www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Christians of the world should be ashamed

Anyone can read Dr. Maria Khoury's messages about the (I won't use the word apartheid) evil segregation that is occurring. They are walling off villages like they have forgotten about the Warsaw Ghetto.

Zenovia, the Muslim terrorists have committed attrocities. The Israelis make a point of administratively assuring that the Palestinian Christians are oppressed, and so completely downtrodden that they are not capapble of fighting back...what could they fight WITH?? I think you do not understand that their lives are literally crumbling around them....no trash pick up, no road repairs, no money, no jobs. The Israelis on the other side of the wall have all these things.

Gaudior, who laments the appalling conditions Israel has foisted on non-Jewish citizens

Shlomo Rilian,

The villages are Ikrit (Melkite) and the Maronite village of Biram. The Israeli High Court has stated that the villeges should be returned, but the government refuses.

Poosh BaShlomo,
Yuhannon

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,

Also, here is an article that tells why the Israeli Government [israelinsider.com] refuses to give back the land. I would also like to quote from a specific section of the article which goes to the heart of the matter. The one point that needs to be understood is that the people they are talking about are citizens of Israel. The only sin that they have is the misfortune to be born Palestinian.

A special committee established a few weeks ago by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon prepared the groundwork for the cabinet's decision. Government secretary Gideon Sa'ar, foreign policy adviser Danny Ayalon and Ministry of Justice representative Ariela Kelai told Sharon that if the government accepted the residents' request to return to their homes, it would be faced with similar requests from other villagers and would be forced to deal with the sensitive issue of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees.

Poosh BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

Dear Icognitus you said:

A secular Palestine (yes, ALL of Palestine), where all citizens of whatever religion (or no religion) have equal rights before the law, and where the places which are sacred to certain religions are protected by law (this probably involves international status for Jerusalem). The right of return for all refugees who originally lived in Palestine and their direct descendants."

I say:

A little reality check here. The purpose of establishing Israel as a state was so the Jewish people could have a homeland. Now what is the purpose of a homeland? Well it was the homeland that the two-million Greeks could go to when they were ethnically cleansed from Asia Minor, their ancestral home, by being massacred and thrown into the sea. Had they not had that homeland, they would have all been massacred as were the Armenians during the first half of the last century. A homeland is what the Jewish people would have had when Hitler and his Nazi's were committing their genocide. Should they be denied this once again?

Now if the Palestinians move back into Israel, they will be in the majority, and the Jews will lose that homeland that they have fought so desperately for. (I'm not saying they were angels, especially Shamir and Begin, terrorists themselves). But they have quite a history of sufferings, so they will, understandably, not give up that homeland easily. Especially considering that most Palestinians still insist that they will throw them in the sea.

You know, what would happen if everyone began to insist on returning to the lands that were taken away from them. First of all, as a Greek, I know that Constantinople was predominantly Greek 100 years ago. They were forced to leave by Turkish mobs about 10 to 20 years after the Palestinians were forced out of Israel. Shouldn't those Greeks be able to return home. What makes the Palestinians any better than them? Remember, Istambul was Constantinople and before that the Greek city of Byzantium. They were there way before the Turks.

Then again, what makes the Palestinians any better than the Greeks that lived in Cairo, and especially the 'Greek' city of Alexandria in Egypt. Built by the Greek Macedonian, Alexander the Great. Nassar ethnically cleansed them about 10 to 15 years after the Palestinians were forced to leave Israel. What makes the Palestinians have more rights than those Greeks?

Then we could go to Northern Greece that was taken over by Albania about the same time that the Palestinians were kicked out of Israel. Those Greeks are still leaving, now that Albania is not a communist country and the borders have opened.

Then there is Cyprus, which is still occupied and had 40 % of it's land ethnically cleansed by the Turks. They then transplanted Turks from the mainland to replace the Greek Cypriots. This was done 20 years after Israel became a nation. What gives the Palestinians more rights to return to their homeland than the Cypriots?

And I could go on and on. There are the Bulgarians, the Serbians, and basically all the countries of Eastern Europe. What gives the Palestinian more rights than all of them? Well I'll tell you what. It is the expansionist policy of Islam and it's propaganda, because 'logically' they have no case. They are Arabs, and they are forced by the other Arabs to remain there in order to reclaim the land.

