Palestinian Christians decimated

[a.ata]

The Palestinian Christian is an endangered species.When the modern state of Israel was established there were about 400,000 of us. Two years ago the number was down to 80,000. Now it抯 down to 60,000. At that rate, in a few years there will be none of us left. When this happens non-Christian groups will move into our churches and claim them forever.Palestinian Christians within Israel fare little better. On the face of it, their number has grown by 20,000 since 1991. But this is misleading, for the census classification Christian?includes some 20,000 recent non-Arab migrants from the former Soviet Union.So why are Palestinian Christians abandoning their homeland?We have lost hope, that is why. We are treated as non-people. Few outside the Middle East even know we exist, and those who do, conveniently forget.I refer, of course, to the American Religious Right. They see modern Israel as a harbinger of the Second Coming, at which time Christians will go to paradise, and all others (presumably including Jews) to hell. To this end they lend military and moral support to Israel.Even by the double-dealing standards of international diplomacy this is a breathtakingly cynical bargain. It is hard to know who is using whom more: the Christian Right for offering secular power in the expectation that the Jewish state will be destroyed by a greater spiritual one; or the Israeli Right for accepting their offer. What we do know is that both sides are abusing the Palestinians. Apparently we dont enter into anyone's calculations.The views of the Israeli Right are well known: they want us gone.Less well known are the views of the American Religious Right. Strangely, they find the liberation of Iraqis from a vile dictator just, but do not find it unjust for us to be under military occupation for 38 long years.Said Senator James Inhofe (Rep.,Oklahoma): God Appeared to Abraham and said: I am giving you this land? the West Bank. This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true.?Inhofe must have got it wrong. Promises are being made to earthly Jerusalem that God did not make. The Holy Land was promised to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants, as stated in the Bible. These are the Palestinian Muslims, Christians and Jews, who have been living in the land for thousands of years. The Bible never mentioned that God promised it solely to Jews. Anyone can be a Jew, but not anyone can be a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants. James Inhofe and followers are unable to tell the difference between Jew, Israelite and Israel.House Majority Leader Dick Armey (Rep.,Texas) was even more forthright: I'm content to have Israel grab the entire West Bank ?I happen to believe that the Palestinians should leave.?There is a phrase for this. Ethnic cleansing.Silencing us, from seeking your support and enlightening you about our suffering, goes counter to what Jesus has mandated us to do. We all know that Muslims and Jews get ceaseless support (political, spiritual and financial) from Saudi Arabia and America respectively, while Palestinian Christians get nothing from Australian and other Western Christian?governments. (The Pope has been an exception.)Prior to the 1967 war, the Christian youth at the Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist and other churches in Bethlehem used to pray and rejoice and have a good chat with hundreds of American Christian pilgrims. In particular Texas and California were two places from where many came to visit the Holy Land. Today only fading memories prevail. Bethlehem has been vacated by Christian families. The remaining Christians are paying the price by experiencing curfews which last for weeks. They remain sandwiched between Muslims and Jews without drawing the slightest concern from the many so-called Western Christians.So why do American Christians stand by while their leaders advocate the expulsion of fellow Christians? Could it be that they do not know that the Holy Land has been a home to Christians since, well ?since Christ?Do not think I am asking for special treatment for Christians. Ethnic cleansing is evil whoever does it and to whomever it is done. Palestinian Christians - Anglican, Maronite Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Armenians, Baptists, Copts and Assyrians - have been rubbing shoulders with each other and with other religions - Muslims, Jews, Druze and (most recently) Baha抜s - for centuries. And we want to do so for centuries more. But we can't if we are driven out by despair.We are equally frightened by those who commit suicide bombings. None of us Christians have condoned it or even contemplated the idea. Our commitment to Jesus?teachings will never shake our resolve in this matter.American journalist Anders Strindberg makes a clearer conclusion. He says Palestinians are equated with Islamists, Islamists with terrorists. And presumably because all organised Christian activity among Palestinians is non-political and non-violent, the community hardly ever hits western headlines. Suicide bombers sell more copy than people who congregate for Bible study.What we seek is support: material, moral, political and spiritual. As Palestinians we grieve for what we have lost, and few people have lost more than us (the Ashkenazi Jews are one). But grief can be assuaged by the fellowship of friends.