That Was Then. This Is Now

Compare and contrast:

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people... it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine... " Balfour Declaration, November 2, 1917

"Over 50 Christian and Muslim sites have been vandalized in Israel and the West Bank since 2009, but only 9 indictments have been filed and only 7 convictions handed down, according to Public Security Ministry data. Moreover, only 8 of the 53 cases are still under investigation, with the other 45 all closed." (53 mosques & churches vandalized in Israel since 2009, Yotan Berger & Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 24/9/17)

Forgive Her Lord, She Knows Not What She Says

Another of Monday night's Q&A Christian panelists, Tiffany Sparks, is described as a "progressive Anglican minister."

Here is her response to the same question dealt with by John Haldane:

"I think for us, as Australians, it's (ie, our Middle East interventions) really exposed a rift in our inter-faith understanding. There's a real problem with us understanding each other's faith. I don't know, there's some sort of stumbling block."

Tiffany's clearly out of her depth here. She continues:

"I'm a pacifist. I'm a really proud daughter of a returned serviceman that did three tours of Vietnam and I think my father's a pretty amazing person. So I have a great respect for our military and for people who do have the courage to be able to do those sort of things, that I certainly couldn't do."

Let me get this straight. Although she's a pacifist, she's proud of her Dad because he just couldn't resist popping over to 'Nam and popping assorted Vietnamese Dads and Mums and...

"I mean all of that being said, I think it's probably an interesting thing to raise is that most Palestinian Christians are actually pacifists in this whole thing. We had a wonderful presenter, Reverend Dr Greg Jenks, who is now the dean of St George College over in Jerusalem and that was something that he took great pains to really point out, that that's where the birthplace of Christianity was and they, even in all of this, are still pacifists."

Better to have held her tongue than to have uttered such nonsense.

Baby steps for Tiffany Sparks:

1) Palestinians are Palestinians are Palestinians. Whether they're Christians or Muslims is irrelevant.

2) They're all in the same trench against Zionist colonisation and dispossession. (In fact, the very first organisational manifestation of Palestinian resistance to Zionist colonisation and dispossesion came in the form of Moslem-Christian Associations, which arose in 1918 and coalesced to formed a national body, the Palestinian Arab Congress, which called for immediate independence from the Britain, and opposed the Balfour Declaration and Jewish immigration.)

3) Palestinian resistance to Zionist colonisation and dispossession has oscillated between armed struggle and non-violent resistance. You never get to hear about the latter because, by and large, the mainstream media is simply NOT INTERESTED in reporting it.

4) Palestinians, moreover, have a right under international law to resist "by all available means, particularly armed struggle," (UNGA 33/24) and "by all available means, including armed struggle" (UNGA 3246).

Interesting, though, her mention of Dr Gregory Jenks. I looked up his website, gregoryjenks.com. While I have real problems with many of Jenks' concepts and statements, which I won't go into here, I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by the relative sophistication of his analysis in the following paragraph:

"In the late nineteenth century, European material interests colluded with an emerging sense of nationalism among European Jewry, to cultivate the dream of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine. All of the people of Palestine, whether they identify as Arab or Jewish, continue to suffer from the tragic consequences of European colonialism; as do their neighbours in Iraq and Syria, where international borders drawn up by imperial bureaucrats in London and Paris continue to diminish the lives of people across the Middle East." (A Palestinian Jesus, 30/12/16)

Of course, he should have mentioned a) that Zionism at this time was very much a minority movement among Jews; b) that the interests and rights of the indigenous Palestinians (90% of the population of Palestine) were completely disregarded by the British and their Zionist collaborators; and c) that the odious and outrageous Balfour Declaration of 1917, which he inexplicably leaves out, constituted nothing less than a crime against the Palestinian people. Nonetheless, the general thrust of what he says is undeniably correct.

Great Moments in Turning the Other Cheek

Here's a recent news report on the plight of Palestinian Christians, which, surprise, surprise, is the exact same plight as all other Palestinians. Who would have thought?

"Palestinian Christians scuffled with Israeli border police near Bethlehem Wednesday after dozens of them, including priests, gathered to protest new work on Israel's West Bank separation barrier in a sensitive Christian area. An AFP journalist said the protesters... gathered in the Christian town of Beit Jala to protest building a stretch of the barrier... The three Roman Catholic priests tried to pray among olive trees that bulldozers and mechanical diggers were seeking to uproot but were stopped by police. One demonstrator was arrested as he tried to plant an olive sapling in front of the excavators. Police wrestled with protesters who chanted, 'Israel is a terrorist state. It doesn't scare us.'... One of the most iconic symbols of the occupation, [the barrier] will cut off more than 9% of Palestinian territory in the West Bank and Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem from the majority, in places separating farmers from their fields or villagers from water sources, the UN says." (Palestinian Christians scuffle with Israeli police over divisive wall, AFP/news.yahoo.com, 19/8/15)

It's not rocket science, folks. Palestinian Christians, like all other Palestinians, have a clear & present ISRAEL problem, OK?

Why then does the latest edition (March 1916) of the Uniting Church of Australia's magazine ACCatalyst contain a centrefold called Persecution of Christians Worldwide Intensifies, containing a list of 50 countries where Christians are allegedly persecuted, beginning with the worst (North Korea) and ending with the least worst (Oman), and featuring the PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES as no. 24?

Not ISRAEL, mind you - Palestinian territories!?

And why O why has the editor of this magazine, one Max Champion, gone out of his way to republish an article from the Australian Jewish News (introduced as "an interesting news and opinion piece"!!!) which:

a) wags a finger at the Uniting Church for daring to entertain a proposal that the church 'establish an awareness-raising campaign throughout the church on the plight of Palestinian Christians and the Palestinian people, including the promotion of the boycott of goods from the illegal settlements in the West Bank as part of the campaign';

b) quotes a Zionist lobbyist to the effect that "a handful of activists" have "infiltrated" the Uniting Church and "bombarded" its members with "a dishonest, one-sided view of the conflict, demanding that the organisation support the activists' position and proposals,";

c) and announces that the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) will be involved in "formal meetings" with the Uniting Church to talk about "Christian and social anti-Semitism, and the theology of land as it relates to Israel"? (Yes, you read right!)

I've heard about turning the other cheek, but this is beyond ridiculous.

Jesus Wept 2

Then there was the following segment, where Geraldine surveys the East Jerusalem skyline under the guidance of Sr Mary Reaburn:

GD (on camera): Wowee!
GD (off camera): The first step on my quest to learn more is the Ecce Homo Convent overlooking the ancient city.
GD (on camera): Oh, look at it. Isn't it fantastic?
MR: So these two dark domes on the horizon are the Holy Sepulchre.
GD: Yes.
MR: That's still within the Old City. And then of course here's the piece de resistance, the Dome of the Rock.
GD: Wow! It sure is.
MR: And now today it's a Moslem [her pronunciation] shrine...

Unfortunately, we didn't get to hear the rest of Sr Mary's words, but I can't help wondering about the somewhat provisional nature of her comment about the Dome of the Rock (now, today), sort of 'Today it's a Moslem shrine, but tomorrow...'

What follows is what the French call folie a deux (a shared folly):

GD (off camera, interrupting): I'm here to meet Sr Mary Reaburn from Melbourne. Mary spends half her year teaching biblical history here in Jerusalem... Mary belongs to a unique French convent, the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion, an order dedicated to understanding the Jewish roots of Christianity.
MR: Mary is a Jewish woman.
GD: A Jewish mother.
MR: A Jewish mother. And raising a Jewish son. I like to tell people sometimes Jesus was never a Christian, a Catholic. He remained, born, lived and died a Jew.
GD: Well that's what I'm fascinated by, you see, that's what I'm really interested in that...
MR: Do you know why?
GD: Why am I interested? Well, how the heck did this Jewish man become this source of this amazing international religion. I find it more and more and more interesting.
MR: If we believe in the incarnation, and that's central, we have to understand the particularity of Jesus, which is his Jewishness, as well as the universality of Jesus, which is his mission... for 1900 years we forgot about Jesus's Jewishness.
GD: I think we did.

Now precisely what this is all supposed to signify is anyone's guess, but I'm sure it's all welcome Judeo-Christian grist to the Zionist propaganda mill. The problem here, of course, is that the locals have effectively been erased from the production. Geraldine is in Jerusalem, not Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem. And you can forget about occupied Palestinians, there aren't even any Arabs here.

In the following segment, our clueless gusher is actually surprised to find that most of those doing the Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa are actually "from the area." It's as though she's only just become aware that there are Palestinian Christians, which she only ever refers to (and then only once) as "Middle East Christians":

GD (on camera): What an extraordinary experience. I mean pilgrims have been coming here to the Holy Land since before the 8th century. In the 12th the Crusaders came and controlled the place for 100 years. Then in the 18th it was all the sea pilgrimage which became fashionable. And then of course by air, which means that pilgrims come by the millions as we've just seen, but, mind you, this was very much a Middle Eastern experience. Most of the people involved mainly were from the area. A lot of us were looking on but it belonged to them. That wasn't quite what I expected.

