15-May-09: What's really being done to Palestinian Arab Christians?

The visit of Pope Benedict XVI to this neighbourhood over the past five days has elicited the usual rush of Israel-critical comment. Frequently based on very partial and distorted views of what actually happens here, there is something sadly consistent about the report flow - an insistent refusal to understand what is being done to the non-Moslem minorities among the Arabs. And that certainly includes among the Palestinian Arabs.

We have copied several Khaled Abu Toameh articles here in the past. He writes with an authentically Palestinian Arab voice, and as a proud Moslem. But unlike the thong of voices emanating from that demographic, Abu Toameh's insights are original and, for most observers, counter-intuitive. Meaning he writes what he believes makes sense, even if it runs strongly counter to the political-correctness winds that are such a problem in this complicated zone.

[To get a sense of what we mean, have a look at Ben White's sadly typical bash of Israel in the Guardian on Monday of this week: "Can the Pope help Christian Palestinians". "A vast majority of locals see the Israeli occupation as the primary reason" for all the problems, says White, expressing the reflexive hostility of many of his reporting brethren.]

In his piece below, written for the Hudson Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh analyzes what's being done to Christian society, and the wrongness of ascribing blame to Israel for the striking drop in the numbers of Christian Arabs living under Palestinian Authority control.

The Beleaguered Christians in Bethlehem

Khaled Abu Toameh, May 2009

Christian families have long been complaining of intimidation and land theft by Muslims, especially those working for the Palestinian Authority.

Many Christians in Bethlehem and the nearby [Christian] towns of Bet Sahour and Bet Jalla have repeatedly complained that Muslims have been seizing their lands either by force or through forged documents.

In recent years, not only has the number of Christians continued to dwindle, but Bethlehem and its surroundings also became hotbeds for Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters and members.

Moreover, several Christian women living in these areas have complained about verbal and sexual assaults by Muslim men.

Over the past few years, a number of Christian businessmen told me that they were forced to shut down their businesses because they could no longer afford to pay "protection" money to local Muslim gangs.

While it is true that the Palestinian Authority does not have an official policy of persecution against Christians, it is also true that this authority has not done enough to provide the Christian population with a sense of security and stability.

In addition, Christians continue to complain about discrimination when it comes to employment in the public sector. Since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority 15 years ago, for example, not a single Christian was ever appointed to a senior security post. Although Bethlehem has a Christian mayor, the governor, who is more senior than him, remains a Muslim.

As a Muslim journalist, I am always disgusted and ashamed when I hear from Christians living in the West Bank and Jerusalem about the challenges, threats and assaults that many of them have long been facing.

The reason why I feel like this is because those behind the assaults and threats are almost always Muslims.

For decades, the delicate and complicated issue of relations between Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land was treated by Palestinians as a taboo. Most Palestinians chose to live in denial, ignoring the fact that relations between the Muslim majority and the tiny Christian minority [about 10%] have been witnessing a setback, particularly over the past 15 years.

On the eve of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land, a Christian merchant told me jokingly: "The next time a pope comes to visit the Holy Land, he will have to bring his own priest with him pray in a church because most Christians would have left by then."

Indeed, the number of Christians leaving Bethlehem and other towns and cities appears to be on the rise, according to representatives of the Christian community in Jerusalem.

Today, Christians in Bethlehem constitute less than 15% of the population. Five or six decades ago, the Christians living in the birthplace of Jesus made up more than 70% of the population.

True, Israel's security measures in the West Bank have made living conditions more difficult for all Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike. But to say that these measures are the main and sole reason for the Christian exodus from the Holy Land is misleading.

If the security fence and the occupation were the main reason, the Palestinian territories should by have been empty of both Muslims and Christians. These measures, after all, do not distinguish between Christians and Muslims.

