The UN exploits Palestinian children to further the two-state propaganda
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 23, 2019
There is one thing the UN and its personnel would do well to keep in mind when pontificating about the purported peace process and to promote Israel’s security narrative: Palestinian children are not props for exploitation. At a time when the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees is facing a severe crisis due to funding shortages, as well as the misdemeanour allegations concerning its staff, the last thing the UN should be doing is exploiting Palestinian children for the sake of upholding the obsolete two-state compromise.
Earlier this month, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov posted a photo on Twitter, of himself and UN Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo, together with a group of female refugee students attending one of UNRWA’s schools. “I hope these young girls grow up to participate in democratic elections where Palestine, Israel live side-by-side in peace and security,” he tweeted.
Just because the colonial narrative makes Israel, peace and security synonymous doesn’t mean there are no inherent contradictions in the rhetoric. The UN, a collaborator since before the inception of Israel, is, of course, aware of the discrepancies, but it prefers to enforce historical cycles of dispossession upon Palestinians, including students, framing them as a warped peace process in which Israel’s existence is paramount, even at the expense of Palestinian lives.
Mladenov’s wish for Palestinian children is not that they exercise their right to live freely in all of historic Palestine. On the contrary, he is demanding perpetual subjugation and oblivion of the Palestinian right of return, and what better way to attempt indoctrination than with the younger generations, according to the UN’s delusional standards?
But Palestinians have remembrance, and that remembrance is political. Has Mladenov deigned to listen to the Palestinian children’s refugee narratives? Are Mladenov and the UN expecting future Palestinian generations to exploit themselves for Israel’s colonial plans? How do UN officials reconcile democracy with the colonialism inherent in the two-state paradigm, which is the purported solution envisaged for Palestinians by the international community?
Taking the latter one step further, since the UN knows that the two-state hypothesis is obsolete, it stands to reason that these Palestinian children, along with many others, will be witness to further colonial appropriation by Israel. Mladenov’s legacy to this group of students will be nothing other than a promotional photo taken for UN propaganda purposes, while in the background; Palestinian families are permanently ruptured and dispossessed by Israel.
UN antics are not impressive; they are endangering the lives of Palestinians and attempting to tarnish students with acquiescence. Parroting about democratic elections while envisaging perpetual colonialism is vile, all the more when involving students in UN propaganda. So, stop the rhetoric of hope, which is an illusion when there is factual support for the elimination of Palestinian rights. Mladenov never intended Palestinian students’ voices to reach the international arena. The promotion photo speaks volumes about how the UN coerces Palestinians into silence. When the focus is Palestinian children facing perpetual refugee status, it is clear the UN could not sink any lower.
Nigel Farage Exposes Extinction Rebellion’s Plan to Topple Representative Democracy
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | November 2, 2019
According to Extinction Rebellion’s Sarah Lunnon, representative democracy, at least on climate policy and economic management, should be subordinated to citizens assemblies composed of people who are already running citizens assemblies, and people nominated by organisations invited to participate. […]
Citizens assemblies would advise on the “grim” task of imposing wartime levels of rationing, and would decide what economic activity would be allowed to continue, to fulfil their paramount goal of drastically cutting Britain’s carbon footprint to address the climate crisis by 2025.
Sarah compares citizens assemblies to court jurors, who once decided on whether people could live or die, before Britain abolished the death penalty.
Extinction Rebellion’s intention is that “advice” provided by the assemblies would be very difficult for elected politicians to refuse.
Breaking news: the British Conservative Government has just agreed Extinction Rebellion’s demand to form a climate change citizen’s assembly. 30,000 invitations will be sent at random, then 110 of the respondents will be chosen to sit on the assembly. The budget allocated for the assembly is £520,000. £120,000 will be provided by the government, the rest will provided by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the European Climate Foundation.
Soldiers Force Palestinians Out Of Their Olive Orchards In Nablus
IMEMC | November 2, 2019
Israeli soldiers invaded Palestinian olive orchards between Burin and Huwwara towns, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, and forced the Palestinians out on Saturday, in addition to threatening them with “bringing the settlers to attack them.”
Eyewitnesses said the soldiers invaded the orchards near the illegal Yitzhar colony, which was built on private Palestinian lands, and attacked the families.
