Israel Hayom..
25 December '19..
When Israel relinquished control of Bethlehem to Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority as part of the 1993 Oslo Accords, 85% of this prosperous town was middle-class Christians. Business and life was good when it was part of Israel.
By Christmas 2019, Christians are less than 10% of the population in an economically stricken town.
How did this come about?
In 1995, Elias Freij was that the last Christian mayor of Bethlehem. He appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, not to withdraw from the city as part of the Accords due to his fear for the future of Christians in Bethlehem. Rabin wanted an official and public statement from the mayor to that effect to take into his negotiations. Freij and the church authorities refused Rabin's request, and the rest is a tragic page in Christian history.
The Palestinian leadership blames the "security wall" for the current situation. They talk of Israel turning Bethlehem into "a prison."
The British artist, Banksy, has advanced his reputation in left-wing circles by promoting propaganda graffiti scrawled on walls throughout Bethlehem. He has even built a hotel in Bethlehem called The Walled-Off Hotel which is full of imagery of Israeli negativity such as a nativity scene in front of a section of security wall with a shattered bullet hole which he calls "The Scar of Bethlehem."
All this propaganda scandalizes Israel and projects Palestinians as oppressed victims.
Nowhere in Banksy's work is there a mention of Palestinian terror promoted and rewarded by the Palestinian Authority, a prolonged terror campaign that has murdered hundreds of Israel and made the security barrier a necessity, or the threatening behavior of Palestinian Muslims that has driven out most of the town's Christians.
Today, at Christmas 2019, Bethlehem is a once Christian town, with important churches, holy relics, and sanctuaries, and a few Christians that live in fear not of Israel, but of Muslim Arabs.
The Christians I once knew had businesses such as tourist shops selling olive wood carvings and religious symbolism to tourists. They are gone. Their homes and the shops now occupied by their Muslim neighbors.
The Palestinians will tell you it's all Israel's fault. They are, after all, the perennial victim. It's become and industry for them. This image sells as much as Banksy's souvenirs in Bethlehem.
But is this the truth?
(Continue to Full Column)
Barry Shaw is the international public diplomacy director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
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