On the other hand, it is also incorrect to assume that the Christians are leaving only because they are afraid of their Muslim neighbors. Christians are leaving because of the poor economy, and because they no longer feel secure in their homes. But they are also leaving because most of them, if not all, find it easier to merge into Christian-dominated societies in the US, Canada, EU and Latin America, where many of them already have relatives and friends.

In fact, Christians began leaving the Holy Land long before Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. But the number of those moving to the US and Canada has sharply increased ever since the Palestinian Authority took control over Bethlehem and other Palestinian villages and cities. When the second intifada erupted in September 2000, Christian leaders said they were "terrified" by the large number of Christians who were leaving the country.

Ironically, leaders of the Palestinian Christians are also to blame for the ongoing plight of their people because they refuse to see the reality as it is. And the reality is that many Christians feel insecure and intimidated because of what we Muslims are doing to them and not only because of the bad economy.

When they go on the record, these leaders always insist that Israel and the occupation are the only reason behind the plight of their constituents. They stubbornly refuse to admit that many Christians are being targeted by Muslims. By not talking openly about the problem, the Christian leaders are encouraging the perpetrators to continue their harassment and assaults against Christian families.

And then the day will really come when the pope, on his next visit to the Holy Land, will not find any Christian to welcome him.‭‮

8-May-09: A Mother's Day introspection

Mother's Day takes place on various dates in different places. This weekend, it's honoured in the US and elsewhere. A good moment to pause and think about the role of mothers in certain societies - and what it means for the rest of us

National Geographic Television recently aired a segment dealing with the appalling phenomenon of mothers who willingly, joyfully, send their children to their deaths. It may not exactly shock you to know that the focus of the TV segment was mothers living in a specific Islamic society where they are deeply entrenched personally, politically and ideologically in the Hamas narrative.

Click below to see and hear Mother Mariam (aka Mariam Farhat aka Um Nidal), a jihadist mother from hell. One of many.



Care to know more about this hatred-driven person? To understand what kind of impact she and others like her can have on generations of innocent children? The interview reveals little. It fails, for instance, to point out that no fewer than three of this woman's sons ended their lives as terrorist/murderers. And she wants the others to follow.

One son, Muhammad Farahat, died after murdering five students in the Jewish community of Atzmona, where they were listening to a lecture. Throwing grenades and spraying the unarmed students with automatic weapon fire, he killed five and wounded 24 others. Killing unarmed students is one of the highest callings in the Jihadist suicide/murder pantheon - so long as those students are Jewish. Mummy helped him make a farewell video, and danced with joy while sending him off.

A second son, Nidhal Farhat, was killed with five other Hamas terrorists while preparing a bomb-laden remote-piloted drone for terror attacks on Israeli civilian settlements.

A third, Rawad Farahat, died in a truck carrying Qassam rockets to a terrorist launching site. Palestinian-Arab terrorists like him have launched hundreds of Qassam rockets into Israeli civilian areas to the applause of their mothers and religious leaders.

As one commentator points out, describing these jihadist thugs as martyrs mischaracterizes the true nature of their deeds and the way they died.

Oh, and did we mention she is an elected parliamentarian for the ruling Hamas party in the Gazan Palestinian legislative council? Or that she was mobbed by supporters after her 2006 election victory? Or that she believes in peace?

Yes, she believes in peace. And here's how she defines it:

"Peace means the liberation of all of Palestine, from the [Jordan] to the [Mediterranean] Sea. When this is accomplished — if they want peace, we will be ready. They may live under the banner of the Islamic state. That is the future of Palestine that we are striving towards... I sacrificed [my sons] for a greater cause. For Allah, who is more precious than them. My son is not more precious than his god, he is not more precious than the places holy to Islam, and he is not more precious than his homeland or his Islam. Not at all."

The evidence of what jihadist terror in all its various guises does and wants is out there for anyone who wants to see it. But as National Geographic sadly demonstrates, you can look. You can listen. You can think you have it figured it out. But you can still miss the whole point. Even while pointing out that the woman "is not yet done" and "wants her other children to follow the same path", the National Geographic video segment interviewing Mother Farhad repeats the word "martyr" multiple times.

