Christians are being persecuted all over the Middle East, North Africa and south Asia. They are being chased out, pressured out, attacked and killed. Churches are set on fire or bombed.
I can't seem to get over my utter shock that the Western world, with its Christian history, seems indifferent to all this.
Here are some examples of what's happening to Christians --
IRAQ: From a well written review article (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/20/religious-cleansing-iraq-christians/) --
“The wave of persecution that has been directed at Iraq’s Christians after 2003 has never received much attention by either President Bush or President Obama’s administrations, but it has been a grave human-rights problem. The campaign against Christians has encompassed 70 deliberate church bombings and assaults, as well as assassinations, an epidemic of kidnappings, and other attacks against clergy and laity alike. In recent years, particularly since 2004, a million of Iraq’s Christians have been driven out of the country by such atrocities. This can be rightly called targeted religious cleansing, and it is a crime against humanity.”
SYRIA:
Christians earlier in this century represented about one-third of the Syrian population; now they account for less than 10 percent.
LEBANON:
In 1932, they composed 55 percent of the Lebanese population, now less than 30 percent.
EGYPT:
Copts began leaving Egypt in significant numbers after the 1952 revolution.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Saturday, June 21, 2014
WHO does this land belong to??? Part 2
What is the actual history of the region? Palestine was the name given to the region by the Romans after they conquered Israel in 70 AD. They really wrecked Jerusalem and you can still see the damage they did, throwing the stones of the Jewish Temple off the Temple Mount onto the ground below. (Take a tour of the south wall in the Old City)
Here is a long story about this land and who lived here in Wikipedia --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine
What makes a place a country? You'd need a ruler or a senate, a currency, buildings, maybe some art. There aren't any! Palestine was an area -- like the Midwest, say -- and since 70 AD, it's been conquered again and again and been part of larger empires, none of them ever having their capital in Jerusalem.
WHO does this land belong to?? Part 1
So I studied this and read From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine by Joan Peters and written in 1984. It is a very thick book. She was a statistician, English, not Jewish, and writes that she began the book expecting to be able to validate the Palestinian claims. But that's not what happened.
She went through boxes and boxes of British Home Office reports. She was able to reconstruct a lot of the population demographics before 1948 and the results were quite remarkable. A vast majority of Palestinians were not indigenous to the land; they had been migrants -- or were workers imported by the British as they developed the country.
Mark Twain visited Israel in 1867, and published his impressions in Innocents Abroad. He described a desolate country – devoid of both vegetation and human population:
“….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
Others who came described the same thing. Desolate, Empty. Certainly people lived here -- but what were their circumstances?
You can read lots of books on this -- and should -- but you can also just sit and think about it for a minute. It's hot and dry here. There were huge swampy areas in the north. The Judean desert is...well, a desert. The Dead Sea is...well, dead. The Negev is a desert. It's a pretty hostile land agriculturally speaking -- or can be. And 100 years ago, it most certainly was.
When I researched how much land was privately owned, I read that by 1948, Jews owned about 7% of the land. Not much, right? But Arabs owned....wait for it....11%. This was the Ottoman Empire. There were absentee landowners.
So this image of a land filled with Arabs farmers, peacefully farming (and growing what???) the land they had lived on for centuries is just not reality.
More on this to come.
She went through boxes and boxes of British Home Office reports. She was able to reconstruct a lot of the population demographics before 1948 and the results were quite remarkable. A vast majority of Palestinians were not indigenous to the land; they had been migrants -- or were workers imported by the British as they developed the country.
Mark Twain visited Israel in 1867, and published his impressions in Innocents Abroad. He described a desolate country – devoid of both vegetation and human population:
“….. A desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
Others who came described the same thing. Desolate, Empty. Certainly people lived here -- but what were their circumstances?
You can read lots of books on this -- and should -- but you can also just sit and think about it for a minute. It's hot and dry here. There were huge swampy areas in the north. The Judean desert is...well, a desert. The Dead Sea is...well, dead. The Negev is a desert. It's a pretty hostile land agriculturally speaking -- or can be. And 100 years ago, it most certainly was.
When I researched how much land was privately owned, I read that by 1948, Jews owned about 7% of the land. Not much, right? But Arabs owned....wait for it....11%. This was the Ottoman Empire. There were absentee landowners.
So this image of a land filled with Arabs farmers, peacefully farming (and growing what???) the land they had lived on for centuries is just not reality.
More on this to come.
What is this blog about?
I grew up in Chicago and I'm an incredibly patriotic American, right down to the goose bumps when I hear the national anthem.
I loved Chicago. I lived there until I was 27 and I loved walking there in the spring. I went to the University of Chicago and I loved Hyde Park and the quiet streets. I thought I'd never leave and then....
By accident I traveled to Colorado and I fell in love with the Rockies and the big skies and the bright sun. Met my hubby in the mountains and I never wanted to leave, but we kept leaving, first to Christchurch, NZ, then back to the Rockies, then Wasilla, Alaska, then back to the Rockies, then away to Chicago, then back to the Rockies.....and then
We moved to Jerusalem. This patriotic American took a full four years to adjust. Now in addition to still being a patriot American, I am also an intensely patriotic Israeli, a Zionist. And by the way, I am what they call here dati leumi, orthodox, a spinner, weaver, doll maker, dog babysitter, former homeschooler....mom, grandma
Like my grandma Ida, I love the news, news shows, talk shows, opinion pieces, raves.
And I am AMAZED at all the lies in the news about Israel! And not just the lies about Israel but the lies about the Jews, the Arabs, the Bible, Islam -- just for a start. So I am going to set a lofty goal for this blog: this blog will be about the truth.
This is not "my truth" or "my narrative" -- rather the truth here is based on research, data, verification, care with context and checking sources. I have included some people's opinions because, well, they're just entertaining -- but they are obviously opinions, not facts.
So here's my best shot.
love,
paula
I loved Chicago. I lived there until I was 27 and I loved walking there in the spring. I went to the University of Chicago and I loved Hyde Park and the quiet streets. I thought I'd never leave and then....
By accident I traveled to Colorado and I fell in love with the Rockies and the big skies and the bright sun. Met my hubby in the mountains and I never wanted to leave, but we kept leaving, first to Christchurch, NZ, then back to the Rockies, then Wasilla, Alaska, then back to the Rockies, then away to Chicago, then back to the Rockies.....and then
We moved to Jerusalem. This patriotic American took a full four years to adjust. Now in addition to still being a patriot American, I am also an intensely patriotic Israeli, a Zionist. And by the way, I am what they call here dati leumi, orthodox, a spinner, weaver, doll maker, dog babysitter, former homeschooler....mom, grandma
Like my grandma Ida, I love the news, news shows, talk shows, opinion pieces, raves.
And I am AMAZED at all the lies in the news about Israel! And not just the lies about Israel but the lies about the Jews, the Arabs, the Bible, Islam -- just for a start. So I am going to set a lofty goal for this blog: this blog will be about the truth.
This is not "my truth" or "my narrative" -- rather the truth here is based on research, data, verification, care with context and checking sources. I have included some people's opinions because, well, they're just entertaining -- but they are obviously opinions, not facts.
So here's my best shot.
love,
paula
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)