Showing posts with label Palestinian Christians. Show all posts

Friday, October 23, 2026

Refugees in Gaza with their parish priest in 1948 ... From the archives of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem

Refugees in Gaza with their parish priest in 1948 From the archives of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem

Monday, October 5, 2026

Mosaic view of Gaza in the Church of St Stephen, Um ar-Rasas, Jordan. It was constructed in 756CE by the mosaics artists Stauranchius & Euremius,

Mosaic view of Gaza in the Church of St Stephen, Um ar-Rasas, Jordan. It was constructed in 756CE by the mosaics artists Stauranchius & Euremius, 120 years AFTER the Islamic conquests.

William Dalrymple

@DalrympleWill

Just come across this mosaic view of Gaza in the Church of St Stephen, Um ar-Rasas, Jordan. It was constructed in 756CE by the mosaics artists Stauranchius & Euremius, 120 years AFTER the Islamic conquests.

The people were still using Greek, still building churches (there are 16 in Um ar-Rasas alone). This is important evidence the continuities of population in this region, masked by changes of language and religion.

The idea that the Arabs swept in and kicked out or forcibly converted the population of Palestine is unhistorical nonsense: the population of Palestine was majority Christian until the time of the Crusades. They took two hundred years to use Arabic as their main language. Six hundred to convert to Islam.

https://x.com/DalrympleWill/status/2106702614372991396/photo/1

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies here, there- and everywhere]

Saturday, October 3, 2026

With deep sorrow and grief, His Beatitude Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, mourns the passing of Mrs. Maysa Khader Ibrahim Abu Daoud (Ayyad) and Mrs. Mary Hafez Michel Najjar (Abu Daoud), who were killed in the Israeli air strike that took place last night October 2nd, 2026, in Gaza City.

Maysaa. Marie. Remember their names

https://x.com/jacknassar33/status/2106278844810314050/photo/1

Christian Palestinians- Mary Hafez Abu Dawoud and her daughter Maysa Abu Dawoud killed by Israel

Daoud Kuttab داود كُتّاب

@daoudkuttab

Sad eulogy by the Patriarch of the latin church in Jerusalem @LPJerusalem

Condolences

https://www.lpj.org/en/news/condolences-on-the-death-of-maysa-khader-abu-daoud-and-mary-hafez

With deep sorrow and grief, His Beatitude Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, mourns the passing of Mrs. Maysa Khader Ibrahim Abu Daoud (Ayyad) and Mrs. Mary Hafez Michel Najjar (Abu Daoud), who were killed in the Israeli air strike that took place last night October 2nd, 2026, in Gaza City.

On behalf of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, its clergy and faithful, Card. Pizzaballa extends his deepest condolences to the families of the deceased and to the Christian community in Gaza, praying that the Lord may grant them comfort, strength, and consolation in their loss.

The funeral will take place today, Saturday, 3 October 2026, at 12:00 noon at St. Porphyrius Church in Gaza.

His Beatitude offers his prayers to the Lord, asking Him to receive the two deceased in His abundant mercy, grant them eternal rest in His Kingdom, and bestow upon their families and loved ones the grace of consolation, strength, and hope.

“Blessed the one whom you will choose and bring to dwell in your courts.” (Ps 65:5)

https://x.com/LPJerusalem/status/2106313489627140386

Thursday, September 3, 2026

Ben-Gvir did not come into power in a vacuum: he was helped into his position by an international community that has afforded Israel complete impunity

Arwa Mahdawi

Ben-Gvir posts Palestinians on conveyor belts to detention camps. The world is silent

Arwa Mahdawi

Thu 3 Sep 2026 06.00 EDT

Let me introduce you to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of Israel’s far-right Jewish Power (Otzma Yehudit) party, the minister of national security, and an almost cartoonishly evil man. You’ll have heard his name before: he made international news when he filmed himself taunting bound activists who had been detained trying to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. But you might not be familiar with many of his recent shocking comments, because they haven’t been widely covered by much of the US media.

