Christian Palestinian [Before Christmas]

Some people thinks it's Odd, 'Zero' Christian in Palestine, although, Palestine literally oldest christian nation

Bethlehem 2.22pm

Many people around the globe have become aware of Palestine and Israel due to the violence in and around Gaza. If one follows the legacy media, one might have been told that the conflict began on 7 October when Hamas, an attacked the 'peaceful' state of Israel.

Long time before HAMAS, Palestinian Christian raise a riffle to defending Palestine.

Few, especially those depending on other sources of information, might have learned that Palestinians under a 16-year Israeli siege had finally broken out of Gaza, or what the Catholic Cardinal of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa has called “an open prison.”

Many of the new followers of the conflict quickly noticed the double standard of the Western governments (and Western media) and have also been appalled by the racism that Israel has towards Palestinians. But this discovery has often missed an important factor.

''The Israeli bombing of Christian facilities, churches, and hospitals has given prominence to the Palestinian Christian existence. Israel shelled a Church building where people were hiding from the Israeli onslaught causing the death of 18 Palestinian Christians.''

Christian Before Israel - Palestine war

George ‘AL HAKIM’ Habash, a Palestinian leader who died in Amman Jordan, on Saturday January 26th, 2008, at the age of 82 [born August 1st, 1926], the godfather of Middle East resistance, decades earlier than HAMAS. If you assumed that Palestinian or Arab extremism somehow sprung entirely from Islam — from the puritanical Wahabbi intolerance and so forth — take a close look at Habash's first name.

HABASH was a Greek Orthodox Christian, who sang in his church choir as a boy back in the Palestinian town of Lydda. Habash had two dreams: an end to the dispossession of his people and the realisation of Arab unity.

2008, When he died, He died without seeing either dream come true. In his last years Habash watched, with deep sadness imprinted on his warm persona, as Israel expanded, the Palestinian movement splintered, Iraq fell under US occupation and the Arab World grew increasingly divided.

But he lived and died without forsaking his dream or losing faith in his people.

“His message to the Palestinians was to restore our unity,” Issam Al Taher, a senior aide who saw him a day before his death, said.

“Unity, unity, unity – that was his only message,” said Al Taher.

To millions of Palestinians those were not solely the words of a political leader but also a soulful cry from a man described as “the conscience of the Palestinian revolution”.

Habash's life tells us a lot about the long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which seems as intractable as ever, and prompts reflection on the Middle East's seemingly unstoppable whirlwind of violence.

Habash's group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), pioneered the hijacking of airplanes as a Middle East terror tactic — one eventually employed by the al-Qaeda hijackers on 9/11 — way back in 1968 when three PFLP armed operatives commandeered an Israeli El Al airliner enroute from Rome to Tel Aviv. Checking in for a flight has never been the same since.

In 1970, PFLP terrorists hijacked four airliners at one time, flew three of them to Jordan, blew them up, and triggered the Black September civil war between Jordan's Hashemite monarchy and Palestinian guerrillas. In 1972, Japanese Red Army terrorists working with the PFLP massacred 24 people at Israel's Lod International Airport (now called Ben Gurion International Airport).

Menachem Begin and Beirut

Beirut, Lebanese killed by Israel / Menachem Begin: 17,825

Palestinian right now: around 21,731 Gazans and around 250 in West Bank.

In 1976, the PFLP's last hijacking ended in the daring rescue by Israeli counter-terrorism commandos in Entebbe, Uganda. By then, the actions of Habash's small but radical faction had propelled the Middle East into cycles of violence that were ever more extreme. They have yet to subside.

Besides multiplying in number and intensity, Palestinian terrorism prompted reciprocal Israeli counter-attacks on neighboring countries that in some instances led to the outbreak of war.

But compared to the terrorists behind today's nihilistic suicide bombings and mass atrocities such as 9/11, Habash's commandos were almost softies. Before they blew up the three planes in Jordan in a spectacular, televised moment that was the 9/11 of its day, all of the 300 or so passengers were evacuated and quickly freed.

