A Christmas Message from HCEF President

Christians Persecuted in the Holy Land
By Chris Mitchell

Two thousand years after the birth of Christ, Christians are leaving the Holy Land in record numbers. Now, a new report suggests persecution against Palestinian Christian believers is getting worse.

Charred ruins are all that remain of 14 homes set a blaze in the West Bank village of Taybeh. An angry Muslim mob, from a neighboring village, attacked the Christian town last September. They said they were avenging the dishonor of a Muslim woman allegedly impregnated by her Christian employer from Taybeh.

Taybeh is the only West Bank village completely inhabited by Christians, about 2,000 of them. Originally, it was called Ephraim in the Old Testament; and in the book of John it is mentioned as a village where Jesus stayed.

David Khoury is the Mayor of Taybeh. He says the attack would not have occurred if Taybeh were a Muslim village instead of a Christian one.

Khoury said, "It’s happened many times between a Muslim and a Muslim; and what they did was, most times, just marry the girl off. Had they given us a chance, and proved this pregnancy was by the man from Taybeh, maybe we would have married him to that girl."

Palestinian officials are downplaying what happened here—depicting it as a dispute between families—the result of an out-of-wedlock romance. But some villagers insist the incident was "pure religious hatred"—that Taybeh Christians were used as scapegoats. Some of the 400 attackers were reportedly heard shouting "Allahu akbar—‘Allah is great’”—as they threw molotov cocktails at Christian houses.

We've hidden the identity of a West Bank evangelist for his protection. We'll call him Nadeem. He suggests Palestinian authorities are covering up a larger problem: a rising tide of Muslim intolerance and violence directed against the Christian minority.

‘Nadeem’ said, "It's a downplay in order to avoid a bigger issue which would be a fight on the village level, when you have villages attacking other villages. It's easier for them to downplay it, to avoid the bigger problem. Which, I don't know if there will be enough officials around to handle it, if that happens."

The attack on the village of Taybeh is one more example of the precarious position of Christians in the West Bank and throughout the Middle East."

Last February, hundreds of Druze Muslims attacked Palestinian Christians in the northern Israeli village of Mughar. Rioters damaged 125 homes and businesses after a Druze teenager spread the false rumor that Christians had posted pornographic images of Druze women on the internet.

International Human Rights attorney Justus Weiner has researched the plight of Palestinian Christians for more than eight years. His findings were recently published by the Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs.

Weiner warned, "Palestinian Christians are in very dire straights…"

He also says Palestinian Christians are now living in fear because persecution against them is increasing.

Weiner added, "I think the situation has been on a steep downhill for at least 12 years—since Israel withdrew from the Palestinian populated areas of the West Bank and Gaza. The Christians fear for their own lives, they fear for their own family, they fear for the future of their community."

The Christians are a community that many of their fellow Christians believe will be marginalized as the Palestinians move toward statehood.

As Palestinians continue to gain more land from the Israelis, many Arab Christians fear the persecution against them will only get worse. In some cases it's already starting to happen.

This Palestinian woman suggests that the marginalization of Christians has already begun. We'll call her Hannan. We've hidden her identity to protect her from retribution.

Hannan said, "It's a hurt church, it's a suffering church …there's no mercy."

Also, Hannan says, Christians are now being treated as ‘second class citizens’ in the Holy Land because Islamists dominate the Palestinian authority.

Hannan added, "Now, all the leadership and the people in authority are Muslims. And they force their laws, their teaching, their Koran, everything in the courts, in the schools, everywhere…they threaten people. People are afraid to say ‘no’."

Western leaders say elections scheduled for January prove the Palestinians are committed to establishing a democratic society. But the draft Palestinian constitution shows a government consigned to institutionalizing Islam.

While the draft constitution pledges to guarantee freedom of worship:
Islam is stated as the official religion of Palestine.
Shariah law is stated as the primary source of legislation. Under shariah law, any Muslim who leaves Islam and converts to another faith must be killed.

So it was for Ahmad El-Achwal, former owner of a falafel stand. The father of eight, he converted to Christianity and held regular Bible studies in his home.

But, he suffered repeated arrests and torture at the hands of Palestinian authority police.

Human Rights attorney Weiner met and interviewed Achwal prior to his death in January, 2004.

