Squeezing a Story Out of Bethlehem
December 23, 2012 15:32 by Simon Plosker
Every year around this time, it’s the same tired old story. A journalist attempts to find a Christmas angle for Palestinian suffering, most often focusing on Bethlehem’s Palestinian Christian residents. This year is no different and Harriet Sherwood of The Guardian and sister Sunday paper The Observer is the journalist filling the seasonal role.
The Guardian regularly trashes or undermines Jewish historical claims to the land of Israel that go back to biblical times. Why is it, however, that the same paper has no problem promoting the claims of Palestinians using biblical imagery to buttress the case if those Palestinians happen to be Christian?
Sherwood’s Observer piece “Bethlehem Christians feel the squeeze as Israeli settlements spread” begins with the subhead:
Near a biblical landscape of donkeys and olive trees, homes are being built and Palestinian Christians fear for their future.
Referring to the Jerusalem suburbs of Gilo and Har Homa as “settlements”, Sherwood claims that “Both are largely built on Bethlehem land.” In reality, much of Gilo’s land was legally purchased by Jews in the 1930s while most of Har Homa’s land was Jewish owned dating back to the 1940s.
If Sherwood’s history is faulty, then so is her geography. According to her:
Bethlehem is now surrounded by 22 settlements, including Nokdim, where the hardline former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman lives, and Neve Daniel, home to public diplomacy minister Yuli Edelstein.
Sherwood is evidently trying to make a political point considering that both Nokdim and Neve Daniel are both tiny in comparison to the Bethlehem region and are located at least 10km away from the center of Bethlehem and are themselves surrounded by Arab settlements. In addition, Neve Daniel is part of the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements, a region where the core Jewish villages had been founded in the 1940s on land purchased by Jews in the 1920s and 30s and destroyed before the 1948 War of Independence. Most observers believe Gush Etzion would be annexed to Israel in the event of a peace deal with the Palestinians.
But the crux of Sherwood’s piece can be summed up as follows:
In the birthplace of Jesus, the impact of Israeli settlements and their growth has been devastating.
While Christians now make up a minority of Bethlehem’s residents, Sherwood’s piece gives the impression that Israel is chiefly responsible for the plight of the Christian community there. She talks about the Palestinian suburb of Beit Jala and the Israeli security barrier without mentioning the security situation there during the last Palestinian intifada. One of the chief reasons that the security barrier was built in the first place was in order to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Jerusalem from the Bethlehem region while Beit Jala was used as a firing position for Palestinian gunmen shooting at Israeli civilians in their Gilo homes during the early 2000s.
As for the decline of the Christian population:
This article is continued on Page 2
Israel and Stuff » Anti-Israeli propaganda wrapped up in a Story of Bethlehem.
6:18 pm
Dec 23, 2012
[...] original Honest Reporting at: http://honestreporting.com/squeezing-a-story-out-of-bethlehem/ Category: Mid-East News | Tags: anti-Israel, Bethlehem, Palestinian [...]
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Wieder eine Geschichte aus Bethlehem quetschen « Medien BackSpin
7:45 pm
Dec 23, 2012
[...] HonestReporting Media BackSpin, 23. Dezember 2012 [...]
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Shimona from the Palace
12:26 am
Dec 24, 2012
Really – does anyone expect anything else from the Guardian?
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Annual Christmas anti-Israel hate-fest gets under way | Anne's Opinions
7:03 am
Dec 24, 2012
[...] I could have done, and have saved me a great deal of effort so I will quote from their post, “Squeezing a story out of Bethlehem” and recommend that you read it all: Every year around this time, it’s the same tired old [...]
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Armed With “Statehood,” Abbas Threatens to Dismantle PA | Blogs about Israel aggregation
9:58 am
Dec 24, 2012
[...] 3. Tis the season for big media to try squeezing a story out of Bethlehem. [...]
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caro
10:30 am
Dec 24, 2012
Poor Palestinians, oy vey. My heart bleeds for them. Did that stupid “journalist” forget that the whole Christmas story is actually a Jewish one and that all the players were in fact Jews, including, of course, Jesus? What gullible fools these people are.
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Larry Breindel
6:36 pm
Dec 24, 2012
My only issue with the phrase “the whole Christmas story is actually a Jewish one”
is that it did not go far enough!
The Temple was reclaimed by the Maccabees in 139 BCE
The next yerar, Chanukah was celebrated for the first time—complete with
lighting of the Chanukah Menorah.
Jesus celebrated Chanukah but the idea that his was Jewish story
is NEVER mentioned!
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JP
6:47 pm
Dec 24, 2012
“the whole Christmas story is actually a Jewish one and…all the players were in fact Jews, including, of course, Jesus”.
True. Many Jews and Christians seem not to understand that the Christmas story is indeed a Jewish one, (though there were also Gentiles involved – the Magi – probably from ancient Babylonia, as well as the Idumenian, King Herod.) You could say that our only major disagreement is about the identity of Messiah.
By contrast, both Jews and Christians (including Christian Arabs) who believe and seek to follow the principles of our own scriptures will INEVITABLY be persecuted by Muslims who believe and seek to follow the principles of THEIR scriptures.
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Squeezing a Story Out of Bethlehem | Blogs about Israel aggregation
2:28 pm
Dec 24, 2012
[...] This article is continued on Page 2 [...]
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Ami
3:55 pm
Dec 24, 2012
History is easily predictable for the simple reason that we’ve seen it before. If the Guardian and Observer cared as much about the Christians in Bethlehem as they do about cuddling up to oil barons, they would focus on the clear indicators of the future of Christians in the Arab world. They can start with Lebanon and it’s bloody civil war, then they can proceed to present-day Syria, Iraq, Egypt, the Sudan, etc. Christians in Bethlehem, etc. know that as soon as they cease to be effective propaganda tools, they will become “history” in the fabricated “state” of “Palestine” and will join the swelling ranks of refugees from Arab states.
