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Tourists almost never find their way to Levanda Street in southern Tel Aviv. Round the corner from the monstrous concrete central bus station, it looks dirty and feels dangerous. Drug addicts, most of them immigrants from east Africa, many stripped to the waist, lie out in the sun in a rubbish-filled children’s play park. Raggedy toothless prostitutes hustle for a few shekels. Most locals pass quickly through this place, many of them young people in army uniforms travelling between home and their base. They don’t stick around for a coffee or lunch. This is not the Bauhaus city many know and rightly admire. This is the arse-end of Tel Aviv. Yet I still find it the best place in the Holy Land to go to church.
Choosing a church to attend on a Sunday morning in Israel can be a surprisingly tricky business. Perhaps I should not be surprised — after all, Christians now make up a tiny minority of the population. But it’s still hard to shake off the romantic idea that, as the place of Jesus’s ministry, this land has some deep affinity with the world’s largest religion. You can go to what I rather disparagingly think of as Disney churches — places that seem set up for tourists, meeting the expectations of those who come on Holy Land tours, looking for some authentic Jesus-feel. Or, for the more intrepid, you can seek out indigenous Arab Christian churches where Palestinians Christians celebrate the ancient liturgies within settled, long-standing communities. But, despite being a Catholic-inclined kind of Christian, I am more comfortable on the second floor of a swelteringly hot disused office block on Levanda Street, with some Pentecostal preacher shouting at me through a loud and rubbish sound system, the only white person in the room.
I often ask myself why I come to Levanda Street, and not to the local Palestinian churches. After all, they do church pretty much the way I like it. And I have contacts, former colleagues and indeed good friends, who work in these churches. There is an Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem with which my own Diocese of Southwark is twinned. But nonetheless, I still find the politics of the Palestinian churches difficult. And things have gotten a whole lot worse since October 7.
Of course, my own perspective on the current war between Israel and Hamas is shaped by the fact that I am married to an Israeli and have children who carry Israeli passports. Before I came to be welcomed into my wife’s family, I saw the situation differently. I have travelled extensively throughout the West Bank, stayed in Gaza — indeed I’ve been shot at by the Israeli army in Gaza. I would have called myself a pro-Palestinian activist. Passport control at Ben Gurion airport certainly used to treat me that way, with strip searches and endless aggressive questioning. Now they treat me as an honorary Israeli, even allowing me to pass through the passport control for Israeli passport holders. These days it takes mere minutes to pass through.
I hold no candle for the despicable Netanyahu. But nonetheless, I now see the world very differently. What is happening in Gaza is a war. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, dismantling all the settlements that used to be there. Since then, Hamas has built up its military strength, redirecting considerable resources that could have been used for the reconstruction of civil society into tunnels and bomb factories. No society can allow a neighbour, committed to its eradication, to keep firing rockets into its territory. And the massacre of October 7 was a declaration of war — a war that Hamas fights by deliberately putting its own civilians in harm’s way. Israel does all it can to protect its citizens; Hamas does all it can to allow its own to be killed, thus to further their propaganda war in the West. Unlike the leaders of my own Church, I haven’t called for a ceasefire — which I take to be a cynical mechanism for Hamas to gain military advantage over their Jewish enemies. Fellow Christians, especially Palestinians Christians, would think me a warmonger and that I have blood on my hands.
Has the Palestinian Church made peace with the very existence of the state of Israel? The short answer, of course, is that some have and some haven’t. Many Palestinian Christians are Israeli citizens and welcome all the opportunities of living and working in a Western-style liberal democracy. Others, of course, think Israel is nothing of the sort, and rail against what they take to be the institutional racism of Israeli society.
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SubscribeI appreciate your plight. It would be better in my opinion not to choose sides but hold the uncomfortable opposition in your head at all times. If you manage, you begin also to see more of the hypocrisy of many people, the comfortable ones, criticising one side or the other.
Soldiers and fighters are going to be coming back broken by the terrible things they have seen, but even worse, things they have done. They might even be family. A grounded and centred understanding is then so necessary.
On a different note, I have lately really come to appreciate the beautiful Arab orthodox liturgy of churches in Lebanon and Jordan particularly. One cantor that stands out is Ribale Wehbé.
As a convert to Orthodox Christianity myself, I am appalled by the antisemitism and antizionism I’ve uncovered since joining. I’m actively pushing back against it, particularly in the Holy Week liturgy. There’s simply no excuse. It’s pure ignorance and ethnic hatred, and is a stain on an otherwise beautiful church.
What exactly do you want done with the “Holy Week Liturgy”?
Coming from somewhere that seems to have more Churches than there are churches the usual answer to a disagreement about Christian dogma is to start your own Church.
It’s refreshing to see that the leftist political corruption of Anglicanism in the UK is mirrored elsewhere in the world.
Having lived in the Gulf for a decade, I can certainly attest to that. But it’s largely because of the influence of British expats. In places where their influence has waned, it is less so.
St Graham Greene
I don’t think that’s it. These Anglicans are Arabs, born and raised in Israel or nearby countries. They get their anti-semitism from mother’s milk. They aren’t leftists. They hate the Israeli govt and hate the fact that the holy land is run by Jews.
How odd since Christianity is Jewish!
What is the latest body count in GAZA does anyone know?
When I last heard, about a month ago it was about 30K, but I have heard nothing since. What is going on?
Impossible to know what is happening in Gaza, numbers are fabricated by Hamas and cannot be verified. They do not distinguish between fighters and civilians. They will always stress that the victims are women and children. Males almost none which is totally unreliable.
The victims of the awful Oct 7 attack have also not been differentiated this way. Let’s be consistent.
Really, what are you talking about ?
Not in the Guardian perhaps, or the BBC, both of which are merely woke-elite Hamas mouthpieces. But in non-woke media, the breakdown is there for Israeli deaths.
