Christians in the Holy Land

by

Albert E. Hazbun, KC*HS[1]

 

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 4^th century, Christianity became the state religion for the Byzantine Empire. By the 6^th 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 20^th 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 19^th 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 defeated 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 6^th 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.