Christians in Jerusalem

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/03/vanishing-arab-christians-gaza-hamas-di-giovanni-book/
it’s not just Israeli settlers who oppress Christian Palestinians.

Are you concerned about all acts of oppression against Christians or are you only interested in the acts of oppression that are perpetrated by Israeli settlers?

@ScrollingLeaves The Bishops are absolutely correct about Israel operating above the law in the West Bank. I read an article today in the NYT which I linked in another thread,
It's about an investigation into direct links of lawlessness , terrorism, the nationalist settlers , the IDF and the far right monsters in the Israeli Govt. An incredibly shocking read and a conclusion for me that all they want is war and extermination.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-7-2011-006179_EN.html#:~:text=In%20addition%2C%20it%20was%20confirmed,of%20burial%20on%20Palestinian%20land.

2 % of the population of the Gaza Strip consists of Palestinian Christians. Since the consolidation of power by Hamas, there has been repeated violence against this community. Between 2007 and 2011, there have been acts of vandalism and bomb attacks on Christian schools, homes and institutions, as well as cases of murder and, recently, attempted murder against members of the Christian community. The failure to carry out investigations or arrests following these incidents suggests that Hamas has no intention of intervening to stop this persecution of Christians. In addition, it was confirmed by a Canadian NGO towards the end of 2009 that members of Hamas have repeatedly desecrated Christian graves and exhumed the bodies, in order to ‘decontaminate’ the soil from the corpses of Christians who they believe to be unworthy of burial on Palestinian land. According to the same source, Hamas has forced members of the Christian minority to collaborate with it, intimidating them with threats of rape and reprisals against their families. Discrimination now seems to have become the rule in the West Bank as well, especially in Bethlehem, where the Muslim majority, while accepting Christian tourists, is becoming ever more hostile to Palestinian Christians.

Thank you. I will have a listen. I don’t disagree that the settler violence is terrible and wrong. I understand why clergy want to draw attention to it. The settlers are extremists and target all Palestinians. It’s obviously wrong.
There are examples of Christian Palestinian families who have felt vulnerable/ targeted living in Hamas-run Palestine. That is wrong too.

35:50 minutes in to Sunday on Radio4 this morning, a bishop is talking about this subject (Palestinian Christians, and the Kisiya family, in the West Bank):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00236qw

Four senior Church of England bishops have accused Israel of acting above the law in the West Bank. In a letter sent to The Observer newspaper, they have called on the UN to move beyond strongly worded resolutions and they say there is little distinction between state and settlor violence. The bishops say the letter has been prompted by the forceful dispossession of a Christian family from their ancestral land outside Bethlehem. Emily Buchanan speaks to one of the signatories, Bishop of Southwark, Christopher Chessun.

( Before thus item they were discussion Hezbollah and Lebanon.)

The plight of Christians in the Holy Land is a discussion that is worth having but not in the current context. The terrible conflict in Gaza means that any debate about Christians in Jerusalem can become polarised and used as yet another proxy online battle against Israelis.
When there is peace we can have a very good discussion about the future of Christianity in the Holy Land.

Indeed @Limesodaagain But it is the place where Christ lived and died and so of great importance to us and a historic connection, which is not to discount the connections of other religions. As a minimum a Christian should be safe to visit or live a peaceful life there without being spat upon, reviled or displaced. But the larger issue is, I think, the unjust treatment of Palestinians more generally, even while I assert that Christians have a moral right to refuge in the land from where they originated.

Christians are abused by extremists in Israel , as are Muslims.
As has been said minority groups are also abused by extremists in this country.
Abuse of minorities is not acceptable but unfortunately happens everywhere- by Christian,Muslim and Jewish extremists.

The Holy Land is a holy land for all three religions. It’s tragic and ironic for all the religions who have holy places in this contested region.

I would expect Christians to be well treated in the homeland of their religion. I find it particularly egregious if they are unsafe in the holy land, while realising they are persecuted elsewhere.

I don't need to dilute that criticism by saying "but what about France or Italy or Germany"

But I am not trying to dilute anything. Where am I trying to dilute anything?

I’m simply saying that the upsurge in religious hatred as described in the article Is wholly unsurprising given the trends we have seen since 7 October and that those trends are not specific to any one country or region.

You are reading way too much into my comment.

Well quite, it does very much come across as some Christian lives mattering more than others to some posters when the insistence is that the only Christians worth acknowledging are those being mistreated by a certain group in Jerusalem, who don't represent Israel or Jewish people as a whole. It's sad to see the plight of Christians across the MENA region being ignored by some on this thread when discussion of this is an expansion on the issue of their persecution rather than a digression or derail.