The ugly reality of Israeli apartheid and occupation is also conspicuous by its absence in the following segment with the passing strange Sr Mary:

GD: How do you find the overt displays of piety?
MR: It teaches me something of the variety of the world. It doesn't have to be my piety...
GD: But, you know, how some deep faith is frankly deeply terrifying. Does that cross your mind?

It's obvious that Geraldine's thinking here about the incident involving the Judeo-fascist in the Cenacle, because none of the Christians in the film have so much as blinked an eyelid. Still, listen to Sr Mary's response, and remember that this is a woman who spends half of every year in Jerusalem:

MR: It does because we know in our own church history the deep faith of the Crusaders who brutally murdered people here on their way to try to regain the Holy Land... sometimes I think God must have a little chuckle.(Chuckles)

!!!!????

This woman's the 3 wise monkeys all wrapped in one.

Finally, Geraldine invites viewers to "join me later this year when I explore the Jewish roots of Christianity."

What? More of Sr. Mary's maunderings? I can hardly wait.

Bethlehem, Christmas 1967

Bethlehem's first Christmas Eve under Israeli-occupation, 1967:

"Bethlehem looked yesterday like a painted mask, frozen and expressionless. Christians may have felt the spirit of Christmas in their hearts but no one showed it openly. Most of them celebrated the feast at home. These few, very few, who were out in the streets looked closed within themselves, and were restrained in their reactions. Truly, it was a sad Christmas. The hundreds of policemen mobilized for the occasion just stood there with nothing to do. The bus and car traffic which was expected but never came reminded me of the common saying, 'The mountain delivered a mouse.' Of the Christians living in Israel only a few attended and those from the West Bank could be counted on one's fingers.

"In Ramallah, the area where there is the biggest concentration of Christians, the atmosphere was much more miserable than in Bethlehem. As one of Bethlehem's merchants told me, 'Would you pray at the Wailing Wall if a Jordanian Arab flag flew over it?'

"Even the great attraction of the evening - the closed TV circuit especially constructed in Bethlehem in order to enable those who had no chance to get into the Church of the Nativity because of the expected crowds, even this had attracted only a few and mainly Israeli citizens, soldiers and policemen.

"All the security men (police and soldiers) were armed with machine-guns. Such a concentration of arms was never seen on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem's history. Mr E. Bandak, the Mayor of Bethlehem, told us that 'all was traditional, like every year.' When we asked why the people seem so disinterested and the streets so deserted and gloomy he answered that 'happiness is something in the heart.'

"This same evening paper on December 24, gave its editorial the following heading: 'This is our test. For the first time in history, Christmas is to be celebrated under the Israeli flag'." (Frozen mass in Bethlehem but not because of the weather, Zvi Lavi, Ma'ariv, 25/12/67)

Sheridan Sheds Tears for Middle East Christians 1

Uncharacteristically, the Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan, hasn't uttered a word in defence of Israel for almost 6 months now, which must be some kind of record for him. Until now that is. His latest thumbs-up for Jewish State in the Levant (JSIL) comes in the guise of a lament for the plight of the Middle East's Christians:

"Pope Francis was in Istanbul this week to draw attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East. The Pope leads 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide. With Bartholomew, Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox, who leads 300 million Orthodox Christians, the Pope said: 'We cannot resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians who have professed the name of Jesus there for 2000 years.' You would think the world might take notice of this. If so, you would be wrong. This week the Catholic Church has dedicated itself to making society aware of the dire straits in which their co-religionists suffer in the Middle East. Yet there has been no interest in Australia." (We can but mourn for the voiceless Christians of the Middle East, 4/12/14)

So who's to blame here? Why, Edward Said, of course! But let Sheridan explain:

"The nonsensical Edward Said popularised the idea that the West dehumanises the 'other' by making it exotic. Thus we are warned in every part of our culture not to demonise the other. That is quite right, so far as it goes. But this translates into a weird reflex in which any group at war with the West is presumed to be, at least in part, virtuously the 'other'. We demonise ourselves, and we especially demonise anything which smacks of Western civilisation in any part of the world which was once colonised. Middle East Christians suffer from this prejudice in the West. Israel does, too. As part of Western civilisation, it earns whole layers of extra hostility. Hating Israel is part of hating Western civilisation, the default position of the inheritors of the detritus of Marxism in successor ideologies like the Greens."

OK, so if I've got him right, the Catholic Church, Middle Eastern Christians and Israel, are all representatives or extensions of what he calls "Western civilisation" vis-a-vis Said's Muslim 'other'. Now let's, for the sake of argument, assume he's right, OK? Wouldn't that make them all, so to speak, family then? One big, happy Judeo-Christian family?

Since Sheridan's introduced the subject of Israel, let's explore the above idea in relation to Palestinian Christians.

As the representatives of 'Western civilisation' already in Palestine when those exemplary agents of 'Western civilisation', the Zionists, first arrived, wouldn't you have expected them to put out the welcome  mat?

Well, guess what? The buggers failed dismally to stick to Sheridan's script:

"On behalf of my brethren, the Christian heads of the different Arab Christian Communities, I speak in the name of the Arab Christian Churches in Palestine. I am an Arab and my connections with the Byzantine Church do not deprive me of being an Arab with Arab blood running in my veins - just as an Englishman is English whether he is Roman Catholic or Anglican. We have confined our statement to three main points: 1. The Christian Arabs in Palestine have everything in common with their Moslem brethren. Religious beliefs do not in any way make them two peoples. They cherish the same hopes and fears and they strive for one goal - freedom and independence. 2. Zionism is a menace to the Christian as well as to the Moslem population in Palestine. A Jewish state in Palestine would result in a gradual decrease in the Arab population and as a consequence the holy places will become lifeless skeletons of stones guarded by monks and devoid of believers. 3. Lastly, the claim of the Zionists to Palestine is based on Biblical promises in the Old Testament. These promises were abrogated by the New Testament; and all promises given to the people of Israel in the Old Testament have been annulled by the advent of Christ." (The Melkite Archbishop of Galilee quoted in the Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry, Palestine, 1946)

And once the new Judeo-Christian dispensation known as Israel was established in Palestine in May, 1948, wouldn't you have expected church bells to begin ringing throughout the land? Jews and Christians dancing together in the streets? Inter-faith celebrations lasting well into the night?

Alas, only if, like Tony Abbott, Sheridan's your 'Suppository of All Wisdom':

"Yaacov [Herzog, head of the department of Christian Communities in the Ministry of Religious Affairs] had to devote much of his time to an unpleasant problem that arose during the War of Independence - namely, the desecration of churches and monasteries by IDF soldiers, the looting of their properties, and offensive misuse of their premises. Such abuse had occurred in many places throughout the [1948] war..." (Yaacov Herzog: A Biography, Michael Bar-Zohar, 2003, p 90)

"The neighborhoods of West Jerusalem that were once predominantly Christian - including the German Colony, Talbiya, and Qatamon - were seized by Israel in the war in 1948. The families that fled the fighting were never permitted to return. After the armistice agreement, their homes were seized by Israel's 'Custodian of Absentee Property,' and the Jewish Agency turned them over to new Jewish immigrants." (The Body & the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians & the Possibility for Peace, Charles M. Sennott, 2001, p 24)

"During the Arab-Israeli war last June [1967] there was much concern about the fate of the holy places in the Old City of Jerusalem. In fact, apart from the church of St Anne, damage to Christian shrines was slight. This was not, however, the case with other Christian property in the Israeli-occupied sector of Jerusalem, belonging to the three major sects, the Latins, Greeks and Armenians. The annexation of the Old City to west Jerusalem, and the return of buildings and cemeteries belonging to them on Mount Sion after a lapse of 20 years, has revealed that these have been extensively desecrated by the occupying forces, and have fared far worse than anything in the Old City during the war. These Christian properties are on the summit of Mount Sion, just outside the city walls to the south. From 1948 until 1967 they were technically in Israel, but the general public was forbidden access to them, and they were under the direct control of the Israeli army.

"Amongst the buildings is the Armenian church of St Saviour, by tradition built on the house of Caiaphas; it is a 15th-century structure... It belongs to the Armenian Patriarchate in Jerusalem, which is also located on Mount Sion, but within the walls of Jerusalem. Since 1948 the prelates of the Armenian church have been unable to visit St Saviour's either from Jordan or Israel. Some years ago a UN truce supervisor was asked about the church, but was unable to get inside it. At the time, he expressed the private opinion that it was being used as an advanced Israeli machine-gun post. "The evidence of recent photographs and reports has proved this conjecture to be correct. The monastery buildings around the church were fortified by the Israelis, and the walls between individual cells demolished to make a continuous passage; the windows were filled with sandbags, and wooden gun emplacements. It is clear that they attached considerable importance to the site, as it commanded the south-west angle of the Old City.

