Last night I went to a talk given by Dr Munther Isaac at St Andrews Church in Tsim Sha Tsui on the problems faced by Palestinian Christians in both Israel and the so-called occupied territories. It was interesting and it was not what I expected. Dr Isaac was very open about the problems faced by Christians namely, persecution, violence and poverty but he put everything down to.... the Israelis, especially Israeli Jews.
He mentioned the security wall but failed to mentioned that Israelis built the wall to prevent suicide bombers from blowing innocent people up. Although he did acknowledge persecution from muslim fundamentalists, the cause of which was bizarrely down to the Israelis. Somehow in Dr Isaac's world if the Israelis or zionists just vanished into thin air then all the problems faced by Christians in the Middle East would vanish. He failed to mention some of the racist bits of sharia law which subjected non-muslims to dhimmi or second class status. In contrast in Israel everyone has the same equal rights be they Jew, Christian, Muslim or anything.
In other words, Dr Isaac presented a very antizionist view of the conflict. At the end I asked why during the 400 years of occupation by the Ottoman Turks did the Palestinians fail to even try gaining their own freedom. He replied that nationalism like that was a recent phenomena which I found quite an unsatisfactory answer.
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