BY DAVID PARSONS, ICEJ-—
With his recent segment for 60 Minutes, CBS News reporter Bob Simon has once again stoked the perennial debate over why so many native Palestinian Christians have been leaving the Holy Land in recent decades. Sadly, he addressed this important issue with a very superficial brand of journalism. The report relied mainly on one local Palestinian cleric – notorious Israel-basher Rev. Mitri Raheb – to single out the “Israeli occupation” as the scapegoat for this Christian flight. There was no need to dig deeper, since Simon knew the report was sure to be a sensation from the moment Israeli ambassador Dr. Michael Oren caught wind of the production and intervened with his bosses at CBS News.
If Bob Simon had truly wanted to know why Arab Christians have been fleeing in droves from Palestinian areas, he should have asked those émigrés now living in Toronto, Sydney and Santiago. Because that is where the majority of Palestinian Christians now reside – in dispersed communities in Canada, Chile, Australia, Germany, the United States and elsewhere.
The disturbing truth is that more than 60% of the Arab Christians born in Palestinian areas over the past several generations now live abroad. Yet the same holds true for Lebanese Christians, as a similar 60% of their beleaguered community now live in foreign lands.
Indeed, there has been a widening Christian exodus from all the surrounding Arab countries, with Iraq’s ancient Assyrian Christian community collapsing from 1.5 million to as few as 250,000 since the Second Gulf War commenced in 2003. The Coptic Church in Egypt is also losing tens of thousands of parishioners in the wake of the Arab Spring.
So it is indisputable that Arab Christians are fleeing all across the Middle East, and surely the Israeli occupation is not to blame. Rather, this flight has been primarily due to local conflicts and the rise of Islamic militancy, as noted by Ambassador Oren, and the Palestinian Christians are no exception to this trend. The lone exception, in fact, happens to be the state of Israel, the only place in the entire region where Arab Christians are growing in number and are afforded their democratic rights.
Still, some Palestinian clerics insist that Muslims and Christians would co-exist in perfect harmony if not for the Jews and their settlements. That, sadly, is a living portrait of a people in denial. How else to explain that Palestinian Christian flight from the Holy Land predates the “occupation” by decades?
For instance, the last British census in 1948 recorded 29,000 Arab Christians living in Jerusalem, while the first Israeli census in eastern Jerusalem in 1967 found only 11,000. That means two-thirds of the Arab Christian population had fled during the 19 years of the Jordanian occupation of east Jerusalem.
The real root of the current exodus actually lies in the historic interplay between Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Middle East ever since the Islamic conquests began in the seventh century. The region’s Christians and Jews became dhimmis – suppressed minorities living under Muslim dominance. They could keep their faith but had to accept second-class status. To survive, both communities adopted a code of silence which dictated that they never challenge the system nor say anything bad about Islam in public.
This system of dhimmitude basically held until modern times. The Crusades may have brought temporary relief for some Christians, but only terror for the Jews.
When Ottoman rule over the Middle East began to wane, the dynamic finally began to change. The Great Powers of Europe moved into the region, each concluding deals with the Sultanate in Istanbul to provide protection to various imperiled Christian denominations. Western missionaries also brought with them schools, hospitals and other modern institutions. With their better education and job skills, Arab Christians became more mobile and many began to migrate to the West to escape the prison of Islam. Thus the modern-day Christian exodus began.
Meanwhile, the Zionist movement arose with a dream of restoring Jewish sovereignty back in their ancient homeland. Israel’s emergence in 1948 challenged the system of Muslim dominance over Christians and Jews, an achievement the Arab world has never truly accepted.
For many Christians in the Middle East, the rebirth of Israel actually stands as a light and model of freedom from Muslim tyranny. But for Palestinian Christians, the conflict that seeks to destroy the Jewish state has been too close for comfort. They are powerless to end it and struggling to survive.
Thus many Palestinian Christian leaders have taken to patriotically waving the flag of Palestinian nationalism higher than even their Muslim neighbors, in the hope such loyalty to the cause will safeguard their flocks. They rail against the Israeli occupation and the settlements as the reason for their dwindling presence. The checkpoints and security barrier may create hardships for them, but it is not the core reason why proud Christian families who have weathered many turbulent centuries here are now pulling up roots.
We must all understand that they are employing an ancient survival mechanism ingrained through centuries of Muslim oppression. Unable to name the real culprit, Palestinian Christians often deflect Muslim anger away from themselves by directing it at the Jews. Meantime, Ambassador Oren is giving voice to the very things they cannot say.
General,
As with most of your articles, I was better informed and better able to pray for Israel after having read it. I well remember greeting the morning of 9 November 1965 overwhelmed by the chaos we had experienced tithe previous day. There, standing on holy ground paid for by much shedding of blood and giving of life. God began a journey in me to seek a greater tuth than the carnage that surrounded us. I have to pray for Israel with a view of what lies beyond the current chaos in thei battle to survive. In the end, there will be a remnant of God’s special people who will have witnessed the faithfilness of Jehovah When Jesu Messiah once again returns to establish His throne in Jeruselem. maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus, Come!
Jim Serna
Hill #65
B/1/503 173D Bde. Airborne!
’64-’66
By the Grace of God
Thank you Jim! That’s what we are here for.
While it is sad that the Christians have fled the Middle East, It only goes to show how evil Islam is.
We all need to be in much prayer at this time for Israel, because Islams would wipe Israel and the United States off the map IF they could, but I don’t think that is GOING TO HAPPEN.
The middle east conflict is a spiritual conflict. All jewish people, whether they are secular, political, or religious, represent a “finger pointing up to a Creator G-d of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob to Whom all mankind (both jew and gentile) is accountable. Man who is in rebellion against the authority of this Creator G-d of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob over the life of man, seethes with anger and rage when confronted by a reminder that there is a Creator G-d to whom man is accountable — and since the jew is this finger pointing to a Creator G-d, man takes it out on the jew. The gentiles don’t make a distinction between secular, political or religious jews — they just project their confused hatred against those who remind them they will be held accountable. So the middle east is a spiritual conflict between the Creator G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the rebellious created being. So, as long as man works to bring about by his works a semblance of peace, there will be none.
G-d notes in His WORD that “When my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, THEN, I [G-d] will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sins and will heal their land” (IIChronicles 7:14).