As to consistency, the death count is the absolute centre of Hamas’s war effort, in which the shooting war is just the content generation for the real war, which is their propaganda effort — aimed at weakening Israel’s international alliances, which will make Israel weaker for Hamas’s long-game Islamist jihad against Jews. In that strategic context, obviously the higher the Palestinian death count can be, especially for women and children, the more culpable Israel is in Western (and Arab) eyes. So again, the death count is the absolute centre of Hamas’s two-tier war (physical war, propaganda war). It’s the entire reason why they provoked Israel: in order to get a massive death count on their own side, by feeding civilians into the line of Israeli fire. And they will inflate those figures as much as plausibly possible. Since woke Western elites are so gullible, so addled by identity politics, and so latently anti-Jew, Hamas finds they can pump the figures very high and woke elites still buy all of it. Which is to say, if you think Hamas casualty figures have any semblance of consistency with truth, you’re not seeing the strategy at play.
Incorrect. They have been differentiated from the very beginning. The fallen IDF soldiers were given – if I remember correctly – as approx 100 out of the total 1200 dead on 7/10.
Around a 1/3 were IDF and security forces, the other 2/3 civilians
False. The numbers reported from the Oct 7 have been far more scrutinized that what is coming from Hamas.
Thank you.
You might also like to know – A UN report issued prior to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza examined the “average ratio of civilians killed in conflict around the world.” It concluded that urban area conflicts produce a nine to one casualty rate, i.e., nine civilians to every one combatant. In Gaza, the 1.5 to one ratio is significantly lower than the UN average of collateral damage incurred in global conflicts. It is apparently the lowest ever in such wars. So much for the hand wringers calling out the IDF and even worse miscalling it Genocide.
I don’t believe that’s the case though when a large majority of those killed have been women and children
Even if we take Hamas at its word (6k dead Hamas terrorists) it’s 5:1, which is nearly half of the average. Read up on the latest Al Shifa operation, it’s something like 200:0.
And yet Biden saw fit to use Hamas statistics in the State of the Union Address. No wonder Hamas thinks it’s winning.
and to help you further, the recent UN report released before OCT 7, confirmed an average 9 civilians killed to 1 combatant in Urban wars. In Gaza that ratio even if you believe Hamas’s made up figures is 1.5 to 1, apparently the lowest ever recorded in such wars. A testimony to the intense CARE with which Israel is fighting this impossible war.
Thank you Mike, In fact once this war will be over, innumerable military delegations from all over the world will come to Israel to learn and study the incredible job done by the IDF. On top of it also medical delegations will come to understand how the life of many badly wounded soldiers was saved. The West will be indebted with Israel as far as defence tecniques are concerned. There will also be an extraordinary AI boom
Even though we cannot believe Hamas’s figures. Think Syria, Iran and The Yemen at the very least 6 times that 30,000!!
The most deceitful propaganda is being used to tarnish the heroic effort of the Israeli Army, they are fighting an unconventional war with one hand tied behind their back and still delivering high level results. Sooner or later the dust will settle down and the truth will come out.
That propaganda is being serviced by a compliant left media.
The number of Palestinian dead is well over 30,000 now. And that is just the number reported by Health Ministry of Hamas, which is careful about documenting its records. There are thousands missing, thousands lost under the rubble of buildings, and many dying every day. Women and children make up the majority. Gaza is on the brink of famine, if not fully there already. All because Israel refuses entry to trucks bearing food and medical supplies. It is tragic.
” Health Ministry of Hamas, which is careful about documenting its records.”
And how do you know this? Just that you feel they’re “good people” because in every moral tale, “the underdog” is always honest? Or you have it on authority from a celebrity friend who visited an NGO there once that Hamas are absolutely lovely and very progressive people really? Or it’s a conviction widely shared in the more progressive circles among the higher classes? Or what?
The fact that they claim that two thirds of the dead are women and children seems unbelievable. It makes all of their numbers suspect. We’ll never really know until long after the fighting is over.
One thing is certain: it is tragic. I doubt there’s anyone, even the beasts who started it all, who doesn’t wish that Oct 7 never happened.
Huh.. Fascinating..I reckon that’s about the same amount my Aussie uncle Barney was responsible for killing as a 23 yo bomb aimer in a Lancaster bomber before he was shot down on the border bewteen France and Germany on his way to bomb a few thousand more in augsburg Feb 1944. ( 29th sortie, He was the only one to get out, he watched his mates all killed he hid behind enemy lines for 8 months and was never captured joining the maquis). That’s waht it takes to destroy an enemy have a cuppa cement and harden the fk up.
There ya go..you can read about a war hero!! Cheers
All victims of Hamas.
‘the number reported by Health Ministry of Hamas, which is careful about documenting its records…’ at first I thought you were being sarcastic. Then I realised you actually mean every word of your parotted propaganda. I would imagine it must be difficult for Hamas to know the full extent of the damage… especially while they are hiding in the tunnels beneath Rafah surrounded by the hostages, being protected by all those women and children above.
https://www.booktopia.com.au/barney-greatrex-michael-veitch/book/9780733640902.html
You can always google to find out. You don’t have to remain ignorant.
Since the great Scamdemic I’m rather sceptical of all MSM.
How about you?
Abc
More haste less speed perhaps?
Huh.. Fascinating..I reckon that’s about the same amount my Aussie uncle Barney was responsible for killing as a 23 yo bomb aimer in a Lancaster bomber before he was shot down on the border bewteen France and Germany on his way to bomb a few thousand more in augsburg Feb 1944. ( 29th sortie, He was the only one to get out, he watched his mates all killed he hid behind enemy lines for 8 months and was never captured joining the maquis). That’s what it takes to destroy an enemy..
That was bad luck because wasn’t an RAF Operational Tour 30 missions?
Yeah mate. Talk about multi culti. The crew was welsh Irish English Canadian Australian..the Canadian pilot was on his 50th and final tour and last flight before he was going home for good..wild huh what they sacraficed. Go to Facebook and search ‘Barney in France’.
