Christmas in Palestine

Abbas’ Palestinian Authority was keen to lighting the Manager Square to give the world the illusion that Palestinians still celebrate Christmas.

By Elias Akleh
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

"......Many people in the Western World and in the USA are greatly misinformed and believe that Palestine (or the Holy Land as they like to call it) is inhabited by Moslems only. It escapes their mind that Palestine is the birth place of Jesus Christ and Christianity, and it is thus a natural consequence that Christian Palestinian Arabs live there. Many American coworkers of mine and people I deal with get surprised to learn that I am a Christian Palestinian Arab. The pro-Zionist Israeli Western media is so keen to marginalizing Christian Palestinians in specific and Christian Arabs in general. Zionist Israel and its political supporters are trying to portray to the Western World a pre-Christian Judaic Israel defending its God’s given gift (promised land) from a sea of Moslem terrorists in order to gain the sympathy and the finance of the Christian right.

Israelis fear the existence of Christian Palestinians might obstruct their ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. So they discretely persecute Christian Palestinians, who suffer the worst Israeli persecution tactics to drive them out of the country, especially out of Jerusalem. Christian Jerusalemite Palestinians are offered huge sums of money to sell their properties to Israelis. Israeli tax collectors, accompanied with armed Israeli soldiers, routinely raid Christian shops in Jerusalem, and impose unreasonable huge sums of taxes on their owners, and when they default payments their shops are closed, confiscated, and sold in auctions to the highest bidders – usually Zionist financiers. Zionist extremists had many times invaded and settled in Christian homes in Jerusalem claiming ownership through fake deeds. Transfer of young Christian Palestinians is covertly encouraged in the form of offering them “refuge” and ease of travel to some European countries and to Canada.

Christian persecution was so apparent when the Israeli government itself had defrauded the Greek Orthodox Church and seized church properties in Jerusalem. The government had also threatened not to officially recognize the new Greek Patriarch if the Church does not drop the legal suite against the Israeli government to regain its property......"