"Reclaiming Christian Values"

[Micah68]

"Reclaiming Christian Values"

by Corinne Whitlatch, Churches for Middle East Peace Executive Director
17 August 2007
http://ga6.org/elca_advocacy/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=9817603

WASHINGTON - The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and the broader schism between Israel and Arab states, is of deep concern to a great many people who have no personal connection to either side. While Arab and Jewish Americans are on the front lines of citizen advocacy regarding US policy toward the conflict and peacemaking efforts, secular and Christian Americans are also involved and consider the conflict important to their lives and to the United States. Many people of all three faiths hold a profound attachment to the Holy Land. As an example, Christians grieve the severing of the natural and historic connection between their holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem by Israel's separation barrier.
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[Micah68]

"Reclaiming Christian Values"

by Corinne Whitlatch, Churches for Middle East Peace Executive Director
17 August 2007
http://ga6.org/elca_advocacy/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=9817603

WASHINGTON - The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and the broader schism between Israel and Arab states, is of deep concern to a great many people who have no personal connection to either side. While Arab and Jewish Americans are on the front lines of citizen advocacy regarding US policy toward the conflict and peacemaking efforts, secular and Christian Americans are also involved and consider the conflict important to their lives and to the United States. Many people of all three faiths hold a profound attachment to the Holy Land. As an example, Christians grieve the severing of the natural and historic connection between their holy sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem by Israel's separation barrier.
[More]

Though most Americans do not know it, we are directly involved in this strangulation of Bethlehem, as our government gives more than $10 million per day to Israel — far more than any other nation on earth. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article One, states that, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood,” not unlike God’s command to love thy neighbor as our self. Fifty-eight years after this historic declaration, Palestinians are no closer to the realization of the rights guaranteed to all human beings by its revolutionary provisions. Palestinians are still a people and a nation that are repeatedly being denied the most basic of freedoms, such as the right to liberty, freedom of movement and nationality. The failure to grant Palestinians statehood, and the failure to pressure their occupier into the implementation of all relevant U.N. Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, rests solely upon the shoulders of the international community.
In many ways this failure is an embodiment of the failure of the international system, a failure that fuels much of the extremism taking place in the world today.
Since 2000, approximately 10 percent of the Holy Land’s Christian families have fled Israel’s confining walls. If Christianity disappears in the Holy Land, along with 2000 years of uninterrupted traditions, it has little chance of surviving in the rest of the Middle East. Truly, can a democratic Middle East exist if the three Abrahamic faiths are denied the freedoms and rights espoused by our own great nation? The consequences are unfathomable, leading to grave consequences, giving cause to extremists and setting the groundwork for sectarian conflicts across the world for decades and maybe centuries to come.
In October 2005 the “Open Bethlehem” project was launched with the aim to encourage trade partnerships, investment, tourism events, and to attract creative opportunities to the city. The core of its message is that Bethlehem is a city of openness and diversity, with centuries of tradition welcoming travelers, refugees and pilgrims from around the world. Go To OPEN Bethlehem