"Less comprehensible was the behaviour of the Israeli soldiers during 20 years of occupation of the buildings. The courtyard of the church of St Saviour is the traditional burying-place of the Patriarchs of the Armenian Church in Jerusalem, and at least 14 of the venerable tombs were smashed open, and their contents desecrated. Two were demolished and excavated to a depth of 6 feet below the ground. "The interior of the church of St Saviour is a scene of total devastation. The carved and gilded altar has been wrecked, and an altar painting lies destroyed on the floor below. The oil paintings that decorated the upper part of the north and south walls have been torn out of their frames leaving only tattered shreds of canvas. Many of the Kutahya tiles, brought specially from Turkey by Armenian pilgrims in the early 18th century, have been ripped from the walls; those that have not been stolen lie smashed on the ground, along with a tangled mass of broken church furniture. The valuable collection of old church vestments has completely disappeared. "So has the well-known Byzantine mosaic, which was in the basement of the monastery. Pere Vincent, the distinguished French scholar, once described it as 'une tres belle mosaique... du IV/V siecle'. It has been expertly lifted and removed. It is common knowledge that the Israeli Minister of Defence, General dayan, has an amateur interest in antiquities; some of his troops would seem to have emulated him.

"Adjacent to the Armenian church is the Greek Orthodox cemetery on Mount Sion, which to judge from the photographs now resembles a film set for the Resurrection. Practically every tomb in the cemetery is smashed. Fragments of marble crosses, angels' wings, and inscriptions lie inextricably mixed with human bones, blackened tree stumps, and the remains of rockets and shells. In contrast to the sack of the Armenian church, the damage could conceivably have been the result of the two wars, in 1948 and 1967, rather than systematic pillage. However, there is no doubt that the cemetery was also occupied by Israeli soldiers; there are well-beaten paths between the tombs, and one of the outhouses is labelled NIGHT CLUB. More graffiti, in Hebrew and English, must have been added by other soldiers to while away their time.

"The state of the third cemetery on Mount Sion, belonging to the Latin church, has been described in a recent issue of the Catholic journal, La Terre Sainte, by the Very Reverend Father Andres. Procureur-General in the Holy Land since 1962, he speaks with authority as he has had the task of supervising the repairs to the damaged cemetery. He begins by deploring the overthrowing of Jewish tombstones by the Arabs of the Mount of Olives - the subject of a recent Israeli White Paper - but observes that they did not, as far as is known, actually drag the corpses out of the tombs, as happened with so many Christian graves. He published several macabre photographs, showing smashed tombs in the Catholic cemetery, with the remains of coffins and the deceased strewn all around. In conclusion he rightly asks why these acts of profanation by the Israelis were not also mentioned in the White Paper.

"As the non-Arab Christian communities are by no means involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, one wonders what possible reason there can have been for the desecration of their cemeteries and churches. It is clear that the pillage and destruction was carried out over a period of years, suggesting that the soldiers' misconduct was condoned by successive generations of Israeli officers. Since the war the Israelis have made it quite clear that whilst some of the recently occupied territories might possibly be negotiable, the Old City is excluded from any bargaining and that they intend to stay. This must give pause for thought to the three major Christian sects in Jerusalem, in light of what has happened to their property during 20 years of occupation; they must surely view the future with apprehension, however much the Israeli government may attempt to reassure them of its benevolence." (The Desecration of Christian Cemeteries & Church property in Israel, Basic Documents Series No. 5, The Institute for Palestine Studies, 1968)

To be continued...

Israel Chokes the Bejesus Out of Bethlehem

"Research showing Christianity is now the most widely persecuted religious group in the world should be an urgent wake-up call to all who value the principles of religious freedom and tolerance enshrined in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted 65 years ago this month. Indeed, Christianity could, after 2000 years, be facing extinction in its birthplace the Middle East... In Egypt, home to what was once a stable Coptic Christian community, but now besieged by Islamic extremism, 207 churches have been attacked this year and 43 destroyed. Previously thriving Christian communities are under siege everywhere - from Syria, where 450,000 Christians have fled the civil war, to Iraq, where a Christian community of one million has been decimated and now numbers barely 200,000, and on to Iran, where hundreds of Christians have been incarcerated and churches open at their peril." (A grim outlook for Christianity, editorial, The Australian, 26/12/13)

Got the picture?

Christians are doing it tough just about everywhere in the Middle East, except, it seems, in occupied Palestine.

I say 'it seems' because curiously Palestinian Christians are nowhere mentioned in The Australian's editorial.

As it happens though, they did get a mention on page 6 of the same edition:

"Nowhere has the impact of Israeli settlements and their growth been as keenly felt by so many Palestinians as in Bethlehem. The birthplace of Jesus Christ finds itself hemmed in on all sides by 22 Israeli settlements, the bypass roads that feed them and the 8m-high 'separation barrier' that snakes around its northern and western sides, cutting off its twin holy city of Jerusalem. 'Our little town has become even smaller due to the continued expansion of Israeli settlements,' Vera Baboun, Bethlehem's mayor, said in a Christmas message appealing to the world to heed their plight. Bethlehem has become more densely populated than Gaza, despite a steady exodus of wealthier residents, mostly Christians, anxious to escape what the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called 'a choking reality'." ('Choking reality' haunts holy city, Catherine Philp, The Times/The Australian)

Isn't it funny how the choking of Bethlehem didn't make it into the editorial... even when it was going on on page 6 of the same paper?! Work that one out.

Sheridan Discovers Beleaguered Syrian Christians

The Australian's foreign editor, Greg (Jerusalem Prize) Sheridan writes:

"Bob Carr's suggestion that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad be allowed to stay in office if it facilitates an end to the bloody fighting there is a sharp and sensible departure from the US and European consensus... Carr believes it is no longer realistic to demand Assad's removal from office as a precondition to a peace conference. This analysis reflects the sober realisation that, with Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah support, the Assad regime has been making progress on the battlefield and there is little imminent prospect of its overthrow. Carr also expresses 'serious reservations' about Western nations arming the Syrian opposition. He says the al-Qa'ida-affiliated al-Nusra group has grown stronger within the Syrian opposition and 'there seems very little doubt they will get a share of the arms' available. He also expresses concerns about the treatment of Christians and other minorities in the region. The Foreign Minister is right to make this point and it is a sad commentary about political correctness in much of the West that almost no one raises a voice in defence of the increasingly beleaguered Christians of the Middle East." (Carr's Syria stand makes sense, The Australian, 3/6/13)

Let's hear that last bit again: "[I]t is a sad commentary about political correctness in much of the West that almost no one raises a voice in defence of the increasingly beleaguered Christians of the Middle East."

Now why is that?

My guess is if, like Sheridan and his great and powerful mates in the US, you spend much of your time cheerleading for Jewish supremacism in Palestine, and ignoring the cries of its indigenous Christians, embodied in the Kairos Palestine Document,* for an end to Israeli occupation, you're probably not that well-placed to take up the cause of Christian minorities at the hands of a Muslim supremacist group such as the Islamic State of Iraq & the Levant.**

If Sheridan had had any real interest in the plight of Syrian Christians, he might have taken the trouble to talk to Syria's Mother Agnes-Mariam de la Croix, here in October last year to talk on that very subject.

After all, the Australian's Rowan Callick did. He even wrote a profile of her for the paper, Christians 'emptied from Middle East' (6/10/12).

Did Sheridan bother reading it? If he had, he might have discovered that Mother Agnes-Mariam's late father was "a Palestinian who fled Nazareth in 1948 when the state of Israel was established."

And if he'd talked to her, he might've found that she'd been born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

Ah, but that'd be to invite an attack of cognitive dissonance, wouldn't it?

[*For the KPD, see my 25/12/09 post A Not So Merry Palestinian Christmas; **See Iraqi al Qaeda wing merges with Syrian counterpart, Sami Aboudi, reuters.com, 9/4/13)]

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...

Confused

Just when I'd gotten used to this particular Israeli talking point...

"According to Ya'ari... Palestinian Christians have fled the region in great numbers and he said there are now more Palestinian Christians living in Santiago than in Bethlehem." (Ehud Ya'ari talks to the media, jwire.com.au, 11/6/09)

... along comes this one:

"The only country in the Middle East in which Christian communities are growing in number is Israel." Peter Wertheim, Council of Australian Jewry, Sydney (Letter, Sydney Morning Herald, 10/1/11)

The Forgotten Faithful

After reading my last post, those interested in what's really behind the emigration of Palestinian Christians from their homeland should read my 25/12/09 post, A Not So Merry Palestinian Christmas. Don Belt's The Forgotten Faithful (National Geographic, June 2009) is also worth a read. Some (abridged) excerpts:

"Easter in Jerusalem is not for the faint of heart. The Old City, livid and chaotic in the calmest of times, seems to come completely unhinged in the days leading up to the holiday. By the tens of thousands, Christians from all over the world pour in like a conquering horde, surging down the Via Dolorosa's narrow streets and ancient alleyways... Every face on Earth seems to float through the streets during Easter, every possible combination of eye and hair and skin color, every costume and style of dress, from blue-black African Christians in eye-popping dashikis to pale Finnish Christians dressed as Jesus with a bloody crown of thorns to American Christians in sneakers and 'I [heart] Israel' caps, clearly stoked for the battle of Armageddon."

"In a small apartment on the outskirts of the city, a young Palestinian Christian couple I will call Lisa and Mark [and their two children, 18-month old Nadia and 3-year old Nate] are preparing to enter the fray... This is the first Easter, ever, that Mark has been allowed to spend with the family in Jerusalem. He is from Bethlehem, in the West Bank, so his ID papers are from the Palestinian Authority; he needs a permit from Israel to visit. Lisa, whose family lives in the Old City, holds an Israeli ID. So although they've been married for 5 years and rent this apartment in the Jerusalem suburbs, under Israeli law they can't reside under the same roof. Mark lives with his parents in Bethlehem, which is 6 miles away but might as well be a hundred, lying on the far side of an Israeli checkpoint and the 24-foot-high concrete barrier known as the Wall.