Let’s start with an AI-generated video that Ben-Gvir posted on Twitter/X on Sunday and then deleted. It shows portly Palestinian prisoners being loaded on to a conveyor belt and going into a detention camp, then emerging emaciated. The caption is “we promised – we delivered!” which seems to be a reference to the national security minister’s promise to worsen conditions for Palestinian prisoners. An ambitious goal, considering conditions are already hellish: Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has likened the prisons where Palestinians are kept to “torture camps”.

I’m being diplomatic with my summary of this latest video, by the way. I suggest you go watch it yourself to fully take in how awful it is. (It may have been deleted, but it lives on online). If the podcaster Hasan Piker had tweeted something similar, with Israelis as the subject rather than Palestinians, it would be front-page news. US lawmakers, all of whom seem to be obsessed with Piker, would be demanding that the podcaster be punished.

Ben-Gvir, by the way, has some imaginative ideas for punishment. One of his sick fantasies is to put crocodiles in moats around prisons where Palestinians are held to stop prison breaks. The plan is now on hold because Israeli rights groups have said it is cruel to crocodiles.

I can’t stress enough that, in any discussion of Palestinian “prisoners”, it’s important to remember that many of these people have not gone through any sort of due process. Thousands of prisoners, including about 200 children, are held under “administrative detention”: a technocratic name for a dystopian practice.

To quote the B’Tselem definition: “In administrative detention, a person is held without trial without having committed an offense, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future. As this measure is supposed to be preventive, it has no time limit. The person is detained without legal proceedings, by order of the regional military commander, based on classified evidence that is not revealed to them.”

In other words: if you are Palestinian, heavily armed Israeli soldiers can come into your house in the middle of the night, drag you into a de facto torture chamber despite the fact that you haven’t committed a crime, and hold you there indefinitely without telling you why you’re being held or informing your family where you are.

When you hear the word “prisoner”, people like Ben-Gvir want you to think of dangerous terrorists who deserve everything they get. In reality, many are people like Layan Nasir: a 23-year-old woman who was taken away at gunpoint from her parents’ home for no clear reason and only made international news because she is a Christian... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/03/ben-gvir-palestinian-comments

Thursday, August 27, 2026

Israeli court acquits Jewish settler who kicked Catholic nun in the head. The ruling comes amid growing attacks by extremist settlers against Christians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank

The 48-year-old nun was attacked on 28 April 2026 in occupied East Jerusalem, leaving her face bruised (Handout via Israeli police)

Elis Gjevori

Published date: 26 August 2026

An Israeli court has acquitted Yona Schreiber, a Jewish settler from the occupied West Bank settlement of Peduel, over a violent assault on a French Catholic nun near Jerusalem’s Old City earlier this year.

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court acquitted Schreiber on Wednesday on the grounds of "mental illness".

Following the ruling, Schreiber’s lawyer, Idan Gamliel, described the attack as an “unfortunate incident” and said the defence took “note” of the nun’s “difficult feelings” over the assault.

Schreiber attacked the 48-year-old nun in April outside the Cenacle on Mount Zion, a site regarded as holy by Christians and Jews.

The nun, a researcher at Jerusalem’s French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research, required medical treatment after Schreiber pushed her to the ground and kicked her in the head.

The attack drew international condemnation and formed part of a growing pattern of attacks by Jewish extremists against Christians in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In May, the French organisation L'Oeuvre d'Orient said Israeli troops demolished a convent belonging to the Salvatorian Sisters, a Greek Catholic religious order, in the village of Yaroun.

In April, an image showing an Israeli soldier using a jackhammer to smash a statue of Jesus on a cross in southern Lebanon went viral on social media.

A recent report by the Rossing Centre for Education and Dialogue documented a sharp rise in attacks on Christians, describing a “continued and expanding pattern of intimidation and aggression”.

