Saturday, December 29, 2007

Blaming Israel for the Consequences of Arab Aggression and Terrorism

This was distributed by the Palestinian (Mis)information Center and was taken from The People's Voice.

It's an excellent example of a general strategy used by haters of Israel — falesly accusing Israel of the sins of which the Palestinian Arabs and their supporters are guilty.

Comments have been interspersed within brackets.


Christians, too, suffer the evilness of the occupation



From Khalid Amayreh in Bethlehem

Christmas is a season of good will. However, for Israel and its notoriously mendacious propaganda machine, Christmas is also a hasbara opportunity for spreading lies and disseminating disinformation and half truths about Christians in the Holy Land.

[He starts right out by accusing Israel of doing precisely what he is doing with this very article.]


The usual seasonal dosage of lies includes such claims that Christians in the Holy Land suffer more from Muslim persecution than from the Israeli and apartheid, and that Christian emigration is not really attributed to Israel’s Nazi-like repression of the Palestinian people but rather to Palestinian “Muslim” intolerance and violence.

[What a mouthful! He manages, in a single paragraph, to lump Israel with both South Africa and Nazi Germany. Goebbels would be proud of him.

Of course, it is the Palestinian Authority which has something worse than apartheid as one of its demands: the complete ethnic cleansing of the Jews from all of the disputed territories.]


Well, such lies are not new. Israel itself is a state based on lies and lying has always been and continues to be Israel’s policy and modus operandi. In fact, it is very hard for one to be Zionist and not to be a liar. In truth, Zionism and mendacity are two sides of the same coin.

[One of the benefits advocates for Israel have over the Israel-haters is that we do not have to lie and distort to make our case.]


Didn’t Zionism claim that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land?

[No. Although Eretz Yisrael was sparsely populated, nobody claimed it was empty.]


Didn’t Zionism claim that Palestinian refugees fled their homes and towns willingly and that Israel was in no way responsible for their flight?

[Most of the refugees, who at that time insisted they were not Palestinians, left either because they were encouraged to leave by the invading Arab armies or because of the natural violent chaos of the war. Most of those who are now called refugees aren't really refugees; rather, they are the descendants of refugees who should have been resettled more than a half-century ago.]


Didn’t Israel tell the world that the Israeli occupation army was the most moral army in the world, and that Israeli soldiers didn’t knowingly and deliberately kill Palestinian children and civilians, &hellips;

[Of course.]


&hellips; and that the numerous acts of murder and maiming by the Israeli army were merely regrettable accidents?

[As with all armies, not everyone who has served in the Israeli army has been an angel, but the adjective "numerous" is a gross exaggeration.]


And even now, and despite Israel’s nakedness before the peoples of the world, this shameless state and its professional liars and spin doctors continue to claim ad nauseam that Israel is a democratic state where the rule of law is supreme.

[It's hard for Amayreh to accept the truth.]


Well, do democratic states act and behave the way Israel is acting and behaving? Do democratic states classify citizens and subjects into Ubermensch and untermensch?

[Yes and no. When did Amayreh stop beating his wife?]


I know for sure that our Christian-Palestinian brothers and sisters shall never allow Israel to use them as hasbara pawns in the service of oppression, racism and ethnic cleansing.

The Christians of Palestine, who have received their share of suffering and oppression at the hands of Zionism know more than anybody else that the wickedness of the occupation doesn’t distinguish between them and their Muslim compatriots.

[The so-called occupation ended more than a decade ago, when the Palestinian Authority took over the administration of the areas in which almost all the Palestinian Arabs resided. Unfortunately, when Yassir Arafat rejected peace and launched a terrorist war, he forced Israel to defend itself. The consequences for the Palestinian Arabs haven't been pleasant, but their the result of their own terrorist war, not occupation.]


In November, 1948, the Hagana terrorists overran the two Christian villages of Ikrit and Birim in the upper Galilee, expelling inhabitants at gunpoint. The pogrom-like expulsion was carried out without the Israeli government approval. However, the democratic Israeli state never allowed the Christian inhabitants to return, despite several rulings to the contrary by the Israeli High Court.

Since 1967, Israel, has been trying to play all kinds of dirty tactics to tamper with Palestinian national unity, especially by playing Muslim against Christian and vice versa.