The soldiers even told the families that if they do not leave, they will bring the colonists from Yitzhar, known for constantly attacking the Palestinians and their lands, to assault them.
Olive harvest season in the occupied West Bank is always accompanied by dozens of Israeli violations by both the soldiers and the illegal colonists.
There have been numerous violations this olive harvest season alone, including twelve just recently in Qaryout village, south of Nablus.
The attacks include assaulting Palestinians, uprooting their trees, burning their lands and orchards, in addition to the military’s refusal in many cases to allow the Palestinians into their lands, isolated behind the illegal Annexation Wall.
It is worth mentioning that the Palestinians in Nablus governorate are not allowed to enter more than 3,500 Dunams of their olive orchards, except for a few days a year, after prior coordination and approval from the military.
Even when they receive the permits, the Palestinians and are forced to wait until the soldiers open the gate for them, and sometimes the soldiers do not open it at all or force them to wait for long periods.
On Friday morning, several colonists invaded a Palestinian orchard in Yasuf village, east of the central West Bank city of Salfit, and stole a donkey, blankets and olive picking tools.
Such attacks against Palestinian lands, especially olive orchards, including those carried out by soldiers, take place in various areas across the West Bank, always escalate during the olive harvest season, and include cutting, burning and uprooting trees, picking olive trees and stealing the produce, in addition to assaulting the Palestinians and forcing them out of their orchards.
Police Defend Use of Taser, Chokehold & Excessive Force Against Man Who Complied During Arrest
The Rutherford Institute | November 1, 2019
MUSKOGEE, Okla. — Oklahoma police have asked a federal court to support their claim that citizens who comply with police during an arrest do not have a clearly established right to be free from police brutality. The police’s justification of the use of excessive force, even in the absence of provocation, were made in a motion by City of Muskogee police seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute on behalf of Jeriel Edwards, an African-American man who, despite complying police orders during an arrest, was subjected to excessive force and brutality, including being thrown to the ground, tasered, and placed in a chokehold that rendered him unconscious and required his hospitalization for three days. The police officers’ motion seeks immunity from The Rutherford Institute’s Fourth Amendment lawsuit. In light of the fact that the beating Edwards was subjected to by police was clearly unreasonable and excessive, Institute attorneys have urged the court to reject the government’s justifications and claim of immunity.
Affiliate attorney Andrea Worden is assisting in the defense of Edwards’ Fourth Amendment rights.
“If you ask police what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “The problem is what to do when compliance is not enough. How can you maintain the illusion of freedom when daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or merely exist?”
On October 25, 2016, Jeriel Edwards was sitting in his car in the parking lot of a Muskogee Wendy’s restaurant when he was approached by a City of Muskogee police officer who ordered Edwards to put the car in park and provide his identification. Body and dashboard camera video of the encounter shows that the officer made the request even though he already knew Edwards’ identity. The officer then ordered Edwards to get out of the vehicle and remove his hands from his pockets. Edwards complied with all the officer’s orders. At this time, a second Muskogee police officer arrived at the scene. As Edwards exited the vehicle, he was ordered to face the vehicle and place his hands behind his back. At this point one of the officers grabbed Edwards’ right arm while the other officer shoved him into the corner of the car door, followed by the officers aggressively grabbing Edwards’ upper body and pushing his head into the corner of the car door as they attempted to place his hands behind his back. One officer then told Edwards to get to the ground, but before he could do so, the officers slammed him to the pavement. As the officers pushed Edwards’ head and neck to the ground, they also placed a knee on his body to pin him to the ground. Edwards repeatedly asked why the officers were abusing him, but got no answer. Instead, the first officer fired a taser at Edwards as he lay on the ground. A third officer arrived on the scene and made two striking motions at Edwards, the impact of which can be heard on the body camera video. A fourth officer arrived at the scene and put Edwards in a chokehold. As the four officers dragged Edwards to the ground, another joined the fray and held Edwards down by digging his knee into his body. Edwards lost consciousness en route to the hospital, where he was admitted to the ICU.
Documents:
‘Defend International Law’ Petition Demands Norway Impose Sanctions on Israel
Sputnik – November 1, 2019
Dozens of Norway’s leading lawyers believe that Israel violates international law and doesn’t deserve the preferential treatment it currently enjoys.
A group of 44 lawyers, including award-winning luminaries and distinguished professionals such as professor Jan Fridthjof Bernt, have called on Norway to impose sanctions on Israel for its violations of international law.
