April 22, 2012 4:00 PM
The exodus from the Holy Land of Palestinian Christians could eventually leave holy cities like Jerusalem and Bethlehem without a local Christian population. Bob Simon reports.
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See all 442 CommentsThe US population needs to receive unbiased media on this issue and to know the truth about Israel since it receives more aid from our government than all the rest of the world combined! Currently this tax money is funding occupation and mass ethnic cleansing, but with more unbiased media this can stop and the US can start to invigorate its tarnished image in that part of the world.
Once Again, THANK YOU FOR STANDING UP AND DELIVERING THE TRUTH
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.
10. The report allows Palestinians to point out that the way the Israelis built the Separation Wall isolated Bethlehem, Jesus's birthplace and a city that still is 18% Christian, had made it "an open-air prison."
1)Give up the West Bank - if not it will be the cause of a major war in Palestine.
2)The US has a responsibility to support and implement Palestinian statehood,provided there is protection for Israel.
3)The US must reduce its amount of FMF program of weapons, and devote a specific amount to Palestinian reparations, a dead issue now in its 64th year. Remember Yasser Arafat and Osama Bin Laden??
4)Any further spying by the Israeli Mossad or selling technology to China must be dealt with severely. Israel is not the parent, it is the child.
5)Any further attack on Israel -from Palestine, Iran, will be met with increasing military aid to Israel.
6)We must separate our cultural(read:religious)affiliations with Israel, and consider that country only strategically and politically. The tourists to the Holy Land will take care of themselves.
7)As many contradictions as you find above have already been far exceeded by US policy toward Israel and the Middle Eastern countries.
8)An agreement must be reached by the 3 major faiths in the Holy Land -permanent access to all the sites of each faith. No future construction by any faith on land or structures validly claimed by another.
9) "Tear down this wall, Mr. Netanyahu"
For better or worse, this is a starting point.
Israelis are far more tolerant than any of the other people of the region. Look at how Christians (or any non-muslims) are treated in neighboring countries. Bob Simon's accusations of Israel are silly, nit-picky, and petty.
Furthermore, it's very difficult to agree with this story if you have ever been to Israel. Walk down the street in Tel Aviv and you will see openly gay couples who do not fear for their lives, as they do in most muslim countries. Walk to neighboring Jaffa, and you will see a very prosperous community of Christian and Muslim Israelis owning very successful restaurants and shops.
It never ceases to amaze me how critical people are of Israel. I guess if the story was about real, current and ongoing Christian persecution in Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc., countries where this has persisted for centuries, then people would not find it of interest.
What happened to fair and balanced reporting, why did you chose not to ask the Israelis' how they like living with a wall around their country. The obvious answer is that they don't. This wall serves a function, it has stopped suicide bombers. The Israelis' were given no choice, but to live with a wall. But you chose not to explore this part of the story.
If you are going to present a report about "The exodus of Christians from the Holy Land" you need to examine the not so old history, because it is all connected. What is happening today in Israel is not happening in vacuum, but it is the result of men made history.
Why don't you go to Eastern Europe and report on the six million dead souls. They were forced into an exodus, in the gas and ovens of concentration camps. There are only a few thousand Jews left in Poland today, but once Poland was the home to the largest Jewish population in Europe. Before WWII, over 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland, making it the second largest Jewish community in the world. WWII destroyed this community completely, devastating their distinctive culture and society. The extent of the loss was so great, so destructive; we know it as the Holocaust, the Shoah.
Holocaust, the Shoah was the final straw why the survivors started returning to their homeland, and the state of Israel was born. On May 14, 1948, the last British forces left and Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq refused to accept the UN partition plan and proclaimed the right of self-determination for the Arabs across the whole of Palestine. They declared war on the new state of Israel and immediately invaded. Israel has had to defend herself since then. If it was up to Israel, she would choose to live in peace with her neighbors.
The Middle East story is a very complex story, and one can argue that we have to go further into history to search for additional understanding. Jews were always expelled from that part of the world, but we know from history that this was their homeland.
Of cause your reporting has no room for this.
You are so blandly narrowed minded, it provokes anger.
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