And what is their propaganda? The exploitation and willingness to sacrifice 'their' own people in order to gain the sympathies of the West for the expansion of Islam.

Zenovia

Dear Gaudior you said:

"Anyone can read Dr. Maria Khoury's messages about the (I won't use the word apartheid) evil segregation that is occurring. They are walling off villages like they have forgotten about the Warsaw Ghetto."

I say:

Do they have a choice? The terrorism they suffered each week was equivalent to their population as our World Trade Center attack occurring every week would be to ours.

You said:

"Zenovia, the Muslim terrorists have committed attrocities. The Israelis make a point of administratively assuring that the Palestinian Christians are oppressed, and so completely downtrodden that they are not capapble of fighting back...what could they fight WITH??"

I say:

The Palestinian Christians are in a terrible pickle. They are forced to side with the Palestinian Muslims, otherwise their life would not be worth a penny...yet by doing so, the Israelis will have nothing to do with them. They are forced to become their enemies.

You said:

Gaudior, who laments the appalling conditions Israel has foisted on non-Jewish citizens.

I say:

Yes, but what is the alternative? If these Christian Palestinians worked with the Jewish state, they would be hunged as traitors by the Palestinians.

As for Maria Khoury, her husband owns a brewery in a Christian town in the Palestinian controlled area. I think the name is Taybeh, (I'm not sure). She certainly wrote many articles condemning the Israelis even to the point of referring to the suicide bombers in one article as 'martyrs'.

Well about two weeks ago, she stated what happened to their town. A Christian man was alleged to have made a Muslim girl working for him pregnant. Her family killed her and then a mob of 300 went into the Christian town where she lives and has her brewery, and burned down 16 houses of those assumed to be relatives of the man.

She said she was surprised because she knew so many Muslims, and had one Muslim boy in her house and considered him almost as a son....yet she had to argue for three hours with the mob so that they would not burn down the brewery.

Well she tried to put some blame on the Israeli authorities for not allowing the Palestinian police to go through the Israeli area, and said that the authorities were quite glad that no one was hurt because that would have made the situation much more troublesome. Of course the girl that was killed by her family was not considered a person.

No one was arrested so tell me, how long do you think that the Christians will be able to live under a Palestinian state?

I know that a Roman Catholic prist tried to explain that it was not an attack against Christians, but an issue of 'honor'. Somehow I can't help but feel that if he said differently, he would be jeapardizing the lives of the Christians throughout the Middle East. Two days ago I heard that one of the terrorist groups will start killing Christians.


Zenovia

Dear Zenovia,

Have you considered the simple fact that if Israel allowed Christians and Muslims freedom to be equals, and to obtain jobs that let them live, and stopped enforcing curfews to the point where if someone DIES during curfew, they will not allow the body to be removed from the house...and essentially treated all citizens as equal, that the Muslims terrorists would have a whole lot LESS to object to?

Did you stop to think that suicide bombing is an act of sheer desperation? As to being martyrs, that is what Islam considers them. Most of them are not blowing themselves up because life is so good here...they are blowing themselves up because life is very, very bad for them, and they can only hope that the Koran was right about paradise. If life held hope for them here, the MAJORITY would not do any such thing.

How many suicide bombings by American Muslims do you hear of? Yes, England had its home-grown bombers, but they, too, are a rarity. The reason it does not happen DAILY here is because there are other options. When a government fosters hate and sub-human status for many of its people, what, exactly, makes you think that those people will be happy? They will revolt, however they can.

Gaudior, who suggest you read Amnesty's volumes of human rights violations by Israel.

Carson asks me "Didn't you ever slur your speach?" Since according to my copy of Webster's there is no such word as "speach", I fear that Carson's question is unanswerable.

Zenovia points out, correctly, that "The purpose of establishing Israel as a state was so the Jewish people could have a homeland." Leaving aside the difficulty of defining "the Jewish people", it is normally assumed that Judaism is a religion, not a race or nationality, and it is not the general practice of mankind to have "homelands" for different religions - there is no such place as Orthodoxia, Catholicia, Protestantia, Shintoia, et al.