"Mark finds it depressing that '80% of the Christian guys I grew up with have left for another country to find work'. Yet he understands why. A trained social worker with a degree in sociology, Mark has been looking for a job, any job, for almost 2 years. 'You're surrounded by this giant wall, and there are no jobs', he says. 'It's like a science experiment. If you keep rats in an enclosed space and make it smaller and smaller every day and introduce new obstacles and constantly change the rules, after a while the rats go crazy and start eating each other. It's like that'.

"For anyone living in Israel or the Palestinian territories, stress is the norm. But the 196,500 Palestinian and Israeli Arab Christians, who dropped from 13% of the population in 1894 to less than 2% today, occupy a uniquely oxygen-starved space between traumatized Israeli Jews [! I know whose trauma I'd rather have: MERC] and traumatized Palestinian Muslims, whose militancy is tied to regional Islamist movements that sometimes target Arab Christians. In the past decade, 'the situation for Arab Christians has gone rapidly downhill', says Razek Siriani... who works for the Middle East Council of Churches in Aleppo, Syria. 'We're completely outnumbered and surrounded by angry voices', he says. Western Christians have made matters worse, he argues, echoing a sentiment expressed by many Arab Christians. 'It's because of what Christians in the West, led by the US, have been doing in the Middle East', he says, ticking off the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, support for Israel, and the threats of 'regime change' by the Bush administration. 'To many Muslims, especially the fanatics, , this looks like the Crusades all over again, a war against Islam waged by Christianity. Because we're Christians, they see us as the enemy too. It's guilt by association'."

"On Easter morning, Mark and Lisa make a handsome couple in their Sunday clothes, leading Nate and Nadia by the hand up the sidewalk to the family car... it's a proud moment, their first Easter together in the Holy Land, and Lisa, noticing the thick coat of dust on the car, asks Mark to give it a rinse. He fetches a hose and connects it to a faucet they share with their neighbors... In an animated voice, Lisa explains to the kids that Daddy's giving the car a bath for Easter. Right on cue, with a playful flourish, Mark squeezes the nozzle on the hose. Nothing comes out. He checks the faucet, squeezes again. Still nothing. So there he stands, empty hose in hand, in front of his kids, his neighbors, and a visitor from overseas. 'I guess they've opened the pipes to the settlements', he says, gesturing to the hundreds of new Israeli housing units climbing up the hills nearby. 'No more [water] for us'. Lisa is still trying to explain this to the kids as the car pulls away from the curb.

"'I hate the Israelis', Lisa says one day, out of the blue. 'I really hate them. We all hate them. I think even Nate's starting to hate them'."

The ABC of Zionist Propaganda 2

The 7.30 Report 0f 21 December does the plight of Middle Eastern Christians:

"Increasingly, Christians are feeling under siege in the territory they've called home for centuries, including the Holy Land - many are fleeing the region for good as they fear for their safety." (21/12/10)

From? "From Egypt to Iraq, they were the victims of violent attacks by Muslim extremists."

Ah yes, Muslim extremists. Egypt to Iraq. Wall-to-wall. And that includes the Occupied Palestinian Territories:

"BEN KNIGHT, REPORTER:... The Holy Land is watching its Christian population disappear."

"FATHER RAFIK KHOURY:.. I cannot imagine the Holy Land without Christians."

"SAMIR QUMSIEH*, CHRISTIAN BROADCASTER: I really fear that the Church of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulchre will be turned into museums."

Yikes! OK, so whether it's Egypt, Iraq or the OPT, your Muslim extremists have your (Arab) Christians on the run.

But wait, what's Father Khoury saying now? "[My congregations] say, Well we lived in that situation, OK for us, but for our children we would like to prepare a better future... That is why they leave."

OK for us? The Muslim knife's up against the Christian jugular, but it's... OK for us? What the... ?

And what's this? "PROFESSOR NABIB GHAYIT: Well they're cowards... you have to sacrifice in order to live, you know."

Cowards? What can he mean? Ben? Ben...?

Ah, but Knight's on a roll... on the Muslim track: "But the danger is real. In 2007, Christian pastor Rami Ayyad was murdered in Gaza. No one was ever charged. His family believes there was never any real investigation." Yep, Muslim extremists alright. Who else could it be?

"But it's not just violence," he presses on, "Some Christians say their Muslim neighbours are taking the land out from under them. SAMIR QUMSIEH: They take it by force, by forgery, by many ways and because many Bethlehem people are emigrating, their lands are done."

Funny that. Knight's been ABC TV's Middle East correspondent for years now, but we haven't heard a squeak from him about Israel's demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem (up 45% this year with 396 buildings razed compared with 275 last year), throwing 561 Palestinians, including 280 children, onto the street. "Out of the 250,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem... 60,000 are at risk of having their homes demolished by the Israeli authorities," claims UNRWA (UN agency condemns Arab home demolitions in Jerusalem, BBC News, 23/12/10), but hey, that hardly fits with Knight's Head for the hills! The Muslims are coming! agenda.

Samir Qumsieh tells us that he's "very angry with the Christian world." But not, you'll notice with Israel! Unless, of course, Knight's edited that bit out. Ditto for Father Khoury who laments that "They are forgetting their own roots to help others who have roots in the Holy Land."

Knight then introduces us to the kind of Christians Samir Qumsieh and Father Khoury are presumably angry with: "BRUCE GARBUTT, INTL CHRISTIAN EMBASSY OF JERUSALEM: We come as friends of Israel because Israel is God's chosen people, chosen for a purpose and not because they're different, not because they're better, chosen for a purpose and that's to bring salvation to the world. BEN KNIGHT: This is a messianic view of Christianity that believes when the Jews return to the land of Israel, the temple can be rebuilt and the final day of judgment will arrive. The Palestinian State doesn't fit into that plan. Glen and Marilyn Shaw here are doing missionary work in the West Bank and have seen the poverty there. BEN KNIGHT: You're here today with Israeli flags. GLEN SHAW: Yes. BEN KNIGHT: Who are obviously the occupying force - is that a conflict for you? GLEN SHAW: Not really. Not really. Because God commands us to bless the Jews. To bless Israel. Anybody who blesses Israel will get a blessing in return." Jesus, talk about giving Christians a bad name!

Now would it be too much to expect of a Middle East correspondent doing a piece largely on the plight of Palestinian Christians to ask the lovely Glen and his charming wife, Marilyn, whether they were aware just how pissed off the local Palestinian Christians were with their attitude? Apparently.

I suppose the closest Knight gets to the bleeding obviousness of It's the Occupation, stupid! is when he mentions a Vatican discussion paper on "the situation of Christians in the Middle East," which he says, "talks about some of the driving issues such as the Israeli occupation or the growing influence of extreme Islam right across the Middle East."

But you can't trust Knight as far as you can throw him. That bit about the growing influence of extreme Islam, that's just there to blur the bit about the Israeli occupation, the critical impact of which on Palestinian Christians he has no interest whatever in exploring. And what does that document actually says?: "The meeting document made clear that bishops in the Middle East believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be the root cause of several conflicts in the region. But it also singled out the growth of political Islam in countries like Egypt, and said the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been exploited by radical terrorism in recent years... It criticized the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, saying it had made life difficult both for daily life and religious life since access to holy places are restricted. Citing both the Israeli-Palestinian and Iraqi conflicts, it said: 'The solution to conflicts rests in the hands of the stronger country in its occupying and inflicting wars on another country." (Vatican memo: Mideast conflict driving Christians out of region, Haaretz/ AP, 19/10/10)

IOW, political Islam (or as Knight has it, Islamic extremism) is a response to the USraeli occupation of Arab lands, the driving issue behind the emigration of Arab Christians from the Middle East.

Knight's fleeting reference to the Israeli occupation is soon overtaken by Samir Qumsieh muttering darkly about a "Muslim state" in the West Bank and Knight proclaiming darkly that "In November, Al-Qaeda in Iraq declared open season on all Christians. After a siege at a Baghdad church ended in the deaths of more than 50 people, these Iraqi Christians fled to the relative safety of Jordan. But they're not staying there. They're looking for visas to Canada, the US and Australia. Yet another Christian community has decided it's time to leave the Middle East for good and they won't be the last."

Ooo... Al-Qaeda in Iraq? Is this the same Al-Qaeda in Iraq that used to be led by the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who became the subject of a US military propaganda campaign a few years back? "The Zarqawi PSYOP program," boasted one of its operatives, "is the most successful information campaign to date... Through aggressive Strategic Communications, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi now represents: Terrorism in Iraq/Foreign Fighters in Iraq/ Suffering of Iraqi People (Infrastructure Attacks)/ Denial of Iraqi Aspirations." (Military plays up role of Zarqawi: Jordanian painted as foreign threat to Iraq's stability, Thomas E Ricks, The Washington Post, 10/4/06)

Hm... has PSYOPs now come to 'Your' ABC?

