The "Pals." No Pals of Christians

Here's news of faith-based concern from the Pal. Authority that won't make it I'm afraid into your local headlines:

Muslims Continue Pushing Christians Out of Bethlehem

International human rights lawyer Justus Reid Weiner, who teaches at Hebrew University, told the Jerusalem Institute for Global Jewish Affairs that, under the PA-Fatah regime, Christian Arabs have been victims of frequent human rights abuses by Muslims.


The highlights:-

The Muslim Fatah-controlled authority in Judea and Samaria is encouraging a "sharp demographic shift" in Bethlehem, where the Christian population went from a 60 percent majority in 1990 to a 40 percent minority in 2000, to about 15 percent of the city's total population today.

It is estimated that, for the past seven years, more than one thousand Christians have been emigrating from the Bethlehem area annually and that only 10,000 to 13,000 Christians remain in the city.

There have been acts of intimidation, beatings, land theft, firebombing of churches and other Christian institutions, denial of employment, economic boycotts, torture, kidnapping, forced marriage, sexual harassment, and extortion and some Muslims who have converted to Christianity have been murdered.

In 2006, Hassan El-Masalmeh, a member of the Bethlehem City Council and local Hamas leader, publicly advocated implementing a discriminatory tax on non-Muslim residents. In late 2007 an evangelical pastor was forced to leave Ramallah under threats from Fatah gunmen, and soon after, his congregation dispersed.

Incidents of Muslim men ‘seducing' or kidnapping Christian girls have caused growing anxiety among the Christian population.

The PA was involved in the torture of two Muslim brothers from Samaria who adopted the Christian faith.

A Christian convert, El-Achwal, was initially arrested on fabricated charges of stealing gold. He was kept in a tiny cell and regularly left without food or water for days on end. The torture he sustained during the interrogation required lengthy hospitalization.

Despite all of this, Weiner says, American Episcopalians and Presbyterians frequently blame Israel for the Middle East conflict. Leaders of other North American churches including the Methodists, the United Church of Christ, and the Lutherans "have also gone to great lengths to offer up one-sided condemnations of Israeli policies."