The petition called “Defend international law” was published by the newspaper Dagsavisen.
Israel has annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and has announced the annexation of the Jordan Valley – without having any major consequences, the petition stressed.
Between March 2018 and September 2019 alone, the lawyers emphasised, 309 Palestinians who have participated in protest marches along the Gaza Strip border were killed. In the past year alone, 56 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces, again without any repercussions, including from Norway. The number of Palestinians who have died at the hands of the state is comparable to the number of murders in the country: 103 people were victims of homicide in 2018, compared with 136 in 2017, according to the local media. For comparison’s sake, police in the US, which is better known for police killings, fatally shot approximately one person for every 19 murder victims in 2017.
“Norwegian authorities and politicians must restore respect for international law and work to ensure that Israel’s long-standing and systematic breaches of international driving rules are met with sanctions”, the petition said.
The authors of the petition stressed that the absence of an international reaction to Israel’s violation of international law, human rights and humanitarian law raises concerns.
“While Israel’s serious and persistent violations are only verbally criticised, other countries that violate international law are exposed to reactions from the international community through concrete actions and sanctions”, the petition said.
On the contrary, Israel is the only country in the world to have been granted a special status in the Norwegian government’s Granavolden platform that allows Oslo to “facilitate enhanced research and development cooperation, trade, tourism and cultural exchange with Israel”.
“This attitude taken by the Norwegian authorities against serious violations of basic humanitarian and international law principles helps legitimise Israel’s policy based on the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land, and the collective punishment of Palestinians on the Gaza Strip,” the petition said.
According to lawyer Kjell Brygfjeld, one of the signatories, the are plenty of sanctions Norway could impose on Israel.
“We are already involved in sanctions against Russia, Venezuela, Iran and a number of other countries. All countries should be treated in the same way and with the same severity for violations of international law. We must not make a difference between those we like and those we do not like,” Brygfjeld told the newspaper Klassekampen.
According to him, the Norwegian government has chosen an opposite strategy, where efforts to boost relations are made despite the fact that some Norwegian residents have been denied entry to Israel.
Earlier this week, Oslo’s newly installed “red-green” City Council led by three left-of-the-centre parties, the Socialist Left, Labour and the Greens, announced it was contemplating a ban on the municipality’s procurement of goods and services from Israeli settlements, which it called “an area occupied in violation of international law”.
However, State Secretary Audun Halvorsen of the Conservative Party said he doesn’t believe sanctions are the way to go. He also stressed that Norway expressed concern over Israeli authorities’ excessive use of force and human rights violations, “when there are grounds for doing so”.
Norway was one of the first nations to recognise Israel in 1949. The stance toward Israel is one of the issues that signals the left-right divide between Norwegian parties. While left-wing parties generally favour Palestine, to the point of being ready to boycott goods and services from what they view as territories occupied by Israel. Right-of-the-centre parties by contrast tend to be more supportive of Israel, with Progress Party leader Siv Jensen being a staunch supporter of Israel.
Israel re-arrests prominent Palestinian legislator Khalida Jarrar
Press TV – October 31, 2019
Israeli forces have re-arrested a prominent Palestinian legislator and senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in an overnight raid into her home.
Khalida Jarrar, a 56-year-old member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, was arrested at 3 am local time (00:00 GMT) at her home in the central occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, located 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem al-Quds, and taken to an unknown area, local media reported on Thursday.
Her daughter Yara Jarrar said in a post on Twitter that the house was surrounded by more than 70 Israeli soldiers who arrived in 12 military vehicles.
“Mom and sister were asleep when they approached,” Yara said.
The Palestinian lawmaker has been jailed multiple times. She was released last February after spending 20 months in “administrative detention” — an illegal practice under which an individual is held without a trail.
Jarrar, a staunch advocate of Palestinian prisoners’ rights, said after her release that she would continue to campaign for the release of all Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons and detention centers.
According to Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner solidarity network, she played a leading role in supporting the education of the minor girls held there, organizing classes on human rights and in review for mandatory high school examinations when the prison authority denied the girls a teacher.
Jarrar was last arrested in July 2017, when a large number of Israeli troopers raided her home. Her husband, Ghassan, said Israeli forces also seized her computers during the raid.