----------------------------------------------------Prof Abe W Ata was a temporary delegate to the UN in 1970 and has lived and worked in the Middle East, America and Australia. Dr Ata is a 9th generation Christian Palestinian academic born in Bethlehem, and currently works at the Australian Catholic University.[email protected]--------------------------------------------------------------Dear Professor Ata....Thank-you for taking the time to write to us.But I must disagree with you on several points.First, there is simply no denying God's special relationship with the Jewish people...and with the land that God himself has deeded to them.And lest you argue that this special relationship has ended, please read Romans chapter 11...not to mention the frequent use of the term " forever" throughout the Old Testament promises made to Israel.I feel for those Palestinian people who are truly the innocent victims in this conflict. But the culprit is not Israel...it is the radical Muslim faction which hates Israel and the Jewish people and wishes to wipe them off the face of the Earth. Israel has been forced to take precautions such as the security wall to simply protect itself from the terrorists who live on their doorstep.My sympathies are with the truly born again Palestinian Christians...but I cannot disobey God's command to support the nation of Israel!Best regards,Fred Jackson, AFN News Director[email protected]========================================================================Dear F J: Your correspondent speaks out of some very clear but unexpressed (and therefore untested) assumptions. These assumptions include a particular view about the nature of the Bible and the timeless significance of its contents.The most that can be logically said about the matters affirmed by your protagonist is that the Bible represents God as having a special relationship with the Jewish people, the land, etc. Or, perhaps better, that the mostly anonymous Jewish authors of the Bible claim that God has a special relationship with them. (As they would - and as others have claimed for their own people at other times. Even the USA has been known to speak in such terms about itself.) Such statements are factual descriptions and can potentially be validated or falsified.To affirm as axiomatic certain theological affirmations is not to make a useful contribution to informed discourse about the conflict in Israel and Palestine.Actually to state a preference for "truly born again Palestinian Christians" over some other category of Palestinians is simply to compound the silliness of the theological positions being avowed.A dispassionate and compassionate observer - no matter their religion or lack thereof - would first of all take seriously the obligation to listen to the human experience of the people suffering from this conflict. How sad that this person cannot pause his religious advice long enough to acknowledge the suffering you articulate.I wonder if he has ever been chased from his family lands and village by a foreign military power intent on stealing his land and even believing that God has given them the right to do so without any legal redress? If that were to happen he would doubtless understand the invaders' desire to consolidate their theft of his land by constructing a concrete wall (inside the small parcel of land on which he still clings to survival) in order to stop the terrorists from resisting the loss of their land. He would not object to the loss ofhis traditional water rights or grazing lands. And naturally he would be delighted to see settler-only roads criss-crossing the enclaves in which his people are forced to eke out their existence.So far as I recall, Jesus preferred compassion over self-serving righteousness.Lord, have mercy!Greg[email protected]PS: What is "AFN News"? Is it really "Armed Forces News"? Now that would be a dispassionate but highly credentialled source for biblical and theological analysis!===============================

 

[Christina]

