When an unknown individual spray painted the phrase “Jesus is a monkey” in Hebrew on the doors of a Trappist monastery in Latroun on Sept. 5, 2012, it made the papers all over the world.
The desecration, thought to be perpetrated by an Israeli Jew angry over the evacuation of Milgron in the West Bank, was covered in the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and a number of other news outlets, throughout the world. It was covered in Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands, for example.
CNN and NBC News also covered the desecration.
The desecration was newsworthy, no doubt about it.
What people have not heard about is a much more violent attack on a Roman Catholic housing project in the neighborhood of Bethpage in Jerusalem that took place in August. The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem provides the following details in a story written by Laurent Charnin:
Bethphage –The Episcopal Commission for Media of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries in the Holy Land condemned a violent incident in the Christian housing complex of Bethphage in Jerusalem.This occurred on Monday, August 20, from 8:00 p.m. to midnight when a group of fifty boys attacked the residential complex for 79 families which is part of a project of the Franciscans of the Holy Land.Following a brawl between young people of the Christian area and some neighbors, friends were called and they all attacked the complex, yelling, throwing stones, smashing cars and windows of houses. A number of residents were injured and one had to be hospitalized for treatment.”They do so because they know that we will not respond with violence!” protested David Josef, a father of five children, as he emphasized: “This is the third time this happened to us in two years …”The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Fouad Twal, the Custos of the Holy Land, Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, ofm and Auxiliary Bishop of Jerusalem, William Shomali accompanied by Priests and Franciscan Friars visited Bethphage on Wednesday morning to show their solidarity with the residents. They heard the complaints and sentiments expressed by the population and saw first-hand the damage resulting from these unlawful actions.All agreed in condemning these events and to take necessary measures to prevent recurrence. The importance of good neighbor relations was emphasized between the residents of the housing complex and their Muslim neighbors.
A close reading of the news article published by the Latin Patriarchate indicates the attack was an episode of Muslim-on-Christian violence.
A Nexis search for the words “Bethpage” and “Patriarchate” in major world newspapers published after Aug. 19, 2012 yields no results, indicating that the world press ignored the story. A similar search for “Bethpage” and “attack” yields a total of 10 stories, all of which deal with local stories that have nothing to do with the attack described by the Patriarchate in Jerusalem.
A Nexis search for the word “Patriarchate” in major world newspapers published after Aug. 19, 2012 yields six results, do not have anything to do with the attacked described above.
The Latin Patriarchate published another story about the attack here, and a Youtube video about the attack can be seen here. The Algemeiner referenced the attack in an article here.
So now you know, no thanks to the news organizations that purport to keep you informed.
Carney Refuses To Identify Capital Of Israel Twice In White House Press Briefing
Carney Refuses To Identify Capital Of Israel Twice In White House Press Briefing
As southern Israel is being pounded with hundreds of rockets launched
by terrorists in Gaza, the world is silent.
A few anti-Israel photos have been circulating for years.
The photo of a man holding a dead girl,
tweeted by a UN media employee that received so much attention,
is the same photo that I saw in 2008 under the caption,
“Israelis kill a lot of Arab children.”
This was the Google search top result for images of “people who smile a lot.”
I was not smiling and later began to take pictures of real Arab girls.
First, on the hot topic of Israeli soldiers and Arab girls,
only in a Bahrain street theater photo will you see a girl lying under a boot.
Israeli apartheid supporters might find it shocking that in Jerusalem,
Israeli soldiers walk on the same streets as Arab girls,
by the Walls of the Old City near the Jaffa Gate
and in the city center. Often they seem to not even notice one another.
Arab girls can be found on the ground,
sitting and enjoying public performances,
or just relaxing
in Jerusalem’s public parks.
Of course…the same goes for boys too.
Where else would a Muslim girl be seen alone in the park with boys?
And famlies enjoyed posing with this snowman last week.
An Arab girl might be dragged along by her mother,
but in Mamilla Mall, most girls can be found happily shopping, both day
and night with no sign of BDS, Boycott, Divest or Sanctions.
Sitting on the steps in Mamilla Mall while texting on their phones,
or sitting at a table alone,
shopping late at night at the Rami Levi supermarket,
or selling Rav Kav cards for the Jerusalem light rail trains…
these are real photos of Arab girls and young women in Jerusalem.
The world is ready to accept faked captions,
how about the truth?
From CNN:
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stands by his support for a Palestinian state, his spokesman said Saturday, despite his comment about an “invented Palestinian people” that has drawn fire from leaders in the West Bank.