To what exact extent Habash inspired the likes of Osama bin Laden is a matter of conjecture. While the al-Qaeda leader seeks to avenge Palestinians and surely was aware of Habash's exploits, he would not be impressed by Habash's Christianity, Marxist-Leninist politics or connections to the ex-Soviet Union. It is clear, however, that the PFLP's audacious actions prompted other Palestinian factions to launch international terror campaigns of their own. Admirers of the PFLP's headline-making attacks within Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah group went on to plan an attack on the Olympic Games in 1972 — ending in the Munich Massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and six others.

What led Habash, a Christian physician — hence his nickname al-Hakim or the doctor — into such a life, of revolution, of killing? The son of a well-to-do merchant, he was trained at the American University of Beirut, the most liberal university in the Middle East then as now. His background was almost identical to that of his best friend, Wadia Haddad, the No. 2 in the PFLP and the operational genius and passionate proponent of the group's terrorist acts. When I asked Habash that question during a series of interviews many years ago, he simply told me about his personal experiences when his family lost its home during Israel's 1948 War of Independence, what the Palestinians call the Catastrophe.

Habash's mother insisted he stay in Lebanon for his studies. He told me he "respected her very much. She was praying all the time. She influenced me to be merciful, kind to people, to love people, etc." When war broke out in 1948, he returned to Lydda. In July, Israeli forces led by Moshe Dayan entered Lydda and its population emptied. Israeli accounts long portrayed the Palestinians as having "fled." But Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote in 1999 that Israeli forces killed at least 250 townspeople, including young men massacred in a mosque. "Immediately after this, with [Israeli Prime Minister] Ben Gurion's authorization, the troops expelled the inhabitants of Lydda and Ramle and drove them toward the [Arab] Legion lines to the east," according to Morris.

That was the horror Habash recollected as well, compounded for him by a personal tragedy: the same night, one of his sisters died in the town. Although she succumbed to typhoid, the clan blamed the Israeli onslaught for preventing her from receiving proper care. He buried the sister in the backyard, took her small children by the hand and followed the orders of the Israeli soldiers to leave. "The soldiers would say, 'All of you, out! In this direction!'" Habash recalled. "I remember asking one of the soldiers where we were supposed to go." Habash told me he rejected Christianity then. "I was all the time imagining myself as a good Christian, serving the poor. When my land was occupied, I had no time to think about religion."

Habash never returned to Lydda, which, renamed Lod, became part of the State of Israel. He and Haddad spent their time volunteering medical services in the newly established Palestinian refugee camps and later formed the Arab Nationalist Movement in solidarity with Egypt's revolutionary leader, Gamal Abdul Nasser. After Nasser's humiliating defeat in the 1967 war with Israel, Palestinians broke off from the group and formed the PFLP. Habash initially sought to use terrorism to instigate a Palestinian uprising against Israel and popular revolts in Arab countries like Jordan ruled by pro-Western leaders.

Israeli occupation, domination, and discrimination are not limited to a particular religion. While Hamas used the Islamic term in reference to their operation (Al Aqsa flood), the fact is that people of all backgrounds and religions have identified with the Palestinian resistance movement, not because of support for Islam.

Furthermore, members of the international community often appear surprised to learn of the existence of Palestinian Christians and may be unable to fathom the continuous existence of Christians in Palestine and the region ever since the birth of Christ in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem.

Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Jerusalem where Jesus was born, was raised, and was crucified are all Palestinian towns with a clear Arab Christian presence.

The Roman Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrios in Gaza City is the third oldest church in the world. It lies also next to the Anglican-run hospital popularly referred to as the Baptist hospital which was also shelled causing death and destruction.

Justin A. Amash, first ever Palestinian - American [Christian] in Capitol Hill. Then followed by Rashida Harbi Tlaib [Muslim]

The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which runs the church, said many of those inside at the time were women and children and accused Israel of targeting churches.

Ple

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Plestia Alaqad and Dr Ghassan Abu Sitta, 15 - 16 hours after Israel airstrike destroyed Anglican Hospital. Dr Ghassan in inside hospital when airstrike happens.

According to reports in The Guardian, the Israeli military said it had damaged “a wall of a church” when it hit a Hamas “command and control centre” nearby but denied intentionally targeting St. Porphyrios. The Israeli military provided a video that appeared to show a powerful missile hitting a building immediately adjacent to the church and said the incident was under review.

