- A “Jesus fish” on a vehicle in a long line of cars waiting to pass through the Israeli military checkpoint restricting movement between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
In a recent BBC radio interview, Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams spoke about the challenges facing Christians in the Middle East. While much of the conversation focused on Iraq, Egypt, and Syria, Archbishop Williams also mentioned Bethlehem and Palestinian Christians as a “marginalized minority,” but cited only growth of Muslim populations as the reason for the “hemmoraging of Christian populations from the Holy Land.”
Rifat Odeh Kassis, coordinator of the Christian group Kairos Palestine, noted that Williams neglected to mention
the Israeli occupation, the separation wall, Israel confiscation of Palestinian land, its policies that violate freedom of movement and worship (Palestinians in Bethlehem cannot, for instance, go to Jerusalem), or its brutal crackdowns on nonviolent protests as one of the major reasons that push not only Christians to emigrate, but also many other Palestinians.
Rev. Naim Ateek, director of Sabeel, a Palestinian ecumenical liberation theology organization and an MCC partner, released an open letter asserting that both Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike suffer in solidarity under the economic and political oppression of the Israeli occupation:
As Palestinian Christians, we perceive ourselves as an integral part of the Palestinian people. … [A]s Palestinians, whether Christian or Muslim, we equally live under the oppression of the illegal Israeli occupation of our country.
Rev. Ateek backed his assertions with data (emphasis added):
In 2006, Sabeel conducted a survey of the Christians in Israel and Palestine with the help of Bethlehem University. The survey clearly indicated that the primary causes for the emigration of Christians from the West Bank are both political and economic conditions. “Those who are leaving…because of the bad economic and political situation represent 87.3% of the total respondents” (p.34). Only 8% of the respondents attributed emigration to religious extremism.
The Sabeel survey reminded me of an article by Aziz Abu Sarah, in the Israeli publication +972, in which he cited a similar poll to debunk American perceptions of Palestinian Christians (emphasis added):
When Americans do recognize the existence of Palestinian Christians, it is often only to use their situation to support anti-Muslim propaganda. For example, according to a poll conducted by Zogby International, 45.9% of Americans blame Muslims for the Christian immigration out of the Holy Land, while only 7.4% of Americans cite Israeli restrictions as contributing to Arab Christian immigration. However, when Palestinian Christians from Bethlehem were asked about the primary cause for Christian immigration out of the area, 78% cited Israeli restrictions as their reason for leaving.
But more powerful than statistics are the testimonies of Palestinian Christians themselves. As Lynne Hybels writes:
I began by asking Arab Christians … what they wished American Christians knew about them and about the Middle East. Thus began my education about US foreign policy, Christian/Muslim relationships, and the conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Holy land. Their united voice has challenged my perspective on what it means to follow Jesus into the complex world of the Middle East.
One of the Palestinian Christians Lynne met and wrote about is Munther, a member of the faculty at MCC partner Bethlehem Bible College. Stephen Sizer recently posted a short video of Munther offering personal testimony about his life in Bethlehem, and how some of his own family’s land was confiscated to build an Israeli Jewish settlement. (Munther, Lynne, and Stephen and many other prominent speakers will all be at BBC’s “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference next spring–a great chance to meet Palestinian Christians and hear their stories!):
Convicted by such testimony, we as Western Christians must repent of and reverse these misconceptions. Sojourners blogger Aaron Taylor asserts:
[I]f all the average Christian knows about the Muslim world is what they read about in the magazine or newsletter of their favorite ministry highlighting the suffering of persecuted Christians around the world, it leads to a distorted, unbalanced picture. We forget that Christian fundamentalism, and, yes, Jewish fundamentalism can be just as oppressive as Islamic fundamentalism.
Rev. Ateek names the power dynamic at play with other fundamentalists in the Palestinian context: extremist Jewish settlers whose violence goes both relatively unhindered by the Israeli government and unreported by international media, as well as “Western Christian Zionists that support Israel blindly and unconditionally. … In fact, these extremists have more military power and clout to uproot all Palestinian presence both Christian and Muslim from our homeland.”
The Zogby poll cited earlier also revealed this challenging statistic: “86.1% of people in Bethlehem think churches should do more to help the city. 74.7% think the world knows little about situation.” Rev. Ateek articulates that challenge to the local and global church in more prophetic terms:
If the church – local and international – does not raise the prophetic voice, who will stand for justice and truth? In the absence of the prophetic, and as the right-wing Israeli government continues to spurn all international efforts for a just peace, we implore you to champion the cause of the oppressed Palestinians. The desperate situation needs the courage and clarity of an Amos, “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