Israel’s internal spy agency, Shin Bet, later announced in a statement that Jarrar was arrested along with a Palestinian activist for “promoting terror activities,” without providing any further information.
Jarrar is one of the most outspoken critics of the Israeli occupation and has repeatedly slammed the Tel Aviv regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.
The Israeli regime has been denying the lawmaker the right to travel outside the occupied Palestinian territories since 1988. She campaigned for months in 2010 before receiving the permission to travel to Jordan for medical treatment.
In August 2014, Jarrar received a “special supervision order” from the Israeli military, which ordered her to leave Ramallah to live in the West Bank city of Ariha, also known as Jericho.
However, Jarrar set up a protest tent outside the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah, where she lived and worked, until the controversial order was overturned later in September that year.
According to reports, a total of 13 Palestinian lawmakers are currently held in Israeli detention facilities without any trial under the so-called administrative detention, which is a policy according to which Palestinian inmates are kept in Israeli detention facilities without trial or charge.
Some Palestinian prisoners have been held in administrative detention for up to 11 years.
Israel currently holds 495 Palestinian prisoners in administrative detention, according to ADDAMEER Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, an NGO that works to support Palestinian political prisoners.
Israel sniper who killed Palestinian child given month’s community service
14-year-old Othman Hilles was shot dead by an Israeli soldier during the Great March of Return on 13 July 2018
MEMO | October 30, 2019
An Israeli soldier was sentenced on Monday to a month’s labour for killing a Palestinian child during a Great Return March protest in the occupied Gaza Strip.
According to a report in the Times of Israel, the soldier – whose name has been banned from publication – was convicted by a military court in relation to the death of 14-year-old Othman Hilles, who was shot during a demonstration on 13 July 2018.
It is the first conviction in connection to the huge number of casualties among Great Return March demonstrators, with Israeli forces shooting more than 7,000 with live fire since March 2018.
Despite Hilles being shot while unarmed and posing no threat to Israeli soldiers, the soldier was only convicted of “disobeying an order leading to a threat to life or health”, as opposed to manslaughter. The military court sentenced the soldier to one month’s labour, as well as a demotion.
The shooting of Hilles was captured on film, likely a factor in the soldier being brought to trial at all.
According to the Times of Israel, the soldier – a sniper from the Givati Brigade – was not convicted of a more serious offense like manslaughter “as military prosecutors were unable to collect sufficient evidence connecting his gunshot to [the boy’s death]”.
The Israeli military spokesperson confirmed the conviction in a statement, saying that the soldier “fired at a Palestinian rioter who climbed the border fence… without obtaining permission from his commanders while not following the rules of engagement or the instructions given to him earlier”.
Rights groups slam Bahrain for torturing 9 female activists in detention
Press TV – October 30, 2019
Rights groups have slammed the Bahraini regime over the detention and mistreatment of nine female activists, saying that the United States and Britain are complicit in Manama’s human rights abuses.
The report, prepared by the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) and Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) last month, was presented during a congressional panel event in Washington, DC, on Tuesday.
The 138-page report examines the cases of nine female political prisoners all arrested, interrogated, and convicted between February 2017 and January 2019.
Speaking during the panel, ADHRB Legal Officer Bridget Quitter said the women had been targeted as part of Bahrain’s “systematic” crackdown on free speech.
“The ill-treatment and torture, coercive interrogation tactics, unfair trial, substandard conditions of detention are not merely coincidental, but part of a systematic repression of the Bahraini population,” she said. “These women were targeted for their opinions or those of their relatives.”
The study revealed that the women had been arrested without search warrants, some of which took place during “highly militarized police raids.” The women faced physical, psychological and sexual abuse during their interrogation, according to the report.
Of the nine women, three are still held in prison in dire conditions, such as being denied access to medical care. The other six have been released after serving their prison terms.
Speaking on Tuesday, Quitter explained that the female activists had been convicted based on forced confessions, and even threatened with rape and death if they refused to comply.
“They were subjected to rights violations from the moment of their arrest, through their interrogation and torture, unfair trials and detention in conditions which fail to meet international standards,” Quitter said.
The report also highlighted how Manama had been using “broad interpretations of counter-terror laws” to facilitate the conviction of the female activists, going as far as revoking citizenship in a number of cases.
“Bahrain has created a system which whitewashes and conceals human rights abuses,” Quitter said.