[* On SQ see A tale of two Palestinians, Jerry Gordon, frontpagemag.com, 14/9/05]

Easter in Jerusalem

Imagine the following scenario in Sydney this Easter: The government has blocked all entry points to Sydney's CBD and only those Catholics issued with permits to access St Mary's Cathedral are allowed through. Thousands of soldiers and police have been deployed in the area and have assaulted some of the worshipers seeking entry to the Cathedral.

Impossible to imagine? Substitute Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem for Sydney's CBD and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for St Mary's Cathedral and you've got Easter in Jerusalem this year.

Welcome to Jerusalem, the Eternal, United, Undivided Capital of Israel.

Typically, none of this was reported in the Australian corporate media.* Nor, I venture to add, in hope of contradiction, did any of our church leaders say a word about it. And our politicians? Forget it. But what of those who parade their 'Christian' credentials? Sorry, they appear to be all Christian Zionists these days.

Remember the dhimmi, beloved ideological weapon of Zionist propagandists and Islamophobes?

The dhimmi (an Arabic word meaning a free, non-Muslim subject living in a Muslim country) is the allegedly persecuted non-Muslim (Christian or Jewish) community living under the yoke of Muslim despotism. Dhimmis, so the story goes, having suffered the great misfortune to have once been conquered by Muslims, have been living ever since without any legal rights as second-class non-citizens in Muslim states.

How ironic then, in light of this construct, to hear Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem this Easter railing that "all of the people have the right to access their holy site without harassment, to practice their traditions that have been performed for hundreds of years without any obstacles. The Jerusalem Patriarchate announces its total rejection of all procedures that prevent followers and those of other denominations from reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulchre during Good Friday and Holy Fire Saturday." (Tensions high as Christians flock to Jerusalem, Ma'an News Agency, 3/4/10)

But what would the Greek Orthodox Patriarch really know? Surely Palestinian Christians are faring better under Jerusalem's current Jewish rulers than ever they were under the grinding heel of the Muslim Arab or his successor the Muslim Turk?

But what if those days under Arab and Turkish 'tyranny' were, in hindsight, The Good Old Days?

Here's the first British Governor of Jerusalem (1918-1926), Sir Ronald Storrs, writing about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at the time of its passing into British hands:

"The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was for some time guarded by British, French and Italian sentries, and was Out of Bounds to the soldiers who had fought to free it from Ottoman rule. This rule, here at least not oppressive, had been represented within by an hereditary Moslem guardian, a dignified figure in turban and quftan, whose ancestor had been appointed to the place by Omar, the conqueror of Palestine in the 7th century. Strong suggestions were made to me by undenominational Christians that this Moslem ward over the holiest place in Christendom was an outrage, which no Christian Governor should tolerate. Few of these critics had ever entered the Holy Sepulchre (or indeed any other church): none had paused to consider what manner of Christian would have proved an acceptable candidate for the post. The Orthodox community would never have tolerated a Roman Catholic; nor a Roman an Orthodox or an Anglican - even if the Anglican Church had possessed, or aspired to 'rights' in the Sepulchre. Neither could have endured a Protestant - assuming that any Protestant would have consented to act. The Shaikh did his work well, maintaining the Status Quo and public order as long as he could, and on occasion calling on the police. I will go so far as to say that he was the one functionary, military, civil or religious, from High Commissioner to municipal scavenger, against whom throughout my 9 years in Jerusalem I never heard a complaint." (Orientations, 1939, p 308)

[*As usual, far from the action, Fairfax's Middle East correspondent, Jason Koutsoukis, was busy chronicling the ravings of a Romanian tourist cavorting in the polluted waters of the Jordan River: "'This is the water that Jesus was washed in', he said. 'This water belongs to God. Why would God want to make anyone sick with this holy water?' Watching a euphoric Mr Ferraro splash around the River Jordan as if it was his bathtub, few could doubt his sincerity. But when he started gargling the muddy concoction, some might reasonably have questioned his mental health." (There's nothing like a dunking in dirty water, Sydney Morning Herald, 2-4/4/10)]

A Not So Merry Palestinian Christmas

Watching SBS Television's 6.30 pm bulletin today, you would have heard reporter Kathy Novak say that "[t]he Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem warned that peace would not come to the Holy Land until Palestinians and Israelis respected each other" (Leaders deliver messages), and you would probably have inferred that the Patriarch's approach to the so-called Palestine/Israel conflict was essentially along the lines of a-pox-on-both-your-houses.

You would, of course, be wrong. Here's the Ma'an News Agency account of the Patriarch's Christmas message: "Efforts to bring peace to the Middle East have failed, Jerusalem's Latin Patriarch Fuad Twal said Tuesday in his annual Christmas message. 'Our dreams for a reconciled Holy Land seem to be utopia. Despite the praiseworthy efforts of politicians and men of good will to find a solution to the ongoing conflict, all of us, Palestinians and Israelis, have all failed in achieving peace', said Twal, the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land. 'The reality contradicts our dreams', he said. 'Palestinians still do not have their own state where they can live in peace and harmony with their Israeli neighbors; they still suffer from occupation, a difficult economic situation, destruction of houses in East Jerusalem and internal divisions', Twal added. He highlighted the Israeli blockade of Gaza as a concern. 'A year after the Gaza war, Gaza still suffers from an economic siege, lack of freedom of movement and from the contamination of its sea and water, which endangers the health of 1,500,000 citizens among which 50% are under the age of 14', he said. The Patriarch went on to note Israeli infringement on the sanctity of Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. 'Unfortunately, the Al-Aqsa compound recently witnessed confrontations between fundamentalist Jews who tried to invade Al-Haram Ash-Sharif [Noble Sanctuary] and the young Palestinians, who wanted to defend their holy place', he said. But the Patriarch urged his followers not to give up hope. 'Hope means not giving in to evil, but rather standing up to it', he said, quoting from a document signed recently by Palestinian Christian leaders calling for resistance to the Israeli occupation and rejecting Christian Zionism. The 'Kairos Palestine'* document, modeled after a 1985 document issued by South African Christian leaders calling for an end to Apartheid, declared the Israeli occupation 'a sin'." (Patriarch's Christmas message: Mideast peace efforts failed)

You can read the full speech at zenit.org. Kathy Novak seems to be simply making it up as she goes along. In doing so, she has completely misrepresented the Patriarch's message. (I should also add that Novak's 'quote' is not to be found in Twal's 25 December speech, Homily From Midnight Mass in Bethlehem, either.)

*Here is the preamble and first part of the The Kairos Palestine Document (oikoumene.org, 11/12/09):

"We, a group of Christian Palestinians, after prayer, reflection and an exchange of opinion, cry out from within the suffering in our country, under the Israeli occupation, with a cry of hope in the absence of all hope, a cry full of prayer and faith in a God ever vigilant, in God's divine providence for all the inhabitants of this land. Inspired by the mystery of God's love for all, the mystery of God's divine presence in the history of all peoples and, in a particular way, in the history of our country, we proclaim our word based on our Christian faith and our sense of Palestinian belonging - a word of faith, hope and love.

Why now? Because today we have reached a dead end in the tragedy of the Palestinian people. The decision-makers content themselves with managing the crisis rather than committing themselves to the serious task of finding a way to resolve it. The hearts of the faithful are filled with pain and with questioning: What is the international community doing? What are the political leaders in Palestine, in Israel and in the Arab world doing? What is the Church doing? The problem is not just a political one. It is a policy in which human beings are destroyed, and this must be of concern to the Church.

1. The Reality On the Ground

1.1 "They say:'peace, peace' when there is no peace." (Jer. 6:14). These days, everyone is speaking about peace in the Middle East and the peace process. So far, however, these are simply words; the reality is one of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, deprivation of our freedom and all that results from this situation:

1.1.1 The separation wall erected on Palestinian territory, a large part of which has been confiscated for this purpose, has turned our towns and villages into prisons, separating them from one another, making them dispersed and divided cantons. Gaza, especially after the cruel war Israel launched against it during December 2008 and January 2009, continues to live in inhuman conditions, under permanent blockade and cut off from the other Palestinian territories.

1.1.2 Israeli settlements ravage our land in the name of God and in the name of force, controlling our natural resources, including water and agricultural land, thus depriving hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and constituting an obstacle to any political solution.

1.1.3 Reality is the daily humiliation to which we are subjected at the military checkpoints, as we make our way to jobs, schools or hospitals.

1.1.4 Reality is separation between members of the same family, making family life impossible for thousands of Palestinians, especially where one of the spouses does not have an Israeli idenity card.

1.1.5 Religious liberty is severely restricted; freedom of access to the holy places is denied under the pretext of security. Jerusalem and its holy places are out of bounds for many Christians and Muslims from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Even Jerusalemites face restrictions during the religious feasts. Some of our Arab clergy are regularly barred from entering Jerusalem.

1.1.6 Refugees are also part of our reality. Most of them are still living in camps under difficult circumstances. They have been waiting for their right of return, generation after generation. What will be their fate?

1.1.7 And the prisoners? The thousands of prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons are part of our reality. The Israelis move heaven and earth to gain the release of one prisoner, and those thousands of Palestinian prisoners, when will they have their freedom?

