The myth of Islam and tolerance

Palestinian Christians are finally coming out and admitting what we’ve known for a very long time: They’re being harassed and driven out by the Muslim population of the terrortories[sic].

A number of Christian families have finally decided to break their silence and talk openly about what they describe as Muslim persecution of the Christian minority in this city.

The move comes as a result of increased attacks on Christians by Muslims over the past few months. The families said they wrote letters to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the Vatican, Church leaders and European governments complaining about the attacks, but their appeals have fallen on deaf ears.

According to the families, many Christians have long been afraid to complain in public about the campaign of “intimidation” for fear of retaliation by their Muslim neighbors and being branded “collaborators” with Israel.

But following an increase in attacks on Christian-owned property in the city over the past few months, some Christians are no longer afraid to talk about the ultra-sensitive issue. And they are talking openly about leaving the city.

“The situation is very dangerous,” said Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of the Beit Sahur-based private Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station. “I believe that 15 years from now there will be no Christians left in Bethlehem. Then you will need a torch to find a Christian here. This is a very sad situation.”

Where is the PC-USA support for their fellow Christians? Are they too involved with slamming Israel to notice their own coreligionists being oppressed by Muslims? Where is the World Council of Churches, another group so busy admonishing Israel that it hasn’t seemed to care that the Christian population of Bethlehem has disappeared since the palestinians took over under Oslo.

Palestinians are being attacked, and their land is being stolen, but since it’s not being taken by Israeli “settlers” (or being lied about being taken by Israelis), the world takes no notice:

Qumsiyeh, one of the few Christians willing to speak about the harsh conditions of their community, has been the subject of numerous death threats. His house was recently attacked with fire-bombs, but no one was hurt.

Qumsiyeh said he has documented more than 160 incidents of attacks on Christians in the area in recent years.

He said a monk was recently roughed up for trying to prevent a group of Muslim men from seizing lands owned by Christians in Beit Sahur. Thieves have targeted the homes of many Christian families and a “land mafia” has succeeded in laying its hands on vast areas of land belonging to Christians, he added.

Fuad and Georgette Lama woke up one morning last September to discover that Muslims from a nearby village had fenced off their family’s six-dunam plot in the Karkafa suburb south of Bethlehem. “A lawyer and an official with the Palestinian Authority just came and took our land,” said 69-year-old Georgette Lama.

But it gets worse. When they approached the PA for help, they had to bribe them to get their land back—and then the PA officials stole it for themselves.

The couple was later approached by senior PA security officers who offered to help them kick out the intruders from the land. “We paid them $1,000 so they could help us regain our land,” she said, almost in tears. “Instead of giving us back our land, they simply decided to keep it for themselves. They even destroyed all the olive trees and divided the land into small plots, apparently so that they could offer each for sale.” When her 72-year-old husband, Fuad, went to the land to ask the intruders to leave, he was severely beaten and threatened with guns.

“My husband is after heart surgery and they still beat him,” Georgette Lama said. “These people have no heart. We’re afraid to go to our land because they will shoot at us. Ever since the beating, my husband is in a state of trauma and has difficulties talking.”

Christians once made up 75% of the population of Bethlehem in 1947, and as recently as 1990 were still in the majority. But they’ve been fleeing by the thousands, and the world is too busy blaming Israel to see that it’s the Muslim persecution of Christians causing the exodus.

We keep hearing about the famous tolerance of other religions in Islam, but we keep seeing more and more examples of Islam’s utter intolerance for any other religion—starting with their inability to tolerate the State of Israel in their midst. But then, the Sunni-Shia divide is heating up enough to show that they’re not even tolerant of each other’s religion.

I cannot name the last time a Jew murdered another Jew because he followed a different form of Judaism. I don’t think anyone can, outside of Biblical times.

Once again, we see the true Religion of Peace™ is not Islam.