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KRIS KRISTIAN
4:34 pm
Dec 24, 2012
I can never understand how Christians can support Muslims who massacre Christians in every Muslim country.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East, where Christians are protected and have no fear.
It wont be long before cities like London, a Christian city, will be over run by Musilms. The Muslim community has already more than doubled.
Well, I hope the Chrisitians in London and other Chrisitian cities will enjoy living under sharia law.
It may take 15 to 20 years, but it is alreday happening.
I have written this many times.
Before Christian Jew haters, believe every lie from the Muslims, why dont they first ask the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem for the truth?
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Malcolm Weller
5:03 pm
Dec 24, 2012
Aviram Oshri notes that there is an absence of evidence of the settlement of Bethlehem near Jerusalem at the time when Jesus was born. There is archeological evidence of the probability that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Galilee.
Aviram Oshri, “Where was Jesus Born?”, Archaeology, Volume 58 Number 6, November/December 2005.
The Times 24th December 2012
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JP
6:31 pm
Dec 24, 2012
London can’t even be called a “Christian city” any more – if it ever truly was!
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Eliyahu
5:02 pm
Dec 24, 2012
why do you call these people “palestinians”? When was there ever a “palestinian people” in all history? Why not call them “Arab Christians” or “Arabic-speaking Christians”? If you call the Arabs in the Land of Israel “palestinians,” then why do you criticize Sherwood [admittedly not the sharpest pencil in the box] for speaking of “palestinian villages in Israel”?
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michael
8:31 pm
Dec 24, 2012
Jesus would be thrilled to see his brothers returning to their historical roots. He would be appalled to finds Palestininans occupying his land
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P.Y.
10:04 pm
Dec 24, 2012
I learned long ago not to depend on the nonsense in mainstream media–one reason I like to get Honest Reporting’s newsletter, and go to other sources.
As a Christian, I challenge other Christians–and non–to read the whole of the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation–all of it–genuinely asking G-d to guide your heart. That will put everything into proper perspective. There is only One G-d–the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. G-d gave that land forever to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. While most have turned away from G-d, he still loves them. Many will return to him; he will be their G-d; and they shall be his people. Halleluijah! We all need to repent and follow him
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Arlene
11:28 pm
Dec 27, 2012
We seem to forget that before the 4th century C.E., Bethlehem was very much a Jewish village; it is near the site of the burial of Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob; it was the city of David, and it was the birthplace of the very Jewish Yeshua (Jesus). That covers 3,000 about years.
History has been conveniently revised by those with an agenda that would deny any Jewish presence in the land of Israel at all. Truth will out.
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Bethlehem’s Doing Better Than Big Media Lets On | Blogs about Israel aggregation
10:28 pm
Dec 24, 2012
[...] other journos rehashing the old settlements-squeeze-Bethlehem dispatches, credit the Indy with some real [...]
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emes
2:19 am
Dec 25, 2012
Leviticus 26 “If you walk in My statutes I will give you peace in the land…” “but if you will not hearken unto Me…I will appoint terror over you…”
We are meant to be on the land given by HaShem but the situation involves appeasing the governments of other countries who feel sympatica with the palestinians – we were not meant to give an inch of land away, to anyone – but we did and the present day problem is a punitive one. No-one else wants these people so “give-em that which the Jews have!” – sweep the problem under the rug, even to the detriment of Israel.
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Armed With “Statehood,” Abbas Threatens to Dismantle PA « American Infidels
7:05 am
Dec 25, 2012
[...] 3. Tis the season for big media to try squeezing a story out of Bethlehem. [...]
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Eli
3:48 pm
Dec 26, 2012
Does the Guardian really believe that if only we nasty Jews weren’t there, that the Christians in the West Bank would be allowed to live in peace and prosper? I defy them to show us a single Islamist nation in the mideast where a Christian minority (or any other religion, for that matter) is permitted to prosper.
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Ami
4:59 pm
Dec 26, 2012
As I noted in my earlier post, “History is easily predictable … we’ve seen it (happening) before”: Here are just a few of the numerous examples:
-Coptic Christians in Egypt: Decimated
-Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Massacred by the millions with several million forgotten refugees
-Indonesian Muslim massacre of Christians in East Timor
-The massacre of Christians by Muslims in the Sudan and the massive refugee exodus that followed
-The war in Lebanon: Muslims against Christians
As to Bethlehem, it was a Christian town; however the Christian population has been dwindling there since the Brits facilitated turn over of control of the town to Muslim settlers (aka “palestinians”
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P.Y.
1:55 am
Dec 29, 2012
Yes, Bethlehem was and should be a Jewish town/city.
The first Christians–and for a long time–were ALL Jewish.
Yeshua (Jesus) was born there. His humanity and family are Jews.
(PS Christ is the Greekified word for Messiah (English)/Savior–Mashiach–the Hebrew word)
G-d warned not to divide the land.
We all need to follow the G-d of the Bible–from the heart–Jew or Gentile. He loves both and wants both to turn from sin, come to Him, to know Him, & be saved.
While he is a G-d of Love, he is also a G-d of perfect justice and righteousness–We come His Way–or we don’t come at all. Judgment Day is coming! Ask Him to reveal the Truth to you–then watch for His answer!
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Squeezing a Story Out of Bethlehem | The Conservative Papers
3:30 am
Jan 04, 2013
[...] December 23, 2012 15:32 by Simon Plosker [...]
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4:19 pm
Jan 16, 2013
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