly Muslim Palestinians, Christians are, Mr. Qumsieh says, "melting away," even in Bethlehem. While they represented about 80% of the city's population 60 years ago, their numbers are now down to about 20%, a result not just of Muslims' higher birth rates but also widespread Christian emigration. "Our future as a Christian community here is gloomy," Mr. Qumsieh says.
Palestinian plight not attributable to Israel barely seems to register in the West's collective conscience. As Christians around the world remember Jesus' birth, perhaps we can think of Mr. Khoury and those Christians still suffering in Gaza and Bethlehem.
Mr. Schwammenthal is an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.
And then there's Jimmy Carter's apology. Who is he trying to kid? I first read of it at
Debbie's place. It's been showing up in other places though. Again, I echo what Debbie says. And I add: the guy's a liar, and I can't be placated by his phony apology. The worst line in the
whole phony thing full of bad lines and weasel words:
I likewise hope that violent attacks against all civilians will end, which will help set a better framework for commencing negotiations.
This reminds me of when CAIR and other jihadists-in-disguise condemn "all terrorist attacks against all people." Carter hasn't acknowledged the undeniable fact that Palestinians gleefully murder civilians of all stripes on purpose for terrorist and for propaganda purposes. When Israelis accidentally kill a Palestinian kid (which Hamas might be using as a human shield), they express genuine remorse. Carter expresses the same stupid, offensive, and just plain wrong moral equivalence.
It isn't an apology. It's an insult.
Labels: Christians, Christmas, Debbie Schlussel, islam, Israel, Jimmy Carter, terrorism, Wall Street Journal
The Farhud
On this day in 1941 the country of Israel did not exist. There was no "Palestinian problem" as no Arabs or Muslims referred to themselves as "Palestinians". There was no "occupation" of Gaza or the West Bank.
And yet . . .
That day in 1941, on the Jewish festival of Shavuot, the sight of Jews returning from the Baghdad airport to greet the returning Regent Abdul al-Ilah, ruler of Iraq, was all the excuse an Iraqi mob needed to unleash its vengeance.
The attack began at 3 p.m., as the Jewish delegation crossed Baghdad’s Al Khurr Bridge. Violence quickly spread to the Al Rusafa and Abu Sifyan districts. The frenzied mob murdered Jews openly on the streets. Women were raped and infants were killed as their horrified families looked on. Torture and mutilation followed.
Jewish shops were looted and torched. A synagogue was invaded, burned, and its Torahs destroyed in classic Nazi fashion. The shooting, burning and mayhem continued throughout the evening. Jews were dragged from their automobiles. Homes were invaded, looted and burned. On June 2, the fury continued with policemen and slum dwellers joining in.
At the Muallem-Cohen house, young Nezima was terrified. Her father had just returned from the synagogue, relating terrible stories about daughters being raped and homes burned, when suddenly shouting, armed men crashed through his own front gates. Quick, Mr. Muallem-Cohen rushed his family to the stairs to escape to the roof. Up they scampered, first young Nezima, then her mother, and then her father. A shot — Mr. Muallem-Cohen was dead.
Mrs. Muallem-Cohen looked back in horror. Just then a policeman appeared. “They killed my husband,” she shrieked. “How do you want to die?” the policeman snapped back, and then cracked her skull with his gun.
Finally, in the afternoon, British forces punched into the city. They opened fire on the rampagers. A 5 p.m. curfew was broadcast. Scores of violators were shot on sight. The disturbances were finally quelled.
The carnage of those 48 hours would be forever seared upon the collective Iraqi Jewish consciousness as “the Farhud,” best translated as “violent dispossession.”
So much for the fairy tale of Jews and Muslims living in peace and harmony until the founding of You-Know-Which-Jewish-State destroyed that peace and harmony by upsetting that carefully balanced aspect of Islamic society wherein Muslims were masters and Jews dhimmis. By 1951, after a continuous presence in Iraq of 2,600 years, almost all of
Iraq's Jews were forced to emigrate to the fledgling state of Israel. A very few remained to be persecuted by the Iraqi government. If there are any Jews left in Iraq today, they are very quiet about it, and they number fewer than ten. Sounds like genocide to me, even though it is politically incorrect, islamophobic, and not very polite to record any of the known genocidal episodes perpetrated by Muslims on people of (not necessarily) other religions.
One more thought: just as almost all of the ancient Jewish communities in the Muslim world have been ethnically cleansed of Jews over the centuries, so have Christian communities. Apologists for Islam never acknowledge that fact and try to ignore it altogether. They will only discuss the Christians who are being forced out of Gaza, Judea, and Sumeria, because they can pin false blame on Israel. We know which religion of peace is at fault though.
Labels: anti-semitism, Christians, Farhud, genocide, Iraq, Jews
Brigette Gabrielle and the Destruction of Lebanon
I went to hear Brigette Gabrielle speak today. She's quite a passionate speaker, and she's got a frightening story to tell. All of the things that the anti-jihadists have been warning us about for years, have already happened to her. She's Lebanese, and her formative years coincided with the destruction of Lebanese society by Islamic jihadists.
