This is copied directly from the Palestinian Catholics facebook page:
“Palestinian Catholics condmen in strongest words the actions of Israeli Police who barred Palestinian Catholics from enterring the Church of Holy Sepulchre. Israel wouldn’t bar Jews from going into the Western Wall. We ask Pope Francis to do something about this, since this has been happening from 1967 until, today. The Christian Churches have a morale duty to defend the rights of Christians in their holy places.”
The lie: Palestinian Arab sources claimed that up to sixty per cent of Christian Arabs living in Judea and Samaria were denied entry visas
The truth: Out of 20,000 applications, 196 were rejected for security reasons.
Fact: In news reports around the world it could be clearly seen and discerned, that this year, as in all years, tens upon ten of thousands of Christians (not the least Arab Catholics) celebrated freely throughout Easter.
Fact: One hundred years ago Christians made up 20 per cent of the population of the Middle East. Today, they make up a mere 0.6 of one per cent of the population.
Fact: Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians are fully protected under law and enjoy full freedom of religion and are free from persecution.
Fact: Yasser Arafat and the P.L.O virtually took over southern Lebanon in the mid 70’s. With Syrian backing, they carried out a campaign of murder, torture and rape against the Christian population. Fortunately for the Christians of south Lebanon, the Jewish State came to their rescue, driving out Yasser Arafat and the P.L.O. From a personal point of view, I did five reserve army tours, giving medical assistance and physical protection to the Christians of south Lebanon between 1982 - 1985.
Brigitte Gabriel, an Arab Lebanese Christian, is a survivor of this time. I have included a link to a short video where she describes some personal experiences:
youtube.com/watch?v=mn-yq6By82E
As a youth I often visited the town of Bethlehem. Under Israeli control, the town and its majority Christian population prospered. After being turned over to the Palestinian Authority in the framework of the Oslo peace accords, the Christians were persecuted and many left. Today they make up a small minority of the population of Bethlehem.
Neighboring Beit Jalla, made up of Christians, was used by Arafat as a base for shooting and sniping at Israelis, thus endangering the Christians living there (a tactic he used frequently in Lebanon - here again we see that the purpose of any “peace” agreement with Israel is to use any land gained as a base to attack Israel).
In security cases involving radical Muslim fundamentalists brought before me, the evidence frequently includes incidents of “excursions” by these same groups to places with relatively large Christian populations, like Nazareth, in attempts to torment Christians in various ways.
Less than a hundred meters from my courtroom window, stands a Russian Orthodox Church. My family fled the religious and political antisemitism of the Russian pogroms in the 19th Century. Today, four generations later, it is my job to help ensure that all people of all religions may freely worship and practice their religion. For the first time, under the rule of the Jewish State of Israel, all people have access to all their religious sites and all people may engage in their religious beliefs without fear.
That is not to say, that any of this will ever change those who have a deep dislike of the Jews. However, isn’t it time that the children of Degenndorf stopped making the Jews and the Jewish State “exceptional” as in it’s a sin to lie unless it’s about Jews or the Jewish State
However, no matter what, we Jews will keep on doing what we have been doing for more than three thousand years, sticking to our eternal covenant. In the end, love us or hate us, no matter what, we will always be a country of democratic and Jewish values.