1.1.8 Jerusalem is the heart of our reality. It is, at the same time, a symbol of peace and a sign of conflict. While the separation wall divides Palestinian neighbourhoods, Jerusalem continues to be emptied of its Palestinian citizens, Christians and Muslims. Their identity cards are confiscated, which means the loss of their right to reside in Jerusalem. Their homes are demolished or expropriated. Jerusalem, city of reconciliation, has become a city of discrimination and exclusion, a source of struggle rather than peace.

1.2. Also part of this reality is the Israeli disregard for international law and international resolutions, as well as the paralysis of the Arab world and the international community in the face of this contempt. Human rights are violated and despite the various reports of local and international human rights organizations, the injustice continues.

1.2.1 Palestinians within the State of Israel, who have also suffered a historical injustice, although they are citizens and have the rights and obligations of citizenship, still suffer from discriminatory policies. They too are waiting to enjoy full rights and equality like all other citizens in the state.

1.3 Emigration is another element in our reality. The absence of any vision or spark of hope for peace and freedom pushes young people, both Muslim and Christian, to emigrate. Thus the land is deprived of its most important and richest resource - educated youth. The shrinking number of Christians, particularly in Palestine, is one of the dangerous consequences, both of this conflict, and of the local and international paralysis and failure to find a comprehensive solution to the problem.

1.4 In the face of this reality, Israel justifies its actions as self-defence, including occupation, collective punishment and all other forms of reprisals against the Palestinians. In our opinion, this vision is a reversal of reality. Yes, there is Palestinian resistance to the occupation. However, if there were no occupation, there would be no resistance, no fear and no insecurity. This is our understanding of the situation. Therefore, we call on the Israelis to end the occupation. Then they will see a new world in which there is no fear, no threat but rather security, justice and peace.

1.5 The Palestinian response to this reality was diverse. Some responded through negotiations: that was the official position of the Palestinian Authority, but it did not advance the peace process. Some political parties followed the way of armed resistance. Israel used this as a pretext to accuse the Palestinians of being terrorists and was able to distort the real nature of the conflict, presenting it as an Israeli war against terror, rather than an Israeli occupation faced by Palestinian legal resistance aimed at ending it.

1.5.1 The tragedy worsened with the internal conflict among Palestinians themselves, and with the separation of Gaza from the rest of the Palestinian territory. It is noteworthy that, even though the division is among Palestinians themselves, the international community bears an important responsibility for it since it refused to deal positively with the will of the Palestinian people expressed in the outcome of democratic and legal elections in 2006."

Schmoozing with Aaron Klein! 2

Continued from my last post...

I'm puzzled as to why the Talking with Terrorists's blurb reckons that Aaron's terrorists have targeted Hollywood "for elimination" when his ground-breaking research actually reveals that they're fans! It would appear that they've been following every twist and turn in the careers of such celebrities as Jane Fonda ("who we all know was involved in Vietnam activism," Aaron! helpfully reminds us), Rosie O'Donnell (Rosie who?), and Sean Penn since the 60s. Jane Fonda, for G-d's sake!: "I asked some of the terrorists... what they thought of the activism by Hollywood, and they loved it, they're emboldened, every time they hear a Hollywood celebrity talk out against the war in Iraq or Afghanistan or go on a solidarity mission [Senator McCarthy must be turning in his grave!] to a terror-sponsoring entity like Iran, like Syria, they're emboldened to believe, because they think that all Americans hate Islam, hate the Middle East, that whenever they get their picture that there are some out there who side with their goals, or at least for the terrorists they believe side with their goals, because to them they're not just looking to get America out of Iraq and Afghanistan or destroy Israel, boost up Iran, these are just their short-term goals and they'll take all the help they can get."

This was a revelation for me, as I'm sure it was for you, dear reader. I had no idea Their Satanic Majesties spent so much time at the movies (the real ones, that is, not that crap from Egypt!). And not only the movies, apparently. Ditto for radio. According to Aaron! they love Madonna and Britney Spears to death! Crikey! What with indoctrination 101 at the madrasa, schmoozing with Aaron!, dodging IDF death squads, reading up on Rosie who?, stalking Britney Spears, going to the movies, shopping around for cut-price bomb belts, wiping Israel off the door mat, and working hard at the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization as we know it, these guys really have their work cut out. They're almost beyond belief.

Also according to the blurb, they've got homosexuality targeted "for elimination." Everything, it seems, except the Israeli occupation. Is there no end to their labors? And how would we ever have known this without the intrepid and courageous Aaron!? You see Aaron!'s been schmoozing with Abu Abdullah, "a senior commander of Hamas' military wing." (And if I may digress here, just thought I'd check out this character among the other A-boos listed in the index of Azzam Tamimi's Hamas: Unwritten Chapters. Nothing! Ditto for Zaki Chehab's Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of Militants, Martyrs & Spies. Thank G-d he's at least made it into Aaron!'s book.) Aaron! quotes AA as saying that unless homosexuals mend their disgusting ways, "they may be sentenced to death." (And if I may digress yet again, Rachael quips, "Well, that would thin the ranks of society, wouldn't it?" Now just how gay does she think we are? Who, dear? Gay, dear? Us, dear? No, dear! How very dare you, Rachael!)

But hang on. I've got this terrible bout of cognitive dissonance, because I remember Rachael describing Aaron in her blurb as an Orthodox Jew, and an adjacent critic's just slipped me this quotation from Israel Shahak's Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel: "Many Israeli rabbis and the Israeli religious political parties in the 1990s reacted sharply against the increased visibility and power of the homosexual and lesbian communities in Israel. According to the Halacha, homosexuality is punishable by stoning... Many rabbis, when interviewed, indicated that they favoured imposition of the death penalty for Jewish homosexual men." (p xviii-xix)

No way could I believe this rubbish. Consult Wikipedia. Aaargh! It seems that "the Biblical book of Leviticus calls the big H an 'abomination' that may be subject to capital punishment, although Halakhic courts are not authorized to administer capital punishment for sexual immorality in the absence of a Temple in Jerusalem." Could it be that Aaron's alleged schmoozing with the Israeli right is designed solely to expose them and thus save Israel's gay community from a right stoning? But what's this? The same adjacent critic's just slipped me an editorial by Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily's CEO, on 'The dirty little secret of America's newsrooms' (25/6/08). Which is? That US "newspapers and broadcast outlets... The Hearst Corp, McClatchy Company, Gannett, National Public Radio, Bloomberg, Washington Post, NBC News, ABC, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network and... News Corp," are all dancing to the tune of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, an "arrogant bunch of fascist mind-control freaks." But not, it seems, WND.

And Orthodox Aaron!? In 'Religious leaders: No 'gay pride' in holy city: Rare gathering of Christian, Jewish, Muslim figures blasts homosexual event' (31/3/05), he informs us that "The Rabbinical Alliance [of America]... sponsored a poll," which showed "[n]early 100% of the Orthodox Jewish segments surveyed said they were opposed to [WorldPride 2005]" being held in Jerusalem. Does this mean then that...? But no, Aaron! must surely have been among the 1% Orthodox who defended this celebration of gay pride. Else why would he be exposing the dreadful Abu Abdullah? But then, in another of his reports just slipped to me, 'Israel recognizes homosexual couples: 'Jewish state risks becoming next Sodom and Gomorrah'' (3/7/08), he's schmoozing with an Orthodox rabbi who's predicting that the Israeli Attorney General's decision will excite G-d's wrath, with dire consequences for Israel! Now Aaron's indicated in his interview with Rachael that he's writing a second book about a much greater conflict than that being fought between the Horned and Fanged Terrorist Aliens of Planet Palestine and the gentle, unassuming volk of the Lamb of Israel: that between "the secular and the religious" in Israel. Guess we'll just have to wait and find out whose side he's on - Sodom and Gomorrah's or the Good Good Good Guys of Gush Emunim.

Apparently, it's not just Hollywood wot's giving comfort to these Terrorist Reptiles. The mainstream media's in on the act too! Says Aaron!, "I think a lot of reporters, they don't have a moral compass... I can't say enough that [the terrorists] are looking to spread their belief system around the world, and that Israel is just a stepping-stone... towards the ultimate destruction of the West, then our media... really needs to... change some of their attitudes... if you look at a lot of the editorial blurbs of the major American media outlets, it's no surprise that a lot of them are controlled by liberal editors, the editorial board of the New York Times, the Washington Post, liberal, liberal, and one of the major tenets of liberalism... is that you can sit down and negotiate with your enemy, as an absolute last resort you should use military means... But I think that if most Americans really understood who their enemy is in these terror organisations, really understood that with this enemy there is no dialogue, that with this enemy there is no cease-fire, a cease-fire is a chance to re-load and re-group. That you can't sit down to this enemy, you either win or they're going to try to win."

Now I seem to remember reading such BK! studies as Israel-Palestine On Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East (Howard Friel & Richard Falk), which argues that the "NYT's unwillingness to view the conflict through the lens of international law has contributed significantly to both an anti-Palestine bias and an inflated sense of Israeli entitlements," and Muting the Alarm over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The New York Times vs Haaretz, 2000-2006 (Jerome Slater), which argues that Israel's Haaretz is actually far more critical of Israeli policies than the NYT. Now, however, thanks to Aaron!'s revelations, I can see that these were just part of a fiendish and sophisticated plot by "liberals, liberals" at the helm of the NYT to cover their slimy, terrorist-appeasing tracks. Is there no end to the deceptions and fraud perpetrated by the liberal media? Thank G-d we've got WND to fall back on!

