Israel is waging a taxation assault on Jerusalem’s Christian presence, endangering its very survival: Patriarchs and Heads of The Churches in Jerusalem renew their condemnation of unjust foreclosure hearing against Armenian Patriarchate, urging immediate intervention.

Kegham Balian

@kbalian90

Jerusalemite Armenian 

https://x.com/SavetheArQ   The official page of the movement for the defense and preservation of the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem  #Save_the_Arq

We Shall Return The Story of Iqrit by Fida Jiryis...This Week in Palestine

Sign Showing Site of Home - Iqrit.

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3697&ed=206&edid=206

We Shall Return The Story of Iqrit

By Fida Jiryis

“I don’t want to open all my wounds…,” says Maher Daoud, a descendent of Iqrit refugees, as we drive to the site where the village of his parents once stood. I wince and apologise, aware of how difficult the subject must be for him. Iqrit is one of the 350 or so Palestinian villages that were completely destroyed and ethnically cleansed in 1948, its residents barred from returning and turned, overnight, into internal refugees in their own country.

Maher, 43, is married to my cousin, Njoud, and they live in Mi’ilya, a village in the Galilee. They regularly drive up to Iqrit, whose church is all that remains today, to partake in religious celebrations at Christmas and Easter and to visit dead relatives in Iqrit’s cemetery. The occasion of our visit now is sombre: Maher’s mother passed away two years ago, and we are here to visit her grave on the occasion of Good Friday, as is the custom among Palestinian Christians.

The drive to Iqrit takes a mere twenty minutes from my village, Fassouta. Both are in the Galilee: the north of historical Palestine, a few kilometres from the Lebanese border. During Israel’s “War of Independence” in 1948, or the Nakba (Catastrophe) as Palestinians refer to it, the residents of Iqrit and Biram, another nearby village, were uprooted from their homes on “security grounds,” presumably for Israel to protect its northern border. The residents of Iqrit were bussed to Rama village, twenty kilometres south in the Galilee, and told it would be for a few weeks, until the security situation was calm and they could return. But they never did. On Christmas Eve, 1950, the Israeli army blew up all the houses of Iqrit, in a timely “Christmas gift” to its expelled Christian residents. My father, a boy of 12 at the time, saw the smoke rising above the village in the distance, and, in panic and haste, told a man named Tu’meh from Iqrit, who had taken refuge in Fassouta. Tu’meh’s eyes filled with tears.

In 1951, the Israeli High Court ruled that the villagers be allowed to return “as long as no emergency decree” existed against the village. With cold predictability, the government was quick to issue such a decree against the Iqrit evacuees. In 1953, it blew up the houses of Biram, too, leaving only the churches of the two villages standing. Two years later, the theft was completed: the land of the two villages - 16,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1000 m2) in Iqrit and 12,000 dunams in Biram - was expropriated for establishing Jewish settlements, which are there today: Even Menahem, Shlomi, and Shtula.

I’d read about this before; Israel coldly and ruthlessly destroyed about 350 Palestinian villages and turned close to 700,000 Palestinians into homeless refugees during the Nakba. I had visited Suhmata, another such village, already, so I was prepared for what I expected to see. Nothing stopped the flood of goose bumps, though, when my cousin whispered: “Here it is. The village starts here.”

“The village” that she was referring to “started” as a small pile of rubble by the roadside. Maher was quick to point to the church atop a hill in the distance. “That’s Iqrit,” he said.

I experienced the same sickening disbelief I’d felt when an old relative had pointed to a tree-covered hill and told me: “Here it is. This is Suhmata.”

In fact, it is completely surreal: all you see are shrubs and trees, thick greenery as is characteristic of the wilderness of Galilee. The small piles of rubble dotted periodically around are the only small reason to believe that those speaking to you are not deranged or delusional.

The climb to Iqrit’s cemetery and church is up a tiny, winding road with tall grass on either side. April is springtime in Palestine, and the Galilee has rightfully been dubbed the most beautiful area in the country, with superb views and hills luscious with thick, deep greenery. The site of Iqrit has one of the best views that I’ve ever seen: the greenery is so vivid, thick, and beautiful that it blows my mind away.

As we climb up the winding road...READ MORE

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

For the Expected One, by Ismail Shammout.

What's God got to do with it? If you want freedom and security, you need the following...

The House voted this week to reaffirm as the national motto the phrase "In God We Trust." (Treasury Department/AP Photo)

"...If you want freedom and security, you need the following:

The rule of law; property rights; a secure and trustworthy banking and monetary system; economic stability; a reliable infrastructure and the freedom to move about the country; freedom of the press; freedom of association; education for the masses; protection of civil liberties; a clean and safe environment; a robust military for protection of our liberties from attacks by other states; a potent police force for protection of our freedoms from attacks by people within the state; a viable legislative system for establishing fair and just laws; and an effective judicial system for the equitable enforcement of those fair and just laws...."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-shermer-god-20111104,0,877363.story

Op-Ed

What's God got to do with it?

He may be invoked in the national motto, but God has nothing to do with why Americans are free and secure.

By Michael Shermer