Attempts to thread police it back into a yet another "Israel are doing something bad!" thread rather than acknowledging there is a wider issue that is relevant to the discussion are tiresome, as are the ongoing creative misinterpretations of posts even after the poster has repeatedly clarified what they said and what they meant.

The problem with Christians in Israel was discussed. There was discussion on the poor treatment by settlers by several and it was widely condemned, correctly so.

Someone kindly added how Israel are rated much better with treatment than other countries in the middle east (which doesn't make it right but adds information) which some want to ignore for various reasons. Why are people reluctant to discuss the treatment of Christians in the middle east generally? Are they not worthy unless it's anti Israel chat? 🤔 It certainly appears that way and why so many different posters commented to say that.

It was interesting how many DIFFERENT POSTERS commented when many of the threads are now dominated by a few posters, becoming echo chambers. It's refreshing to see a thread with lots of different posters take part with a variety of views and that's the point of a chat forum surely?

Alas, the poor Christians don't appear to matter unless it's used to dig at Israel. It certainly comes over that way with the claims of we only want to discuss that and ignore the rest.

Christians are persecuted throughout the middle east, imprisonment and torture, even death and THEY ALL MATTER, not just some of them. I've learnt from what others have shared in this thread and I thank those posters for that.

Having spent time in the UK over the past year, having seen the ways in which the political establishment weaponised racial and religious prejudices, I don't see what would be wrong with saying the UK government at those times did bad things and through inaction facilitated bad things. I don't need to dilute that criticism by saying "but what about France or Italy or Germany". It's possible to look critically at what's happening in a country and say that it's not ok in itself.

In this thread, an article was initially shared that focused on a specific group in a specific situation. Maybe the OP hoped to have a space in which that article and that group could be discussed. Maybe, rather than derailing the OP's thread, it would have been more appropriate (if people wanted to discuss the wider social and political challenges facing Christian populations in the Middle East) for people to start their own threads with a broader scope set out in the original posts for those threads.

Nope.

I simply said that since 7 October religious tensions have increased everywhere. So it is not surprising that tensions have also increased in Israel.

I didn’t say at all that Islmaophobia and antisemitism in the U.K. shouldn’t be discussed, or that it is worse elsewhere. I simply said that it is not limited to the U.K. and is happening across Europe, America etc. So it would be wrong to judge any one country for this, when it is a global trend.

I was also responding to someone who said that “Israel are doing something bad”. I’m not conformtable demonising another country for increases in religious hatred when that same religious hatred is a problem here to the extent that Jewish schools actually need security to keep the children who attend there safe.

I don’t think this Guardian article has yet been linked?The Kesiya family are mentioned, and much more besides.

www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/21/senior-church-of-england-bishops-accuse-israel-of-acting-above-law-in-west-bank

Yep. This is how it came across.

I don’t think this is on the thread so far, if so I apologise. Here is a link to an excellent, nuanced and detailed article about Christians in Jerusalem written in July 2023 by +972 magazine.

It covers some points no one on this thread has mentioned so far too, so it may be of real interest to anyone here who has not seen it:
https://www.972mag.com/jerusalem-christians-future-israel/

Again, that’s not what I said.

Rather than pondering on what I might be saying, it would be better to read what I actually said. And the ridiculous post I was responding to.

It seemed to me as though you might be saying that criticising or highlighting issues of anti-semitism and Islamophobia in the U.K. [ but in your argument the equivalent of this for Christians re. Israel] is wrong when anti-semitism and Islamophobia should be discussed in relation to other countries, not the U.K, as it is far worse for Jews and Muslims in those other countries than it us in the U.K. -
with an allegation that the only reason for bringing the U.K. into it is U.K. bashing ( this last argument though was possibly from another poster.)

That’s not what I said.

Re the mistreatment of Christians at the hands of settlers being due to them being Palestinian, not due to them being Christian.

This is probably largely true. Some of the articles posted earlier on this thread though also showed that a cemetery and a statue had been damaged, which does seem to indicate a motive of wanting to
attack the religion too.

I agree that Christians are far safer in Israel and I also agree it would be awful if settlers chased them off. I think the settlers need stopping. I also wish people would stop ignoring the plight of Christians in the middle east and at least by opening up this originally narrow thread focus it is talked about.

Yes, agreed, that would be very wrong.