Bethlehem and Bigotry -Michael GoveEggnog lattes on sale at Starbucks? There's one invariable sign that Christmas is almost upon us - a story about how Bethlehem is suffering at the hands of wicked Israel. It has become a feature of seasonal journalism...
The message: oppressive Israel has snuffed the life out of the town where the Prince of Peace was born.
The truth is very different. The parlous position of Palestinian Christians, indeed the difficult position of most Christians across the Arab world, is a consequence not of Israeli aggression but of growing Islamist influence. Israel goes out of its way to honor sites and traditions sacred to other faiths, while the radicals who are driving Palestinian politics seek to create an Islamist state in which other faiths, if they survive at all, do so with the explicit subject status of dhimmis.
(Times-UK)
Bruce's Note:
For an interesting display of anti-Israel Christmas coverage, see National Geographic Magazine's "Bethlehem 2007 A.D." Their video and photo gallery are stunning examples of how some media paint Israel's attempts to defend herself in a contextless haze. Absent from National Geo's narrative is mention of Bethlehem's Rachel's Tomb. CAMERA has a thorough critique of the National Geo piece.
1 comment:
It is hard to understand why the educated of this world cannot see that what the Israelis have to deal with in the form of ever present threats of violence and death is not the same as the oppression and genocide of indigenous peoples in Africa and Eastern Europe. There are a lot of other "obvious" things in this world that I cannot explain wither, but I hope some of them, like this one, get better quick!
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