Christians in the
Holy Land
by Albert E. Hazbun, KC*HS
1 -
Introduction:
To the average American the Holy Land
brings images of the Judean desert, the Dead Sea, as
shown in travelogues by Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson or Charlton Heston, empty
land where Jesus and his disciples walked and preached two thousand years ago.
You get the impression that this land somehow remained vacant until the state
of Israel came
to being some fifty years ago. A country with no people for a people without a
country. This is enforced with today’s pilgrims, who, unless they came with a
Catholic group, tour the country in an Israeli bus, with an Israeli guide who
takes them through the many holy churches in a manner similar to visiting
museums and chateaux in France.
The pilgrim fails to see that Jesus and his disciples left behind the original
Christians and some of them continued to live on this Holy Land
until today. These are the living stones that have kept the faith, built and
tended the churches, and allowed these magnificent places of prayer and
remembrance of His presence to survive all these centuries.
2 - The Byzantine
Period:
In
the 4th century, Christianity became the state religion for the
Byzantine Empire. By the 6th Century The whole
Middle East was solidly Christian. In the spring of
578 A. D., two monks, John Moscos and his pupil Sophronius, set out from St.
Theodosius Monastry near
Jerusalem to visit and document the Christian
presence in the Eastern
Mediterranean.
These travels were documented in The
Spiritual Meadow. 1400 years later, William Dalrymple, a prizewinning
British author, visited the Greek Orthodox Monastry at
Mount Athos, and in spite of the fact he is
Catholic, was allowed to review this ancient leather bound Byzantine
manuscript. Dalrymple was on his way to trace the footsteps of the two monks
and assess the status and conditions of today’s Christians. His journey, adventures and observations are
well documented in his From the
Holy
Mountain.
Mr. Dalrymple ends his
book with the following quotation: ”Christianity is an Eastern religion which
grew firmly rooted in the intellectual ferment of the
Middle East. John Moschos saw that plant begin to
wither in the hot winds of change that scoured the
Levant of his day. On my journey in his
footsteps I have seen the very last stalks in the process of being uprooted. It
has been a continuous process, lasting nearly one and a half millennia. Moschos
saw its beginnings. I have seen the beginning of the end”[1]
3 -
Islam:
Today, Christianity
appears to be in its final period of existence in the
Holy
Land. What caused it? Was it Islam?
Islam came to
Jerusalem
in February 638 A. D. when Sophronius, who by then was the first Patriarch of
Jerusalem, handed over the keys of the city to Caliph Omar Bin Abdul Khattab. Historical
evidence indicates that the Christians in the
Holy
Land did not rush to convert to Islam, although some
of them eventually did. After the
Byzantine
Empire became Christian, some Arab tribes
accepted Christianity and provided the
Byzantine
Empire a buffer from attacks on the eastern
front. Some of these tribes maintained their Christianity through the Islamic
period and remain Christian today.[2]
As a child I remember meeting the father of my friend Farouk, who always wore
his beduin attire. I was a guest at their desert properties in
Jordan
and saw Bedouins living their ancient life with tents, cattle and camels.
Farouk and his family have been Christians, possibly since
Byzantium
days.
Although Muslim
occupation dampened political and territorial ideas among Christians, the
Christian communities survived the Islamic occupation. Most were natives and
had no other country to go to. Given the choice of either converting to Islam
or paying taxes, many chose to pay taxes. In time they learned to pray in Arabic,
translated the Scriptures into Arabic, and produced devotional and theological
literature in the language of their conquerors. These Christians were
assimilated in this Arab Islamic society and participated in its great culture.
During the 400 years
of Muslim Ottoman domination, between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the Christians played a disproportionately large role in
Palestine’s
economic life. They settled in increasing numbers in coastal towns and
established commercial relations with
Europe.[3]
Over the centuries Christians and Muslims shared a common, language, history
and culture. Although the Christians avoided playing a major political role,
some of them led the Arab nationalist movement in the early 20th
Century for Arab independence and a secular state. George Antonius’s The Arab Awakening is a good example of
that. The Arabic speaking Christians who live today in
Israel,
the
West Bank,
and
Jordan
are their descendants and hence the descendants of the first Christians. They
are, as it were, the only indigenous Christian community in the world.[4]
4 - The Zionist Movement:
By the end of the 19th
Century about 25 % of all Palestinians were Christians. Jews were only 2% and
the remainder were Muslims. Today, the Christians in the
Holy
Land are about 2% of the population. What brought
their numbers down after managing to survive as a minority twelve centuries of
Islamic domination?