In fact, so powerful is this liberal media conspiracy to aid and abet the Legions of Terror that even Rachael, despite her being in the Top 50 and all, is sucked in! No sooner has Aaron! declared he's for eternal war on the terrorists, than she's babbling, Chamberlain-like, about "the war in Iraq... dissuad[ing] anyone from say approaching this issue in a military fashion." But our Aaron!'s not sucked in by the snakes of the liberal media, no siree, Bob! The courageous, intrepid, unbelievably honest one is prepared to fight the Towelheaded Vermin to the last American soldier: "Yes, there's absolutely no question that America could have won this war a long time ago and why they haven't been using their full military might, rather than restraining the military, I don't know..." Shock & Awe, 655,000 Iraqi deaths and climbing, millions of refugees, and trillions of $$$ - simply not good enough! With the application of "full military might," Yankee Doodle Dandy could've blown Iraq back to the Stone Age where it belongs! And all this while the namby-pamby IDF merely "go from home to home instead of carpet bombing in Gaza, in the West Bank." That, of course, is the appeaser Olmert's doing, and Aaron!, as we know, has fingered his government as one of the conspirators engaged in the awful business of simply handing over the Middle East to the Terrorist Hordes. Hence the importance of his research and his number one finding: You've gotta talk to the terrorists to know that you can't talk to the terrorists.

For me, the high point of Rachael's interview came when she asked Aaron! about his "encounters with Christians in the Middle East." This triggered a veritable flood of revelations, hitherto unrevealed. The persecution of Christians was "a huge story," said Aaron! "Take for example Bethlehem, which is one of the holiest cities for Christianity. It's the site of the Church of the Nativity, which is where Christians believe Jesus was born, and up to about... 18 years ago the Christian population of Bethlehem was about 85%, and then, starting in the early 1990s, suddenly Christians started fleeing Bethlehem, and now actually the Christian population of Bethlehem is about 23%, and actually that counts satellite towns, the actual Christian population in Bethlehem proper right now is 12%, it's dwindling. Why?... what happened was Israel evacuated Bethlehem and gave Bethlehem to Yasser Arafat, gave Bethlehem to the Palestinians as part of the Oslo Accord in the 1990s and as soon as the Palestinians took over, as soon as Yasser Arafat got his hands on Bethlehem, right away you had all of these instances of Christians being persecuted, of Christian women being forcibly converted to Islam, Christian stores being firebombed, of Christians actually coming home at the end of the day, and I witnessed this twice, this happens, it's incredible, they come home and their property is confiscated by Muslim terrorist gangs related to Fatah, to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah group. They tell the Christians they have 24 hours to evacuate your home and then get out. That's it. Happens all the time, and the Christians can't go to the police, they can't go to the court system because the courts and the police are controlled by the Palestinian Authority and so you have the situation now where Christians are fleeing left and right." Rachael was so shocked at this tale of rapine and plunder that all she could manage was a strangled, "Why haven't we heard much about this from Hanan Ashrawi?" I too was reeling. I'd been misled.

BK!, I'd read this from the book by the Boston Globe's Middle East bureau chief from 1997 to 2001, Charles M Sennott: "Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, and Beit Jala formed a 'Christian triangle' in the West Bank, containing the highest concentration of the Palestinian Christian population. Roughly 30% of Bethlehem's 30,000 inhabitants were Christian; and Beit Sahour and Beit Jala, each with approximately 12,000 residents, were about 75% Christian. About two-thirds of all Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem lived in one of these 3 towns." (The Body and the Blood: The Middle East's Vanishing Christians & the Possibility for Peace, p 117) Obviously dodgy figures. Almost certainly a liberal. The very fact that he qualifies the word 'Christian' with the adjective 'Palestinian' is a dead give away.

And this on Arafat and the Christians: "Arafat has always been attentive to the Christian minority within the Palestinian community, and some officials of the Palestinian Authority have criticized him for coddling the Christian minority in a way that causes their ostracization from the larger group. Arafat seems to have a genuine concern for the diminishing local Christian presence as well as a shrewd understanding of Christians' importance to his own political, diplomatic, and fund-raising missions throughout the Western world. Arafat has been attuned to the resonance of Bethlehem and Jerusalem during his frequent trips to France, Italy, and America. On these trips, whenever he spoke of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, he evoked images of Jerusalem's church spires along with the Dome of the Rock. When he spoke in Arab countries, the church spires were more often left out and the Islamic requirement to protect Al-Quds was stressed." (p 69) Mere hearsay, of course. If only Sennott had had the gumption to schmooze with Arafat instead.

And then there's that 2006 poll of Bethlehem Christians, carried out by the Palestinian Centre for Research and Dialogue, which showed that 78% blamed the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem on Israel's blockade, and 73% believe that the Palestinian Authority treats Christian heritage with respect. (http://www.openbethlehem.org/) Obviously, these figures need to be taken with more than a few grains of Dead Sea salt. After all, the mob that did the polling was "Palestinian." And anyway, talking to Bethlehem Christians while they're busy with Muslim home renovators and learning how to don hijabs couldn't possibly lead to reliable results.

Not to mention the following 2006 letter by Open Bethlehem's chief executive Leila Sansour, a Bethlehem Christian, to Texas congressman Michael McCaul on his resolution on the plight of Palestinian Christians: "The resolution seriously misrepresents the situation facing Christians in the Holy Land. [It] ignores the numerous calls from churches in Jerusalem and Bethlehem - and the overwhelming body of reports from international human rights organizations - that warn of the devastating effect of the Israeli system of closure, collective punishment and the construction of the wall. In the Holy City of Bethlehem, the wall forcefully expropriates most of Bethlehem's valuable land and historic landmarks, depriving many Christian families of their homes, barring access to family and jobs in Jerusalem and all the lands that are on the other side of the wall. By perpetuating the misconception that it is their Muslim neighbors and the Palestinian Authority who are creating this crisis, rather than policies imposed by the Israeli government, congressman McCaul is entrenching the problems faced by the Christian community rather than helping address them. The Open Bethlehem campaign was created to address the state of emergency in Bethlehem with full support from the Patriarchs of the churches in Jerusalem and all Bethlehem civil institutions." (Congress misled about real threat to Palestinian Christians, http://www.openbethlehem.org/) Well, I never. Talk about propaganda! Aaron!'s got this one pegged: "Actually, every year about Christmastime, right before, every year the mainstream media in America does these stories where, get this, they actually blame Israel. I kid you not, every year, blame Israel for the plight of the Christians in Bethlehem because they say that Israel built a fence that encircles Bethlehem. Actually there's no wall that encircles Bethlehem, there is a fence and part of it's a wall and it's just in one part of Bethlehem that interfaces with Jerusalem..." And Top 50 Rachael didn't pull him up on this, so that's good enough for me.

How to explain the discrepancies between the findings of the above BK! scribblers and those of our Aaron!? There's the inevitable question of liberal bias, of course, with Aaron! correctly pointing out that these hacks have a tendency to leave their moral compasses on the shelf at home. However, I believe that they can largely be explained by a difference in methodology. The above babblings are generally based on such traditional investigative techniques as interviews, polls, and accessing relevant data in libraries and databases, and are generally carried out by experienced and qualified personnel who wouldn't know an axe-grinder if they stubbed their toe on one. Needless to say, this makes their product extremely bora, bora, bora. The result is that the punters have lost all interest - they're switching in droves to WND or FrontPage Magazine or Little Green Footballs. Thanks to Aaron! the old approach to these matters has been superseded by his exciting new strategy of knowledge acquisition, schmoozing, which could perhaps be defined as getting so close to the bastards that you can smell the sulphur. You see, schmoozing cuts right through all that boring and time-wasting academic folderol (after all we are dealing with ticking bombs here), and goes straight to the heart of darkness!

The efficacy of schmoozing is perhaps best illustrated, apart from the revelations already alluded to, towards the end of the interview. Rachael, breathless at Aaron!'s tales of derring-do, asks him if he was ever scared for his life. The self-effacing lad is, of course, as honest as the day is long. "Absolutely," he replies. "There were several interviews in particular in the last two years while writing this book where I really didn't think I would get out alive." Here is his hair-raising account of just one. Aaron!'s moral compass, which he carries with him at all times, had led him to the lair of "the senior leadership of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror group, the most active Palestinian terror group in the West Bank, with literally the chief of the Brigades No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, it was all the senior leadership, they were all with their weapons, had machine guns..." Presumably the chiefs of Brigades No. 1, No. 5, No. 6 etc, etc were busy with their Bethlehem furniture removal business (Gone Before You Know It! Pty Ltd). He was, of course, accompanied by his long time colleague and research assistant, the equally intrepid and courageous "American radio host" and Professor of Islamic Studies at George Dubya Bush University, Redneck, Kansarse, Rusty Humphries. Predictably, Rusty proved more than a match for the Terrorist Spawn of Satan but, hey, I'll let Aaron! tell the story in his own inimitable (72 virgins x 10) style: "We went in together and during the interview Rusty... kept asking the terrorists to show us where in the Qur'an it says anything about 72 virgins, about suicide bombers who go up to Allah's paradise and get an eternity with 72 dark-eyed virgins, because actually I don't know if you know this, but it's not in the Qur'an, the Qur'an doesn't say anything about 72 virgins and yet the terrorists constantly tell the Palestinian teenagers who blow themselves up that they're going to get the 72 virgins, and so Rusty knew it wasn't in the Qur'an and he kept asking the terrorists who said earlier that martyrs get 72 virgins, he kept asking where in the Qur'an it was located. And I was sitting across the room from Rusty and so I couldn't really nudge him, but the terrorists were getting really agitated and he didn't realise that, they actually kept shooting these angry glances at me, like shut this guy up, tell him to stop asking. And he kept petitioning, 'So did you find the 72 virgins yet, did anybody find the 72 virgins?' He actually had them take out a Qur'an and flip through the Qur'an and look for the 72 virgins, and they kept pointing to different verses that may indicate a virgin or two, but they couldn't find the 72 virgins, and I didn't think we'd get out alive from that interview." What a close shave that must have been!

