Israel cracks down on Christian Arabs
This is a disturbing piece of news from Israel, as Israelis denounce the discrimination of Iran’s Ahmadinejad and others scream about Iran’s oppression, few people are talking about the continued oppression of Palestinians, not just Hamas in the Gaza Strip but throughout the West Bank where roadblocks and indiscriminate policies continue to target civilians, innocent people not engaged in the battle who push for peace. This is just one example of what is happening and it should change and you have to wonder why Jordan and King Abdullah have not spoken out in defense of Palestinian Christians who are a continued oppressed minority under Israeli rule:
from www.hcef.org
Israel Denies Re-entry Visas to Holy Land Arab Christian Clergy
23-Sep-07 — The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF)
Toll free at +1-866-871-HCEF (4233)
The Israeli Government has rescinded its policy of granting re-entry visas to Arab Christian ministers, priests, nuns and other religious workers who wish to travel in and out of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, according to information provided to the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF) by Christian clergy in Jerusalem.
Until now, re-entry visas were normally granted in Israel by the Israeli Government to Arab Christian religious workers in the Holy Land, and clergy traveled relatively freely to and from points overseas, including the United States.
However, HCEF has been informed that Arab Christian church workers will henceforth have to apply for re-entry visas at Israeli consulates abroad each time they travel outside the areas of Israeli control.
Since visa applications submitted to Israeli missions abroad are normally not acted upon for months after they are filed, his new Israeli policy means that religious personnel will no longer be able to move freely between their parishes in the occupied territories and any points out side of those areas.
Christian church workers normally travel frequently between their parishes and their churches’ offices in Jerusalem. Some also must travel often to countries outside the region, including the United States.
Many of the clergy and other church workers in the occupied Palestinian territories are from nearby Jordan; the new Israeli policy will prevent them from visiting their families there.
Indeed, that has already happened. Rev. Fares Khleifat, a pastor and the only Greek Melkite priest in Ramallah, traveled to Jordan for several days in mid-September; when he tried to return to his parish on September 14, he was stopped at the Israeli border, and his valid, multiple-entry visa was canceled.
Forced to remain in Jordan, he has been effectively deported from the Holy Land by the Israeli government, and his parish now has no priest.
The new Israeli policy makes it unlikely that any Arab Christian priests, ministers or other religious workers from the Holy Land will be able to attend HCEF’s Ninth International Conference, scheduled for October 26-27 in Washington.
Christian personnel based in the Holy Land have participated in all eight previous conferences of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation.
http://www.hcef.org/index.cfm/mod/news/ID/16/SubMod/NewsView/NewsID/1849.cfm
– Ray Hanania
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What? No comments about the ‘de-Christianization’ of Bethlehem by Palestinian Muslims?
Can you be any more irrelevant?
Thanks Joel for avoiding the issue, right. Don’t address the problem, respond with another problem. There is no policy to “de-Christianize” Bethlehem. But you might not know that, of course. However, my family lives in Bethlehem and when you speak with them, they will tell you that the Muslims ARE NOT the problem. The problem is Israel’s government — not the Israeli people or the Jewish people, but Israeli policy that confiscates their land, evicts them from their homes, builds cement Fences around their homes, puts tanks on Manger Square and denies Christian Palestinnians entrance into the city.
You opened the door with your comment, but I will bet any amount of money that you don’t have the courage to address the real issue and that your only real motive is to shut down open discussion on an important topic by using “strategies of slander.”
The SOS is a strategy of many supporters of Israel’s government’s extremist policies to ignore the things Israel does wrong by responding with accusations about what others are doing wrong.
Still, thanks for commenting and helping me make my point.
Ray Hanania
http://www.ArabWritersGroup.com
The real issue is a climate of fear and mistrust between neighboring ethnic groups that has saturated the entire MENA region, in which nobody goes out of their way to share their resources with “the other.”
FYI the crackdown is not just on Christian clergy; Imam Yayha Hendi of Georgetown University’s Campus Ministries was prevented from leaving through Ben Gurion Airport for over a week after visiting the West Bank. The Palestinian Muslim religious figure was in the region to meet with other religious authorities to talk about peacemaking strategies.