Remembering Palestinian Christian villages

But while for many the discovery of Palestinian Christians was new; their oppression is as old as the state of Israel itself. The current attempts by Israel to force the expulsion of Palestinians from the north of Gaza to the Egyptian Sinai (under the excuse of protecting them) have refreshed the Palestinian people’s memory of having become refugees 75 years ago and never being able to return. One of the most telling cases of disenfranchisement and refusal to allow refugees to return happened to citizens of the state of Israel who were Palestinian Christians.

In the winter of 1948 six months after the creation of Israel, and when the Israeli army was dealing with cross-border attacks from Lebanon, it asked two mostly Christian Arab villagers to leave their towns temporarily promising them that they could return a few weeks later when the danger was dealt with.

The Palestinian Christians of Kirit and Biram listened to the new rulers and agreed to temporarily leave their villages only to be denied return ever since, despite being legitimate citizens of the state of Israel. Not only that but when an Israeli high court ruled in favour of their return, the Israeli Airforce shelled the entire villages to prevent any return.

The story of Palestinian Christians from these two villages is detailed in Blood Brothers, a book by a Melkite priest Father Elias Chacour. In 1994 the Washington Post ran a long article on the case, entitled: When two weeks turn into 45 years. Today, those two weeks are more like 75 years and there is no sign of the Palestinian Christian citizens of Israel ever returning.

Anti-Christian racism today

More recently though, and especially since the far-right wing Israeli government took power in October 2022, fundamentalist Israelis have taken it upon themselves to bully Palestinian Christians, damage their churches and cemeteries, and regularly assault and defame religious leaders and holy sites.

Nir Hasson, the Jerusalem reporter for Haaretz, happened to be on the scene when a particularly egregious incident took place on 5 October, just two days before the attacks on Gaza were launched. The incident which he filmed and published, showed a group of Christian pilgrims who were carrying a large wooden cross in the Old City of Jerusalem, being spat at repeatedly by adult Haredi Jewish men and boys. The video went viral, sparking outrage around the world.

The creator of the newly established Religious Freedom Data Center, Yisca Harani, explained that the attacks are not one-off incidents.

We aren’t truly free until Palestine is free

Following 7 October, however, no one was spared from Israel's vicious revenge. A Christian-run hospital and church were shelled, with many Palestinians killed and injured. This led Palestinian Church leaders to issue a series of calls for a ceasefire.

An alarm was subsequently raised by the UN, humanitarian agencies, and human rights organisations that all issued multiple statements saying war crimes by Hamas can never justify war crimes by Israel.  The law of war stipulates that civilians must be spared; bombing must not take place if it is not against a legitimate military objective.

The Hamas attacks which also included soldiers and civilian being taken hostage, produced one of the vilest Israeli responses from Israeli officials who publicly made genocidal and dehumanising statements. Early in this war an Israeli army spokesman said that their actions against Palestinians in Gaza are based on the “emphasis of damage not accuracy". This came when Israel’s defence minister started on 9 October 9 (and implemented) the war crime of preventing water, electricity food, fuel, and medical supplies from 2.2 million Palestinians trapped in a small part of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The harsh assault on Palestinians described by many, including resigning UN officials, as raising the level of genocide, has happened due to the green-light Israel has been given by US President Joe Biden, to commit its onslaught on the people of Gaza. The attacks have not come out of thin air, they were the consequence of Israel's continuous efforts to dehumanise Palestinians as a way of justifying their attacks.

The use of the term "human animals" by Israeli Minister of Defence Yoav Gallant to describe the Palestinians, is a shining example. Israel's army chief, Herzl Halevi, also declared, “They are human animals, and we will treat them accordingly.” This designation is not limited to Hamas and its fighters but covers all the people of Gaza, who are being collectively punished for 7 October.

Jerusalem and the war on Gaza

In addition to the situation in Gaza, Palestinians have also been suffering in Jerusalem the rest of the West Bank and Israel. Workers, students, and even medical personnel have been fired for having videos on their phones that reflect the tragedy in Gaza. As the Israeli army has changed the rules of engagement Jewish settlers are allowed to rampage through Palestinian villages and towns.