The Al Khalifah regime has been mounting a heavy-handed security crackdown since a popular uprising began in the country in mid-February 2011.
The protest campaign is demanding that a just system representing all Bahrainis replace the Al Khalifah ruling dynasty.
Enjoying extensive assistance from the Saudi kingdom and the backing of London and Washington, however, the Manama regime has sought to crush any perceived threat to its authoritarian rule.
The report, which was presented on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, also revealed that UK-funded and trained “oversight bodies” have “consistently whitewashed” Bahrain’s human rights abuses. London actively ignores that “taxpayer money” is being used to support such initiatives, it added.
The report also said that the US government provides “funding, training, and assistance to Bahraini government bodies implicated in human rights abuses.”
The rights groups have called on Bahrain to release the three remaining female prisoners and urged the US and UK to cooperate in improving human rights conditions in the country.
Airbnb complicit in ‘plunder of Palestinian refugee properties’ says new report
MEMO | October 29, 2019
Online accommodation and tourism giant Airbnb has been accused of “complicity in the plunder of Palestinian refugee properties”, in a new report published last week.
According to Who Profits, an independent research centre focused on exposing corporate involvement in the “ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian lands”, their new update sheds light on a “largely overlooked” dimension of Airbnb’s “complicity”.
Taking the Old City of Yafa (Jaffa) as a case study, the new report “aims to highlight the ways in which Israel confiscated and controlled Palestinian properties, leading to their privatisation”.
“Israel has transformed properties into economic assets that benefit both the state and private actors, thus undermining Palestinians’ legally enshrined Right of Return,” stated the research centre.
“Serving as a platform for showcasing the homes that once belonged to Palestinians, Airbnb plays a role in strengthening the Israeli hold over Palestinian refugee properties,” Who Profits added.
During the Nakba of 1948, more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and lands – property that was subsequently appropriated by the Israeli state “through legal mechanisms that formalise their confiscation and turn them into economic assets”, Who Profits explained.
According to the centre, this “privatisation” of refugee properties has benefitted market actors and Jewish Israelis, “whilst further threatening the possibility of Palestinians reclaiming ownership of their properties in the future”.
In the case of Jaffa, what was once the largest Palestinian city was almost entirely ethnically cleansed during the Nakba (five per cent of its Palestinian residents remained post-1948). Today, the Old City is one of the most popular sites in Israel for tourists, where Airbnb lists more than 40 properties.
In its new report, Who Profit notes that “while the issue of listing settlement properties [in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem] has gained worldwide attention, the issue of listing refugee properties ‘abandoned’ in 1948 remains largely overlooked.”
“The act of plundering and privatizing refugee properties by the Israeli state, which started during the Nakba and continues to this day, has transformed the refugee properties in Yafa into commodities that can now be listed by hosts on platforms such as Airbnb,” the report concluded.
“In serving as a platform for these properties, as well as those in settlements in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, Airbnb is profiting from the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.”
READ ALSO:
Microsoft funds Israel firm that spies on West Bank Palestinians – Report
MEMO | October 29, 2019
Microsoft has invested in an Israeli startup that uses facial recognition to spy on Palestinians throughout the occupied West Bank, “in spite of the tech giant’s public pledge to avoid using the technology if it encroaches on democratic freedoms”, NBC News has reported.
AnyVision, headquartered in Israel but with offices in the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore, sells an “advanced tactical surveillance” software system, Better Tomorrow.
“It lets customers identify individuals and objects in any live camera feed, such as a security camera or a smartphone, and then track targets as they move between different feeds,” said the report.
NBC News’ investigative report concluded that “AnyVision’s technology powers a secret military surveillance project throughout the West Bank” – a project “so successful that AnyVision won the country’s [Israel’s] top defence prize in 2018”.
As noted by NBC News, “Palestinians living in the West Bank do not have Israeli citizenship or voting rights but are subject to movement restrictions and surveillance by the Israeli government.”
Israeli forces have “installed thousands of cameras and other monitoring devices across the West Bank”, while authorities “also scan social media posts and use algorithms in an effort to predict the likelihood that someone will carry out a lone-wolf attack and arrest them before they do.”
“The addition of facial recognition technology transforms passive camera surveillance combined with the list of suspects into a much more powerful tool,” the report stated.
