Church Under Attack In Holy Land

Christian clergy examine Church property destroyed

by Jerusalem Municipality

The municipality of Jerusalem has launched an attack on Arab held property in the “Old City” of Jerusalem including property held by the Roman Catholic Church.  According to reports, this past Monday bulldozers came and razed a house owned by the Latin Patriarchate and inhabited by an Arab Catholic family.  Patriarch Fuad Tawwal, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Jerusalem, came to inspect the ruins of the house and told journalists: "This act is against the law, against justice and against humanity, against any ideology upon which peace can be built and increases segregation and hate."  The Israeli government spokesperson claimed that the house had been built illegally without proper permits but Archbishop Tawwal pointed out that, in fact, the house had been built prior to the 1967 invasion of the Old City when control of the area passed from Jordan to Israel.  Archbishop Tawwal said that both the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipal officials knew that the house belonged to the Church and that this demolition was an attack on the Church and its property. 
Many Americans are very naïve as to the complexities of the Palestinian situation.  Before the 1948 creation of the State of Israel, when the Holy Land was in the British Protectorate of Palestine—and even before that when it was part of the Ottoman Empire—the Palestinian population was approximately evenly divided between Christians and Muslims.  The Christians were Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, or Roman Catholic.  (The Melkite Church is a Byzantine Rite Church in Union with the Holy See.)  Christians tended to be merchants and professional people living in the cities and towns; Muslims tended to be more farmers living in the rural areas.  After 1948 the State of Israel made living conditions very difficult for the Palestinian population, giving them disproportionately low representation in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), as well as funneling government money for urban development, schools, recreational areas, and hospitals to the Jewish settlements and mostly ignoring the Palestinians.  Former President Jimmy Carter compared the treatment of Palestinians in Israel to the situation of Africans in South Africa under apartheid.  One could not even call the Palestinians “second-class” citizens as they were excluded from the tremendous economic development the Israelis have been able to achieve.  Water was cut off from their lands to irrigate the orchards and fields of Israeli farmers; schools were ramshackle affairs without books or the basic educational needs, children had no place to play or exercise but in the streets. 
The Israelis were Jews who had in the late nineteenth century begun to migrate back to Palestine from the Russian, Austrian, and German empires where they often suffered discrimination at best and too often bloody pogroms aiming for their elimination.  The horrors of the Nazi Holocaust convinced the world that the Jews needed a “homeland” where they could be secure from further attempts to wipe them out and in the years after the Second World War, the British protectorate of Palestine was flooded with Jewish refugees who came as settlers.  They had to fight a dual war to establish their homeland—a war against the British for independence and a war against the Palestinian peoples for control of the land.  
The Palestinian people, while called “Arabs,” are not the descendent of the Arab invaders who conquered the Holy Land from the Byzantine Empire in the seventh century, but are descendants of the ancient Syrian, Canaanite, Phoenician, Greek and Roman people who inhabited the land from antiquity.  At the time of the Islamic conquest, these people were Christian and a significant number of the population, approximately half, remained Christian until the mid-twentieth century.  As their life deteriorated under Israeli government, many opted to emigrate to the United States, to Canada, Australia and other nations.  It was easier for the urban population—mostly Christian—to sell homes and shops and to leave than it was for those who livelihood was on the land—mostly Muslim.  Today less than 10% of the Palestinian people who remain are Christians, but the Church is still a significant presence in the Holy Land as Christians—and Catholics in particular—support hospitals, schools, and even a University in the Palestinian territories. 
Political pressure on the Israeli government from religious extremists in the ultra-Orthodox factions of society has caused the government to continue to harass the Palestinian people in hopes of forcing them to leave Israel.  The ultra-Orthodox want the land entirely for Jews and believe that this is God’s destiny for this ancient land which God “gave” their ancestors.  The Catholic Church (along with the Orthodox) is very concerned about the future of an Israel without the historic presence of its Christian peoples.  There is fear for the survival of the shrines connected with the life of Our Lord, but there is also a concern for the people themselves to maintain their culture and faith in this hostile environment.  For political reasons in our own country, the United States, news about the plight of Palestinians, and in particular Palestinian Christians, is often embargoed.  If American Christians knew the truth about the injustices foisted on the Palestinians and the infringement on the religious freedom of Christians in the Holy Land, the political pressure on our government to review its Israel policy would be to Israel’s grave disadvantage. 