You do know that technology has moved on since the days of Area Bombing don’t you? The RAF & the various US Air Forces wanted to avoid the civilian targets and started off attempting to do just that and carried on longer than they might. The technology at the time simply did not allow it. The IDF have no such excuse. They re monsters.
Mm. Find out about Dresden.
Oh, and silly emotional language about the IDF. You have no idea what you’re talking about. None whatsoever. But it’s not personal, it’s just silly Western woke groupthink, so wedded to simplistic binary moral narratives, so easily manipulated. But go on, head off to the next Hamas rally with your “river to the sea” placard and shriek for ethnic cleansing and death to the Jew. You are so played.
You ask like it’s some kind of contest, which is the Hamas narrative. More Germans than Brits were killed in WW2. Should we have stopped fighting?
The only one winning the war in Gaza is Death.
If Hamas wins this war the the killing won’t stop.
Senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahar said on Al-Masirah TV last December: “This (conflict) is not about land, not just Palestine. “The entire planet will be under our law, there will be no more Jews or Christian traitors.”
And in 2008 Younis Astal, a popular cleric for Hamas, scholar on Islamic law and a Hamas MP stated: “Soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, like Constantinople was conquered, according to the prophecy of our prophet Muhammad. Their capital will be the first post of the Islamic conquests that will spread all over Europe then it will turn to the two Americas and even to Eastern Europe.”
“And were I to try to hold a congregation together in Gaza or the West Bank under present circumstances, I would inevitably want to be alongside my people in their suffering and feel great anger towards those who were harming them.”
Giles is right to acknowledge that a close personal connection with people on one or other side of this conflict inevitably affects one’s views. It introduces starkly the personal and actual rather than the theoretical morality of the conflict.
His article throws an interesting light on the position of local Christianity that I have not come across before and that could only arise from his close family connection through his wife with Israel. Too often Christian spokesmen talk in detached ignorance of the complexities and are easily swayed by simplistic arithmetic of the body count as if these should somehow balance out to be fair.
I found that to be a disturbing admission by a writer who I generally like and read. It is as if he identifies with whoever is in his “in” group at the time (first pro-palestine activists and now his new Israeli/jewish family). He should be trying to look beyond his proximity and see the Palestinian church for what it is: a small and beleaguered out-group surrounded by forces far more deadly and powerful trying to cling on to a land that is just as much theirs as anyone else’s. He doesn’t really grapple with what innocent civilians are supposed to do when the terrorist mafia rule and the Israeli state stands by and does nothing.
You would deem Judeo-Christianity an “in group” or an “out group” ? I would rather view it as aligning with a nonviolent group versus a violent group. Make sense to me, and not just because I am Jewish. I would rather see it as an in-your-face-wake-up-call that was finally heard. Allahu Akbar is a violent jihadist war cry. The author says it’s a line he won’t cross. Smart if you ask me !
Have I misunderstood?
The Palestinians are human beings. As are the Israeli Jews. Equal. Nobody better than the other. In or out.
They are being mercilessly massacred and the suffering they are enduring is disoroportionate and cruel.
Yes, what happened on 7th Oct was indescribably hideous and horribly cruel and barbaric.
But it does not justify what the Israeli government is doing. How many more Palestinian lives are going to be obliterated? Is this going to release hostages? Why are Jewish lives seen as more valuable? They are not.Nobody is more valuable. We are all human.
What church or synagogue you worship in seems completely irrelevant to me.
But an interesting article nevertheless.
October 7th justifies anything that Israel wants to do. These half-measure bad peaces do nothing but perpetuate more bad wars. The time has come to crush at least one of these Palestinian factions as completely and forcefully as America, Britain, and the USSR crushed Germany’s Nazis. Disproportionate? Sure. So what?
The 1988 Hamas Charter states “Islam will obliterate Israel”.
The present aim of Hamas is two-fold, to drive Israel “from the river into the sea”, and to spark-off a world war between Muslim nations and democratic Western ones, primarily the USA.
NB Many Palestinians admire Hitler. The 1988 Hamas Charter states “Islam will obliterate Israel”.
There are even Palestinians whose first name is “Hitler”: Hitler Salah [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 28, 2005], Hitler Abu-Alrab [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 27, 2005], Hitler Mahmud Abu-Libda [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Dec.18, 2000.]
What would you have the Israeli state do? They are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. If the people won’t get rid of the ‘terrorist mafia’, and they could, but it would be bloody, quite literally, then why is it the job of the Israelis. They are a foreign country and have enough problems of their own, without taking on the problems of a people who hate them.
Absolutely right Milton, but I’d suggest he’s decided to move towards the side of the oppressors in this case.
Cultists only like fellow cultists.
Simplistic to use the oppressor-oppressed paradigm.
Oppressors…weird how when Jews are involved you all get super woke
The palestinian christians’ biggest enemies arent the jews but their arab muslim compatriots. Btw you misunderstood that sentence. Giles Fraser means that palestinian christian congregants would be “his people” and not his new jewish relatives.
But what he’s saying is that when it becomes personal it changes one’s perspective. It’s the same with any dogma. If a few people in the American gun lobby had their family wiped out in a mass shooting they’d change their opinion about guns. It’s just the way it works with anything. It’s human nature.
Why would they do that? Does the gun pull the trigger?
Nope, but it’s much harder to commit mass murder without a gun
Is it? The terrorists flying into the World Trade Center didn’t use guns.
Terrorism isn’t comparable to home- grown gun violence.
Airplanes do a good job.
Or trucks, or knives….
I think what he is saying is that unlike the pro-Palestinian perspective, which has become holy writ in much of the “progressive” West, you must become Israeli to even express the pro-Israeli perspective. This is a sad testimony to the Western biases.
As to the pro-Palestinian tilt of the local church, which is indeed “surrounded by forces far more deadly and powerful”, it could be a pragmatic position: it is much less dangerous to be anti-Israeli than anti-Palestinian.
The fact, however, is that the only country in the Middle East where the christian population is increasing, is Israel. Could that mean something?
Eh?!? You are blaming Israel?! Christians are an increasingly beleaguered minority EVERYWHERE in the Muslim Middle East. Forced conversions, attacks on churches, etc.