[In Gaza, where Israel has no presence and no control, the Muslim rulers seem to have no trouble harassing and even murdering Christians without any help from Israel.]


A few years ago, the Israeli Intelligence instructed its agents to throw stones and Molotov cocktails on several churches in the northern and central parts of the West Bank, apparently in order to use the incidents as hasbara ammunition in North America where public opinion was already overcharged against anything Arab or Islamic.

[Anti-Israel propagandists constantly fabricate nonsensical charges, which by their very nature are difficult to un-categorically deny. This sounds like one of them.]


Meanwhile, the Israeli media, especially right-wing newspapers such as the Jerusalem Post, was concocting and inventing stories about Christian girls being raped and murdered by Palestinians in Bethlehem.

Such fabrications would be readily inflated, spun out of proportions and then widely disseminated especially among evangelical fundamentalists. Eventually, this would be translated into political support for Israeli colonialism and ethnic cleansing against both Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land.

Of course, many innocent and often naïve Americans and Canadians have no idea what kind of treatment is being meted out to Christians in the West Bank at the hands of Israeli occupiers.

[Actually, the sad fact is that many have no idea of the kind of harassment Christians in the disputed territories are suffering from at the hands of Muslim fanatics.]


They don’t know that Israel is systematically stealing, at gunpoint, Church property and real estate in Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahur and Jerusalem.

[Of course they don't know this, since it's a fabrication.]


They don’t know that Israel routinely bars Christians, laymen and clergy, from accessing their holy places in Jerusalem, e.g. the Church of the Sepulcher.

[During nineteen years of Jordanian occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem, Jews were totally barred from their holy places, including the Western Wall and Temple Mount. When Israel came into possession of Jerusalem, people of all faiths finally had free and easy access.

Arab terrorism has forced Israel to undertake security measures, but any difficulties anyone is having is a consequence of Arab terrorism, not any Israeli effort to deny access.]


They don’t know that Israeli Jewish youths routinely harass, even spit on clergymen in the streets of Jerusalem, often in full view of policemen who in most cases remain passive.

[There are some fanatical, generally anti-Zionist Jews who act in vulgar ways. They also spit on Jews who desecrate the Sabbath. It's obnoxious, but I don't find it as bad as Palestinian Arabs who get their thrills from murdering Israelis.]


They don’t know that Christian commuters are routinely humiliated at roadblocks manned by trigger-happy soldiers, which make their daily lives an unending nightmare?

[End the terror and the roadblocks will be removed. Most soldiers try to minimize the inconvenience caused. As with all armies, there are some soldiers who don't act appropriately.]


They don’t know that Israel has already morphed Bethlehem into a ghetto thanks to this Wall of Shame which Israel calls “separation wall” when in reality it is designed to grab and steal as much Palestinian land as possible.

[If Israel was trying to use the anti-terror barrier to grab land, it would have built it to bring far more land on the Israeli side.]


Well, just come to Bethlehem and see for yourself. It is a nightmare, it is hell on earth, and it is done by a people who claim to be a light upon the nations.

[It's done by the Arab terrorists, not Israel.]


If Christians in North America knew how Israel is acting and behaving toward their fellow Christian coreligionists and, of course, toward other Palestinians, they probably would start to change their views.

[They certainly won't find out how Israel is acting from the lies and distortions in Amayreh's writing.]


That is why it is imperative that Christians, especially in North America, make some serious efforts to know the truth about Israel and its crimes.

[See above.]


This can be done through third-party sources such as human rights organizations and western groups operating in the West Bank such as the Christian Peace Making Team and the International Solidarity Movement.

In short, Israeli and pro-Israeli media wouldn’t tell the truth about Israeli crimes against Palestinians, Muslim and Christian alike. So try to find alternative sources of news to know the truth about what is really happening in the Holy Land.

Don’t allow yourself to be duped and enslaved by Zionist lies.

[As I said at the beginning, one of the general strategies of the anti-Israel activists is to accuse Israel and its supporters of the sins for which they themselves are guilty.

Certainly, it is to be hoped intelligent people won't be swayed by the lies spread by the Palestinian (Mis)information Center and Amayreh.]

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