Palestinian Christians: The Unknown Victims :: Essays Papers

Palestinian Christians The Unknown Victims greyback Yousef George Thaljieh has be enumerate known as the Martyr of the Nativity Church. He was not a suicide numbfish or even a st unity thrower, just a 17-year-old boor who belonged to the small Palestinian Christian minority that is often forgotten in what is seen as a war amid Islamics and Jews. There was a wound that day in late October 2001, as there often is between Beit Jala and the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, provided none near the Nativity Church. As his mother says, Nothing was done to make the Israeli sniper think Johnny was a threat. He had just been to church and was playing with his 4-year-old cousin in Manger Square when the bullet struck him with a fatal blow. When the beleaguering at the Church of the Nativity ended and Johnny was forgotten, the Israel Defense pressure (IDF) pulled its soldiers, tanks and armored personnel carriers from Bethlehem and lifted the curfew on the city. The remains were a fractured, d isjoint and disoriented Christian community. Not but were a large outlet of Orthodox Christians stirred directly by the closure of the Church of the Nativity, but the great majority of Christian Palestinians in general were indirectly affected by the days of curfew, and what they consider siege. Many feel abandoned by Europe and the US, humiliated by Israel, often rejected by their Muslim neighbors, and worst of all, they fear their society is just a few long time from extinction. Despite the initial jubilation that erupted when Israel lifted its curfew after a 39-day toilsome standoff between the IDF and gunmen holed up in the Church of the Nativity, reality has come crashing down on this community. Unfortunately, the Christian population of Bethlehem only serves as one example among many. Thousands of Palestinians throughout the Middle East and the world are subjected to prepossession and neglect. Often, they are not welcomed by their Jewish and Muslim neighbors, and are ag onistic to live in communities of fear. Receiving no coverage and attention from the media, these Christians try day after day to survive in lands that have been forced upon them. Palestinian Christians are a people searching for an identity. An identity that has been lost in the turmoil of the Middle East. (Dan 14)The exodus of the Christians from the region of the Palestinian Authority acquires peculiar(a) significance when one realizes that the entire Christian-Arab population of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip currently totals only 61,000, about 2 percent of the Palestinian population of about iii million.