And what did Zeus do to Mary ?
By any other name !
What?!
Put the bottle down.
Well said.
Appreciate that you are mentioning Marcionism, which is a hateful form of antisemitism.
When I try to post the following I don’t see it, but I have posted it. Forgive me if this is a duplicate:
I appreciate your plight. It would be better in my opinion not to choose sides but hold the uncomfortable opposition in your head at all times. If you manage, you begin also to see more of the hypocrisy of many people, the comfortable ones, criticising one side or the other.
Soldiers and fighters are going to be coming back broken by the terrible things they have seen, but even worse, things they have done. They might even be family. A grounded and centred understanding is then so necessary.
On a different note, I have lately really come to appreciate the beautiful Arab orthodox liturgy of churches in Lebanon and Jordan particularly. One cantor that stands out is Ribale Wehbé.
Two-siding a Genocide.
You don’t get do you? See the genocide, it is real. See the suffering of the people murdered and abducted at a kibbutz. That is also real. Try to understand the position and philosophy of people like Hannah Arendt or even Nelson Mandela.
Because if you do not then you will in turn become the perpetrator, of necessity.
I get it. I get that the atrocities of October 7th have been instrumentalised by scum. The inestimable Peter Obourne gets it too:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-al-jazeera-tells-7-october-story-british-media-will-not
Palestinian Arab Christians may cling to idea that they are Arab but the original reason they speak Arabic and have Arab names is the forced Arabisation due to the invasion in the early medieval period. Their ancestors are likely to be partly descended from the Jews that lived there in the 7th century. In theory if there’s any group that would be closest to the Old Testament it is them. The legacy of roman & islamic colonialism means they identify with the notion palestine, a region in the “arab world”.
Exactly, and there’s tragedy in that realisation. I used to know an Israeli tech entrepreneur who publicised the Jewish roots of many Palestinians evidenced in family traditions and practices, and even worked to return them to the Jewish fold. Some old Palestinian homes still have stars of David carved into the lintels (although increasingly chipped off for obvious reasons). Interestingly, there are also some Bedouin who believe themselves to be descended from Jews.
From what I have gleaned from discussions by geneticists (not being a scientist myself), Palestinian Christians and Samaritans are direct descendants of the biblical Hebrews (as shown by DNA extracted from ancient remains). They are endogamous communities either by choice or due to marriage bars. Palestinian Muslims largely share that origin but also have an admixture of Arabian and Egyptian genes due to intermarriage with fellow Muslims. Jews who immigrated from the Arab world appear to have similar combinations of Levantine and Arab origins to the Palestinian Muslims. The Ashkenazi are outliers, with a large European genetic input and perhaps only 30% to 40% Levantine origin. All Jews, apart from converts, have Levantine genetic roots though. These facts underline how appalling are the demands by Jewish extremists for the expulsion of Palestinians. Those demands are liable to be linked to false claims that the Palestinians immigrated during and after the Arab conquest.
How far back do you go though? Would I be German due to my surname being (according to Google anyway) Saxon? My missus surname is Scandinavian but you’d have to go back to the early 1700’s (she’s into all the ancestry stuff) before you come across anybody who was actually born there, so would you class her as Danish?
If they’ve been Arab for centuries, irrespective of how it originally came into being so then they’re Arab today as far as I’m concerned
Matthew I would beg to differ …. Look at an online channel called “Ask Project” with Professor Corey Gil-Shuster. He interviews a lot of Jews and Arabs on the street. The Palestinians are woefully ignorant of Quran and Torah, and certainly don’t identify with the Torah or any values stated within. They don’t even realized that the Quran refers to the Children of Israel at least 13 times and never refers to Palestinians or even Jerusalem. See also, Imam Tawhidi, a modern and highly educated Imam who says Israel is for the Jews, by God’s decree. If they would like to call themselves Palestinian Jews …. well that would be interesting wouldn’t’ it ?
As an atheist- I see all of you as tribal. So deeply identified with “your people” you cannot be trusted to clearly see fairness or justice. It is complicated- but the complexity at its root is the tribal mindset.
Agree. I’m glad I don’t have a dog in the race and I distrust anyone who does.
If you live in a Western country where Islam is rising, you certainly do have a dog in the race. You’ll know it when it sinks its teeth into your leg, or some place higher up.
Rather “my people” than the mindless glob porridge of the contemporary atheist religious cult of ‘human secularism”. God bless
“God bless” is a meaningless phrase, and even if your god existed, the last thing i’d want is his (presumably ‘his’?) blessing. I’d find your god intolerable and would actively campaign against worship of such an idiot.
And don’t speak about ‘values’. My values are perfectly intact and humane, having no need of an imaginary backup.
You think your values are intact. I think you’re a little bit too angry.
Agreed there seem to so many Gods and Jesuses
Why are you yelling?
He’s yelling to show the peace of mind which his superior creed has invested him with.
“I’d find your god intolerable” — so is that why you’re so intolerant?
Fun fact: there’s more Christians in the global south than the north (about 60/40 split). So your intolerance is mainly directed at ethnicities other than your own. Be more careful.
Which has its own “my people ” and tribalism…
Is Scientology secular or religious ?
As a Christian, I see those who don’t believe in a lawgiver as unqualified to recognize any Law, who don’t believe in a Creator as unqualified to assign any meaning to creation and who don’t believe in intention behind the cosmos to see any meaning behind the words good or evil.
I agree that Giles’ position seems to be formed by whomever is his pal at the moment, and that the entire Middle East is a tangled mess, but there is no equivalency between the conflicting factions.
You keep talking about “belief” and “believing” but that’s the problem. If you know something for a fact you don’t need to believe.
You need to believe in facts. Which I doubt you really do – you only believe in those facts that suit you.
From one atheist to another, I see “belief” in the supernatural as the common denominator. Reading Giles piece I was once again struck by how horribly complicated and divisive religion is.
