Het is weer bijna kerstmis en dat wordt door antizionisten altijd gretig aangegrepen voor anti-Israel propaganda. Wat zou Jezus hebben gedaan als hij al dat onrecht had gezien? En Jozef en Maria zouden Bethlehem niet eens inkomen, aldus een artikel in de Guardian. Er zijn vele, vele cartoons van Jozef en Maria die bij een checkpoint staan, of bij de muur, waarbij Maria en Jozef blijkbaar vanzelfsprekend Palestijnen zijn. Ook wordt het beeld weer eens opgeroepen van de Palestijnen als de oorspronkelijke bewoners, die nog leven in de authentieke stijl van vroeger, herder zijn en olijfolie maken, tegenover Israel dat alles volbouwt en het mooie Bijbelse landschap verpest. Natuurlijk klopt van al deze zaken niet veel – het is pure propaganda, bedoeld om bepaalde emoties op te wekken, om van alles te suggereren zonder het letterlijk te zeggen, om goed en kwaad neer te zetten met een mooie Bijbelse achtergrond.
Ondertussen worden christenen juist door de Palestijnen gediscrimineerd, en elk jaar zijn er minder christenen in de Palestijnse gebieden, terwijl het aantal christenen in Israel juist toeneemt. In 1948 was 80% van de bevolking in Bethlehem christen, nu is dat minder dan 15%, terwijl in Israel het aantal christenen met 400% toenam sinds 1948 (cijfers van Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs - zie video ). In Bethlehem ging het met de christenen het slechtst toen het tussen 1948 en 1967 onder Jordaanse heerschappij viel en toen het na 1993 onder de Palestijnse Autoriteit kwam. Maar laten dergelijke feiten het antizionistische feestje vooral niet verpesten, want kerstmis en Bethlehem en het Israelisch-Palestijns conflict zijn perfect geschikt om te mixen tot een onwelriekend antiziosemitisch goedje.
Een slimme reageerder merkte bij Elder of Ziyon op dat Jozes en Maria inderdaad Bethlehem niet in zouden komen heden ten dagen, omdat ze..... Joods zijn, en gebied dat onder de PA valt is voor Joden verboden. Wat een discriminatie en racisme!
RP
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How the Jews steal Christmas: Ugly Guardian story evokes Jesus as an “oppressed” Palestinian
As NGO Monitor noted about the above cartoon, a Christmas card distributed by the NGO War on Want:
This Christmas card shows Joseph and a heavily pregnant Mary encountering a Bethlehem that is “effectively sealed off from the outside world by Israel’s Separation Wall” and “Mary and Joseph being frisked on their way to find an Inn for the night.” Linking the suffering of Palestinians with that of Jesus and Bethlehem is a common strategy for emphasizing accusations of Israeli brutality.
Such an insidious narrative, which uses Christmas as a means to demonize the Jewish state – including the conflation of Jesus with the Palestinians – is not uncommon among the British NGOs most hostile to Israel such as War on Want, Amos Trust, and Pax Christi, and other NGOs, such as Sabeel andAdalah-NY.
A recent essay - to which NGO Monitor President Gerald Steinberg contributed – noted:
UK-based Amos Trust is advertising its annual Bethlehem Pack, “a resource…which refers to Christian symbols in order to conflate the suffering of Jesus with the experience of Palestinians, explaining “If Jesus was born today in Bethlehem, the Wise Men would spend several hours queuing to enter the town” and “If Jesus was born today in Bethlehem, much of the shepherds’ fields would have been confiscated for illegal Israeli settlements.”
As the author of the essay observed, “These theological references are direct successors to millennia of Christian anti-Semitic campaigns.”
Such tropes are also employed by the Guardian’s Phoebe Greenwood.
Here is the headline of her Dec. 22 report:
Here’s the Guardian photo and caption which accompanied Greenwood’s report – evoking Jesus Christ, the ‘Good Shepherd’ (John, verses 11-13), which is among the most common symbolic representations of Christ found in Early Christian art:
Greenwood’s tale leaves little to the imagination, beginning thusly:
If Joseph and Mary were making their way to Bethlehem today, the Christmas story would be a little different, says Father Ibrahim Shomali, a parish priest in the town. The couple would struggle to get into the city, let alone find a hotel room.
“If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed,” says the priest of Bethlehem’s Beit Jala parish. “He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission – or to have been tourists.
However, as I pointed out in a previous post, the ONLY place in the Middle East where the Christian population has grown since the end of WWII is Israel, and the flight of Christians from Palestinian controlled areas, such as Bethlehem, is primarily the result of persecution by the majority Muslim population.
Today, Christians make up just 1% of the population of the Palestinian territories. In 1920, they represented 10%. And, in Bethlehem in particular, not only has the number of Christians continued to dwindle, but Bethlehem and its surroundings also recently has become hotbeds for Hamas and Islamic Jihad supporters and members.
Undeterred, Greenwood continues:
Dr Jad Isaac, an expert in Bethlehem’s demographics and a consultant to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, says aside from the physical restrictions on development,Bethlehem’s economy is being strangled by the loss of land and restrictions on Palestinian movement. [Emphasis mine]
However, as Reuters reported (consistent with a recent Post by Akus)
With millions of tourists expected in the West Bank town of Bethlehem during Christmas, local merchants and tourism officials say they are enjoying an economic boom. Palestinian minister of tourism, Kholod Daibes, predicted that two million tourists will visit the city by the end of 2011.
We expect to attract greater numbers who are making a special visit so there will be more who stay in the Palestinian hotels, especially when the number of rooms and facilities is increasing,” she said. Daibes said that despite the Arab Spring revolutions in the region, which is expected to impact on tourist numbers, the outlook is still better than in previous years.
Greenwood concludes:
“The little town of Bethlehem? It will soon be the little ghetto surrounded in all directions by Israeli settlements,” he predicts. “We’ve already passed the stage where Bethlehem can be saved. Frankly, that’s why I don’t celebrate Christmas any more.”
In the media there are, to be sure, small lies, big lies and moral obscenities.
The small lie in Greenwood’s tale pertains to her suggestion that Bethlehem is being economically strangled by Israeli policy.
The big lie is that Jews are preventing Christians from celebrating the birth of Christ.
The morally obscene charge is that, if Christ, Mary and Joseph were all alive today, they’d be persecuted by the Jewish state.
The indisputable fact, however, is that Israel remains the sole nation in the Middle East where Christians are free to worship as they choose.
Is this even debatable?
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