Not Knowing Friends From Foes

Yahoo Groups contains a group called PalestinianChristians. It may be found at groups.yahoo.com/group/PalestinianChristians.

There are occasional sane messages posted, but generally the messages gie insight into the self-delusion of many Palestinian Christians.

Their plight under the Palestinian Authority would convince clear-thinking Christians that Israel is the only real friend they have in the Middle East, yet anti-Israel rhetoric dominates their posts.

We include two posts which show disregard of both the truth and their own self-interest.

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Macmillan USA Encyclopedia Damns Zionism as Racism

This was posted by Yousef Abudayyeh yabudayyeh@sbcglobal.net.

And the Jewish mostly zionist community in the US is going nuts.

The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, which carries the names of both Macmillan Reference USA (now owned by the Michigan-based Gale, Cengage Learning company) and the Macmillan Social Science Library is including "zionism " in the section that talks about racism in a clear understanding that zionism is racism. After all the UN has a resolution that equates zionism with rasicm domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0a2a053971ccb56885256cef0073c6d4/761c1063530766a7052566a2005b74d1!OpenDocument.

[This is a typical example of a total disregard for the truth.

The United Nations, in one of its most disgraceful actions, at one time passed a resolution falsely describing Zionism as a form of racism, but it eventually rescinded that motion.]

Or just look what the zionist are doing to the Palestinians.

[The Zionists did take one action about fifteen years ago that was one of the worst ones ever taken against the Palestinian Arabs: They agreed to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinian Arabs have suffered from that ever since.]

Please do you part and contact the publishing company and urge them not to yield on this issue and take zionism out of that section . They are getting a lot of heat from the zionists and we need to make sure that people everywhere will support them in referencing the right explanation in the right section. They can be reached at Phone: 1-800-877-4253Fax: 1-877-363-4253 Monday-Friday 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST or Outside U.S. and Canada:Visit www.gale.com/world.

[It wouldn't be a bad idea to contact the publisher and urge it to remove the false and libelous references to Zionism.]

Christian population of Jerusalem decreasing under Israeli scheme

This was posted by Peter Shanab pashanab@yahoo.com.

Palestinians of both the Christian and Islamic faiths face routine attack in Jerusalem under expanding Judaization as reported by residents and groups such as the Al Aqsa Foundation.

Christian Front for the Defense of Jerusalem. Although the colonization is political, Israeli actions are often pointed toward religion in order to color public perception into believing it is a "religious conflict."

[The war against Israel is both political and religious.]

Palestinian official Hatem Abdel Kader said yesterday, Israel wants to shift issue of Jerusalem from the political to a religious conflict. The land grab is notable to the naked eye with this month olive fields being turned under for settlement expansion.

Hundreds of Palestinians are losing their Jerusalem identification cards and are thereby being forced out of the city. Settlers are walking in the streets of East Jerusalem near the Old City and a synagogue opened this week next to Al Asqa Mosque.The examples are as ample as they are disturbing to any interested party as religion comes to the front in another way. The Jordanian government called this week for aid in saving Al Aqsa Mosque from Israeli threats.

[This is almost funny.

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and, although the Temple Mount is the holiest spot on earth in Judaism, there is no synagogue there.

Nor are there any Israeli threats to the Al Aqsa Mosque, although countless threats to Israel eminate from the Al Aqsa Mosque.]

What concerns Bishop Attallah Hanna at the moment is the shrinking number of Christian residents of the city. The population is down to 10,000 after being 40,000 in 1967 at the beginning of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.The Bishop told the Sixth International Jerusalem Conference this week in Doha, Qatar, The decrease is a dangerous phenomenon that must be addressed.

[The Christian population is under threat virtually everywhere in the Middle East except for Israel. Christians are especially under siege in the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority, both in Hamastan (Gaza) and Fatahland (West Bank).

The way Palestinian Muslims are driving Palestinian Christians out of Bethlehem ought to give them pause, yet they misdirect their anger at Israel, the only state that doesn't mistreat them.]

Some 46 countries are represented at the major conference attending by political and legal forces, and members of the foreign and Arab press.A Keynote speaker, Hanna attributed this decline to the dangerous Israeli practices against the holy city and its inhabitants, where he said, Israel seeks to empty the city of its Palestinian inhabitants, whether Christians or Muslims.

[This is a typical example of Israel's enemies attributing to Israel that of which they themselves are guilty. The entire Arab-Israeli conflict is essentially an attempt to rid Eretz Yisrael of its Jewish residents.]

The Christian and Muslim character of East Jersualem's Old City is being chipped away and replaced by Jewish settlers, Israeli flags and synagogues.

[Actually, the proportion of Arab residents in Jerusalem has increased dramatically since the city was reunited as Israel's undivided capital in 1967.]

The Bishop told the Gulf conference that the Israeli administration is putting Jews in their places, in their houses, or taking them down and putting up others on the spot.

[Apparently, honesty isn't a prerequisite for being a bishop.]

This is already the case with hundreds of thousands of settlers coming from all corners of the earth to live here and set up Jewish settlements of housing and infrastructure. They pressure and assault the Palestinian population, establish checkpoints and limit movement, prevent Palestinians from construction and prosperity, and are forcing more to leave the city. Christians have emigrated from Jerusalem to the West Bank, other Arab countries and overseas in an ongoing relocation scheme, the Bishop told the conference, to make a purely Jewish Jerusalem.

[Christians have been fleeing the areas ruled by the Palestinian Authority.]

Israel also continues the planned displacement of Arabs from Israel and the full conversion to a Jewish state. We must use our energies to protect sacred Jerusalem.

[Israel is a Jewish state; it thus cannot be "converted" to a Jewish state.

Under Israeli sovereignty, there is free access to Jerusalem to people of all faiths, restricted only by security considerations necessitated by Arab terrorism.

This is in stark contrast to the discrimination in effect during the period the Arabs divided Jerusalem.]

The prestigious Sunni Muslim scholar and scientist, Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi commented, What I have just heard from Bishop Atallah Hanna on the decreasing presence of Christians in Jerusalem is a very dangerous matter with an unpredictable stopping point. The threat to Christians is a threat to Muslims and if this decline continues Israel will succeed in turning the city into a Jewish city. We must support our people in Jerusalem politically, morally and religiously with vital projects in housing, health, education and economy. The protection is needed for all Arabs, Islamic and Christian alike.