Mistake number one.. Conflating religion with the wildly successful 3000 year old philosophy of mind that is judeo Christianity we shorten that to ‘faith’, ( to make it easier for the experts in theology and the book who’ve never actually read it or studied it and it’s extraordinary fascination.) do you like chess? Christianity is simply 3 dimensional chess..all you christ haters, you should try it.
Lifelong fascination why rabid atheists and Christian haters ( Hitler Stalin et Al) go wild because billions of people like to come together on a Sunday morning share stories interpret stories give each other encouragment support each other laugh listen to their fellow worshippers and help selflessly their communities because thats how they like to give thanks to God for his blessings of existing here for this staggeringly brief moment..
Hitler was neither a “Christian hater” or even a “Muslim hater.” Quite the opposite. The first of his victims on gaining power was to suppress atheists and free thinkers.
Stalin later became an atheist but he was socialised as a Christian and was educated at a seminary.
“Adolf Hitler was raised Roman Catholic as a youth, but he began to despise the church and all of Christianity as too pacifist or a “religion for weaklings”.
During Hitler’s dictatorship, more than 6,000 clergymen, on the charge of treasonable activity, were imprisoned or executed. The same measures were taken in the occupied territories, in French Lorraine, the Nazis forbid religious youth movements, parish meetings, scout meetings, and church assets were taken. Church schools were closed, and teachers in religious orders were dismissed. The episcopal seminary was closed, and the SA and SS desecrated churches, religious statutes and pictures; 300 clergy were expelled from the Lorraine region, monks and nuns were deported or forced to renounce their vows.
Intelligent people don’t brag about failing to understand something.
“As an atheist- I see all of you as tribal.” Do you see the irony of your comment? You identify as belonging to a distinct political group, then immediately define your outgroup (“all of you”), the “tribe” to whom you and yours are opposed. Doesn’t seem like you’ve got the “complexity” thing down quite yet.
The perspective I give comes from a constant striving for no dogma. It is a moving organic thoughtful process.
Practiced and organized religion is by definition dogma.
Being “Christ-like” is not the religion of Christianity, obviously from the comments and sentiments of so many “Christians” commenting not being anywhere near “Christ-like.”
Saying one does not belief in “god” does not mean amoral or without values. The conclusions of ethics are derived from reason- not “dogma.” Again- continuously examined- not “handed down” by ancient texts or a man in the sky. This also means that if a value in any religion or culture is agreed with that’s okay- there is no ego in morality.
I also see that many religious people cannot follow the very values of their religion… why would anyone consign themselves to that label of hypocrisy.
Brag brag brag. And incoherence. But above all, nothing here to which one can honestly respond: only accusations and disguised insults. You are a sad person.
“The conclusions of ethics are derived from reason”. As I implied at the top of this thread, Reason cannot lead anyone to ethics. All that you know “as a fact” leads to only one desirable ethical path: my own survival and pleasure.
We may hold up “survival of our species” or “human rights” as an ultimate good, but what makes those goals “good”? We – or more to the point, you – have decided that those are worthy goals, but what right have you to condemn anyone who has decided to pursue deceit and violence as his self-fulfilling goals? Why do you condemn hypocrisy when that is someone’s ethical imperative?
Again: No Lawgiver = no law. No Intender = no meaning.
This is not that elusive Proof of God’s Existence, just a demand for consistency and reason on the part of Atheists, who claim to value it above all else.
You’ve addressed your comment to me, although you haven’t actually addressed my comment. I pointed out that your original comment was as equally “tribal” as those you seek to criticize. As to what you wrote in your new comment, I don’t have a dog in that race I’m afraid. I just guess you’re fairly young and still trying to work it out.
It’s interesting that your comment starts “as an atheist”, you’re identifying yourself with your group. Your comment is dripping with tribalism.
You are no less attached to “your people”, the narcissistic community of the New Atheists and secularists. You do not stand above human nature, looking down with a mixture of pity and contempt.
“Since the creation of the state [of Israel], some Jewish and Christian interpreters have read the Old Testament largely as a Zionist text to such an extent that it has become almost repugnant to Palestinian Christians.”
Using the Old Testament as a Zionist text? Well I never!
Zionism is surely a nineteenth century secular ideology?
Political zionism (of the Herzl Der Judenstaat flavour) may date from the 1890s, but zionism as a concept dates from the Babylonian exile some 2,600* years ago.
*See, for example, Psalm 137 which is recited prior to grace-after-meals (weekdays).
I do not know why – from above – Christians in Israel / West Bank take the side of the Arabs. Ironic when the Christians are persecuted in majority Moslem countries. Possibly a desire to deter attack by the majority population?
Oh dear. VeryHerd here has pulled my comment, I suppose because it was too “hot”. There were certainly no bad words, uncouth language, or personal attacks. Just political commentary critical of the woke elite and their Islamic sympathies. Is this site run by the Guardian or something?
Try again. Toned down slightly?
The problem was, I think, I disputed the H*m*s d**th toll figures, so used the word d**th a number of times. The only way to tone it down is to not dispute the figures. Anyway, it’s gone. I’d forgotten to select-all copy before posting. Update: I noticed my other comment here has also been removed, but I see that’s because the comment it replied to was removed too … and although I think that my opponent’s comment was silly, I don’t see why it was banned either. What’s going on?
Interesting!
I notice from a number of sources that Hamas’s casualty figures have been entirely debunked.
Mmmmm. …I find I can’t uptick your post so maybe …..
Strangely, I’ve found that I’ve had to re-uptick all my previous upticks, in this thread. Or at least as many as I can recall.
Is Herd’s website broken or is an activist moderator to blame?
The fact that there are Arab Christians free to openly practice their religion in Israel says a lot. Are there any synagogues hidden away in the backstreets of Gaza?
It seems more than a little ironic that the West seems hell-bent on embracing tribalism – political, religious, ethnic, gender – when the failure of such tribalism is literally right in front of them. Have the bandwagon anti-Semites and anti-Zionists actually summoned the intellectual curiosity to wonder what the region would look like if Hamas succeeded in defeating Israel? Do they expect that Palestinians will be able to turn back the clock to a particular point in pre-Israel history when life was “good”? Free at last?
