**This is an absolute stunner!**
Reuters blames the Christian flight from the Middle East on the Jews!
Palestinian Islamic militants rampage through Taybeh an all-Christian village of 1,500 people back in 2005. (Moriel Ministries)
In an outrageous piece of Anti-semitic journalism, Reuters blames “Israeli occupation” for the Christian flight from the West Bank:
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) – Despairing of life under Israeli occupation, many Palestinian Christians are moving abroad, threatening their ancient links to Bethlehem and the land where Jesus was born.
“There is a real fear that 50 years down the road, the Holy Land will be without Christians,” said Mitri Raheb, 45-year-old pastor of the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem.
Pressures on majority Muslims are just as daunting — and many of them also leave — but dwindling Christian communities look more precarious as the young and dynamic pull up roots.
Christians have migrated from Bethlehem and nearby Beit Jala and Beit Sahour for over a century, mainly to Latin America, the United States and Canada, to escape successive wars and crises.
Radical Islamists leave the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem after being holed up there for more than 5 weeks in 2002. (CBC)Bethlehem governor Salah al-Tamari said there was no way of tracking accurately how many Christians and Muslims had left since the eruption of Israeli-Palestinian violence in 2000.
“There is no business, no freedom of movement,” he said. “We depend on tourism, which is being demolished. Sometimes we receive 1,500 tourists a day but none of them stay the night. They visit the Nativity Church and leave, so we don’t benefit.”
…Christian leaders say they face no religious persecution from the Palestinian Muslim majority or from Israel.
Bernard Sabella, a Palestinian sociologist at Bethlehem University, estimates that 50 to 75 Christian families a year are leaving Jerusalem or the West Bank for new lives abroad, down from a peak of 200 to 250 families in 2002 and 2003.
He said most cited similar motives to Muslim migrants — political conditions, unemployment and lawlessness, although discomfort with rising Muslim militancy was a factor for some.
“As Christians we want to be part of this society,” he said, pointing to the cultural richness, variety and ancient roots of the church communities living in the cradle of Christianity.
The median age of Palestinian Christians is now 37, against 19 in the general population. “If our young people leave, we are in a disaster,” Sabella said.
What Reuters writer Alistair Lyon does not mention in his anti-Semitic rant is that Christians are not just fleeing Palestine but ALL of the Middle East in droves!
And, even Reuters can’t blame that on Isreal!
According to a recent article in Asharq Alawsat:
What is the meaning of these indicators? There is definitely a reason for the migration of the Christians from their countries, leaving behind their properties and homes. It is obvious that the environment and climate of the Middle East no longer tolerate peaceful coexistence, especially with the Christians. Otherwise, how could this continuous and big exodus be explained?
Over 70,000 Palestinian Christians have relocated to Chile alone!
That’s not all:
Copts have arrived in large numbers in Montreal, Canada, and in Sydney, Australia, in addition to various cities in the United States. The Maronites of Lebanon have migrated to Europe, especially France, in addition to South America, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Many Greek Orthodox Christians in Jordan and Syria have migrated to various countries in the world. Many Copts and Greek Orthodox Christians have left Sudan for Europe. Recently, Baghdad and Mosul have been emptied of over 50 percent of their Christian inhabitants. Some of them have left out of fear, others voluntarily, and the rest have been forced to leave.
And, this article puts the nail in the coffin of Reuters anti-semitic “Israeli occupation” argument:
In the past decade Palestinian Christians, once 60 percent of Bethlehem’s population, have fled and currently represent less than 20 percent of the city’s total population.
** Although critics of Israeli policy have attempted to place blame for the Christian emigration on the implementation of such security measures at the anti-terror barrier, checkpoints and roadblocks, these were put into place only in the past few years in response to repeated terror attack from Bethlehem [see below], and cannot account for the dramatic drop in the Christian population between 1990 and 2001.
In 1990, Christians comprised nearly 60 percent of the total Palestinian population in the Bethlehem region. Palestinian Christians began to leave in large numbers after 1995, when the Palestinian Authority obtained control of the city, because they were discriminated against and encouraged to leave.
And… Look what the Pope said in this Reuters article from 2005:
The Pope also talked about the difficulty Catholics were experiencing in Palestine amid media reports that Christians living there have suffered violence and intimidation at the hands of Islamist extremists.
Meanwhile… Jules Crittenden has more on another mass flight from Europe.
Hat Tip Larwyn
