Christian Flight

Submitted by Fred Schlomka (Israel), Oct 14, 2009 at 16:27

Seamus - the Christians in this land also define themselves as Palestinians. They leave because of the Israeli Occupation, not because of their Islamic neighbours. My Christian friends in Beit Sahour, Beit Jala, Nazareth and Ramallah are all in solidarity with their Muslim, Bedouin and Samaritan countrymen and women. Don't forget that the Christians here are also Arab and part of Arab culture - as are many Jews by the way. It's all too easy to define our problems as 'us' and 'them' - with the 'them' being Muslims. The reality is that there are a spectrum of people here, of many religions and races, and we need to figure out how to live together. The last thing we need is a bunch of armchair theorists trying to pigeonhole us according to you own world view.

By the way, my reading of history is that the European Christians were the most recent invaders coming over here and forcefully converting people or putting them to the sword, Jew and Muslim alike. The Crusaders even slaughtered local Christians because they assumed that 'real' Christians were white people, whereas the local Christians were, and are, Arabs.

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