Not your average 'talmid hacham'--------------------------------------------------------------------------------LAUREN GELFOND FELDINGER, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 17, 2007 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Nibal Khouri races down the hallway, waving to friends, between classes in Talmud and the historical geography of Jerusalem. A long way from her roots as a farmer's daughter in Ibillin, a Galilee Arab village, she rushes past the beit midrash shelves stocked with Torah, Talmud, Shulhan Aruch, prayer books and Jewish literature. "There is nothing strange about it, in fact it makes me feel special," she says of being one of two Arab master's degree candidate among 500 Jewish students at the Schechter Institute's Graduate School of Advanced Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Khouri, 39, has always liked feeling like a pioneer. After finishing high school in Haifa in the 1980s, she went on to the University of Haifa, where she majored in geography and Land of Israel studies. "Why not?" she says. "I love this country, I love nature, I love to travel and I wanted to know the history and the country better." Nobody in her mixed Muslim and Christian village batted an eye, she says. "I grew up in a very open house; there are no fanatics there. We were taught that all people are human beings. If someone respects you, you respect them back." Since moving to Haifa, she, her husband and two children live in a building populated primarily by Muslim and Christian Arabs. She describes her own family as secular Christian. The lower level of their apartment complex sits atop an Orthodox synagogue. "In Jerusalem you live in a different world than we do in Haifa," she says, shrugging off the three religions under one roof as nothing out of the ordinary. After university and then studying special education, Khouri went on to teach geography and also teaches a general studies class in the special education track in high schools in her native Ibillin and the Muslim town of Fureidis, near Zichron Ya'acov. It was there she says that an Education Ministry official contacted her about a job opening in Shelah, a ministry program which offers courses, seminars and field trips on the country's environment and history. Shelah is offered in both Arab and Jewish public schools, says Khouri, adding, "What and how I teach has nothing to do with who the students are." For 10 years she has been teaching at a Muslim high school, she says. "We don't get into politics. But when I'm at a Jewish site, Ramat Hanadiv for example, I teach my students about Baron Rothschild [who is buried there] and how he succeeded in helping the Jewish community. If I'm at a Muslim tomb, say at Geva Carmel near Fureidis, I will explain that there was an Arab village there named Jaba that was destroyed when the State of Israel was established. In either case, they just listen." But, she says, after all the long years of studying and teaching geography, she still feels she doesn't know enough, for her own good or for the good of her students. "I feel like I don't know the history of the Jews and the history of the country. I want to know the truth," she says. "It helps me as a citizen and as a tour guide. I also live among the Jews; I need to know them better." And as her children are older, eight and 11, she says it was a good time to go back to school. Last year she started flipping through Histadrut brochures for continuing education and discovered one for the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, affiliated with the Masorti (Conservative) Movement. "I saw it was focused on Judaism," she says. "If I'm going to study something, I should go to the source. They also have history and Jerusalem geography, and that's as far as I looked - I was convinced." After talking to professors at Schechter, who convinced her it was a safe, pluralistic environment in which to learn during hours that worked around her job, she was given the phone number of a student from Haifa. "I met Gabi [Dagan] and he explained that it's not a fanatic place and everyone was respectful," says Khouri. "I didn't even check the other places out." IT IS RARE but not unheard of for an Arab to pursue intense Jewish studies. At Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, for example, there are no Arabs working toward a master's in Jewish studies, but there are two Arab undergraduates in the Jewish studies and Jewish philosophy program and six others studying Jewish history. Hebrew University dean of students Bili Shapira says "it's not popular, but it happens. A few years ago there was a group from the South Lebanon Army. Now we have one or two in Jewish history; maybe others in language, history and archeology." No universities keep records of students by religion or ethnicity, so no official tallies exist. Interfaith programs beyond the universities - such as the Interfaith Encounter Association, where Jews, Muslims and Christians jointly study each other's religions and cultures - are relatively small but have far more Arab participants than at the university level. "Few Arabs study humanities in Israel for practical reasons - they can't get jobs if they study humanities. Also, there are few scholarships for Arabs to study Judaism at the university level," says Rabbi Ron Kronish, head of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, an umbrella of dozens of Christian, Muslim and Jewish organizations involved in interfaith activity. "Arabs in Israel tend to live very separate lives than Jews. The ongoing conflict has led to more and more separation rather than integration or normalization." However, Kronish added, "We have found in interreligious