It recorded 155 incidents in 2025, including 61 physical assaults, 52 attacks on church property, 28 cases of harassment and 14 instances of vandalised signage. The report said the figures represent only the “tip of the iceberg”.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-court-acquits-jewish-settler-who-kicked-catholic-nun-head

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Tent of Nations (ToN) is an educational and ecological family farm committed to nonviolent resistance, environmental stewardship, intercultural education, and connecting people with the land. It serves as a living model of nonviolent action and faith-based community building, within the context of Palestine and the world.

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

https://tentofnations.com/

The Tent of Nations is an educational and ecological family farm southwest of Bethlehem, Palestine. Our mission is to build bridges between people and between people and the land. Through creative resistance, organic farming, and educational programs, we seek to transform despair into hope and promote understanding, respect, and sustainability.

What we do

– Educational Programs: Children’s summer camps and women’s empowerment initiatives.

– Volunteer Opportunities: Join short-term or long-term projects caring for the land and community.

– Environmental Learning: Workshops in sustainability, organic farming, and renewable energy.

Please note that we are not an NGO. We are a small educational and environmental family farm that welcomes individuals and groups to visit, to volunteer and to be encouraged to hear our story of hope in the middle of this darkness. We are not affiliated with any organization and we are supported by church groups and other international private friends of ToN.

Our Philosophy

In the face of injustice, we refuse to be enemies. We transform pain into positive action and work for justice and peace from the ground up. We believe every person can help shape a better future by caring for one another and for the earth.

We want to help the oppressed and marginalized realize that they are powerful and can do something positive, even if they live under challenging conditions. We all have the task of creating the future with our own hands and not waiting for others to do it for us. At the ToN, we aim to collaborate with others and lay the groundwork for a better future, believing that justice and peace should emerge from the grassroots. At ToN, we connect people with the land and to our shared environment. We need them to appreciate this wonderful gift that GOD gave to humanity, and to help protect it for the generations to come.

Vision for the land

We continue to strive for self-sufficiency in food, water, and energy, building an Environmental Education Center where young people can learn about sustainability, tolerance, and community responsibility.

https://tentofnations.com/about-us/

About Us: Rooted in the Land Since 1916

The Tent of Nations stands on a 100-acre (about 400 dunams) family farm named Daher’s Vineyard, located about six miles (about 10 km) southwest of Bethlehem in the West Bank. The land was purchased more than 100 years ago by the Nassar family, and the family holds original registrations and deed documents dating from the British Mandate (registration in 1924-25), and Jordanian administration.

In 1991, the Israeli authorities declared the Nassar family farm (and surrounding lands) as “state land”. Since then, the family has engaged in protracted legal proceedings in the Israeli Military courts, the Appeals Committee, and the Israeli Supreme Court to re-register and protect their land.

The farm is surrounded on all sides by Israeli settlements, including those in the Gush Etzion settlement block. the farm has faced repeated road encroachments, bulldozing and burning of orchards, and access restrictions.... READ MORE https://tentofnations.com/about-us/

Who We Are

Tent of Nations (ToN) is an educational and ecological family farm committed to nonviolent resistance, environmental stewardship, intercultural education, and connecting people with the land. It serves as a living model of nonviolent action and faith-based community building, within the context of Palestine and the world.

We host international visitors, volunteers, and local partners who come to learn, share, and participate in our work. Together, we transform despair into hope through environmental education, organic farming, empowerment programs for women and children, and global solidarity.

Our Mission

Our mission is to build bridges between people and between people and the land through creative resistance, education, and environmental stewardship. We strive to cultivate understanding, respect, and sustainability by working in harmony with the land and with one another.

We live by four guiding principles:

We refuse to be victims
We refuse to hate
We act on our faith
We believe in justice

These principles shape every act of cultivation, teaching, and welcome that happens on the farm encompassed by the slogan We Refuse to Be the Enemy.

Our Vision

We envision the Tent of Nations as a beacon of hope and sustainability – a place where individuals and communities learn to live in harmony with the environment and each other.... READ MORE https://tentofnations.com/about-us/

https://www.facebook.com/tentofnations

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