But it fails to pronounce the word 'terrorism' even once.

Happy mothers day.

1-May-09: The murder of your child gets you thinking like this

The murder of our daughter has made us more sensitive than most to the way the media, and those who explain things to the media, think about the death of children. The op-ed below appears in both the print and online editions of today's Haaretz.

The power of numbers
By Frimet Roth

"Malki will never become just another number," we vowed, days after our daughter was murdered in the August 2001 terror attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. We never imagined that she could ever fade into less than "just a number."

Yet that is what has happened to her in the mindset of Israel's spokesmen...

Like Malki, the scores of Israeli children murdered since October 2000 have been forgotten. Their precise number has never been tallied by our government, let alone publicized in the international media.

Deflated statistics of Israeli children murdered by Palestinians in this millennium have been widely disseminated on Palestinian Web sites. There they are cited in comparison with the far greater numbers of Palestinian children killed in this conflict.

The refrain "numbers speak louder than words" is now being brandished obsessively in columns and reports about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the number of Gazan civilians killed in Operation Cast Lead, the number of Gazan houses destroyed, the number of Gazan women and children injured. Their impact on world opinion is immeasurable.

Here is what Prof. Rashid Khalidi wrote about numbers in an op-ed piece that appeared in the New York Times this past January, while the Gaza campaign was underway:

"But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers."

There is no doubt that Palestinian numbers have won many hearts and minds. The recent resurgence of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism - January and February saw a sharp rise worldwide - is, in many instances, testimony to that.

The numbers cited by the Palestinians dodge issues and trump logic. They obviate the need to explain how Israel is supposed to react to attacks on its civilians without incurring the ire of "human rights" defenders. Those numbers ignore the dilemma Israel faces when its enemy hides in hospitals and in apartment buildings filled with women and children and other noncombatants.

But the numbers "game" is not played for fun and we can no longer afford to ignore it. Israel's security depends to a large extent on how it scores in this unsavory game. Unfortunately, our spokesmen have been derelict in their duty by failing to arm themselves with fighting numbers.

The murders of 144 innocent Israeli children, targeted while they played, ate, studied, hiked or rode buses to and from school over the past eight years, are a potent verbal weapon. Not one of those children was armed, not one was caught in soldiers' crossfire, not one was used as a human shield by Israeli soldiers.

These 144 children provide a context for much of the IDF's activities since terrorism became a major threat in October 2000. This number explains the checkpoints, the security fence, the arrests, and even Operation Cast Lead - all of which have ignited venomous vilification of Israel. Against the backdrop of our murdered children, Israel's conduct can fairly be viewed as not only justified, but unavoidable.

Our phone calls and written inquiries to the appropriate government bodies failed to yield publication of the forgotten number. The tally was reached, rather, by reading the complete list of terror victims posted on the Web site of Israel's Foreign Ministry and counting the children one by one.

Why our diplomats have chosen to conceal the children bombed, shot and stabbed to death by Palestinians remains a conundrum. But it is not too late to rectify the error.

In numbers, at times, there can be strength.

...
Frimet Roth is a freelance writer in Jerusalem. Her daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in the Sbarro restaurant bombing (2001). She and her husband founded the Malki Foundation, which provides concrete support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child.

Please help us honour Malki's memory, and re-affirm the humanity of the victims. Keren Malki, a respected not-for-profit which we created in 2001 provides practical support for thousands of Israeli Jews, Christian, Moslems, Druze and others. They all have in common their desire to care at home for a special-needs child. Without Keren Malki's help, many of these children might otherwise be placed in institutions. Keren Malki is uncommonly efficient, and dedicated to a cause for which there is almost no other source of support in Israeli society - the need to empower parents who make the decision to care at home, and not via an institution, for a child with serious disabilities. You can learn more, and give your support, at www.kerenmalki.org