dialogues, seminars, conferences and workshops that there is great interest on the part of Arab religious leaders, educators, women and young people to learn about Jewish history and Judaism. One has to create the right ambiance for this kind of learning. Once people get to know each other as individuals, then there is more interest in learning about their traditions and cultures, not in the abstract, but in the context of new and important interpersonal relations." FOR KHOURI, her interfaith studies began in July, during the Second Lebanon War. Asked if she was scared on her first day at a Jewish school, she raises her eyebrows: "Scared? No. Not at all. I don't care. We are all the same; all in the same situation." Khouri got a ride to Schechter with Dagan, who also lives in Haifa. The first weeks were tense because of the war, and the students from the North shared stories of scrambling to their safe rooms when Katyushas were falling. Sometimes on the two-hour drive they also talked about Jewish philosophy. Two weeks into the semester, Khouri, Dagan and another student from the North came to Jerusalem for some quiet study away from the turbulence in the North. Khouri's cellphone rang that morning. Her son was on the line, shaken by a missile that had fallen nearby. A couple of days later, Ibillin went into mourning after a resident was killed by a Katyusha while at work in neighboring Kiryat Ata. But Khouri kept coming to Jerusalem for her studies. "I'm proud to study the religion of the other," she says. "You have to know people to love them. Every person in Israel needs to study the other religions and history of the other peoples. It will help bring peace." When she started teaching in Fureidis, she says the Muslim students didn't know anything about Christianity. "The only thing they had was this stigma, that Christians were unbelievers. Arabs have stigmas against Jews, too - they think all religious Jews are extremists and racists and it's not true. "Christians learn in school about Judaism and Islam, and I know every school is different. But it really seems that most Jews and Muslims don't really know about each other and each other's religion," she says, explaining that the more information she can gather about communities and their histories, the better she can teach her students. "It's important not to infringe on the students' religion, not to criticize their religion or their beliefs," she says. "But they are open to listening about others." While on a recent field trip on the Golan Heights with Muslim and Christian Arabs, Khouri started thinking about a class she takes at Schechter on the history of the Second Temple. "Did you know the Jews were here before the Arabs?" Khouri reports telling a Muslim teacher from the North. "He said: 'Really?' He accepted my explanation. Arab students, too, don't know that Jews were here for so long; they think they only came from Europe or after 1948." Her Israeli and Jewish history and geography lessons have never yielded an angry or critical response from her students, she says. "Life is more normal in Haifa. We may not really know each other, but we live together, work together, have stores next to each other. Everyone gets along." A spokesman for the Schechter Institute says that she is also accepted by the Jewish student body and described by classmates and teachers as "very popular." Khouri laughs and smiles a lot and says that's just her personality. She laughs as she races down the hallways between classes, so as not to miss anything, and smiles even when she's dropping from exhaustion. She's particularly tired juggling graduate school and her work as a teacher, tour guide and mother. She has two more years to go before she finishes her degree. Her mind is full with homework for her classes in Talmud, Genesis, the First and Second Temple periods and the history of the establishment of the State of Israel. "Talmud was the big surprise," she says. "I didn't know what it was, how they study, what they study. I think its helpful to know, because every religion interprets a sentence or a word in a different way, according to its tradition. I'm getting to see how the Jews approach language and study. Hopefully I can understand them better from this." She is especially focused on her two term papers. The first is on the geographical history of Jerusalem from the First Temple period to the Byzantine period; her second is a comparative study of how tour guides teach about the Golan. "I am looking at the differences in historical, geographical and environmental material between Jewish and Arab and secular and religious tour guides," she says. "I love the Golan and it's going to be interesting to see what messages different communities bring to it." Khouri is so enthusiastic about what she is doing and why, that she hopes the inspiration will spread. "I wish everyone here would have the same ideology as I do - never to judge a person because of his religion or background. If they did, there would have been peace a long time ago."