Making Deserts Bloom 2

The following report should be compulsory reading for Christians at this time of year. Astonishingly, too many need reminding that the Zionist Grinch is stealing Christmas, dunum by dunum:

"If Joseph and Mary were making their way to Bethlehem today, the Christmas story would be little different, says Father Ibrahim Shomali, a parish priest in the town. The couple would struggle to get into the city, let alone find a hotel room. 'If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed', says the priest of Bethlehem's Beit Jala parish. 'He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission - or to have been tourists. 'This is really the big problem for Palestinians in Bethlehem: what will happen when they close us off completely?'... A strip of Israeli settlements built on 18 square kilometres of what was once northern Bethlehem threatens to cut the city off from its historic twin, Jerusalem... One of the settlements, Har Homa, is built on land where angels are said to have announced the birth of Christ to local shepherds. A narrow corridor of land between Har Homa and another settlement, Gilo, still connects Bethlehem to Jerusalem, but the construction of Givat Hamatos, a settlement announced in October, will fill this in a matter of years." (If Jesus was born today 'Bethlehem would be closed', Phoebe Greenwood, Guardian/SMH, 24/12/11)

But none of this should come as any surprise. From the very moment Lloyd George and Lord Balfour, in a fit of madness, unleashed the Zionist movement on an ill-prepared and unsuspecting Palestine in the 1920's, the malign makeover of the Holy Land proceeded at an unholy pace, with scant regard for the ecology, either environmental or spiritual, of the place - as doughty Christian missionary Frances E. Newton bore witness at the time:

"The [1922] Rutenberg scheme [for the electrification of Palestine] has so far been dealt with from the point of view of its political reaction in the Arab world. But there is another aspect of it which should not be lost sight of. Christendom too has its deeply-rooted interests in Palestine. Are these interests also menaced by the industrialisation of the Holy Land? Admittedly the enterprise is a step forward in the process of developing the amenities of civilised life and has benefited the Arabs as well as the Jews; but this is only a plea in its favour, for, as an Arab quoted in an article which appeared in the Observer some little time ago: 'Man doth not live by bread alone'. Rider Haggard wrote, in a letter to The Times of December 11th, 1917: 'Material progress in general has to justify itself in such cases. It is not enough to show that such and such an undertaking means progress for the beginning of work upon it to be at once licensed. Christians as well as Jews have interests in the Holy Land and, where Palestine is concerned it has, and forever will have, its God-given traditions and its inalienable rights.

"Surely one of these rights claims the safeguarding of sacred sites, the spiritual value of which is a focal point in the life of Christians throughout the world. When a friend of mine pointed out to a prominent Zionist that Christian sentiment was being outraged by the desecration of the shores of the Lake of Galilee as the result of the activities of the Electric Power Station in the Jordan Valley, the answer he received was, 'All development involves vandalism; that is inevitable'.

"The Power Station may be - as is claimed by the Zionists - a great engineering feat; it is none the less a horrible blot on a lovely landscape. It harnesses the waters of the river Yarmuk flowing down from the highlands of Gilead to the east, with those of the Jordan, half way in their courses to the Dead Sea. In the spring, after heavy rains of the winter, and when the melting of the snow on Mount Hermon causes the Jordan to 'overflow its banks all the time of harvest' (ie, in May and June for the region is semi-tropical) more water is available than is required, while, during the later summer months the supply is not sufficient. This called for the erection of a dam where the Jordan flows out of the Lake of Galilee, in order to control the supply from that source; less in the winter, more in the summer.

"When closed in the winter the dam holds up the water thus causing a rise of several feet in the level of the Lake, and the river Jordan loses its character of a swift flowing turbulent stream, and becomes a mere trickle in its almost dry bed, while huge deposits of mud dredged from it top its banks on either side. A modern St. John the Baptist would find himself very much out of place! The rise in the level of the Lake not only causes the inundation of houses by the Lakeside in the town of Tiberius, but also that of not inconsiderable areas round its shores which have for generations been cultivated by Arab peasants.

"When opened in the summer and autumn months, water is drawn from the Lake as required, thus reducing its level and leaving large stretches of hard sunbaked crinkled mud around the shores and, what is more, the lowest level of the dam lies deeper than the bed of the Lake itself, so that - though in its own interests it is not likely to do so - the Company could, if its electrical requirements called for it, drain the Lake dry.

"The alterations in the Lake level affect not only the human population, they bring consternation also among 'the humbler creation', for the fish which, in their multitudes, used to swarm from the Jordan into the Lake for spawning purposes, can no longer do so, and the eggs of those already in the Lake, which are laid in the shallow waters round its edge, become dried up when the water recedes. Arab fishermen have already found their means of earning a livelihood so seriously interfered with that some have given up their craft. It may not be long before the industry hitherto carried on in much the same manner as when, in the days of our Lord, He called His disciples to be 'fishers of men', may disappear altogether.

"It is, therefore, not going too far to say that the 'inevitable vandalism' which accompanies the industrialisation of the land results in the desecration of sites and scenes hallowed by 'those holy feet', which it is surely one of the inalienable rights of Christians to preserve." (Fifty Years in Palestine, 1948, pp 206-207)

Merry Christmas...