Weiner attested, "He showed me, at the time, the results of his—what were then—recent arrests, which included burns all over his body. Where hot pieces of sheet metal were taken from a fire and touched to his skin. And, on January 21st, 2004, someone knocked on the door- he opened the door and he was met with a hail of bullets. And he was shot dead in the entrance to his apartment."

Hannan verified, "A lot of families—they are leaving because they can't do anything about what is going on. They can't take it; they can't handle it."

Half of Hannan’s family left the West Bank she said, because of persecution against them.

Her family is not alone. Political instability, economic hardship and human rights violations have caused a mass exodus of Christians from the West Bank/Judea-Samaria and throughout the Middle East.

One recent population study shows that the Christian presence in Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority has declined from 26 percent in 1914 to 9 percent today.

The city of Bethlehem—the birthplace of Jesus—was once a Christian city.
Several decades ago it was more than 80 percent Christian, but today it is less than 15 percent Christian

While their numbers may be fewer, and persecution against them is increasing, thousands of Christians have chosen to remain in the Holy Land….and some are quietly leading Muslims to Christ…

Nadeem said,” When the person's faith is true, and they realize that their suffering doesn't go unnoticed by God, and they see that they're doing something for the cause of Christ and furthering his kingdom, then they grow with more courage and the work goes on."

In his second letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul said that those who live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted. Nearly 2000 years later, those words are ringing true for Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land, where persecution is now a way of life.

This item courtesy of the goggle-eyed lordy-lordy people at Christian World News

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/CWN/120205palestinian.asp

Who somehow forgot to notice how their own Middle East "crusade" has killed at least half a million Muslims, mostly kids, in just one country over the past 15 years.

It's odd, isn't it? For hundreds of years Muslims, Jews, and Christians all got along pretty well in the Middle East, then these nasty colonizing maniacs came lurching out of Europe. No, I don't just mean Jews.

They don't adapt to or otherwise accomodate the places they enter. They regard the natives with abiding contempt, which they institutionalize. They basically wall themselves off in a mental space where they can nurture the nasty obsessions they dragged along with them out of Europe: "munnn-NEEEEEE!! POWW. WUURRRRRRRR!!!!!!!! MUST. HAVE. MOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" If their pathology were not so implacably ruthless and deadly it would almost be comical.

And now they've brought on yet another immune reaction from the aforementioned natives, who've developed a desire to push all Western taints out of their world, when before they were tolerant, often even welcoming and hospitable. It's the same reaction Europeans have caused everywhere they've gone in the world -- until they succeed in exterminating the natives, of course. Isn't that funny? It must be the fault of all the untermensch types. Yah, that's it!

Biological insight reveals where this is going, and it's gonna be pure shits'n'giggles, I very much hope to see it. While the European pathology is driven by an unlimited appetite for privilege, and unlimited privilege has a clear history of leading to mutant mental jellyfish, the people Europeans are preying on are being forged into hate-hardened steel. This follows directly from survival pressure. The 15-year "softening" of Iraq didn't soften them at all. They're just going to keep getting tougher and stronger, just like the Vietnamese did, just like the Palestinians have. Unite an entire society behind passionate hatred of yourself and you unleash a cosmic force that no technology can match. Vietnam, baby, Vietnam. And it's not their fault: they weren't the arrogant invaders. It's justice, it's beautiful!

More people have died in the name of religion than any other force in the world. Your tendency to blame it solely on the Europeans is either ignorance or guilt (do we see white man's burden here?)
Ever hear about the mountain range in Afghanistan "Hindu Kush"- means Hindu slaughter- it was intended as a warning for those pesky Hindus

See:

http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/modern/hindu_kush.html

the exact toll of the Hindu genocide suggested by the name Hindu Kush is not available. However the number is easily likely to be in millions. Few known historical figures can be used to justify this estimate. Encyclopedia Britannica informs that in December 1398 AD, Timur Lane ordered the execution of at least 50,000 captives before the battle for Delhi, .. and after the battle those inhabitants (of Delhi) not killed were removed (as slaves) , while other reference says that the number of captives butchered by Timur Lane's army was about 100,000 . Later on Encyclopedia Britannica mentions that the Mughal emperor Akbar 'ordered the massacre of about 30,000 (captured) Rajput Hindus on February 24, 1568 AD, after the battle for Chitod' . Another reference indicates that this massacre of 30,000 Hindu peasants at Chitod is recorded by Abul Fazl, Akbar's court historian himself . These two 'one day' massacres are sufficient to provide a reference point for estimating the scale of Hindu genocide. The Afgan historian Khondamir records that during one of the many repeated invasions on the city of Herat in western Afganistan, 1,500,000 residents perished ."