I would suggest you might look to the Holy Land Ecumenical Foundation (http://www.hcef.org/) for more information about the plight of Palestinian Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox. 

 

Rembering the Mother Church at Christmas

The Mar Elias Church, a Greek

Orthodox Monastery in Bethlehem.

Bethlehem is the center of Palestinian

Christians. 

Well, it is Christmas Eve and there is much to remember in our prayers but this evening let us in particular pray for the Christians of the Near East who are suffering terribly in the shifting political situations of the various nations in which they are a minority. 
     Palestinian Christians represent the “Mother Church” of Christianity, the Jerusalem community spoken of in the Acts of the Apostles, being descended from the converts made the Apostles at Pentecost.  They are mostly Greek Orthodox and Melkite Catholic (Arab Catholics of the Greek Rite in union with Rome) with smaller communities of Copts (both Catholic and Orthodox), Syrians (mostly Orthodox, some Catholics), Chaldeans (in union with Rome), Maronites (in union with Rome), Armenians (both Orthodox and Catholic) and some smaller Protestant (Anglican Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist) congregations.  At one time Palestinian Christians made up as much as 20% of the indigenous population of what is today Israel and Palestine. We think of the Palestinians as Arabs but the majority are descendants of the ancient peoples of Palestine who have lived there since before Joshua led the People of Israel into the land promised them: that is to say that modern Palestinians are descended primarily from the Canaanite, Phoenician, Philistines and other peoples mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures.  During the period of Greek Rule under the Seleucid kings they, unlike the Maccabean Jews, renounced their various belief systems and adopted the Greek deities.  Under the more tolerant Roman rule they became very syncretic religiously borrowing belief systems from various sources according to their particular choices but culturally they remained Graeco-Syrian having lost their particular ancient identities as Philistines, Canaanites, etc.  When the Jews were expelled from Roman Palestine after the Bar Kokhba revolt (123-25 CE), this indigenous Graeco-Syrian population was left in the land.  Christianity, preached by the Apostles at Pentecost and afterward drew many converts and by the time that the Christian religion was legalized in the Roman Empire, most had already become Christian and were well established in the Christian faith.  The Persian conquest of 614 was devastating to monasteries and churches, the Persians being Zoroastrians and harassing Christians, but the Byzantine reconquest was quick and the effects of the Persian persecution was not long term.  It was only two decades later, however, in 636 that Arab forces under the Caliph Umar, the second Caliph after Mohammed, conquered Palestine.  There was no persecution of Christians under Islamic rule of Palestine though Christians and Jews, called dhimmi under sharia law,  were subjected to a higher tax rate than the Muslim population.  This tax for non-Muslims was called jizya and it was in lieu of military service which was restricted to Muslims.  The tax burden could be quite heavy, especially on the rural population who eked out a living by subsistence farming.  Over the centuries many rural Palestinians adopted Islam to escape the jizya while the merchant classes in the town were more prosperous, able to pay the tax, and remained Christian.  
     After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 many Arabs in the new country felt the effects of discrimination and chose to leave for North or South America as well as for former British dominions in Australia and South Africa.  (Palestine had been a British Protectorate from the end of World War I until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.)  In a similar way when Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Days War (1967), many Palestinians decided it was time to emigrate.  Urban merchants can convert their business to cash far more easily than farmers whose wealth is in their land—a land that is poor to begin which and which now became subject to seizure at whim as the ‘settlements’ go up on what had been Palestinian farms and orchards.  Consequently the Christians have been quick to emigrate while the Muslims economically do not always have the same freedom.  The Christian population in Israel/Palestine has now diminished to less than 3% from a pre-State of Israel high of perhaps 10%.  According to the Latin Patriarchate (The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Jerusalem), the Christian Population is being driven out by a combination of Israeli policy towards Palestinians and Muslim prejudice against Christian Arabs.  There is great danger of the Christian population disappearing from Israel/Palestine and Christians losing a heritage that goes back to the preaching of Jesus.  We will look at the problems of other Christian communities—the Copts (Egypt), the Chaldeans (Iraq), and the Maronites (Lebanon) in future blogs.