Palestinian Christians Forgotten by Christians in the US: NOT ALL Palestinians Displaced by Israeli Policies are Muslims:

"(Palestinian) Christians find themselves under the hammer of the Israeli occupation to NO LESS an extent than Muslims, yet America—supposedly a Christian country—stands idly by because its most politically influential Christians have decided that Palestinian Christians are acceptable collateral damage in their apocalyptic quest.

Abbas, a Palestinian Christian whose family lived in Jerusalem for many generations until the purge of 1948 says: "To be a Christian from the land of Christ is an honor. To be expelled from that land is an injury, and these Zionist Christians in America add insult."
-Anders Strindberg

Other Breaking News UNCHECKED ISRAELI BRUTALITY ON PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS At least twenty-seven Palestinians were killed, more than 200 injured, including 35 children. All casualties were civilians. Destruction was widespread: in the Zeitoun neighborhood, 100 Shops and workshops were destroyed, 6 houses totally destroyed, and 17 houses partly destroyed, 67 cars destroyed, and a total of 116 families made homeless. In the Rafah area 1,125 were made homeless.Israeli troops used 35 military vehicles, 3 Apache helicopters, and were backed up by unmanned monitoring aircraft and also gunboats on the coast when they invaded the Rafah area during which the Apache helicopters fired several missiles into the refugee camp.Read here for more Amnesty International said Tuesday that Israel has destroyed more than 3,000 Palestinian houses since the second intifada began three-and-a-half years ago, and demanded the army stop razing civilian homes. Amnesty called on Israel's military to halt demolitions of Palestinian buildings "without absolute military necessity" in a report issued amidst Israeli threats to raze hundreds of houses in the southern Gaza Strip in an assault on militant strongholds. Read here for more The Israeli army has sealed off a refugee camp and causing panic among its Palestinian residents. Thousands of people had been fleeing Rafah camp, until the army bulldozers broke up the road on Monday morning. Dozens of houses were torn down last week, leaving 1,100 people homeless. Israel plans to widen a buffer zone between the camp and Gaza's border after five soldiers were killed there by an anti-tank bomb last week. Read here for more The Israeli army sealed off the increasingly tense southern Gaza town of Rafah yesterday in what fearful residents assumed was the first stage of a large-scale military operation that might include the demolition of several hundred homes. Tanks were deployed at points on the main road between Rafah, on the Egyptian border, and Khan Younis to its north, amid growing speculation that the army was on the point of razing the homes for a major widening of the Israeli patrol route along the Egyptian border. Read here for more Israeli security forces have prevented distribution of the three main Palestinian newspapers in the Gaza Strip for the last six days. Copies of Al-Ayyam and Al-Hayat al-Jadida, which are both printed in the West Bank town of Ramallah, as well as the east Jerusalem-based Al-Quds daily, have been turned back at the main Erez crossing point since last Tuesday. The papers are usually delivered at the Israeli side of Erez and then passed through the crossing point before being picked up by delivery drivers on the Palestinian side. There are no newspaper printing presses in the Gaza Strip. Read here for more The United Nations Security Council was due to meet Tuesday afternoon to discuss a request by Arab nations told hold an immediate meeting to consider Israel's widespread destruction of Palestinian homes in the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Read here for more In return for his wholehearted and unstinting support for Ariel Sharon, President Bush has asked the Israeli prime minister not to expand the West Bank settlements, not to engage in targeted killings of Palestinians and not to demolish Palestinian homes.The Israeli leader has largely ignored all three. As a gesture to Sharon, Bush recently reversed three decades of U.S. Mideast policy by endorsing a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank and no right of return for Palestinians who fled after earlier wars. U.S. policy had been that all three issues were to be resolved by mutual negotiation.Last week, Israelis demolished 88 homes in Rafah, leaving over 1,000 homeless in that sprawling Gaza slum. That brings to 2,000 the total of demolished homes there, according to the United Nations, leaving 11,000 homeless since 2000. And this is one of the most impoverished places on the planet. Read here for more An annual U.S. State Department report released Monday in Washington leveled criticism at Israel's security forces, calling their record in the West Bank and Gaza Strip poor and noting that the interactions between troops and international activists have deteriorated in the past year. The report's main points are similar to those made in last year's report. The State Department accuses Israel of excessive use of force, leading to "numerous deaths." Israel was also accused of employing strict closures and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians in the territories, of hindering Palestinian medical personnel and of detaining pedestrians and drivers at checkpoints located throughout the territories. Read here for more

Read here for more in article by Anders Strindberg, "Forgotten Christians" in American Conservative

Excerpts from Anders Stringber article:
Anders Strindberg is an academic and a journalist specializing in Mideast politics.

At the time of the creation of the Israeli state in 1948, it is estimated that the Christians of Palestine numbered some 350,000,(forming) almost 20 percent of the total population at the time.

Their forbears had listened to St. Peter in Jerusalem as he preached at the first Pentecost.

Yet Zionist doctrine held that Palestine was "a land without a people for a people without a land."

Of the 750,000 Palestinians that were forced from their homes in 1948, some 50,000 were Christians, 35 percent of the total number of Christians living in Palestine at the time.

Yet U.S. media and politicians have become accustomed to thinking of and talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as one in which an enlightened democracy is constantly forced to repel attacks from crazy-eyed Islamists bent on the destruction of the Jewish people and the imposition of an Islamic state. (And that) Palestinians are equated with Islamists, and Islamists with terrorists.

In the process of “Judaizing” Palestine, numerous convents, hospices, seminaries, and churches were either destroyed or cleared of their Christian owners and custodians.