Nevertheless, that was the aim of creating "Israel" - to be, as the World Zionist Organization calls it, the Jewish State.

However, the territory in question was not vacant - it was already occupied by the Palestinians, whom the Zionists expelled by force, violence and "ethnic cleansing". For a really thorough and scholarly account, try Lilienthal, "What Price Israel" (if you can find a copy).

Incognitus

No more weapons? Who's taking away their weapons? They've got one of the best, most heavily armed militaries in the world. It's astonishing, quite frankly.

With the Occupied Territories made into an independant, secular Palestinian state, the IDF would be able to close rank and guard its borders much more effectively. Even the IDF has stated as much time and time again, hence the construction of "the Wall", as ill-placed as it is.

Incognitus' recommendations were no different than the recommendations of some of the finest political and military minds in Israel. He could have been speaking in the Knesset with his suggestions.

Peace and God bless!

Are you trying to start a fight? What is the point of such taunting? Don't you have better things to do?

Dan L

Christians do offer an alternative to to constant fighting. It's called "forgiveness". Nevertheless, it is difficult to implement when the 1365 year history of Islam is one of dominance and violence. There are Islamic traditions of peaceful coexistence but even otherwise peaceful Muslims operate in fear when facing the Wahhabists.

We could spend the rest of our lives pointing fingers and retaliating. Or we can find a way to protect peace loving people while teaching warlike people that Jihad and Dhimmitude aren't the only principles by which the world can function.

Dan L, who once again encourages people to read Stephen Schwartz, Bat Ye'or, and to examine http://jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/

CDL

Ghosty,

If the Jews no longer have a homeland in a hostile environment with the dominant group being Muslims who would most like impose Sharia there is no doubt in my mind that the Jews would not have weapons. The real question must be asked "If the Muslims always leave their 'protected' minorities defenseless why would they not do it in Israel?"

If there were some way to protect the lives of the Jews in the middle East in the context of a system that favored no religion over another I'd certainly support it. I'm not convinced that such a state is possible.

Dan L

Dear Ghosty,
The Knesset would hardly approve of a proposal to make ALL Palestine a secular state with no religious discrimination - that would destroy the basis of the "Jewish State". Still less would the Knesset approve a proposal to allow all the refugees of Palestinian origin and their direct descendants to return to their homes.

Nevertheless, those are indispensable conditions for a serious resolution of the conflict based on peace and justice.

Incognitus

TIME OUT!

I hesistate to interfere because it is quite evident that Fr Incognitus can and does speak for himself, but for the benefit of all of you who have alerted me to Carson's various ramblings...

Carson:

your first comment on this thread to incognitus was

and your last comment to incognitus was

Perhaps you should have thought about your last post before you sent the first.

Restart the clock.


(Sorry for the football lingo... I'm still relishing the Trojan victory over the Fighting Irish, and I have been wearing a button that proclaims "GOD is a Trojan!")

(Fr Deacon) John Montalvo III,
USC Class of 1982

"FIGHT ON!"

For the benefit of those who lack the necessary experience, I shall explain that the "Fighting Irish" (of Notre Dame) is a collective term for the roughest, toughest Polish university students in the Midwest.

Incognitus

Dear Icognitus and Gaudior,

If you will read my above post, you will notice that I mentioned what occurred to the Greeks in the past 40 years. Now I stated that this happened to many other people, and it has throughout history. The Palestinian Arabs are not the only ones.

Now I'll try to explain it a little better. Just imagine a scenario where the Canadian Indians united with the French and forced the expulsion of all the English speaking people in Canada.

Now what if they were to come here for refuge, and we decided that regaining Canada as an English speaking nation was more important than their welfare. So we decided to keep them in refugee camps, have them live in poverty, and use propaganda to arouse all the English speaking people in the world.

We even went so far as to find someone like Arafat and pay him millions, if not billions, in order to keep the people in that destitute condition. Our money then would be going into his pocket for doing our work, and for arms so the people could blow themselves up with innocent others, in order to recover that land.

Think about it! This is what the Arabs have been doing. When the Palestinians ran into the other Arab lands, they were not allowed to settle there. Their fate, (for the expansion of Islam), was to return to Palestine and suffer in order to reclaim the territory.

Zenovia