Lebanon used to be a tiny majority Christian nation surrounded by Islamic dictatorships (well, except for that tiny "zionist entity" to its south). Now it's a tiny puppet state of Syria. Beirut, Lebanon's capital, used to be known as the Paris of the Middle East. Now it's - I don't know what it is. We don't hear much about it anymore. And while we read, over the years it took place, about the destruction of Lebanon, I don't think we were really paying attention to the details.
The once free, proud, and democratic country of Lebanon, prided itself on its welcoming attitude to all, even non-Christians including "Palestinian refugees", its multicultural attitude, and its general success in creating a free society. And how have they been rewarded for this generosity?
Ever since they first welcomed the viper, Arafat, to their breast, they've been on the losing end of the Jihad. Thanks to the entrance of the
PLO to Lebanon, there's been civil war, desecration and destruction of churches (remember the siege of the
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where PLO members were not afraid to desecrate a Christian shrine, but worldwide pressure was placed on Israel to avoid damaging the church?), massacres of Christian civilians, and attacks on Israel, who, after an insanely long period of patience, finally invaded to try and lift the yoke of Islam from the Lebanese Christian population. Since it was Israel, however, who tried to stem the tide of jihadist slaughter, guess who was painted as the bad guy?
Up until Israel entered the fray, nobody really cared about the Lebanese Christians, just as nobody today cares about the various wars, and massacres, and other pathologies throughout the African continent (Sudan, Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, etc.) and the continued slow strangulation of freedom in Lebanon, because nobody really cares - unless Israel is involved.
So when it comes to Lebanon, nobody can say the world community had anything against the Lebanese. It didn't matter that Lebanon was one of two countries in the Middle East where people were allowed and encouraged to create wealth (even in the absence of oil), offer freedom, build an excellent educational system and have access to medical care for all. By ignoring the fate of Lebanon for all these years, even though the destruction has been covered by the world's press, we are ignoring the future that the Islamists have planned for all of us. They've told us, they've shown us. Most of us just don't want to listen. Islam is a religion of peace we've been told. Many westerners have forced themselves to believe it.
As for the ruin of Lebanon? Hasn't that been blamed on Israel. After all, what catastrophe in the Middle East hasn't been blamed on Israel or the Jews?
Labels: Brigitte Gabriel, Christians, islam, Israel, Jews, jihad, Lebanon, PLO
An Interview with Rabbi Bradley Hirschfield
Rabbi Hirschfield offers sage advice and some sober thought in this
interview at
Beliefnet.comWhy is there more talk each year about this being a season where our holidays are "under siege"?
The "war on Christmas" language—and you hear that language much more from the Christian world than from the Jewish world—I'm actually sympathetic to it. Not because I think there's an actual war on Christmas; I do think that there is a kind of bankruptcy to political correctness that tells people to call 12-foot blue spruces covered with ornaments, crystals, and lights a "holiday tree." That's ridiculous, because it just begs the question: What holiday? Christmas!
It's crazy. Because that's not a war on Christmas. In the desire not to say anything hurtful, which was the beautiful motivation behind political correctness, we've gotten carried away. The price we pay for not saying anything hurtful is not saying anything meaningful at all. So they're right in saying, "Stop telling me I have to call that a 'holiday tree.' That is offensive." It is offensive. Unless you want to call it a holiday tree because you like the observance without the holiday. That 's another question: It is a holiday tree for a whole lot of people who say, "I have no interest in Christmas, but what a beautiful thing to put colored lights in my house."
But that's not all. He goes much deeper than "I'm OK, you're OK."
And what about the fact that the trees are pagan rather than Christian?
What does that "actually" mean? Hanukkah menorahs are actually Zoroastrian. Tefillin [two wooden boxes, containing parchment scrolls with verses from Exodus and Deutoronomy, one worn on the head and the other on the arm of observant Jews when reciting morning prayers] are actually Canaanite. Everything has its roots in something else.
Should we be teaching children those historical linkages?
Yes, for one reason: So that nobody ever believes that they own the full story of their symbol.
I don't want to copy the entire interview, but I do want to finish with one last quote from the interview:
All the stuff about saying "Happy holidays" and not saying "Merry Christmas" is offensive to Christians. As I was getting out of a cab last night, a cab driver said "Merry Christmas" to me. He was African, and he saw my kippah and said, "I see your hat. You're religious. Merry Christmas." And I said "Merry Christmas to you." He wasn't trying to convert me and he wasn't trying to take over our culture. He was actually offering me the most sincere blessing he knew. And everyone on the left is going to have to chill out, because every time you hear "Merry Christmas" it is not someone who's trying to convert you or take over your school.
Now go read the whole thing!
Labels: Christians, holidays, Jews, Rabbi Bradley Hirschfield
CHALLAH AKBAR