Grantees of the New Israel Fund are working on the issue of freedom of movement, specifically at borders and at the airport after reports of violations of travelers’ rights; the organization Gisha works withing the Occupied Territories on the legal aspect of freedom of movement.
Ray, a simple search of his username shows that he is fond of trolling all internet sites with pro-Israel propaganda, in a very MEMRI-like manner.
Exactly.
I just wish more Israelis had the guts to actually condemn and address these things publicly. I always hear people asking “where are the moderate Arabs?” well I don’t hear enough moderate Israelis either, who publicly denounce terror from all sides including their own. Many that I come across just make up phony excuses for what happens, instead of rallying against it.
Israel has a robust infrastructure in which many human rights organizations go out of their way to provide services and to cultivate peace on behalf of their adversaries. It sure would be nice if someone would finally show some appreciation for that.
Thanks Esra’
There are actually many Israelis and Jews who oppose the oppression and who speak out and act. The problem is it is so hard to speak about these issues publicly, especially in the United States where if you criticize Israel in the slightest, you are branded an anti-Semite.
So many of the good people on this web site try to address the issues forthrightly and with honesty that sometimes hurts, but the truth has to be addressed and the problems on both sides have to be addressed.
Many people, Miriam, speak about the discrimination against Muslims, but I was moved by the above report on Christian Clergy because so little is written about them at all.
thanks
Ray
PS … MEMRI is one of the more racist and inaccurate sites on the Internet that intentionally distorts translations to bend them to a political agenda. Very pathetic. I refuse to use the site
You are taking things out of context. No one said we didn’t appreciate the existence of such groups. I just think that it’s apparently lacking in this respect. Just like people tell us we’re not doing nearly enough, I don’t think Israelis are doing enough in this respect either, and especially in the blogosphere the majority to me seems to be freakishly right-wing and many are just downright abusive.
Seriously, I am so sick of hearing people complain that there aren’t any moderate Muslims or Arabs, well guess what? People all over the Arab world ask the same about Americans and Israelis. Unlike in our countries, where censorship is rampant, Americans and Israelis don’t have much of an excuse to not take part in this struggle for change.
I don’t know if I would have used the term “robust” to describe the Israeli peace groups. I know several Jews in Israel in BTselem, for example, and they are hated, ostracized and excluded in their own society. There is a very strong Jewish peace movement, although many people correctly point out that Peace Now and Americans for Peace Now are near death groups with little to show for enormous investment in time and support from believers like me.
The mistake here, I think, is the belief that just because I posted a note about Christians who are being persecuted, that somehow that means that I don’t care about Muslims whoa re persecuted or that I ignore the great efforts of many Israeli peace groups like BTSelem and the New Israel Fund, and others Jewish and Israeli organizations that have done great things.
The problem is instead of addressing the issue, people take it out of context and want to use it to address their own issues. Why not debate whether or not these Christians are the victims of discrimination rather than addressing saide issues like, oh, the Israeli peace movement is robust, or, Muslims are discriminated, too, or Israelis are great people, or Muslims are discriminating against Christians in Bethlehem.
It’s human nature, I guess, but fortunately we have this web site — ONE OF THE FEW — where Arabs (Christian and Muslim) join Jews and Israelis and discuss issues. We may not always agree and we may be upset with what some say, or moved to tears by what others say, but there is no other place like this in the universe where these issues can be discussed openly and without fear.
Many of the other “Arab” news sites refuse to permit Jews and Israelis to participate as bloggers — I left one a while ago, and many of the Jewish and Israeli news sites are no different, too.
The tragedy is peace is failing and we are not doing much about it anywhere else, except, in my opinion, here.
Ray Hanania
http://www.ArabWritersGroup.com
Sorry, E. That didn’t come across right. I didn’t mean to make it seem as if I were referring to you specifically. I was just using your post to highlight an issue.