Do you know about the Muslim slaughters in India? the Muslim slaughter of the Bahai? Do you care? No, its just so easy to blame the europeans....which is as openminded as we can expect from you, with your usual liturgy of blame assigned to "thuh Jews" or" thuh Zionists"

The answer? Stop being a force that spreads hate. Take your lessons from the avatars of history and realize that anything that brings us closer to the source of all light is powerful, true and strong. On today of all days, ignore the spectacle of the winter gift giving season and focus instead on the traditions of lighting candles against the darkness. Look at the power of light to push away the dark. This is a victory that occurs every winter and every sunrise. Be a source of light, TW. Just try.

The light is called "Truth." It illuminates the world in totally unambiguous terms, but to know this one must have "eyes," meaning a truth ethic, meaning the understanding that the world revealed to you through your senses is a staggering enormity, while you and all your desires and aspirations and identity issues are trivial, of scant consequence. The second, self-related set of things in no way determines the first.

Truth ethic means observing this proper relationship between self and environment at all times, even when doing so is distasteful or even terrifying, and understanding that this exercise is not optional. As a human intellectual trait this has become disturbingly rare. Most humans in my sight are pathologically confused about all this. They have come to see the inner reality as the dominant one, while the world of light, now dim and muddled through their vestigial eyes, can be tamped to fit the caprices of their inner worlds. I say to you this is a kind of insanity! It is not insane among infants, for whom it is natural and inevitable, but a "mature" human who remains in this darkness throughout life is a mewling half-born monster.

"Civilization," meaning class-driven collective survival strategy, is an arrangement that selects for these pulsating abortions, which is why they have come to fill the world while those with clear wide eyes have all but disappeared.

Privelege... If one is fortunate, the experience of privilege is integral to civilization, and that experience destroys the truth ethic more surely than any other condition of life. To be born into privilege means never experiencing life as an exercise in raw animal survival, but to the halfling mind, willfully ignoring its proper place in the natural order, preserving privilege and conniving ruthlessly against others to do so _becomes_ survival. This involves constant lies and rationalizations. No, this is not a universal human proclivity, it's a "civilized" half-born thing. Like all Americans, I was born to considerable privilege, yet my eyes have opened to these things, so I demonstrate that the halfling psychology of privelege is NOT inevitable. Diogenes of Sinope and ancient songs of "primitive" cultures inform me that I am not alone, just very lonely

To my eyes, your assumptions and references are a web of half-seen lies, fed to you by your culture, lies which have slipped by you because you've never caught sight of the visible landscape. The cultures of civilizations are abysses of darkness, tapestries of such lies.

To escape from these tombs and emerge into the light requires only innate sensibility -- being sensate and rational. What I mean is not learning, but UNlearning, cleansing your mind of all assumptions, rejecting ALL imposed religious faiths, including faith in technology, "science," civilization, and human supremacy. These are chains -- slave beliefs -- thrown across your mind.

No aspect of this life bears out the truth of my words more powerfully than organized religions, which have co-evolved alongside civilizations. Religion is anti-Truth. It is from religion that you have absorbed your reverence for "love" and scorn for "hatred," and in fact this is exceedingly simple-minded, among the most incapacitating of all slave beliefs.

The manifest world is both "God" and "Bible" and to "worship" is simply to exist as sensate rational beings. This is the only religion we've known through 99.9% of our history, the only one we really need. To our grave detriment, our metaphysic sense has progressively perverted away from it. Now we use the humanoid God as an excuse to worship ourselves, and this gets back to halflings and their delusional self-importance. The rejection of even this totem in favor of explicit self-worship, a la "secular humanism," is an even deeper insanity, the final stage of narcissistic introversion

Of all the cultures in the world, those of Europeans are most alienated from the Truth I'm laying out here, most deeply withdrawn into preening delusions and classist madness. They are indeed the most "civilized" people, i.e. the most culturally insane, and this is inseperable from the epic destruction they continue to bring down on the world and themselves. I don't give a damn if you or Gerald Diamond agree. That's just both of you subordinating the lessons of present history to the whims and desires of your inner halfling selves. This particular conceit all but defines everything I've said.