While the world was focused on the situation in Gaza, extremist Jewish settlers were busy carrying out violent pogroms in the West Bank. Palestinian farmers living near illegal Jewish settlements woke up to discover that they were denied access to the harvest they had been waiting for all year. Settlers also cut down olive trees and cases of settlers stealing Palestinian oil harvest at gunpoint have been reported but Israeli police have done nothing to follow up on the complaints.

Once again, the bulk of such attacks were focused on the old city of Jerusalem with a clear intent of turning the largely Palestinian Muslim and Christian residents into a Jewish Israeli one.

The latest victim of the settler lust for Palestinian land has been the Armenian Quarter which is adjacent to the Jewish Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter. Building on a controversial land deal to which the Armenian patriarch has legally rescinded, Jewish hooligans have been trying to seize land belonging to the Armenian Church for centuries.

The controversial investor who goes by the name of Danny Rubenstein or Danny Rothman says he has a deal to build a fancy hotel on what amounts to one-fourth of the Armenian quarter. In mid-October, while the world was focused on Gaza, he brought bulldozers, a private security firm with dogs and Jewish settlers in a show of force to intimidate the Armenian community and to begin digging up the church property.

One of those attempting to take over the land by bullying protesting Armenians (including Armenian religious leaders), is a criminally indicted Jewish settler, Saadia Hershkop, who is an aid to the racist Israeli minister of the Interior, Itamar Ben Gvir.

For the time being, the communal unity against the land deal, which has been publicly supported by the head of the Churches in Jerusalem, appears to have fended off efforts to take over the Church property.

Attacking Christians unifies Palestinians and Arabs

Palestinians, including Gazans, are not Hamas, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when the two met in Cairo. Certainly, Christian Palestinians have nothing to do with the fundamentalist Islamic Hamas movement. So why are hospitals, churches, mosques, bakeries, and homes being targeted continuously without a whisper from the so-called free world?

Ironically by targeting all Palestinians including the small Christian Palestinian community in Gaza, the Israelis have cemented national unity in Palestine and beyond, including in nearby Jordan. Protests and vigils by Arab Christians in opposition to the Israeli onslaught and in support of the Palestinian resistance has brought out hundreds of Jordanian Christians for the first time.

A Palestinian Catholic mother published an appeal to Biden as a Catholic, to base his policies on his moral beliefs: “We are not children of a lesser God, Mr. President, we are the Palestinian Christians of the holy land where the message of love peace, and justice started, and we call upon you to stop this Genocide.”

Palestinian Christians sent an open letter to Western church leaders and theologians, a “call for repentance” that has garnered thousands of signatures and is being circulated to the world.

The letter vowed that Palestinian Christians will “continue to be steadfast in our hope, resilient in our witness, and continue to be committed to the Gospel of faith, hope, and love, in the face of tyranny and darkness.” It was also stated that the call for a ceasefire “came from the simple fact that we are pro-life. We cannot stand still while people are dying from hunger, thirst, lack of medical access, lack of access to fuel to generate electricity, and victims of indiscriminate shelling causing widespread deaths and injuries as well as destruction of homes, schools, bakeries, and media outlets.”

The Palestinian Christian appeal, which has so far gained over 17,000 signatures, concludes with a quote from the 2009 Kairos Palestine document: “In the absence of all hope, we cry out our cry of hope. We believe in God, good and just. We believe that God’s goodness will finally triumph over the evil of hate and death that persist in our land. We will see here a new land’ and a new human being,’ capable of rising in the spirit to love each one of his or her brothers and sisters.”

Plestia Alaqad. Anne Frank

I know a lot of high-ranking media, such as New York Times, Guardian, Anadolu, BILD, Spiegel, Financial Times, Strait Times, Washington Post etc subscribed my substack. Plestia ‘Bosbos’ Alaqad ready to be your Stringer inside Gaza under bombing by Israel. Plestiaa2011@gmail.com

Toddler with Plestia, before war, living in Northern Gaza and they evacuated to Southern Gaza. Since Friday, Oct 13, when Israel announced to every Gazans from northern move to southern, more than 5,000 killed in southern, not counting barbaric bombing in northern Gaza. Northern Gaza is being depopulated, while even residents in the south are ordered to evacuate as the israelis implement their ethnic cleansing. Refugee literally fulfilled Israel warning, and still killed with barbaric bombing by Israel. Documentation by Plestia Alaqad

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