There is nothing to debate, Ray. They are victims of discrimination. We have communities in conflict with each other. Lots of fear. Lots of mistrust. Lots of desperation to take care of ones own needs. Lots of being fed up and just not caring anymore out of sheer emotional exhaustion and confusion, due to no obvious light at the end of the tunnel. One group has more power than the other. The result is discrimination. What’s to discuss other than how to move foward?
The issues I prefer to discuss are to how we can put our heads together to elevate the prosocial aspects of MENA society that can flourish if they are given the right cultivation, rather than continue to bitch about each other. This website can take the concept of coexistence much further … beyond respectful debate about all the obvious dysfunctional behavior, to one where diverse people actually cooperate to develop the region.
But how come this is only said when we “bitch” about Israel? If Iran did this, this thread would be full of “oh God, how horrible!” and “what can we do to help?” but somehow there is just no one doing this when it comes to Israeli human rights abuses or racism. I find that rather worrying, to be very honest, that we are allowed and are in fact encouraged to denounce human rights abuses but apparently we can only do this if Muslims or Iranians or Arabs are guilty. I don’t see Israelis saying “this is indeed horrible and should not happen.”
We can’t really coexist if we aren’t aware of these things and if it weren’t for many blog posts here I would be so ignorant of other abuses that oppress Baha’is or Palestinians or Arab Jews or even immigrants. But people are always trying to somehow hush up the criticisms of Israel, even if it’s not only about war anymore but criticizing its policy as a country which we so often do here with its neighbors.
Actually, I say the same thing when people bitch about Palestinians. We just don’t get any posts complaining about them on this blog so I haven’t reacted to it. But if you read my post here, you’ll see that my views toward Palestinians also are toward developing society: http://www.mideastyouth.com/2007/08/30/could-a-sovereign-palestine-sustain-itself/
I guess I just see it differently. Personally, I’m burned out on all the complaining about the dysfunction between Israelis and Arabs without any real effort to foster some level of constructive engagement. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become the personal vomitorium for many people who have no organic conflict with either group, yet need to purge their hate upon someone; resulting in completely uninvolved people going out of their way to feel gutter-level bias against one or the other group. And you know what, E.? I’m just ready for some healing now. The complaining about our dysfunctional interaction has gone on in the public sphere for many years without anything coming from it, and I’ve kind of reached my saturation point. Over the years, there have been so many protests and rallies held; countless op eds; ads in newspapers; dozens of UN resolutions; committees, meetings, and gatherings held; exclusive organizations formed — all to bitch and complain about Israel and/or Palestinians with the specific intention of picking scabs and painting them in a negative light. Nothing has evolved from it and I’m just over the stagnation. Complaining about Iran and other nations may result in social change, I don’t know because the level of intensity on the international stage has not been anywhere near as high as we’ve seen between Israel and Arabs.
Personally, the only complaining I feel somewhat comfortable with at this stage is that which comes internally from a community. Everything else comes across as unproductive nagging — almost nobody is really listening, they’re just reacting. Ya gotta remember, I’m a dude from L.A., land of the Malibu sufer, so my primary motive is to figure out how we can all kick back and party.
Many Palestinian Christians live at peace with Muslims, even in Bethelehem. Obviously you have never been around Palestinian Christians to attest to that.
The decrease in numbers of Christians in Israel and Palestinian territory over the generations is in a large part due to natural increase.
If you google birth rates, which aren’t hard to find since the Israeli government is keeping track of them, you’ll find that muslim birthrates are roughly double that of christian, druze, and jews.
What about the parts of Bethlehem that have been annexed by Israel? Anyone care to give a shit about them?
“MEMRI is one of the more racist and inaccurate sites on the Internet that intentionally distorts translations to bend them to a political agenda.”
Is there an alternative you’d recommend?
There is no major reliable source concerning the Middle East that we can depend on for absolutely everything. You have to take bits and pieces from everywhere and come to your own conclusion. It’s hard work seeking the truth in this place, and so far no one is doing a really clean job of providing it in the mainstream. Thank god for the Internet, that’s all I can say.