When NBC News first approached AnyVision for an interview, CEO Eylon Etshtein denied any knowledge of the West Bank project, threatened to sue, disputed that the West Bank was occupied, and suggested the reporter “must have been funded by a Palestinian activist group”.
AnyVision then later “apologised for the outburst and revised its position”, claiming that “as a private company we are not in a position to speak on behalf of any country, company or institution”.
NBC News also confirmed how AnyVision’s technology has also been used by Israeli police to track suspects through the Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
AnyVision launched in 2015 and enjoys “close ties to Israel’s military and intelligence services”, NBC News stated, with former head of Mossad Tamir Pardo among its board of advisers.
Microsoft told NBC News that the company “takes these mass surveillance allegations seriously because they would violate our facial recognition principles.”
“If we discover any violation of our principles, we will end our relationship,” a spokesperson said.
Earlier this month Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah discovered a surveillance device planted in concrete at a village cemetery. According to Ma’an News Agency, the monitoring tool was manufactured by AnyVision.
READ ALSO:
Israel has been caught spying on the US, again
Israel tech ‘facilitating press freedom abuses around the world’
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinian Christians that nobody is talking about
Side view of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which is opened to worship after the restoration in Jerusalem on 24 March 2017
MEMO | October 29, 2019
Palestine’s Christian population is dwindling at an alarming rate. The world’s most ancient Christian community is moving elsewhere. And the reason for this is Israel.
Christian leaders from Palestine and South Africa sounded the alarm at a conference in Johannesburg on October 15. Their gathering was titled: “The Holy Land: A Palestinian Christian Perspective”.
One major issue that highlighted itself at the meetings is the rapidly declining number of Palestinian Christians in Palestine.
There are various estimates on how many Palestinian Christians are still living in Palestine today, compared with the period before 1948 when the state of Israel was established atop Palestinian towns and villages. Regardless of the source of the various studies, there is a near consensus that the number of Christian inhabitants of Palestine has dropped by nearly ten-fold in the last 70 years.
A population census carried out by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in 2017 concluded that 47,000 Palestinian Christians are living in Palestine – with reference to the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Ninety-eight per cent of Palestine’s Christians live in the West Bank – concentrated mostly in the cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Jerusalem – while the remainder, a tiny Christian community of merely 1,100 people, lives in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The demographic crisis that had afflicted the Christian community decades ago is now brewing.
For example, 70 years ago, Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, was 86 per cent Christian. The demographics of the city, however, have fundamentally shifted, especially after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank in June 1967, and the construction of the illegal Israeli apartheid wall, starting in 2002. Parts of the wall were meant to cut off Bethlehem from Jerusalem and to isolate the former from the rest of the West Bank.
“The Wall encircles Bethlehem by continuing south of East Jerusalem in both the east and west,” the ‘Open Bethlehem’ organisation said, describing the devastating impact of the wall on the Palestinian city. “With the land isolated by the Wall, annexed for settlements, and closed under various pretexts, only 13% of the Bethlehem district is available for Palestinian use.”
Increasingly beleaguered, Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem have been driven out from their historic city in large numbers. According to the city’s mayor, Vera Baboun, as of 2016, the Christian population of Bethlehem has dropped to 12 per cent, merely 11,000 people.
The most optimistic estimates place the overall number of Palestinian Christians in the whole of Occupied Palestine at less than two per cent.
The correlation between the shrinking Christian population in Palestine, and the Israeli occupation and apartheid should be unmistakable, as it is evident to Palestine’s Christian and Muslim community alike.
A study conducted by Dar al-Kalima University in the West Bank town of Beit Jala and published in December 2017, interviewed nearly 1,000 Palestinians, half of them Christian and the other half Muslim. One of the main goals of the research was to understand the reason behind the depleting Christian population in Palestine.
The study concluded that “the pressure of Israeli occupation, ongoing constraints, discriminatory policies, arbitrary arrests, confiscation of lands added to the general sense of hopelessness among Palestinian Christians,” who are finding themselves in “a despairing situation where they can no longer perceive a future for their offspring or for themselves”.
Unfounded claims that Palestinian Christians are leaving because of religious tensions between them and their Muslim brethren are, therefore, irrelevant.
