April 22, 2012 4:00 PM
Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States, discusses the role of Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land, and their growing exodus from the Middle East.
Christians of the Holy Land
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See all 31 CommentsIt is so thick and it spreads to the US with ease. The ingenuity, rather the "disingenuity," of US groups like AMCHA and Stand With US is breathtaking in this regard. That's why we need and value Bob Simon ...for his vigilance and defiance.
Dear Supporters,
This week, something rare happened: A major U.S. media outlet actually showed the effects of the Israeli occupation on Palestinians.
But the candid reporting by "60 Minutes", America's most respected news program, has unleashed a furious response from Jewish and right-wing Christian groups.
Unless we push back now -- and thank "60 Minutes" -- real journalism like this will become even more rare. Can you sign our petition to thank "60 Minutes"?
Go here: http://www.ThankYou60Minutes.org
I'm sure you'll agree that now they need to hear from you and others who support their courageous and sadly all too accurate report about the Palestinian Christian exodus from cities like Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
Under Israeli occupation, Palestinians have endured decades of unlawful home demolitions, checkpoints, land confiscation, detentions without charges, and much more. That's primarily why Palestinians are leaving, and why Palestinian Christians issued a call to Christians in other lands to help create pressure on the Israeli government through divestment campaigns.
In response to this call, this week the United Methodist Church is considering a historic vote to begin phased divestment from companies that profit from the occupation. The "60 Minutes" segment, which you can watch on our petition page, explains clearly why church divestment is the right thing to do. The occupation dehumanizes Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Please, take a moment to sign the petition and share this link, http://www.ThankYou60Minutes.org, with your friends. Don't let "60 Minutes" back down. We need more fair and truthful reporting, not less.
Thank you,
Cecilie Surasky
Jewish Voice for Peace
http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
Most Christian tourists to Israel never even meet an indigenous Palestinian Christian.
On my third of seven trips to Israel and Palestine since 2005, Hind Khoury, who was the delegate general of the Palestine Liberation Organization in France from 2006 through 2010, informed this reporter:
"The truth has been hidden, and it has been maneuvered by an oppressive and violent occupation.
"This occupation violates every single human right imaginable. Governments today are getting their own way to serve their own interests which are: money and power.
"It is ethnic cleansing that is happening in Jerusalem. Bethlehem is a ghetto, an island, an open-air prison! When the gate in Beit Jala is done, it will completely isolate Bethlehem from her sister city Jerusalem which is only three miles away.
"Before Hamas won the elections there were 370 checkpoints. There are now 25% more. Because of the moral bankruptcy of the PA, Hamas won the elections and they should not be feared. They have an open mind and open heart and many of them say: 'Fight them with love.'
"The International community put conditions on Hamas, but it is not about Israel's existence we are speaking of, it is the existence of Palestine and Human Rights that must be addressed! The world is unbalanced and the polarization just increases the violence. Civil society must become responsible."
"The Christian EXODUS from the Holy Land and the Archbishop of Canterbury misses the mark" @
http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2101&Itemid=247
What a shameful piece, "The Christians of the Holy Land." It is already garnered much deserved notoriety and will be infamously remembered as one the most blatantly unbalanced works by an internationally respected journalist. Aside from the selective and sometime completely erroneous representation of facts, you comported yourself with utter unprofessionalism. Your asymmetric interviewing of Ambassador Oren compared to the Kairos authors was shocking. You came off as a petty, bitter man indignant that Oren had complained about him to his boss. You let your indignation and anger become the story. Your abrasive posture toward Oren might have been explained as 'hard-hitting' journalism except for the fact that you treated the authors of the repugnant Kairos document with kid gloves. The distinction was glaring. There was so much you could have challenged them on from their provocative comments such as "Christianity has a stamp on its back 'made in Palestine' " (Palestine and not the historically accurate "Judea", clearly meant to strip the origins of Christianity from ancient Judaism in the Holy Land) to the anti-Semitic aspects of the Kairos document. Instead you gave them a complete pass on everything. It was a love-fest not an interview. It's seems, Mr. Simon, your gritty contentious journalistic style is reserved only for Israeli officials whereas for Israel bashers you are 'tabula rasa'.
http://www.juancole.com/2012/04/top-ten-reasons-israel-tried-to-censor-bob-simons-report-on-palestinian-christians.html
Posted on 04/25/2012 by Juan
Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren not only called the head of CBS news in an attempt to quash a report on the displacement of Palestinian Christians by the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but he briefed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of the far right wing Likud Party on his attempt.
Here are the top ten reasons Israel's Likud Party would have wanted to censor American television news on this occasion (and of course we don't know all the occasions they have successfully done so):
1. The report told Americans that there are Palestinian Christians. Right wing Israelis have attempted to displace, expropriate and erase the Palestinian nation, and to convince Americans that Palestinians don't exist or if they do are enemies of the U.S. When the foe of the US was the Soviet Union, they made the Palestinians Communists. When the foe became al-Qaeda, they made the Palestinians violent fundamentalists. But if some percentage of Palestinians is Christians, then that fact disrupts the propaganda. In fact, millions of Palestinians are descended from the 700,000 or so Palestinians ethnically cleansed by the Israelis from what is now Israel in 1948, of whom about 10 percent were Christian.
2. The report mentioned that some Palestinians are Lutherans, Catholics and Episcopalians, establishing a link of commonality between them and Americans. The Israeli Likud Party wants Americans identifying only with Israelis, not with Palestinians.
3. The report told Americans that Israel is occupying and colonizing Palestinian land. Most Americans think it is the other way around because of the success of Likud disinformation.
4. The report let it slip that Palestinians in the West Bank need a permit to travel to Arab East Jerusalem and are subjected within the West Bank to humiliating check points that turn a 7 mile journey into an all-day ordeal. This system sounds an awful lot like the old South African Apartheid.
5. The report allowed Palestinians to speak for themselves and to refute Oren's anti-Palestinian talking points. It is a key principle of right wing Israeli propaganda that Palestinians should never be allowed to challenge the Israeli narrative on American television.
6. The report allowed a prominent Palestinian businessman and Coca Cola distributor to say that he knew of no Palestinian Christians who were leaving the West Bank and Jerusalem because of Muslims but that rather they were leaving because of Israeli oppression.
7. It allowed the Palestinians to point out that the West Bank now looks like Swiss cheese, with Israeli colonies grabbing the good land and water, and the stateless Palestinians pushed into the holes.
8. The report described the Palestinian Kairos Document, calling for nonviolent, peaceful struggle by Palestinians against Israeli Occupation and land grabs. Likud propaganda insists in racist fashion that all Palestinians are inherently angry and violent and that their protest against being made stateless and homeless by Israel is irrational.
9. The report quotes an Israeli scholar who puts "Political Judaism" on par with "Political Islam." It is a key principle of Likud propaganda that no movement in Israel may ever be compared to movements in the Muslim world.
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