Monday, December 24, 2007
OpinionJournal has printed a remarkable op-ed piece by Newsweek editor Kenneth L. Woodward: The Plight of Bethlehem. Rarely does one this bad get past the Journal's editors. What happened? No need for a pull-quote, Woodward blames the hardships of Bethlehem's Christians on (cue ominous music) "The Wall" and not the terror that necessitated it, nor the well-documented persecution of Arab Christians by their Muslim neighbors. The Christian population was falling long before anyone even thought of a wall (in Bethlehem and all over the Muslim world).
Doesn't an editor at Newsweek have something important to do, like searching toilets for stray Korans, for instance?
The reader responses are the balm on this chafe, including comments by "The Editor." Would that be Bret Stephens? It doesn't say:
Jews who attempt to visit our holy sites in the West Bank and Gaza do so at significant risk to our lives while Christians and Muslims enjoy full, uninterrupted access to their holy sites within Israel without ever having to fear for their safety. The tragedy of Bethlehem is not the Israeli security measures that are the first responsibility of any government; it is the absence of true courage and appropriate action on the part of the Palestinian Christians and Muslims who may yearn for peace, yet continue to allow murderers to live, plot, and operate from their neighborhoods, schools and religious sites. The sanctity and peace of Bethlehem will be restored when Palestinians of all faiths find the courage and strength to stand up forcefully against the hatred, violence, and fanaticism that their brethren direct against their Jewish neighbors. In the spirit of this holy season, that should be the call that echoes from every pulpit.
I left the 3rd comment by Vince. The WSJ did soemthing weird to it with "Editors note" or something .. all the text in the comment is mine.
Small world. I noticed that oddness. It didn't seem like an editor's comment.
I'm surprised they published my comment considering the way I ended it.
Kenneth Woodward is full of ...
Lebanon, over the last three and four decades, furnishes a startling and sobering real-world example of what has occurred, what is occurring and what is in store if people continue to fail to wake-up. Brigitte Gabriel, born into a Lebanese Christian family and growing up during the critical period in question, here tells her own and the wider story on youtube.
The next time someone brings up, for example, Sabra and Shatila, remind them of the origins, remind them of Jordan's Black September (beginning in Sept. '70 and last several months) reprisals against those Jordanian Palestinians; remind them it was Lebanon who furnished humanitarian centers for the refugees streaming out of Jordan; remind them it was Arafat and others who then used that country and who used Lebanon's "liberal," western and multicultural openness first against Lebanon itself and then against Israel; remind them of the Arab Muslim and Palestinian militancy and terror and horrific and truly shameful acts that occurred against Lebanese populations in the wake of those origins. Remind them of all manner of murderous oppressions against civilian Lebanese populations; remind them of things I won't describe here but concerning which Gabriel ably describes, for example in the second youtube video in the seven-part series beginning in the link above.
At turns, it's regrettable, shameful and tragic that so many western Christians remain naive and ignorant concerning a singular situation like Lebanon, much less the wider history as pertains to Israel and the region at large.