Gaza is another case in point. Only 2 per cent of Palestine’s Christians live in the impoverished and besieged Gaza Strip. When Israel occupied Gaza along with the rest of historic Palestine in 1967, an estimated 2,300 Christians lived in the Strip. However, merely 1,100 Christians still live in Gaza today. Years of occupation, horrific wars and an unforgiving siege can do that to a community, whose historical roots date back to two millennia.
Like Gaza’s Muslims, these Christians are cut off from the rest of the world, including the holy sites in the West Bank. Every year, Gaza’s Christians apply for permits from the Israeli military to join Easter services in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Last April, only 200 Christians were granted permits, but on the condition that they must be 55 years of age or older and that they are not allowed to visit Jerusalem.
The Israeli rights group, Gisha, described the Israeli army decision as “a further violation of Palestinians’ fundamental rights to freedom of movement, religious freedom and family life”, and, rightly, accused Israel of attempting to “deepen the separation” between Gaza and the West Bank.
Israel aims at doing more than that. Separating Palestinian Christians from one another, and from their holy sites (as is the case for Muslims, as well), the Israeli government hopes to weaken the socio-cultural and spiritual connections that give Palestinians their collective identity.
Israel’s strategy is predicated on the idea that a combination of factors – immense economic hardships, permanent siege and apartheid, the severing of communal and spiritual bonds – will eventually drive all Christians out of their Palestinian homeland.
Read: Morocco insists that Palestine is one of its core principles
Israel is keen to present the ‘conflict’ in Palestine as a religious one so that it could, in turn, brand itself as a beleaguered Jewish state amid a massive Muslim population in the Middle East. The continued existence of Palestinian Christians does not factor nicely into this Israeli agenda.
Sadly, however, Israel has succeeded in misrepresenting the struggle in Palestine – from that of political and human rights struggle against settler colonialism – into a religious one. Equally disturbing, Israel’s most ardent supporters in the United States and elsewhere are devout Christians.
It must be understood that Palestinian Christians are neither aliens nor bystanders in Palestine. They have been victimised equally as their Muslim brethren. They have also played a significant role in defining the modern Palestinian identity, through their resistance, spirituality, deep connection to the land, artistic contributions and burgeoning scholarship.
Israel must not be allowed to ostracise the world’s most ancient Christian community from their ancestral land so that it may score a few points in its fierce drive for racial supremacy.
Equally important, our understanding of the legendary Palestinian ‘soumoud’ – steadfastness – and solidarity cannot be complete without fully appreciating the centrality of Palestinian Christians to the modern Palestinian narrative and identity.
Featured Video
Did the 9/11 Hijackers Really Fly the Planes?
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
Book Excerpt
Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Hezbollah fighters confront intruding Israeli forces in southern Lebanon
- The Straight of Hormuz is Open for Iranian Business… Oil is Moving and Iran is Getting Paid
- Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
- Lebanon Accuses Israel Of Violating The Chemical Weapons Convention By Spraying Toxic Herbicide Over Farmland
- Did the 9/11 Hijackers Really Fly the Planes?
- ‘Jewish lobby’ deceived Putin – Lukashenko
- The UK Joins the Pirates
- Israeli government plans to fund extremist occupier group in occupied West Bank with $1.89M: Report
- Press TV reporter wounded in Israeli drone strike on southern Lebanon
- Time for Trump to Tell Benjamin Netanyahu to Go Away!
- If Americans Knew
- Jared Kushner’s Israel-linked island, and other dubious projects
- Why Are Crypto Billionaires and AIPAC Spending $8+ Million to Elect Adrian Boafo?
- Why the Mainstream Media Should Stop Using the ADL as Their Go-To Antisemitism Source
- Censorship and Thuggery Won’t Save Israel’s Reputation
- Israel Searches for a Red Sea Foothold in Somaliland
- They Weren’t Convicted of Terrorism, But These Palestine Activists Got Sentenced as Terrorists Anyway
- “Ceasefire” is not in Israel’s vocabulary – Daily Update
- Did Trump just threaten a nuclear attack on Iran? Another merger for Israel-Firster David Ellison –Daily Update
- Israeli Firm Accused of Launching Smear Campaigns During US, European Elections
- As World Cup kicks off, Gaza amputee girls chase football dreams
- No Tricks Zone
- Beyond The Pitch: Why FIFA’s World Cup Is One Of Humanity’s Best Investments
- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
Aletho News 