Gingrich made the comments in an interview that aired Friday with The Jewish Channel, a U.S. cable channel.
“I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state,” Gingrich said in the interview. “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, who are historically part of the Arab community.”
He added, “And they had a chance to go many places and for a variety of political reasons, we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s. I think it’s tragic.”…
Fatah Revolutionary Council member Dimitri Diliani said Gingrich’s remarks reflect “the ignorant, provocative, and racist nature of Mr. Gingrich,” according to WAFA.
“The Palestinian people descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 B.C.E.,” Diliani said. The “Gingrich remarks are ignorant of the basic historical facts of the Middle East.”
This is too good.
The only confirmed mention of the historic Jebusites is in the Hebrew Bible. That’s the only source that says that the Jebusites lived around Jerusalem. This exact same source says that one of their leaders, Araunah, offered to give the Temple Mount to King David; David insisted that he pay for it, and he did - for the amount of fifty silver shekels.
So if you believe that the Palestinian Arabs are actually Jebusites, you must believe that they sold the Temple Mount to the Jews in a legal transaction.
(Since such a sale to a Jew would get Araunah the death penalty today, perhaps the Palestinians should atone for their sin!)
There is another problem, though.
The Constitution of Palestine refers numerous times to the “Arab Palestinian people” and that “Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation.” The PLO Charter similarly states “Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”
But Jebusites were not Arabs. They were not even Semites! No self-respecting Jebusite (if any had still existed) would identify with the Arab hordes who overran his homeland in the seventh century. He would probably want to behead the infidel invaders.
Is the constitution and charter wrong? When they call themselves Arab, are they all lying?
Perhaps “Palestine” should quit the Arab League and re-assert its nebulous Jebusite ancestry.
If it isn’t obvious enough already, note how Diliani chooses the Jebusites, not the Hittites or Amorites or other residents of Canaan, to be their ancestors - choosing the one tribe that is associated with Jerusalem.
A real people knows their own history; an invented people will invent their history - and change it whenever it is convenient for them. And since Jerusalem has only become important to the Arab residents of Palestine in the past hundred years, it is convenient to choose specifically that tribe that lived there to be their invented ancestors today.
In other words, Diliani’s absurd assertion is actually proof for Gingrich’s claims.
Now this is just getting silly. The Obama White House is gearing up for a Supreme Court case in which it will defend its refusal to list “Jerusalem, Israel” on the passports of Americans born in the Israeli capital. As part of its preparations the administration recently scrubbed all the captions on a White House photo gallery of Vice President Biden in the city, changing “Jerusalem, Israel” to “Jerusalem.” The optics of methodically erasing the word “Israel” from the White House webpage caused a predictable uproar.
Those who make it their business to rationalize White House hostility toward Israel were relieved, then, when the Washington Jewish Week’s Adam Kredo published an article claiming that the Bush administration had enforced an identical policy. Kredo cited a “search of the Bush White House’s archives” and photos of Laura Bush touring the Western Wall to conclude that the Bush White House webpage “never explicitly labeled [Jerusalem] as part of Israel.” Though he was otherwise unsparing in criticizing the White House’s “horrible, simply ridiculous… photo mistake,” Obama’s defenders latched on to his article anyway. The NJDC and J Street found particularly grating and obnoxious ways to pass along the article. You should read them because they’re about to become deeply embarrassing.
Elliot Abrams responded in a quote he gave to Jennifer Rubin, forcefully insisting that Kredo was “just wrong” and that the Bush White House “did not have a hard and fast rule that prohibited referring to Jerusalem” as part of Israel in documents and captions.
Basic Google searches are enough to show that Abrams is right and Obama’s defenders are flat wrong.
Archaeological digs under the disputed Old City are a matter of immense sensitivity. For Israel, the tunnels are proof of the depth of Jewish roots here, and this has made the tunnels one of Jerusalem’s main tourist draws: The number of visitors, mostly Jews and Christians, has risen dramatically in recent years to more than a million visitors in 2010.
But many Palestinians, who reject Israel’s sovereignty in the city, see them as a threat to their own claims to Jerusalem. And some critics say they put an exaggerated focus on Jewish history.
A new underground link is opening within two months, and when it does, there will be more than a mile (two kilometers) of pathways beneath the city. Officials say at least one other major project is in the works. Soon, anyone so inclined will be able to spend much of their time in Jerusalem without seeing the sky.
(There are interesting photos accompanying the article - Harry)