Easy. Without Israel Palestine would most probably be a typical Levantine nation fractured, fractional and violent. The Zionist state is generally well governed, maintain high standards of living, clean streets and low crime. Who should keep the land?
What do you mean ? There wouldn’t be a Palestine because Lebanon and Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq would have gobbled it up in a flash. Jerusalem is a jewel in the dagger of Islam and you can bet there would have been a ravaging battle over who owned it. There may not even have been a Jordan in the end, or, as was mapped in Sykes Picot, Jordan would have been the Arab Palestine itself. Whatever the outcome MIGHT have been if the Arabs had prevailed, another Jewish Holocaust would have followed on the heels of the European Holocaust and the remnants of Jews would have died at Arab hands.
A great article. I too am shocked by much of what I see from Palestinian Christians towards Israel and how it has affected perceptions of Christians in the West.
Perhaps worth mentioning that Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the Christian population is growing. In Gaza in 2005 there were 5000 Christians, now I believe less than 1000. In PA-run areas of West Bank the Christian population is also in decline.
Inconvenient fact to some western churches like the CoE who would rather turn away from much worse persecution of christians in other parts of the world in favour of socking it to the jews.
Yep, most recently Justin Welby made a virtue signaling display, urging us all to pray for Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal journalist held in Russia, yet Welby has little to say about the 62,000 Christians murdered since 2000 in Nigeria by Islamists. A few years ago Welby’s Christmas message in the Times was all about “Christians being under threat in the Holy Land” (he couldn’t bring himself to say Israel). That piece centred on a few scuffles in Jerusalem by Jewish extremist, yet completely ignored the real plight of Christians in Palestinian Authority areas where churches have been trashed, and where Christians are in decline, as opposed to Israel where the Christian population is growing. Welby also has tea with Islamist extremists. He and his chum, Theophilis III, patriarch of Jerusalem, are happy to pile in on Jews, but rather more reticent to address the real threat Christians face all over the world. Wonder why?
Building on your comment, I would like to see some population numbers of Christians in the countries of the Middle East over time. May make for some interesting reading and debate.
Take a look at this link:
https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2014-07/emigration-of-christians-from-the-middle-east-and-some-implications
Also, the population of Bethlehem was once 80% Christian. Now less than 15% and falling since the town came under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Jews are indigenous to land of Israel
Accept it or not. Don’t? Keep living in camps.
On welfare.
So are the Palestinians, much more so than some American or European Jews who shifted there after the war
After the Crimean War, you idiot. Not to mention that there had always been Jewish communities there.
More than 50% of the Israeli population are Mizrachi Jews who were expelled from Arab and Muslim countries after 1948.
So just under half don’t have roots in the Middle East then is what you’re saying?
Not as clever a one-liner “kaboom the-left-are-naturally-much-smarter” comment as you think:
“In current usage, the term Mizrahi is almost exclusively applied to descendants of Jewish communities from the Middle East and North Africa”
That’s quoting from Wikipedia, which is practically all left wing dogma.
Over half the Jews in Israel are indigenous then is what you’re saying?
Thanks for this well written piece. The behaviour of some churches beggars belief. The teachings of Jesus – both spoken and by example – are all too often completely ignored in the interests of compliance with self-made rules and doctrines. I pray the Holy Spirit continues to protect and guide you and your extended family.
How were Christian Palestinians getting on in the Gaza strip before October 7th? Were they flourishing?
Under Hamas? Nope.
Mr. Fraser would do well to tune in to the lectures and lessons of Mr. Haviv Rettig Gur, Shalem College which are readily available on YouTube. Mr. Fraser would learn about Zionism, which was Jewish Rescue and Survival Project, not a white colonialist project. But maybe he’s sensitized to that point since 10/7. Mr. Gur explains clearly, and in a most excellent fashion how Palestinians misunderstand Zionism. Jews fled pogroms, and ultimately the genocide of 6 million by escaping to Palestine.No other country would take them. Ottoman Arabs of the dissolving Empire wanted Jews. Jews paid for their land. Almost one million Jews from Arab lands came after 1948. Today, Israel’s Jewish majority is Sephardic, and from Middle Eastern, Muslim lands which spit them out Farhud-style. The real genocide of Jews has been going on since Christianity accepted Pilate’s mocking assertion that Jesus was “king of the Jews”. The real ethnic cleansing has been the cleaning of Jews from Israel, the ME, and Europe by Christians and Muslims.
It’s not surprising to learn that Palestinian Christians think of themselves as some kind of “ethnicity”, which they are not. Islam was the true colonial project. Falestine never was a nationality and the inhabitants are, as he points out, Arabs, or Arabized. Or Mr. Fraser can learn from Imam Tawhidi, an Islamic scholar who feels Israel is for the Jews, by God’s command, and that Arabs should go to Arab lands voluntarily or make their peace with the Jews.
The idea that Christians even suggest an excision of the Hebrew Bible from the Christian Bible is Hitleresque. In the early 20th century, Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Husseini were buddies. Or that …… “The Arabic language newspaper Falastin, founded in 1911 by Arab Christians, was one of the earliest and fiercest critics of Zionism. And Palestinian Christians have often been prominent in what they understood as the armed struggle against Zionism.” (talk about a misunderstanding !) …… Ottoman Empire Arabs MUST OWN the genocidal Haj Amin Husseini, who wasn’t a Christian but certainly was friendly with George Habash and Waddie Hadad. They would have been partners in criminal massacre of Jews during the period of Jewish LEGAL immigration from Europe and Russia between 1881 and 1948 when Israel was partitioned. This was one of the very reasons Jews founded the White City in Tel Aviv … to get out of harm’s way from murderous Arabs at the Jaffa Port.