In 1897 the first
Zionist convention held in
Switzerland,
decided that Jews should establish a state in
Palestine
for the Jews. No consideration was given at the time to the fact that the land
was already inhabited and owned by others. Zionist influence obtained the
Balfour Declaration from
Britain,
which promised ‘ …the establishment in
Palestine
of a national home for the Jewish people’.[5]The
Balfour Declaration was not made public until it received the support of
President Woodraw Wilson.[6]
In 1922 the
League of Nations
put
Palestine
under British Mandate. The British were then able to allow the immigration of large
numbers of European Jews to
Palestine.
5 -
Israel - Phase I :
On November 1947 the
General Assembly of the United Nations passed Resolution 181 in favor of the
partition of
Palestine
into a Jewish state comprising 55% of
Palestine,
and an Arab state for the remainder, except for the City of
Jerusalem
which was to become a UN mandated zone. At the time the Jews were about 30% of
the population and owned about 6% of the land. Although the Jewish “Hawks” were
against partition, the Zionist movement accepted the partition in a wise
tactical step.[7]
Ending a long conflict with the Jews in
Palestine,
the British withdrew from the country after a series of terrorist acts by
Jewish gangs. In 1948 the State of Israel was established and the Israeli Army,
as part of its War of Independence, conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Within what became the State of Israel, about 78% of the original
Palestine,
they evacuated about 400 villages of their Christian and Muslim population[8].
About 700,000 Palestinians, 50,000 of whom were Christian, fled as refugees to
adjacent Arab countries.[9]
Some were forced to leave, some left because of the fear generated from
massacres by Israeli fighting forces such as the slaughter of the total
population of the
village
of
Deir Yassin.
Others left on the assumption that they could return once the fighting stopped.
Israel
never allowed any of these refugees to come back.
About 150,000
Palestinians remained in what became
Israel.
Israel
forced many of these to abandon their homes and villages in the hope that they
would leave the country. Eventually about 70,000 became internal refugees. The
case of the Catholic villages of Kafr
Bir’im and Ikrit is very well documentd[10],[11].
The Israeli army evacuated both villages in 1948. None of the former occupants
were allowed to return up until today in spite of 3 decisions by the Israeli
Supreme Court supporting their claims. The Israeli army destroyed the villages
and left a Catholic Church in each village to decay. Today, the site of Kafr
Bir’im is a National Park, with a sign that the “Bar’am Antiquities date from
the Second Temple Period”.[12]
Christian Palestinians together with their Muslim countrymen who remained in
Israel
became Israeli citizens. All were treated equally as second class citizens in
the Jewish State.
6 -
Israel – Phase II :
In a
"pre-emptive strike" in 1967 the Israeli Army attacked and invaded all its Arab neighbors in
the Six-Day War. As a result,
Israel
now occupied all of
Palestine,
the Sinai from
Egypt
and the
Golan Heights
from
Syria.
Although the Israeli
government talked of peace, it proceeded with colonizing the
Occupied
Territories.
It confiscated centuries Palestinian owned land and built Israeli settlements
for new Jewish immigrants, mostly American and Russian. It is interesting to
note that most of the funds for construction came from US government funds or
tax deductible contributions from Americans. As of early this year over 200,000
Israelis live in colonies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and another
200,000 in colonies constructed on land expropriated from Palestinians and
annexed to Jerusalem. These are referred to usually by
Israel
and the
US
media, as
Jerusalem
neighborhoods and not occupied territory. In addition
Israel
has uprooted over 120,000 trees many of which were ancient olive trees, and
destroyed about 8,000 Palestinian homes.
Israel’s
plan has always been to colonize more Palestinian land and erase the history of
the last two thousand years. Not much attention was paid to archeological finds
or artifacts that date to the Romans, the
Byzantine
Empire or the Arabs. Among many examples are
two Christian Shrines in
Jerusalem.