The point is, but for the intrepidity and courage of these two, we would've just gone on swallowing any old codswallop from these Terrorist Swine. Now, AK!, we know that, as Aaron! says, "at the very foundation of the arguments of the terrorist, there is no argument, there is no foundation, it's not there." I know just what he means.

"Are you going to be more careful in the future?" asks a maternal Rachael in one last, probing question. "Oh yes, absolutely, very careful," responds Aaron!

I somehow think he'll survive, don't you?

Oh, I almost forgot! Rusty's also a renowned singer and songwriter. You can order his CD, Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy, from www.talk2rusty.com/store. The lyrics of the title song are informed by the very fruitloops of his joint research with wunderkind Klein!: Life as a terrorist is really laid back/ You find an infidel and give his head a big whack/ See a soldier just shoot him in the back/ Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy - Well I got me 5 wives and got me a hooka/When the sun comes up I strap on me Bazooka/ One wife so ugly I'm glad she wears a burka/ Thank Allah I'm a Jihad Boy (Radio host's CD pokes fun at terrorists, 27/10/06, WorldNetDaily.com)

Greg Sheridan: Charmed by Israel's "Most Dangerous Politician"

Greg Sheridan is The Australian's Foreign Editor. He is also a recipient of the Zionist Federation of Australia's Jerusalem Prize "for his support for Israel." (The Australian Jewish News, 27/4/07) Currently in Israel, he's been talking to some VIPs - VIPs like Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, dubbed by Hebrew University's Professor Zeev Sternhell, "Israel's leading academic specialist on fascism and totalitarianism...[as] 'perhaps the most dangerous politician in the history of the state of Israel.' " (Extreme right-winger to join Israeli government, The Scotsman, 23/10/06)

Lieberman, who heads a party called Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home), was born in Moldova and emigrated to Israel in 1978. As a Jew he became an instant citizen under Israel's Law of Return. This parvenu, whom Sheridan found "charming in a rough, Russian way," (Israeli right-winger redraws the battle lines, The Australian, 17/12/07) has a bellicose bee in his Moldovan bonnet about the indigenous peoples of the area, whether Israeli Arabs (who should be moved out of Israel), inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (who should be treated like the Russians treat the Chechens), or other Arabs, such as Egyptians (whose Aswan dam should be bombed). (Israel must treat Gaza like Russia does Chechnya: hardliner, AFP, 1/11/06)

Sheridan really digs Lieberman, finding him, "...more open to compromise than many Israelis." But what could Sheridan possibly mean here by "compromise"? Does Lieberman believe in ending the 40-year Israeli occupation of the territories, allowing for a contiguous Palestinian state on 22% of historic Palestine? As if! No, Lieberman believes that "as well as territory, Israel should give away people too, in particular its Muslim Arab citizens. He doesn't want to expel them exactly, just redraw some borders so that some Arab towns and villages move into a new Palestinian state nextdoor, thus making Israel a more Jewish state." Seems that in Israel the word 'compromise' is as movable as the word 'borders'.

At first Sheridan seems to recoil from such a Clayton's "compromise": "The idea of excluding people on the basis of their ethnicity or religion is anathema to every liberal principle..." But, where Israel is concerned, "liberal principles" can always be compromised and excuses found: "Yet it conforms to the reality of the Middle East. Hamas extremists are trying to kill, convert or drive into exile the tiny Christian minority in the Gaza Strip. The Jewish minorities have been driven out of virtually every Arab state. And even the logic of objecting to every Jewish settlement in the West Bank can be seen as endorsing the notion that Israel should bequeath the Palestinians a state which contains not a single Jew."

Let us examine these bold but specious assertions. First, that the reality of the Middle East is ethno-religious exclusion. This is certainly the case with Israel, and does not depend on whether or not Lieberman's brand of ethnic cleansing is one day implemented. As a Jewish state, representing not its citizens (one fifth of whom are Arabs), but 'the Jewish people' from Moldova to wherever, Israel privileges Jews over non-Jews. This is true both for its own non-Jewish citizens, who are denied access to land and resources within Israel, and to the stateless Palestinian refugees expelled by Zionist forces in 1948 from their homes and lands in what is now Israel, who are denied the right of return. As American-Palestinian academic Joseph Massad puts it: "...Israeli racism...manifests in its flag, its national anthem, and a bunch of laws that are necessary to safeguard Jewish privilege, including the Law of Return (1950), the Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of the State's Property (1951), the Law of Citizenship (1952), the Status Law (1952), the Israeli Lands Administration law (1960), the Construction and Building Law (1965), and the 2002 temporary law banning marriage between Israelis and Palestinians of the occupied territories." (Israel's right to be racist, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007836/op1.htm) No other Middle Eastern state, whatever their failings, comes anywhere near the Israeli reality of ethno-religious exclusivism.

Second, that Hamas is "trying to kill, convert or drive into exile the tiny Christian minority in the Gaza Strip." One recent source, the Jerusalem Post, no less [Gaza: Christian-Muslim tensions heat up, 25/9/07], reports an attack on an 80 year-old Christian woman by "a masked man" who "demanded her money." This led to an appeal by Palestinian Christians to Hamas "to make an effort to protect Christians." Curious that they should be appealing to a movement allegedly involved in "killing, converting and exiling" Christians. In fact, as Palestinian academic, Khaled Hroub, has written: "In its conduct towards the Palestinian Christians Hamas has shown extraordinary sensitivity...there have been no religious-driven or sectarian friction or riots in Palestine during the lifetime of Hamas that could be linked directly to the movement." (Hamas: A Beginner's Guide, pp. 90-1)

Third, that "The Jewish minorities have been driven out of virtually every Arab state." Pushed or pulled, Mr Sheridan? Consider the following extract from CIA adviser, Wilbur Crane Eveland, who was in Iraq at the time (early fifties): "Just after I arrived in Baghdad, an Israeli citizen had been recognized...his interrogation led to the discovery of 15 arms caches brought into Iraq by the underground Zionist movement...In an attempt to portray the Iraqis as anti-American and to terrorize the Jews, the Zionists planted bombs in the US Information Service Library and synogogues, and soon leaflets began to appear urging Jews to flee to Israel. Embarrassed, the Iraqi government launched a full-scale investigation, and shared its findings with our Embassy. Iraqi Chief Rabbi Sassoon Khedouri...was urging his people to be calm and remain, remembering that they were native Iraqis first and that Judaism was only their religion, which they could practice freely as always. In spite of our constant reports that the situation in Iraq was exaggerated and artificially inflamed from without, the State Department urged us to intervene with the government to facilitate an air-lift that the Zionists were organizing to 'rescue' Iraqi Jews...Although the Iraqi police later provided our Embassy with evidence to show that the synogogue and the library bombing, as well as the anti-Jewish and anti-American leaflet campaign, had been the work of an underground Zionist organization, most of the world believed that Arab terrorism had motivated the flight of Iraqi Jews, whom the Zionists had 'rescued' really just in order to increase the Israeli Jewish population..." (Ropes of Sand (1980) pp. 48-9)

Fourth, the laughable assertion that "the logic of objecting to every Jewish settlement in the West Bank can be seen as endorsing the notion that Israel should bequeath to the Palestinians a state which contains not a single Jew," is like asserting that, because the French objected to the German occupation of France in WW2, they must have been prejudiced against Germans.

Of course, there's more, much more, but let's fast forward to Sheridan's oh so understanding conclusion: "What [Lieberman's] political rise does show is just how weary people are getting of the failure to solve the conflict and how longingly many Israelis are looking to straightforward notions such as separation as their salvation." What the rise (and rise?) of Lieberman actually reveals is the rising racism at the very heart of the Jewish state. As Palestinian-American academic, Saree Makdisi, has pointed out, the only difference between Lieberman and mainstream Israeli politicians is that while they both "agree that a line of concrete and steel ought to be drawn with Jews on one side and as many Arabs as possible on the other," the latter "argue that it is OK to have a few Arabs on the inside, as long as they behave themselves, and don't contribute too heavily to what Israelis refer to as 'the demographic problem'." (http://www.counterpunch.org/makdisi03312006.htm)

Partisan journalism doesn't get much better than this.