I appreciate Mr. Fraser’s candor and his sympathy. In his quiet way he has exposed the hypocrisy of Arab Christians, and I will forgive him for mistaking this as a racial or ethnic problem. The words on the page of Torah, whether in Hebrew or in translation, are sacrosanct. Even his Saviour knew this to be true. Jesus was a Jew, and an Israeli. Judaism is not necessarily supreme to Christianity, but it was the primal progenitor, and Torah survival, like the survival of Jews is most assured by the nation of Israel.
Nice way to deal with the dissonance Giles. This is not Netanyahy flattening Gaza, this is not Netanyahu shelling food queues, this is not Netanyahu filming himself laughing, singing, dancing whilst he’s at it. These are the friends of your family, these are the friends of your kids and this is what your kids will be up to sooner or later if they’re not at it already. This is Israel Giles – apologise for it if you must – but I’d be interested to hear why you and your family have not, like at least half a million others with the option to do so, decided to leave. I hope your wife is worth it.
The Arabic speaking Christian churches have a long history of being more “arab” than “Arab” Opposing Pope John 23rd historic papal pronouncement about Jews and deicide….practicing Palestinian supercessionism about the history of Historic Israel and the truth about Jesus as a Jew in a Jewish land. The Arab Christians created the “Arab nation” in the 20th century….Jews were not Arabs then unlike the attempt to retroactively confer Arabism on them today…..yet still murder them in barbaric way Oct. 7th. In some, these Eastern Christian churches are in large part toxic with Jew Hate. The foreign origins of “Palestinian” names is there for anyone to see. Yes, some “Palestinians” are Arabized Islamisized people of Jewish and Samaritan origin. This is what happens during an imperialistic invasion and settler colonialism and unilateral appropriation of the Holy places of others…notably the TEMPLE MOUNT.
Apparently Prophet Isa entered Al Quds after iftar meal to worship at the Haram at sacred Al Aqsa.
Palestine supercession at its most deranged.
Thank you for information I didn’t know, always a good thing. I consider myself a Judeo Christian and will never betray that heritage. For me, it’s not one or the other, it is both.
I find Giles writings to be boringly predictable, simply because he always only understands all of reality through the lenses of corporate media. So, all his writings are just different attempts to creatively narrate whatever official corporate narrative down our throats. He is as far from an Unherd voice as you can get. He is an establishment voice leftist in the guise of a religious authority. Even a broke clock is right twice a day, and Giles is never ultimately right about anything. He is an ear tickler with whatever wind he feels blowing the hardest.
Just now Mr. Fraser is asking this question ? Better late for the vicar than never. He is a victim of the political climate like many. I recommend Mr. Fraser listen to lectures by Mr. Haviv Rettig Gur at Shalem College. Gur has a much more profound understanding of Zionism, Gur speaks to the way that Palestinians and many Europeans and Americans misunderstand Zionism. Zionism was, and remains, a Jewish Rescue and Survival Project. It is not, and never was, a settler colonial project – this is a grave misunderstanding. Perhaps since 10/7 Mr. Fraser will be sensitive to this reality. Pogroms, exiles, de-Judaizing, expulsions, ethnic cleansing and genocide have been our history for 2,000 years.
Arab Christians in Ottoman, and later British Mandate Palestine, allied themselves with anti-semitism of Islam long ago. Mr. Fraser’s evidence for this is: “The Arabic language newspaper Falastin, founded in 1911 by Arab Christians, was one of the earliest and fiercest critics of Zionism. And Palestinian Christians have often been prominent in what they understood as the armed struggle against Zionism. ” Readers can’t be shocked at the reality of Arab Christian antisemitism in 1911. Haj Amin Husseini, the Grand Mufti from 1921 to 1937 was an ally of Hitler. This alignment was predictable because Christianity itself is guilty of anti-semitism as Mr. Fraser acknowledges. How many more Easters will Christian liturgy repeat the mocking, and morally despicable words of Pilate calling Jesus the “King of the Jews” ? Why would Christians adopt, promote and dwell under such venomous mockery ? Because it serves their political purposes and religious aims of supersession. Isn’t it about time to end this strange farce? Not only is Christianity now reconciled with Israel, Christianity has become reconciled with its debt to the Jews and Judaism.
I often hear from Christian friends that the Hebrew God was vengeful. My response is always, REALLY ??? The God of the Hebrews stayed Abraham’s hand and spared Isaac as he lay bound on the sacrificial pyre. The Christian God forsook Jesus and left him to a cruel death at the hands of the Romans. No amount of whitewashing can negate this question. Marc Chagall posed it in his painting The Binding of Isaac, in which Jesus labors under the burden of his cross in the upper corner. How, by comparison, is the God of the Hebrews vengeful ?
I also have to ask Mr. Fraser what is Palestinian about your society ? Arab Christians are just that … ethnic Arabs. There is no such ethnicity as Palestinian, nor was there ever a country called Palestine. There was Ottoman Palestine and British Mandate Palestine but as the mandate was partitioned, the Arabs refused a state. They chose war and war has consequences. It is a fictitious narrative that has been circulating to racialize and smear the state of Israel. If Arabs don’t want to belong to the Jewish state, their solution is to leave, not overthrow Israel. Imam Tawhidi opines that God gave Israel to the Jews. Muslims (and presumably Christian Arabs who want Palestine from the river to the Sea) aren’t reading the holy books. He says that Arabs and Arabized non-Jews ought to leave for Arab lands. If they don’t want to leave they should reconcile themselves with the Jewish state.
Jesus was not a Palestinian and he was not a Christian. He was a Jew who got murdered by the politics of his time. Thrash that bone around all day long as hard as you want to, but Christians practice Judaism with a holy ghost. They often do it badly, which brought us the Holocaust, but Christians can no more take Hebrew out of the Bible than they can rewrite Jesus’s identity. Jesus’s mission to bring Judaism to all was evangelical and seditious at the same time. But he was always a Jew and remains a Jew in memory.
