53 Mosques and Churches Vandalized in Israel Since 2009, but Only 9 Indictments Filed.
Jerusalem church leaders: ‘Radical’ Israeli groups driving Christians from Holy Land.
Christians in Jerusalem's Old City 'under threat' from settlers.
Sometimes, but not this time.
The post was purely about Muslim attacks on churches in Israel.
There have been threads posted for those incidents you highlighted in the past.
'Tis the season to nail Israel Dec 24, 2020
THESE SCREEDS demonize Israel and seek to cover up the real reason for Christian decline in Bethlehem: the Palestinian Authority and radical Islam.
It started with Yasser Arafat. Arriving from Tunis, Arafat immediately set out to suppress the Palestinian middle class across the West Bank, which he understood could be the only real opposition to his planned dictatorial authority.
He nationalized most business sectors and squeezed Palestinian small businessmen out of business. Especially hard hit were middle-class businessmen of Bethlehem, mainly Christian.
Arafat then sidelined the long-time Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, and Arafat’s henchmen led a campaign of terrorism and intimidation against Christian institutions and families in the city. Land theft, beatings and harassment of Christians in Bethlehem by PA security services and other gangs became routine. Forced marriages between Christian women and Muslim men were reported. In 2002, Arafat’s terrorists even took over and defiled the Church of the Nativity for 39 days, holding 200 priests hostage as the terrorists sought to escape Israeli justice.
The result was an inexorable and ongoing Christian exodus from Bethlehem; a city captured by the PA and taken over by a very intolerant strain of Islam.
Nevertheless, PA President Mahmoud Abbas annually releases a malevolent Christmas message in which he cynically calls Jesus Christ a “Palestinian messenger,” and goes on to blast Israel for denying “millions” of Christians their “right to worship in their homeland.”
This is an ugly attempt to apply “replacement theology” (in which Christians are said to have superseded the Jews in a covenant with God) to the Palestinian assault on Israel. In Abbas’s reversed and warped world, the Jewish-Christian Jesus has been replaced by a Palestinian Christ, and Christianity is under attack by the Jews, not the Arabs and Muslims.
Not only is this untrue, but it ignores the radical Islamic assault on Christians across the Middle East, often with government encouragement and support. According to a report commissioned in 2019 by then-British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, pervasive persecution of Christians “sometimes amounting to genocide” is ongoing in parts of the Middle East. Millions of Christians in the region “have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against,” the report finds.
It also highlights how states and state-sponsored social media incite hatred and publish propaganda against Christians, especially in Iran, Iraq and Turkey. “The governing AKP in Turkey depicts Christians as a “threat to the stability of the nation. Turkish Christian citizens have often been stereotyped as not real Turks but as Western collaborators.”
Iraq has lost at least two-thirds of its Christians over the past two decades. More than 600,000 Syrian Christians have been displaced or fled Syria since the civil war began. Other Christians have been massacred and buried in mass graves. In Gaza, Islamic terrorists have bombed churches, killed prominent Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox), and forced others to convert to Islam. In the West Bank, Arab Christians are better off than almost anywhere in the region, but only an estimated 50,000 live there – about 2% of the population, down from 10% in 1920. Overall, Christians now make up only 4% of the population of the Middle East, down from 20% a century ago.
It should be the season for a rigorous world defense campaign on behalf of beleaguered Christians in the Middle East. Instead, ‘tis the season to nail Israel.
'Outrageous, False, Dangerous': Israel Rejects Accusations of Religious Discrimination in Entry to Country By TPS / Tazpit News Agency.
15 Tevet 5782 – December 19, 2021
Israel issued a stern statement rejecting and condemning the accusations of any religious discrimination regarding the granting of entry permits into Israel, following allegations by Christian groups on the subject. Wadie Abu Nassar, advisor and media spokesperson of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land, claimed Wednesday that Israel was discriminating against Christian pilgrims and banning their entry into the country while admitting Jewish visitors. "These unfounded allegations of discriminatory conduct are outrageous, false, and dangerous. We expect religious leaders to not engage in and promote the baseless discourse of hatred and incitement that only serve to add fuel to the fire of antisemitism and can lead to violence and cause harm to innocent people," the Foreign Ministry stated. The ministry explained that the renewed outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Israel and the new Omicron variant has "led to a change in the regulations and procedures regarding entry to Israel, just as many other countries have done.
These changes, unfortunately, include a ban on tourists entering the country." The Exceptions Committee, which discusses special entry requests, has issued numerous permits, to both Jews and Christians. Some of the approved requests were those that came from the church authorities in Israel, including permits for priests to enter the country for the upcoming Christian holidays, the ministry noted. Israel "prides itself in its ardent devotion to safeguarding and promoting freedom of religion and worship for members of all religions and denominations in the country." "Israel has an open-door policy that allows church leaders to discuss with relevant government officials and authorities a variety of issues, including preparations for Christmas," and is "currently involved in special preparations for Christmas and its surrounding events and ceremonies in order to enable access to holy places for worshippers while ensuring their health and safety," the statement read. "We expect religious leaders to renounce hate speech and invite them to continue the regular and fruitful dialogue with the Israeli government," the Ministry concluded.