In one of the most spectacular attacks on a Christian target, on May 17, 1948, the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate was shelled with about 100 mortar rounds—launched by Zionist forces from the already occupied monastery of the Benedictine Fathers on Mount Zion. The bombardment also damaged St. Jacob’s Convent, the Archangel’s Convent, and their appended churches, their two elementary and seminary schools, as well as their libraries, killing eight people and wounding 120.

Today it is believed that the number of Christians in Israel and occupied Palestine number some 175,000, just over 2 percent of the entire population, but the numbers are rapidly dwindling due to mass emigration.

Now, most of (Palestian Christians) live in Lebanon, where they share in the same bottomless misery as all other refugees, confined to camps where schools are under-funded and overcrowded, where housing is ramshackle, and sanitary conditions are appalling. Most, however, have fled the region altogether.

It is estimated that between 100,000 and 300,000 Palestinian Christians currently live in the U.S.

The Palestinian Christians see themselves, and are seen by their Muslim compatriots, as an integral part of the Palestinian people, and they have long been a vital part of the Palestinian struggle.

As the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, the Reverend Riah Abu al-Assal has explained,

"The Arab Palestinian Christians are part and parcel of the Arab Palestinian nation. We have the same history, the same culture, the same habits and the same hopes."

During the 1930s, Hajj Amin al-Hussein, the leader of the Palestinian struggle against the British colonialists, surrounded himself with Christian advisors and functionaries.

In the 1950s and ’60s,some of the most prominent militants of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were of Christian origin . For instance, George Habash, a Greek Orthodox medical doctor from al-Lod, created the Arab Nationalists’ Movement and went on to found the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Naif Hawatmeh, also Greek Orthodox, from al-Salt in Jordan, founded and still today heads up the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Hannan Ashrawi, one of the Palestinian Authority’s most effective spokespersons, is a Christian.

In fact, over the decades, many of the rank and file among the secular nationalist groups of the PLO have been Christians.

For them, the conflict with Israel is simply about resistance against occupation.

The Lebanese Hezbollah is widely admired among the refugees in Lebanon and in Palestine. One Christian Palestinian refugee in Damascus remarked:

."We have received far more support and comfort from the Hezbollah in Lebanon than from our fellow Christians in the West. I want to know, why don’t the Christians in the West do anything to help us? Are the teachings of Jesus nothing but empty slogans to them?"

This is a justified and important question, but the answer is not straightforward.

The Catholic Church has long argued for an end to the Israeli occupation and for improvement of the Palestinians’ situation.

The leaders of the Eastern Orthodox churches have taken similar, often more strongly worded positions.

Likewise, many Lutheran and Calvinist churches run organizations and programs that seek to ease the suffering of the Palestinians and draw attention to the injustices with which they are faced.

However, their impact on the political situation has been minimal. This is due to) the Evangelical movement that have adopted Zionism as a core element of their religious doctrine.

Christian Zionists in the U.S. are currently organized in an alliance with the pro-Israel lobby and the neoconservative elements of the Republican Party, enabling them to put significant pressure on both the president and members of Congress.

They are among the most influential shapers of policy in the US , including individuals such as Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell, and groups such as the National Unity Coalition for Israel, Christians for Israel, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and Chosen People Ministries. (They) are only too eager to sacrifice their Palestinian fellow Christians on the altar of Zionism. They do not want to hear about coreligionists’ suffering at the hands of Israel.

One of the most potent forces behind the Evangelical Zionist influence in Washington is Tom DeLay, leader of the Republican majority in the House. Part of DeLay’s growing influence within the Republican Party stems from the fact that his campaign committees managed to raise an impressive $12 million in 2001-2002.

Washington Post writer Jim VandeHei suggested,

"In recent years, DeLay has become one of the most outspoken defenders of Israel and has been rewarded with a surge of donations from the Jewish community."

DeLay had called for activists to back pro-Israel candidates who "stand unashamedly for Jesus Christ."
In July 2003, Tom DeLay traveled to Israel and addressed the Knesset, saying he was an "Israeli at heart." He said " the Palestinians have been oppressed and abused , but never by Israel, only by their own leaders."

(Palestinian) Christians find themselves under the hammer of the Israeli occupation to NO LESS an extent than Muslims, yet America—supposedly a Christian country—stands idly by because its most politically influential Christians have decided that Palestinian Christians are acceptable collateral damage in their apocalyptic quest.

Abbas, a Palestinian Christian whose family lived in Jerusalem for many generations until the purge of 1948 says

"To be a Christian from the land of Christ is an honor. To be expelled from that land is an injury, and these Zionist Christians in America add insult.

Is the State of Israel not in fact the fulfillment of God’s promise and a necessary step in the second coming of Christ?

You’re kidding, right? You know what they do to our people and our land. If I thought that was part of God’s plan, I’d be an atheist in a second."

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” is playing to full houses in the Syrian capital Damascus. Watching it here turns out to be much the same as watching it on opening night in New York—customarily rowdy moviegoers observe a reverent silence, the usual sound of candy wrappers is replaced by sobbing and gasping, and, at the end of it all, the audience files out of the theater in silence and contemplation.

Many of those watching the movie on this occasion are Palestinian Christian refugees whose parents or grandparents were purged from their homeland—the land of Christ—at the foundation of Israel in 1948.

For them, the movie has an underlying symbolic meaning not easily perceived in the West: not only is it a depiction of the trial, scourging, and death of Jesus, it is also a symbolic depiction of the fate of the Palestinian people.

Zaki, a 27-year old Palestinian Christian whose family hails from Haifa says,

"This is how we feel.

We take beating after beating at the hands of the world, they crucify our people, they insult us, but we refuse to surrender."

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