It is the Season to Nail Israel

 Video Of The Week - Christian. Israeli. IDF Officer -https://tinyurl.com/yale4cl

By David m. Weinberg   December 24, 2020

For the full article go to Israel Hayom: https://tinyurl.com/y7nyelwm

 ‘Intersectionality” is the idea that race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics “intersect” with one another and overlap, and that all injustices are interconnected.

 Intersectionality has risen to smash Israel for Christmas. Two weeks ago, the “Irish Unity Movement” tweeted, “If Mary and Joseph set off to Bethlehem today, they’d cross 15 Israeli checkpoints and a 30-foot wall,” setting-off a Twitter-storm.

 One diplomatic correspondent responded that Mary and Joseph were Jews (!), who today would have been barred from visiting Bethlehem by Palestinian police. Others responded bluntly that “If Mary and Joseph somehow made it to Bethlehem they probably would be raped and lynched by a Palestinian mob.” Others noted correctly that the Christian population in Bethlehem has dropped drastically since the PLO took over.

 Intersectionality aside, the Western media annually devotes considerable Christmas ink, and many Christian NGOs dedicate their Christmas appeals, to purveying the false impression that Christians are under assault by Israelis. And worse still, that Jews are crucifying Christians smack in the heart of Bethlehem.

 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,

 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.

 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.

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There are Real People on Givat Hamatos

 Video Of The Week - City of David: Bringing Bible to Life - https://tinyurl.com/y59sdt8s

From Israel Hayom, By  Leora Levian 18-11-2020 https://tinyurl.com/y42lkpyf

Anyone who stands in the neglected Jerusalem neighborhoodsand shouts that it is "Palestine" is about as relevant as someone standing on the outskirts of Bethelehem, calling it part of east Jerusalem.

Anyone who heard the reports about the approval of a construction plan for the Givat Hamatos neighborhood in east Jerusalem could get the impression that it was a real estate jewel on which the Israeli government wanted to build luxury apartments, make a fortune, and on the way torpedo the dream of a territorially contiguous Palestinian states.

But the neglected caravan site with the impressive view is, first of all, a human story, a social one, a story about domestic issues in Israel. In the 1990s it was populated by hundreds of families who arrived as part of the large waves of aliyah from Ethiopia and lived there until they could move into permanent accommodations. They were joined by a few dozen families in need of emergency housing, and they are the ones who live in the "neighborhood" – a slightly puffed-up name for a twisted road with broken streetlights, stray dogs, and broken-down mobile homes.

I know Givat Hamatos well because I arrived there in 2009 after I called all the community centers in the area and realized that the neglected site was a former part of Jerusalem. There were four of us, looking to make the world a better place, who came to fill the social and educational vacuum. We set up a clubhouse for children and teens that is still in operation. For some, it rescued them. We became an integral part of the place the responsibility for which has been passed back and forth between the Jerusalem Municipality and the Housing and Construction Ministry's Amidar building company for years.

Once every few years, including this week, the neglected neighborhood makes it into the headlines. "Construction in east Jerusalem," the left-wing organizations cry, and envoys of the European Union rush to criticize the "attack on the peace process." Former US Ambassador Martin Indyk took to Twitter to ask if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to "embarrass" President-elect Joe Biden through controversial construction in Jerusalem.

But the "peace process" hasn't been on the agenda for a long time now, and the "embarrassing" construction includes hundreds of housing units for the adjacent Arab neighborhood of Beit Zafafa, and Givat Hamatos – get ready for this – is in the far south of the city, near Bethlehem and Gush Etzion, not in its east. This perfect disorientation is so symbolic of those who in the name of a dream ignore reality; those who seek out Palestinian "oppression"  and are blind to the fact that real people are already living there. Before they run to lay out the borders of an imaginary Palestinian state, maybe they could turn the spotlight (and resources) to the big questions involving the people who live there now: questions of housing and education policies; personal responsibility and government planning; massive investment in certain sectors while others are ignored; historical mistakes and who is responsible for fixing them.

Anyone who has a hammer sees only nails; anyone who has European funding sees only a problem of Israel oppressing the Palestinians. But anyone who stands on Givat Hamatos and screams "Palestine!" is about as relevant as someone who stands on the outskirts of Bethlehem and calls it "east Jerusalem."

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Christian Persecution

Video Of The Week - Bethlehem's Christians ethnically cleansed by PA- https://tinyurl.com/ya4rj4r6

JPost “Opinion”– 23-12-2018

The majority of Christians in Israel will not be celebrating this week, as they are Greek Orthodox, and their Christmas falls on January 7.

But this is still a good time to take stock of religious freedom in our region.

Earlier this month, the head of the Church of England wrote in the Sunday Telegraphthat millions of Middle Eastern Christians are on the verge of “imminent extinction.”

“In the birthplace of our faith, the community faces extinction,” Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby wrote, calling it “the worst situation since the Mongol invasions of the 13th century.”

Christians face government harassment in Egypt, leading them to emigrate in record numbers.

Lebanese Christians fear Hezbollah’s growing power in their country, along with an influx of Syrian refugees. Turkish Christians are also facing oppression by their government. And in Iraq, the Christian population has been nearly wiped out, but those remaining are trying to rebuild their lives.

Closer to home, the Christian Palestinian population is in a constant downward trend.

Christians have long been fleeing Palestinian-controlled areas in light of systemic abuse. Terrorists affiliated with then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat famously raided and trashed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002, holding monks hostage.

Last year, Christians were only 2% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, less than half their numbers a generation ago.

In 1950 in Bethlehem, Jesus’s birthplace, 86% residents were Christians. In 2017, they were only 12%.

In Gaza, there were 6,000 Christians when Hamas took control in 2006, but as of 2016, there were only 1,100. Hamas has murdered Palestinian Christians for their faith, and commandeered the Gaza Baptist Church for combat, because it’s one of the tallest buildings in Gaza City.

Despite this, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas still claims to be a defender of Christians and the Palestinian leadership on the whole thinks it ought to control Christian holy sites – all the while denying history at those sites.

Palestinians like to claim the “Jesus was a Palestinian,” even though he was Jewish. And despite the importance of the Temple in Jerusalem to the New Testament, many deny that there was any Temple at all.

These denials continue to this day, but the most famous one may be when Arafat told then-US president Bill Clinton that the Jewish connection to Jerusalem was a falsehood.

Clinton told Arafat that he’s wrong; as a Christian, he knows the Jewish Temple was there.

Meanwhile, in Israel, the Christian population has stayed mostly stable at around 2%, growing by about 5,000 in the past 20 years.
Christians are free to worship in Israel without persecution or pressure from the authorities.

The latest controversy with the churches in Jerusalem shows the stark difference between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East.

The crux of the dispute is about management of land owned by the Greek Orthodox church, on which private Israelis reside.

Jerusalem residents are concerned that when the church sells the land to third parties, their homes will be endangered, whereas the church wants to use their vast tracts for must-needed funds.

This is not a matter that limits Christian worship or that would impact or harm the vast majority of Christians in Israel – though that is not to make light of the dispute, which should be resolved.

In any case, President Reuven Rivlin intervened in favor of the churches Saturday night, so no changes are currently being made.
Religious freedom is such in Israel that there was been a growing trend of Israeli Christians enlisting in the IDF, even though they are not required to do so, out of patriotism and appreciation for Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with some of these soldiers on Sunday to wish them a happy holiday.

As Christmas approaches, we should appreciate living in a country with these freedoms, and hope, in these bleak times for Christians across the Middle East, that their situations will improve.

Turkish Christians are also facing oppression by their government. And in Iraq, the Christian population has been nearly wiped out.

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