I just
realized that by putting the word Catholic on my Facebook status, my status
gets posted to the Catholic Facebook friend’s activity page where there are
411,000 members. As a member of the
Catholic Facebook page, I, a Christian, now have the ability to communicate my
Palestinian message to other Christians.
I suppose that there are many other Facebook pages that I can do the
same to.
Such
out of the box thinking needs to be part of the Palestinian agenda to expose
the Apartheid State of Israel. We need
to find different ways to inform the world that Israel is daily inflicting a
brutal campaign of fear to rid Palestine of Palestinians. So I turn to my fellow Christians to say the
following.
Apartheid Israel has imprisoned the
4.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza with an Apartheid
Wall or electronic barbed wires. Palestinian towns are imprisoned in enclaves
with only one entrance and exit point controlled by apartheid Israeli soldiers.
The gate is open for short periods of time during the morning, afternoon and
evening. Some days, in the apartheid
Israeli soldier forgets to open the gate for the afternoon opening and children
coming back from school have to wait outside the town gates until the evening
opening.
Many Catholics
may not realize that a Catholic synod, a special council of church members that
holds regular meetings to discuss religious issues, stated in October, 2010
that Israel is the root cause of all the Middle East woes. The final statement of the synod listed the
occupation, the apartheid wall, the numerous military checkpoints, the huge
number of political prisoners, and the Israeli policy of fear which disrupts everyday
Palestinian life as the main reasons behind the exodus of Palestinian
Christians. It also stated that these
continuing Israeli aggravations are the cause for attacks on Israel.
The Catholic
synod even stated that Christ nullified God’s promise to the Jews. While the purpose of this blog is political
rather than religious, the implication of this statement is both political and
religious. The religious and political
cover Apartheid Israel uses to retain, occupy and plunder Palestinian land can
be negated if Catholics grasped the concept that Christ’s New Covenant made
Christians the inheritors of God’s
promise. Instead the Christian religious right misunderstands Jesus’s
teachings when it supports Israel’s domination of Palestinian land. This in
turn is a direct contradiction of Jesus’s teachings when such policy
strengthens Israel and contributes to the exodus of Christians from the Holy Land.
But my
purpose in writing this blog is not to get too deep into a religious dissertation
but rather to call upon Catholics to understand what is happening in the
Palestinian Occupied Territories. I want Catholics reading this message to
understand that Israel is not the democracy it says it is. I want Catholics to
understand that Israel is an Apartheid State.
I say this because Apartheid Israel has laws that allow Jewish
communities to screen new applicants, a legal way to exclude Palestinians from
mixing with Jews. Apartheid Israel has roads that are for the exclusive use of
Jews. Does this sound like the Whites Only bathrooms and drinking fountains of
the American Southern States? Palestinians
have to have a different colored license plate to distinguish them from
Jews. Is this not racism? Is this not an
Apartheid system?
The
percentage of Christians is dwindling tremendously in Jerusalem and in
Palestine. Christians are losing a
presence in the Holy Land for which it will take decades if not a century to
build back up. Can Catholics sit idly by and close their eyes to what is
happening in the Holy Land? Can
Catholics allow Israeli atrocities and policy of fear to drive Christians completely
out of the Holy Land?
Communicating
to the Catholics and other groups in this way needs to be part of the Palestinian
agenda. We have a just cause that needs
to be communicated.
(© Copyright, Fadi Zanayed. Publication or distribution of this material is allowed provided its content is not altered and the source and its author are cited.)