The Israeli authorities decided to bury these two churches and did not provide
protection, allowing vandals -allegedly ultra-Orthodox Jewish Haredim, from nearby Mea She’arim
according to the
Jerusalem
Post- to pour tar over a beautiful sixth century Byzantine mosaic and pile
rocks on the top of a Christian funerary crypt[13].
In 1998 Charles
Sennott, the Middle East Bureau Chief of the Boston Globe, decided to trace the
footsteps of Jesus Christ in commemoration of the upcoming millennium. He
documented his journey in a very readable book, The Body And The Blood, The Holy Land Christians at the turn of a new millennium.
Sennott relates the many stories of the Palestinian Christians from
Nazareth,
Bethlehem,
Jerusalem,
and the
Galilee.
He ended his trip at Emmaus, where he went to interview the last remaining
Christian family in the village. On the way, he discovered that they were
preparing to emigrate to the
US.
Sennott observed the
very small numbers of remaining Christians. The Christians are caught between a
right wing Israeli government that does not want them to remain and the
increasing power of the Islamic militants. He observed after several interviews
with Christian Palestinians:” Arab Christians were reluctant to assert their
Christian beliefs. They expressed beliefs dearly shaped through the teachings
of Christian theology and the academic institutions, Western in their outlook, that
the church built and funded through the centuries. But they did not want to
have them categorized as such, and they were suspicious of anyone who tried to
do so. Politicized Christian Arabs were consciously just as much part of an
Islamic culture as they were of a Christian culture; and to embrace a Christian
identity in too strenuous a manner would offend the Islamic and Arab part of
their identity. So they constantly tempered their arguments in a way that
turned the focus away from their Christian background.”[14].
Sennott explains the mood of the Palestinian Christians. They feel their
Christian brothers in the West had abandoned them. They see the strong support
for
Israel
led by the Zionist Christians in the
US.
They see the strong bias and financial support that the
US
government provides to
Israel.
They are resisting in a losing battle and many have decided it is best for them
to join other relatives who have already emigrated to the West.
Sennott provides the
following conclusion: “The emptying villages and the tides of tourists had made
for a sad pilgrimage through a beautiful land. What was left was a dry, barren
community of faith that seemed barely capable of clinging to its
two-thousand-year-old roots. It had the decaying but somehow noble appearance
of a gnarled, gray olive tree that no longer yielded fruit.” Sennott believes
that the number of Christian Palestinians in the
Holy
Land has gotten so small that they will become
insignificant within a generation or two.
7 - The
Present :
The United Nations
recently reported that unemployment among the Palestinians is at about 80%, and
about 50% of children are malnourished. Palestinians in the
West
Bank have been living under a constant curfew.
Palestinians live in small cantons surrounded by the Israeli Army and Jewish
settlements, and are not allowed to travel between these cantons without
permits that are difficult to get. The Israeli Army has damaged the Palestinian
infrastructure. The World Bank estimates repair costs at just below $1 Billion.
A whole generation of Palestinian Muslims and Christians were born and lived
their whole lives knowing only Israeli occupation. They lost their education,
culture, and family life and only see humiliation, insecurity and a hopeless
future. Although Christian Palestinians appear to have fared a little better
than Muslims because the help from the various churches has gotten through
while Muslim charities have gotten caught in
America’s
fight against terrorism. This has somehow hurt the relations between Christians
and their Muslim neighbors who sometime regard them with envy and suspicion.
The internationally
sponsored improvements done to
Bethlehem,
to celebrate His millennial birth, have been completely destroyed and this
ancient holy town is in shambles.
Bethlehem
University,
a
Catholic
University,
sponsored by the
Vatican
and run by the American Christian Brothers Order has been attacked and
temporarily occupied. Christian Shrines continue to be confiscated or damaged.
The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem announced that on
May 16, 2001,
the Israeli Army broke into their Baron Der Convent in the
West
Bank, and seized a portion of the property after
causing enormous exterior and interior damage to the convent. On
June 1, 2002,
the Israeli Army blew up the 6th Century Byzantine Church of Saint
Barbara in Aboud, a village near Ramallah. A large number of ancient mosques
have been demolished.
8 -
Hope
for the Future?
Is there any hope for
an end to this horrid situation?
