umkahlil
Thursday, September 10, 2009
What Would Jesus Say (to a Zio-Christian)?
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| Holy Family Catholic Church in Ramallah |
Time
to re-visit, as administrators like to say, the Christian Zionists.
This is a response to the usual blather from one of the the Armageddon
is nigh types:
You ask rhetorically, Who
Are the Palestinians? just before you admonish them to take up residence
in one of the twenty-two Arab countries so that European and American
Jews may live in Palestine without Arabs.
What
you don't seem to get, full of the usual canards that you are is that
Palestinians are a diverse people, just like any people. We certainly
are not all alike. I am a Christian Palestinian; twenty percent of the
Palestinians are Christian. We are the original stones; that is, the
original Christians descended from the apostles. My father was born in
Ramallah, which before 1948, was a totally Christian village. I can
asssure you that none of my relatives nor I wish to see Jews
obliterated.
Most Palestinians would just
like to return to their towns and villages from which they were expelled
to make way for European and American Jews. I think that it is very sad
that our grandmothers and grandfathers may not return to their villages
to be buried, yet any Jew, from anywhere in the world may immigrate to
Israel and become an instant citizen. I wonder how Christ would view
this injustice.
Would Christ be happy that
Zionist Jews shoot children in the head and the heart? Johnny Thalijieh
was an altar boy at a Greek Orthodox Church; he was shot by an Israeli
soldier while he was standing in front of his uncle's store. Do you know
that the Christian villagers of Bir'im watched as the Israelis bombed
their village in the 1950's? Even though the villagers wanted to live
peacefully among the Israelis and didn't even want the part of the land
back that European Jews had stolen from them, the Israelis wanted to
assure that they would not return so they bombed their beloved village.
Would
Christ condone land theft and house demolitions? Would Christ condone a
Zionist Jewish settler in Hebron who screams "whore" at her Palestinian
neighbor and directs her children to throw rocks at her in hopes that
she'll leave her home?
I find it very
arrogant to expect my relatives and countrymen to leave their homes and
take up residence in any Arab country so that European and American Jews
may continue to devastate and wreck havoc in what once was a Holy and
peaceful land. We do not come from Syria; we do not come from Saudi
Arabia; we do not come from Qatar or Dubai or Kuwait; our home is
Palestine. This is a story that I wrote about Christian Zionists:
An Apology From a US Christian to Palestinians
This
is my apology for Christians in the US to Muslims, the Arab World, and
particularly Palestinians. Too many of my co-religionists have made a
travesty of the Golden Rule which unequivocally compels us, "Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you."
For
example Ed McAteer, founder of the Moral Majority, and a Christian
Zionist who doesn't believe Israel should relinquish any of the
illegally occupied territories, was asked by Bob Simon of CBS News:
"What about the three million Palestinians who live on the West Bank and
Gaza?"Simon said that McAteer suggested that " . . . the bulk of them
could be cleansed . . . and moved to some Arab country."
Not
to be outdone, Kay Arthur, of Precept Ministries, an organization that
leads tours to Israel, told Simon that Yitzak Rabin's signing of the
Oslo Accords was a mistake " . . . and I believe that God stopped it by
the things that happened," a not so indirect reference to Rabin's death
by assassination.
In March 2002, Ariel
Sharon invaded the occupied territories again. George Bush unequivocally
told him to get out. Jerry Falwell launched a campaign in which his
minions, estimated at 20-26 million, phoned, e-mailed, and wrote letters
to Bush and Congress. Bush didn't say another word as Sharon unleashed
another vicious attack on the indigenous people of the occupied
territories and Falwell boasted, "The Bible Belt is Israel's safety net in the US."
One
incitement to hatred that I found particularly appalling from my fellow
brothers and sisters in Christ is the following from the Fourth International Christian Congress on Biblical Zionism.
"We
also urge the Church to recognize that local Christian Arabs have been
living under unbearable circumstances due to abusive Islamic coercion
and intimidation."
My father was a
Palestinian Orthodox Christian. When he lay dying four years ago, the
person who visited him most frequently, and who came a long way from
Northern California to do so was the son of a prominent Jerusalem Muslim
cleric. Indeed, my father and Sa'eb were friends for most of their
adult lives. For US Christian Zionists to make a proclamation about
supposed animosity between Muslim and Christian Palestinians is the
height of audacity and ignorance.
Indeed,
the fate of the Christian Palestinian is no different than that of the
Muslim if these millions strong fanatical hatemongers hold sway. In
fact, Palestinians are chastised for seeking solace in Christ for their
suffering. To the Christian Zionists it is no more than "exploitation of His suffering and sacrifice for temporal and devious political purposes."
Christian
Zionist websites still peddle misinformation that has been debunked not
only by Palestinian historians, but also Israeli historians. "There
simply is no distinct Palestinian entity," proclaims retired Brigadier
General James Hutchens of the JerUSAlem Connection. Particularly galling is his pernicious use of the word "so-called" when putting "Palestinian" before people.
And
then he proceeds to pontificate on what we are "in reality." People
without a "distinct culture." People to whom he referred in "An Open Letter to President Bush," as "from God's viewpoint . . . the illegal occupants, not the Israelis."
Christian
Zionist websites repeatedly bleat that Allah is not "our" God although
as a Christian Palestinian I call upon God, "Ya Allah." As the daughter
of a Christian Palestinian I am the descendent of the original stones,
the first Christians, although the Christian Zionists consider my
Palestinian brethren, both Muslim and Christian as "illegal" occupants
of the land to which they're indigenous. It is particulary hateful for
these Bible Belters to make the ignorant assumption that Palestinians
lack a discernable "culture." Assuming that they did not have a distinct
culture, does it give anyone a right to ethnically cleanse them? To the
Christian Zionists, Palestinians are the children of a lesser God.
For
their malice, for their perversion of Christianity, for their
promulgation of lies regarding the Palestinian people and their history
in Palestine, for their demonisation of the Palestinians, for their lack
of regard for the dwindling numbers of their co-religionists in
Palestine, for the lies that their leaders spew about God; i.e., "Those who promote a Palestinian state have placed themselves in alliance against God,"
for their incitement to hatred, for their advocating ethnic cleansing,
for their role in promoting Israel's repressive measures in the occupied
territories, for those who believe as does Gary Bauer, co-founder of
Stand For Israel, that it is an "obscenity"
to give up land for peace, and for their complete and total abdication
of the Golden Rule, I apologize to the Palestinians on behalf of US
Christians.
For those US Christians among
us who are appalled at what our co-religionists are doing in our name,
and who still consider "the least of their brethren," please look to
those Palestinian Christians such as Reverend Naim Ateek, the founder of
liberation theology,
and an advocate of "spirituality based on justice, peace, nonviolence,
and love." That's what I thought Christianity was all about. Let us not
allow it to be hijacked by the fanatics.