By Barry Shaw ——Bio and Archives--December 24, 2019
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When Israel relinquished control of Bethlehem to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo Accord agreement in 1995, 85% of this prosperous town were middle class Christians. Business and life was good when it was part of Israel.
By Christmas 2019, Christians are less than 10% of the population in an economically stricken town.
How did this come about?
In 1995, Elias Freij was that the last Christian mayor of Bethlehem. He appealed to Israeli Prime Minister, Yizchak Rabin, not to withdraw from the city as part of the Accords due to his fear for the future of Christians in Bethlehem. Rabin wanted an official and public statement from the mayor to that effect to take into his negotiations. Freij and the church authorities refused Rabin's request, and the rest is a tragic page in Christian history.
The Palestinian leadership blame the "security wall" for the current situation. They talk of Israel turning Bethlehem into "a prison."
The British artist, Banksy, has advanced his reputation in left-wing circles by promoting propaganda graffiti scrawled on walls throughout Bethlehem. He has even built a hotel in Bethlehem called the Walled-Off Hotel which is full of imagery of Israeli negativity such as a nativity scene in front of a section of security wall with a shattered bullet hole which he calls "The Scar of Bethlehem."
All this propaganda scandalizes Israel and projects Palestinians as oppressed victims.
Nowhere in Banksy's work is there a mention of Palestinian terror promoted and rewarded by the Palestinian Authority, a prolonged terror campaign that has murdered hundreds of Israelis and made the security barrier a necessity, or the threatening behavior of Palestinian Muslims that has driven out most of the town's Christians.
Today, at Christmas 2019, Bethlehem is a once Christian town, with important churches, holy relics and sanctuaries, and a few Christians that live in fear not of Israel, but of Muslim Arabs.
The Christians I once knew had businesses such as tourist shops selling olive wood carvings and religious symbolism to tourists. They are gone. Their homes and the shops now occupied by their Muslim neighbors.
The Palestinians will tell you it's all Israel's fault. They are, after all, the perennial victim. It's become an industry for them. This image sells as much as Banksy's souvenirs in Bethlehem.
But is this the truth?
The Palestinians wanted a separation from Israel and when Israel gave it to them, they used the vacated territories to relaunch their terror campaign against Israeli civilians, killing thousands.
In the name of peace, Bethlehem was the sixth town that Israel vacated and put under Palestinian rule following its withdrawal from Jericho, Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus and Kalkilya.
Initially, there was a free flow of people. Palestinian Arabs worked in Israel. Israelis visited the Arab towns to buy and enjoy the services of the local Arabs. Everything was cheaper than in Israel and the interchange was buoyant and good for everyone.
That was until Arafat commanded his troops to engage in what they called "the Second Intifada," a brutal terror campaign. This was a repeat of an earlier Arafat-inspired killing spree against Israelis civilians that killed and injured many thousands of Israeli Jews.
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The Oslo Accords was but a way-station on the road to the total destruction of Israel according to the Palestinian plan of Jewish elimination by stages.
After the slaughter, Palestinians complained when Israel put up barriers to prevent the incursion into Israel of Palestinian suicide bombers, gunmen, and other forms of crude terrorism.
I am witness to the change, the division, between Israelis and Arabs who want to call themselves Palestinian. In the past, we also enjoyed visiting Tulkarm to buy household goods and enjoy their cafes. I even had Palestinian Arabs work on upgrades to my apartment. That was before Tulkarm became a hotbed of competing Palestinian terrorism.
Killers representing the PLO, Tanzim, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even Lebanese Hezbollah have emerged from the hellhole that once was peaceful Arab Tulkarm to kill Israelis, including women and children. I know. I became the co-founder of the Netanya Terror Victims Organization. Over 50 Netanya victims were killed, many more injured, some badly, in my small hometown.
Since Israel constructed a security wall bordering Tulkarm, no Israeli has been blown up by Palestinian suicide bombers.
The Palestinians of Tulkarm, Nablus, Hebron, and Bethlehem can complain about restrictions as much as they want. They have only themselves to blame.
Peace was once an option. They killed it. Deliberately. Let them blame their leaders, not ours.
One deceptive fable Palestinians tell the world is that they are trapped in Bethlehem behind oppressive walls and checkpoints, that it is a prison with no exit, that it is a form of apartheid, ethnic cleansing. Yet, it is a strange sort of ethnic cleansing prison in which the Christian population has fallen dramatically while the Muslim population has increased exponentially! It's a checkpoint where Christians leave and Muslims enter.
Some ethnic cleansing! Some apartheid!
Christians are not trapped in Bethlehem. Neither are Muslims. They can go through checkpoints after an obligatory security clearance. Israelis, on the other hand, are advised not to enter Bethlehem. Road signs warn Israeli drivers that it is dangerous to travel on certain roads under Palestinian control, and are prevented from doing so in certain sensitive areas.
Contrary to Palestinian claims of Israeli "oppression," in Bethlehem the major problem still facing the few remaining Christians is the duress posed by Islamic extremists and Palestinian bullies. They are the ones that are driving them out of that town.
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, reported a few years back, "I have spent two days with fellow Christian leaders in Bethlehem. There are signs of disturbing anti-Christian feeling among parts of the Muslim population, despite the constant traditions of co-existence. But their plight is made more intolerable by the tragic conditions made by the security fence."
Both of these tragedies are the responsibility of the brutal and uncaring oppression of the Palestinian leadership and the emboldened Muslim population who have exploited the Palestinian-inspired turmoil.
In a televised report for Fox News by Pete Hegseth called "The Battle in Bethlehem," Hegseth found it difficult to find a Christian willing to go on camera to tell him what they told him privately. He had several booked to appear. They all backed out at the last minute, even after he promised to hide their identity.
When Hegseth mentioned this to law professor, Eugene Kontorovich, the professor smilingly told him, "They are not going to tell you they live in danger, because they live in danger."
Among the Palestinian Christians there are a radical minority that perpetuate an anti-Semitic Kairos doctrine of replacement theology. They help generate a relatively new Palestinian lie – that Jesus is a Palestinian.
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My opinion was formed from living in Israel, witnessing the horror of terror, reading the misinformation and downright lies perpetrated by the Western media, seen the incompetence of Israeli leaders to project the facts. My website comes from a particularly personal perspective. The articles may be controversial and provocative. For whatever strikes Israel today will surely visit you tomorrow.
Barry Shaw is the author of Fighting Hamas, BDS and Anti-Semitism.’
Barry is the author of ISRAEL - RECLAIMING THE NARRATIVE which is available at Israelnarrative.com” or at Amazon Kindle.