by Stuart Littlewood
Pro-Palestinian campaigners are cock-a-hoop over the Presbyterian Church USA’s vote to divest from Caterpillar Inc, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions. Hailed as amazing, brave and miraculous in some quarters, it was actually a very close-run thing: 310 to 303 against, with no abstentions.
What a feather in the Zionist cap! A Catholic pope honouring Herzl the Zionist atheist! Francis’ rabbi friend, Abraham Skorka was spot on when he noted that it ‘could be understood as a nod to Zionism’. It was much more than a nod. For the gleeful Netanyahu gang, it was an imprimatur on the expansionism of Greater Israel negating Francis’ two-state solution.
When Pope Benedict XVI visited the Holy Land five years ago, Israel heightened its security, gladly emphasising the potential threat he supposedly faced in Israel from Muslim extremists.
As his successor, Pope Francis, arrived in Israel late on Sunday, security was no less strict. Some 9,000 police had been drafted in to protect him, Christian institutions were under round-the-clock protection, and the intelligence services were working overtime. According to a Vatican official, Israel’s preparations had turned “the holy sites into a military base”.
Jerusalem Christians were 24,000 before Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. Today, we are less than 9,000! This is due to displacement, house confiscation and demolitions, revocation and denial of residency rights and restrictions of movement. We have become an isolated community, economically and socially as a result of Israeli laws against family re-unification, and torn apart by the separation wall. This is the truth of Jerusalem Christians today.
Image above: Jewish men call on Pope Francis to stay in Rome, at a protest against his upcoming visit to Israel, Jordan, and Palestinian refugee camp.Photograph by: Ahmad Gharabli, Getty Images , The Associated Press
Image above: Jewish settlers burned this Christian Church in Jerusalem
Non Jewish sites such as mosques, churches, Christian and Muslim graveyards, as well as Palestinian property and land in both in the occupied territories and Israel are routinely targeted, damaged and defaced.
Those in the West who hesitate to boycott Israeli universities and academic institutions for fear of being accused of de-legitimizing Israel, need only remember this. The Israelis have no respect for other people’s right to education and, in the Palestinians’ case, do everything to obstruct it. They have de-legitimized themselves.
Hebrew graffiti sprayed by Jewish extremists on a Roman Orthodox Church in Jerusalem reads: ‘King David, king of the Jews and Jesus is garbage’. May,9, 2014 (Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images)
After 66 years of brutal occupation “peace talks without applying the principles of International Law are an exercise in delusion”