Define Israel! ..is it:-
1. The colony established in 1948 and continuing with the Nakba ie ethnic cleansing?
2. The current extreme Right-wing government led by Netanyah and the Ultra Right Satanists?
3. The current Jewish population who are mostly Atheist, genocidal degenerates?
4. The descendants of the Israelites? ..well, that’s the Palestinians for those who know anything about history.. the fact they are now all Muslim, Christian, Messianic Jew and Orthodox Jew is irrelevant, isn’t it, if accuracy is an issue.
If you’re OK with 1, 2 then you must be unaware Ashkenazi Jews have 2½% Middle Eastern DNA (we all have 2½% ME DNA FGS).. I’m Christian but I don’t claim to be descended from ME Jews turned Christian do I? No, I’m Paddy through and through and still 2½% ME DNA!
Israeli really means white supremacist coloniser, racist, bigot, killer.. originally from Khazar, Turkic, absorbed into Russia: then persecuted, and yes almost exterminated.. but not by those who gave them shelter (the Palestinians) but rather by those appalling Germans, appalling Russians, appalling Ukrainians etc. so why punish the ONLY people who welcomed them, who gave them shelter??..the Palestinians!
For the few who want to know: the descendants of “God’s Chosen People” are the Palestinians.. the Antichrists (ala the Bible) are those who are persecuting them.. a glimpse at A. the Bible and B. the facts on the ground, will tell you that! unless you are willfully blind, or so indoctrinated you’re beyond hope, or stupid, or evil..
Palestinians are not the descendants of the Israelites you idiot. If they were they’d be Jewish.
Wow. Actual hate speech. Rabid, ranting, extremist anti-Semitism. The name put to it is Liam O’Mahoney.
Were you foaming at the mouth when you wrote that, Liam?
Why were some of my comments deleted ?
and mine??
And mine!
Sometimes emailing them can make things magically reappear. But why bother.
A few months ago, Giles Fraser was amongst a specially selected group of Establishment types invited to watch a specially curated IDF video. He found it quite persuasive and wrote agonisingly on these pages. I would love to read his commentary on this documentary described by Peter Obourne at the link below.
To the surprise of no one who has been paying attention from the USS Liberty onwards, the IDF story turns out to be a pack of lies.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-al-jazeera-tells-7-october-story-british-media-will-not
If you are going to use Al Jazeera as a reliable source, you have already defeated your own argument. There has been clear forensic evidence of families and children being burnt alive, of mass rape and mutilation, much of the evidence from the bodycams of the perpetrators.
Clear forensic evidence? Where? Please provide links and an explanation why none whatsoever made it into the UN report on it (which I’m assuming you haven’t read).
When you go to Hamas rallies, do you scream “show us the rapes” too?
You’d make David Irving proud (famous Holocaust denier). Why have Leftists taken on all the tropes they used to caricature of the old time Right? It doesn’t stop with the rabid anti-Semitism does it? There’s the authoritarianism, the elitism, and the conspiracy theories. You’ve lost your way.
There is a great deal of something called “history” which happened prior to the USS LIberty. You might like to read up on it. It’s calle Jewish history, and it goes back about 4,000 years. Oh yes there are a few other tribes sprinkled among this history … the Canaanites, Moabites, Nabateans, Phoenicians, and even the Philistines. However it was the Hebrews who gave the world the most influential Holy Book ever written, and it’s called the Torah. It’s written in Hebrew and developed in an ancient land called Israel, or sometimes Judea and Samaria. Both the Gospels and the Quran are derivative, although both are supersessionist of the Torah, and therefore of questionable motivation.
How are Christians doing in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, etc.? In every Muslim nation, the Christian population has shrunk from as much as 30% of the population to 3% or thereabouts. In only one country in the Middle East is the Christian population GROWING, not shrinking. That country is the Holy Land of Israel.
There’s a lot of confusion about what ethnicity is. Palestinian is not an ethnicity. It is a nationality that never was. Ottoman Palestine was full of Arabs and Arabized other people, AND JEWS. Palestinians are just garden variety Arabs with no particular uniquencess that distinguishes them from Egyptians, Saudis, Yemen Arabs, Iraqis, and other Arabs. Islam is the colonizing force here and for once, leave a nation alone for God sake.
There is only one Jewish State in the world and that is Israel. It’s going to stay that way.
Interesting to note that despite all of Fraser’s visits, he fails or dares not to mention the words “Christian Israeli Arabs” preferring instead to use the inaccurate but politically convenient term “Christian Palestinians”. for Christians living inside the green line.
It’s truly ironic that if Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas and their (sinister or idiotic) fellow travellers eventually succeed and destroy the state of Israel – then Palestinian Christians will also quickly be extirpated from the land. As indeed they have been from many parts of the Middle East already.
Is Unherd trying to appeal to an American audience with ‘gotten’ or is it merely the syntax of a man of the church trying to sound cool and relevant? The article serves only to highlight the negative influence of organised religion.
I hear you. Clearly attending church services with grubby unsophisticated “Holy Land Tourists” is beneath the dignity of such an erudite cleric. I would imagine that some of those people think of themselves as pilgrims.
Very disappointed by this superficially researched or dogmatically doctrinaire piece by Giles. Has a combination of familial ties and Israeli propaganda robbed him of his objectivity? Can he not, like so many Jews worldwide now, from Orthodox rabbis to the secular young, see apartheid and genocide for what they are when staring him in the face? Has he swallowed the lies whole? The truth has slowly been coming out of course – about beheaded babies and rapes on 7th, a day which pales in significance when compared to the well documented (by the Red Cross, CIA, US State Dept, etc) Israeli atrocities in 1948. Oh to live in the surreal world of the blinded Oxford academic! A piece I believe he will come to regret deeply.
I’ve just noticed the date on the article. That explains it now!
Splitters!
test
So the Israelis treat your fellow Christians like dirt, but it’s ok because you’re married to one?
Either you didn’t bother to read the article or you failed to comprehend it, which would be surprising as it very clearly and simply laid out.
He probably failed to read it realizing that he would fail to comprehend it. Easier to just type blindly into the comments section.