Barry Shaw, The Truth About Christians in the Holy Land this Christmas, American Thinker, December 25, 2021.
Sadly, this Christmas, many Christian leaders must enter into a period of theological soul-searching. Christian diplomats from once proudly Christian nations failed to oppose the United Nations General Assembly resolution that designated the central holy sites of Jerusalem to be exclusively Islamic property, thereby excising both Jewish and Christian history and the biblical heritage of the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. And, following this recent fraud that Israel will never accept, Christian pastors and bishops are now preaching blasphemy against Israelis and the Jewish State. This Christmas, the Archbishop of Canterbury colluded with the Archbishop of Jerusalem in suggesting that the fate of Christians in the Holy Land is being challenged, not by those who have been threatening Christian existence in once Christian majority towns, but by Israel. This is nothing short of a barefaced lie. It more than hints of disgraceful replacement theology, a medieval blasphemy against Jews that, sadly, continues by misguided church leaders to this day.
The Archbishops, in an inaccurate and biased article published in the anti-Israel Times newspaper under the dramatic title, “Let us pray for the Christians being driven out of the Holy Land,” more than hinted that Jews were the ones driving Christians out of the Holy Land... They may be religious leaders. They are certainly not statisticians. They admit that the Christian population in Israel has grown. Indeed, there are now more Christians in Israel than Druze. Christians have been free to follow their faith and various churches have taken root in Israel including Roman, Armenian, Syriac, Maronite, Chaldean, Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, as well as Anglicans and other Protestants. Israel protects the only significant population of Samaritans in the world. It is where the Baha'i faith is centered (in Haifa) after being persecuted in Islamic countries, particularly Iran.
And yet, the Archbishop of Canterbury and his colleague in Jerusalem have forged an alliance that picks on the Jews for the persecution of local Christians when, if they were to be truly honest, they would admit that the real danger to Christianity lies in the locations that Israel handed over to the Palestinians to administer, and Bethlehem is a prime example.
When Israel was established in 1948, Christians composed 80% of the holy Christian town. This Christmas, Bethlehem Christians are a shrinking minority, less than ten thousand strong.
They pretend it’s because of Israeli checkpoints. At least this is what the replacement theologians behind the Kairos campaign allege.
Truth is, until Israel handed over control of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority the vast majority of local businesses were owned by middle class Christian families who were driven out by the Muslim population who did to the Christians what Arabs had done to the Jews in Arab lands.
In 2006, David Parsons of the International Christian Embassy wrote in a Jerusalem Post op-ed that Christians who remained in Bethlehem “suffer from the same Islamic hostility that is battering Israel, and which views both Jews and Christians as followers of ‘inferior’ faiths naturally destined to be subjugated by Muslims.” He was referring to the edict of Sheikh Yussef Salameh, the Palestinian Authority's undersecretary for religious endowment, who promoted the idea, in 1999 after Israel had left Bethlehem, that Christians should become dhimmis, second-class citizens "protected" by a majority Muslim administration. It’s an easy search to uncover multiple Christian tales of persecution by Muslims in Bethlehem. Why should they treat Christians better than Jews? Bethlehem became a hot bed of Palestinian terror. Multiple deadly attacks were launched from Bethlehem against Jews in Jerusalem and Kiriat Araba. In 2002, when the IDF moved in to arrest the perpetrators of one particular deadly attack, the terrorists took over the St. Mary’s Church, held priests and nuns at gunpoint, and used the sanctuary of the church to open fire on the soldiers. The Israeli soldiers did not return fire and negotiated the safe release of the Christians.
By Christmas 2005, one Italian blogger wrote, “The Mayor of Bethlehem is Christian, but it is Hamas that’s in charge.”
Threats, physical attacks and extortion drove Christians out of their holy town. Their businesses and homes are now occupied by incoming Palestinians.
The Kairos lie alleges that Christians fled because of Israeli checkpoints, but these checkpoints didn’t prevent thousands of Arab Muslims entering the town to usurp the homes and businesses of departing Christians.
This is one fact that the two Archbishops failed to address this Christmas. This Christian persecution has been repeated in the Gaza Strip ever since Hamas usurped power in Gaza during the Palestinian civil war between this Islamic terror group and Fatah. One result of the Hamas takeover has been that Arab Christians have fled the Gaza Strip, some finding shelter in Israel. In short. Where Israel handed control over to the Palestinians one direct result has been that Christians inevitably fled. Where Israel retained control, the Christian population increased, prospered and were protected. This is the truth about Christianity in the Holy Land this Christmas.