Phila. Media Coverage of Christmas in Bethlehem Misses the Real Story

 
by Michael Goldblatt 

Every December, Philadelphia's newspapers run stories about what life is
like in Bethlehem at Christmas time.  And every year, they miss the real
story.  1996 was no exception.

	The day after Christmas, the Philadelphia Inquirer featured a large,
full-color front page photograph of a Christian worshipper lighting candles
at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity.  "Thousands of pilgrims filled the
church to worship and celebrate," the caption announced, offering no clue
that anything was amiss in Bethlehem.

	The Philadelphia Daily News did its Bethlehem story a few days before
Christmas.  "It's Not a Little Town Anymore," the headline announced,
describing the urbanization of Bethlehem in recent years.  The News story
mentioned that the city today has "12,000 Christians and 38,000" Muslims, but
said nothing further about the Islamicization of the most important town in
Christianity.  And that's the important story that the Philadelphia media
missed.

	Bethlehem had a large Christian majority until the 1970s.  But a steady
campaign of harassment and terror by Palestinian Arab Muslims has gradually
reduced the Christian population to a weak and dwindling minority.  Father
Georges Abou-Khazen, a Roman Catholic parish priest in Bethlehem, writing in
the journal Terra Santa, an Italian-language periodical published by the
Franciscan order, "in Bethlehem, Muslims are paying astronomical prices" for
Christian homes, using "considerable sums contributed by the Moslem states."
 In his own parish, Father Abou-Khazen said, "a Christian family wishing to
sell their property told prospective buyers they would rather sell to
Christians.  Soon after, their home was set on fire, apparently the work of
the shebab" (militant Palestinian Arab Muslims).  "As a result of the
'Islamification' of the land, the living space of the Christians is steadily
being reduced."

	David Blewett of the National Christian Leadership Conference, who recently
visited Bethlehem, found a Christian community living in fear of Muslim
extremists and the local PLO leadership.  They are trapped in "an
overwhelming Muslim society, where they are seen not only as inferior but as
potentially disloyal to Islamic authority, especially in light of a growing
radical fundamentalism...Because of their fear of what will happen to them
and their families, local Christians must say whatever the Palestinian
Authority tells them to say."

	Israel Lippel, who was the special adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin
on religious affairs, reports that Christian leaders in Bethlehem "are afraid
to speak out" because of Muslim intimidation.  "There have been dozens of
cases in which churches and Christian clergy were attacked by Moslems...They
just swallowed it and kept silent," according to Lippel.

	Philadelphia's Christian community has a right to know the truth about what
has been happening to their coreligionists in PLO-occupied Bethlehem.  When
will Philadelphia's newspapers tell the real story about the mistreatment of
Christians in Christianity's most cherished city?

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