Forgotten (Palestinian) Christians

Most Americans are seemingly unaware that there are significant numbers of Palestinian Christians who have been expelled from their land by the Israelis and continue to suffer injustice under the Zionist occupation. The following article discusses this inherent contradiction in Christian Zionism:

Forgotten Christians
Not all displaced Palestinians are Muslims.
by Anders Strindberg
The American Conservative - May 24, 2004

"Christians find themselves under the hammer of the Israeli occupation to no less an extent than Muslims, yet America—supposedly a Christian country—stands idly by because its most politically influential Christians have decided that Palestinian Christians are acceptable collateral damage in their apocalyptic quest."

Even though this inherent contradiction of Christian Zionism should be glaringly obvious, I'll try to explain it in a basic and comprehensible way for the benefit of the historically challenged and doctrinally misinformed. Hopefully most readers are aware that the Christian Bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. This division came about, according to Christian belief, because God abrogated His covenant with the Jews (as described in the Old Testament) due to His New Covenant with mankind based on the (alleged) incarnation and sacrificial death of His Son Jesus Christ. Therefore, Jews who rejected the "New Covenant" of Christian belief and continued to practice Judaism were considered by the overwhelming majority of Christians, both in official Church doctrine and practical persecution, for the overwhelming majority of Christian history (i.e. almost 2,000 years) to be hell-bound disbelievers. Setting aside the fact that stealing land is fundamentally unjust, the idea of driving Christians from their homes so that they can be given to gospel-rejecting Jews would have been anathema to any and all Christians just over a half-century ago. This is because historically Christians always believed, based on the New Testament, that Jerusalem and the land of Palestine rightfully belonged to Christians—not the Jewish rejecters of Christ's message. Indeed, Christians launched a whole series of Crusades in the Middle Ages to establish Christian rule in Palestine and drive out both Muslims and Jews. When the Christian Crusaders conquered Jerusalem and massacred the entire city, they slaughtered Jews as liberally as they did Muslims. Once this is understood, one can hopefully begin to see the problems inherent in Christian Zionism. Not only do their beliefs imply that for about 2,000 years, all Christians (others than themselves) had a flawed understanding of the gospel message, but they are also tantamount to advocating the persecution of fellow believers for the benefit of disbelievers. Obviously this is only a problem if one is actually aware of the fact that there are Christians amongst the native inhabitants of Palestine—which explains why most people, spoon-fed by the popular press and mass media, are not aware of it. One should also understand that although there are many liberal Christians today (both churches and individuals) who do not consider believing Jews to be hell-bound disbelievers, this is not the case of Christian Zionists who adhere to a very conservative and exclusivist view of Christianity. These Christian Zionists, in their misguided zeal to force a fulfillment of (alleged) Biblical prophecy (which is the "apocalyptic quest" referred to in the article) are not only willing to take advantage of Jews (whom they consider to be disbelievers), but to persecute fellow Christians as well. This, more than anything, explains why most people in the U.S. aren't aware that there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Christians, because if they did they might begin to question some of the actions of the Israelis. Seemingly, their brutal policies are okay as long as they're only killing Muslims, but if they're killing and stealing land from Christians then it would be time to put a stop to things. One should also be aware that, contrary to popular belief, most Israelis are of European, not Middle Eastern, origin. In the first few decades of Zionist mass migrations to Palestine, starting just after the Second World War, those being displaced were simply described as "Arabs" (not "Palestinians"), which implied in the minds of Americans that they were a backward, dark-skinned and uncivilized people. It was rarely, if ever, mentioned in the popular press that some of these "Arabs" were Christians, since that would have have added some moral ambiguity to the entire scheme—at least where Christians are concerned. That there's an element of racism in Christian Zionism should come as no surprise since historically racism and conservative American Protestantism have gone hand-in-hand. Anyway, while I think the general tone of the above mentioned article tries to imply that Palestinian Christians haven't been involved in violently Israeli occupation, since they only "congregate for Bible study", the author is forthright enough to admit that back in the days of Arab Nationalism "some of the most prominent militants were yet again of Christian origin". That's just another fact that many Americans need to be made aware of...