His Holiness Pope John
II in a speech on
11
August 2002 talked about peace and that the
coexistence of the Israeli and Palestinian people cannot be brought about by
arms. The Pope added:” From 1967 till today, unspeakable sufferings have
followed one upon another in a frightening manner: the suffering of the
Palestinians. Driven out of their land and forced, in recent times, into a
state of permanent siege, becoming as it were the object of a collective
punishment: The suffering of the Israeli population who live in the daily
terror of being targets of anonymous assailants. To this we must add the
violation of a fundamental right, that of freedom of worship. In effect,
because of a strict curfew, believers no longer have access to their places of
worship on the day of weekly prayer. I think of you, beloved Christians:
although not involved in terrorist activity and yet sharing the great
affliction of your fellow citizens, you are now tempted to leave the
Holy
land. The Pope and the whole Church are with you.
and they renew their sentiments of profound solidarity and spiritual
closeness”.
Msgr. Michel Sabbah,
the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, addressing the root of the conflict sated: on
May 8, 2002:”
The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is not basically a question of
Palestinian terrorism that threatens security or the existence of
Israel.
It is a question of Israeli military occupation that started in 1967, which
provokes Palestinian resistance, which then threatens the security of
Israel.
To go on speaking about Palestinian terrorism, without seeing the right of the
Palestinians to their freedom and to end the occupation, is condemning oneself
not to see reality, and to remain impotent in reaching a solution.”
Since President Wilson, the
US
presidents and Congress have been
Israel’s
primary supporters, politically and financially. In 1994, President Clinton, in
a speech to the Israeli Knesset, declared that
America’s
support for
Israel
was nothing less than a divine ordinance.[15]
Clinton
is a Southern Baptist. President Bush, a Born Again Christian, recently stated
that:”Sharon is a man of peace” and looked the other way while Israel
re-occupied the West Bank, killing hundreds of Palestinians, demolishing homes,
uprooting trees and putting the whole population under constant curfew. Members
of the US Congress normally vote at about 90% in support of
Israel.
The fundamental belief in US politics is that the Palestinians have no rational
basis for their hostility to
Israel
and want to destroy it and at the same time the Palestinians have no basis for
a national claim to the
Holy Land.[16]
Many members of
Israel’s
Knesset and at least one member of
Sharon’s
cabinet are advocating a Palestinian “relocation” to
Jordan.
A polite way for ethnic cleansing. I heard
Israel’s
leading Historian Benny Morris in an interview on KPFA’s Democracy Now on
September 18, 2002,
where he stated that should a war occur with an Arab country, such as
Iraq,
he strongly believes that all Palestinians should be evacuated from
Israel.
He also expressed his belief that former Prime Minister Barak supports this
action. Moshe Ya’alon Israel’s Army Chief of Staff has stated in an interview
that the Palestinians are a cancer which should be eliminated.[17]
It is therefore obvious that according to
Israel’s
leaders, the
Holy Land
should be a Jewish state and there is no room for Christians and Muslims to
live in it as citizens.
9 - Conclusion :
The Catholic Church
and clergy have managed to provide great support for the Christians in the
Holy
Land, but the Christian presence continues to decline
dramatically. Palestinian Christians continue to provide intellectual leaders
such as Edward Said, Hanan Ashrawi and Afif Safieh, who continue to plead for
Palestinian dignity, fairness and human rights. These pleas have fallen on deaf
ears in the
US.
Americans in general seem to accept the Zionist point of view that the Jewish
bible is God’s covenant giving the
Holy Land
to
Israel.
The Catholic point of view comes from his Beatitude Msgr. Michel Sabbah, the
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem who stated, when asked on this subject: “God loves
every human without discrimination....No injustice at all can be committed in
the name of God's love. That is the criteria to judge whether the Jews have a
religious right to the land or not... .God's love cannot admit any injustice by
one people against another. "[18]
As Afif Safieh stated it, the Palestinians are not Children of a lessor God[19].
It is about time for
Americans to look at a fair and just solution for the Israeli/Palestinian
conflict. Two states with defined borders living in peace and security.
