Gaza’s Christians: Living in fear

The AP has noticed that the Muslims in the Gaza Strip have been terrorizing Gaza’s Christians. The International Herald Tribune carries the story with this headline:

Gaza’s Christians keep low profile during Christmas after slaying of activist

“Activist”? What did the “activist” do?

Ayyad, a member of the Baptist Church, managed Gaza’s only Christian bookstore and was involved in many charitable activities. He was found shot in the head, his body thrown on a Gaza street in early October, 10 hours after he was kidnapped from the store.

He regularly received death threats from people angry about his perceived missionary work — a rarity among Gaza’s Christians — and the store was firebombed six months before the kidnapping.

Oh. He actively practiced Christianity, and apparently, he tried to convert Muslims to Christianity. Or so they thought. And that, of course, gets you a death sentence in the world of jihadis.

I wonder how prominently displayed this lede will be:

Gaza’s tiny Christian community is keeping a low profile during Christmas this year, traumatized by the killing of a prominent activist after the Islamic Hamas group’s takeover of the coastal territory.

Few Christmas trees are on display, churches are holding austere services and hundreds of Christians hope to travel to the West Bank to celebrate the holiday in Bethlehem. Many say they don’t plan on returning to Gaza.

“We have a very sad Christmas,” said Essam Farah, acting pastor of Gaza’s Baptist Church, which has canceled its annual children’s party because of the grim atmosphere.

So the Muslims are effectively cancelling Christmas for Gaza’s Christians, but the AP article actually contains this laff-line:

About 3,000 Christians live in Gaza, an overwhelmingly conservative Muslim society of 1.5 million people. The two religions have generally had cordial relations over the years.

The relations are so cordial that Christians have been disappearing from the Palestinian territories for decades. Fifty years ago, the Christian population of the territories was estimated to be 15%. It is now 1.5%. Christian flight from the Middle East is the biggest open secret of the area. Did you know that most Lebanese Americans are Christian? And by “most” I mean “90%”? Why is that, I wonder, especially when you factor in the famous Muslim tolerance for other religions. I mean, that’s what they tell us, right? Islam is more tolerant of other religions than, say, Christianity or Judaism. And yet—Gaza’s Christian population is down to a paltry few thousand, and the ones remaining want to leave and never return. But don’t think they’ll get a warm welcome, even in Bethlehem, one of the biggest Christian tourist attraction in the world. Bethlehem used to be 80% Christian. That was before the Palestinian Authority took over running the town several decades ago.

And see how Gaza’s Christians are forced to lie about the persecution by their Muslim neighbors:

While no official statistics were available, the signs of the flight are evident. Rev. Manuel Musallem, head of Gaza’s Roman Catholic church, said he alone knows of seven families that sold their properties and left the area, and 15 more are preparing to do the same.

Musallem blamed Israeli sanctions and excessive violence in Gaza for the flight.

“In previous years we didn’t see this rate of migration,” Musallem said. “Now, exit is not on individual basis. Whole families are leaving, selling their cars, homes and all their properties.”

Really? It’s the Israeli economic policies of Gaza that are running the Christians out of town? Not things like this:

Ayyad’s older brother, 35-year old Ibrahim, said his 6-year old son, Khedr, was nagged in school about his uncle’s murder. Muslim schoolmates call him “infidel.”

[…] A distant relative of Ayyad, Fouad, said he also is packing up. He said his father, a guard at a local church, was stopped recently by unknown bearded men who put a gun to his head before he was rescued by passers-by.

[…] Those who are staying are trying to limit the risks. Nazek Surri, a Roman Catholic, walked out from Sunday’s service with a Muslim-style scarf covering her head.

“We have to respect the atmosphere we are living in. We have to go with the trend,” she said.

The Israelis aren’t the ones who are running the Christians out of town. Not that the media really notices all that much. Those facts were buried far down in the AP article. It’s far easier to blame Israel for the lack of Bethlehem tourism than to point out the religious persecution endemic in the Muslim world. And besides, you can’t shake the narrative. So you can’t blame the Muslims for anything bad that happens. It has to be all Israel’s fault.