Israelis need to live in permanent peace and the Palestinians in their own
state, with dignity and freedom. The
Holy Land
can be shared and should be. This will provide security for the Christians,
whether citizens of
Israel
or the
Palestinian
State
and allow them to survive. Although this sounds an impossible dream, there is a
sliver of hope. It is now up to
America’s
60 million Catholics. If they are truly informed through their parishes and
national organizations regarding the facts about the plight of the remnants of
the original Christians in the
Holy Land,
and how their fate is so closely tied to their Muslim countrymen, they might
decide to come to the rescue. They could tell their friends and neighbors and,
if they felt strongly enough, contact their elected representatives and express
views different from those of the Zionist Christians and the friends of
Israel.
This should send a message to Congress and hopefully might achieve a change in
America’s
policy and attitude to this conflict. Without this, I can assure you that the
original Christians will soon have a very insignificant presence in the
Holy
Land, leaving our 16 centuries old churches with no
parishes, to be run by the clergy.
Israel
will be happy to provide tourist guides for these very cold and beautiful
museums.
[1]
William Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain,
page 453
[2]
Robert L.Wilken, The Land Called Holy, page xv
[3]
Baruch Kimmerling & Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians,
page12
[4]
Robert L.Wilken, The Land Called Holy, page xv
[5]
Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall, page 7.
[6]
Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine,
page 27-28.
[7]
Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, page 496.
[8]
Walid Khalidi, Editor, All That Remains, preface.
[9]
The LINK, In the
Land of Christ, Christianity is Dying, Vol. 28, No.1, Jan/Mar 1995, Page 3
[10]
Charles M. Sennott The Body and The Blood”,
Pages 274
[11]
William Dalrymple, From the
Holy Mountain, Page 362.
[12]
Ibid., page 369
[13]
Ibid. page 331.
[14]
Charles M. Sennott, The Body and The
Blood, page 154.
[15]
Anton La Guardia, War Without End,
page 349
[16]
Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of
Palestine, page 1.
[17]
Yitzhak Laor, London Review of Books, Vol.24. No. 19, October 3, 2002.
[18]
John W. Mulhall, CSP, America and the Founding of Israel”, page 23
[19]
Afif Safieh, Children of a Lesser God. A
collection of interviews and essays.
References:
Baruch Kimmerling & Joel S. Migdal, Palestinians, The Making of a People. The
Free Press, a division of Macmillan.1993.
Roan Carey, Editor, The
New Intifada, Resisting Israel’s Apartheid. Verso, 2001.
Kathleen Christison, Perceptions of Palestine, Their Influence on U.S. Middle East
Policy, University of California
Press, 2001
William Dalrymple, From
The Holy Mountain, A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East, An Owl Book, Henry Holt and Co., 1997.
Anton La Guardia, War
Without End, Israelis, Palestinians, and the struggle for a Promised Land. Thomas
Dunne Books, 2001
Walid Khalidi, Editor, All That Remains, The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by
Israel in 1948, Institute of Palestine Studies, 1992.
Walid Khalidi, Before
Their Diaspora, A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948,
Institute
of Palestine Studies, 1984.
Benny Morris, Righteous
Victims, A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. Vintage Books,
2001.
Rosemary Radford Ruether & Herman J. Ruether, The Wrath of Jonah, The Crisis of Religious
Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Fortress Press, 2002.
The LINK, Christians
in the Arab East, Vol. VI, No. 5, Nov/Dec 1973, Published by Americans for
Middle East Understanding.
The LINK, The Vatican, U.S. Catholics and the Middle East, Vol. 19, No.3, Aug/Sept. 1986
The LINK, In The
Land of Christ Christianity is Dying, Vol. 28, No. 1, Jan./Mar. 1995
John W. Mulhall, CSP, America and the Founding of Israel, An Investigation of the Morality of America’s Role. Deshon Press, 1995.
Afif Safieh, Children
of a Lesser God?, Palestinian General Delegation to the U.K.,
1999.
Charles M. Sennott, The
Body and the Blood, The Holy Land’s Christians at the Turn of a New Millennium,
A Reporter’s Journey, Public Affairs, The Perseus Book Group, 2001.
Tom Segev, One
Palestine, Complete, Jews and Arabs under the British
Mandate, Translated by Haim Watzman, Metropolitan Books, 2000.
Avi Shlaim, The
Iron Wall, Israel and the Arab World, W.W. Norton &
Co., 2000
Robert L. Wilken, The
Land Called Holy, Palestine in Christian History and Thought,
Yale
University Press, 1992.
