Palestinian Christians

Palestinian Christians Bring Protest to Palm Sunday Procession

March 25, 2013%

The annual Palm Sunday procession from the biblical town of Bethphage begins in a church that’s right next to a demolished Palestinian home. The signs of occupation don’t stop there: Israeli soldiers along the route, Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem—illegal under international law—and the bold protests of Palestinian Christians who will not accept the petty “privileges” granted by the occupier as a substitute for justice. See the full photo essay on +972, but here’s a snippet:

This Easter season, early reports indicate that Palestinian Christian communities from the northern West Bank had to cancel their Palm Sunday celebrations in . . .

Israeli Ambassador, Meet Ambassadors for Christ

March 15, 2012%

Alex Awad of Bethlehem Bible College speaks at the Christ at the Checkpoint conference. His brother Mubarak (left), was deported by Israel in 1988 for his nonviolent activism against the occupation.

Last week, perhaps not coincidentally in the middle of the Christ at the Checkpoint conference, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal titled, “Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians”, claiming, among other things, that:

…the West Bank is also hemorrhaging Christians. Once 15% of the population, they now make up less than 2%. Some have attributed . . .

Archbishop Williams ‘Step Change’ in Rhetoric on Palestinian Christians: This Time He Mentions Israel

July 27, 2011%

Palestinian and international clergy walk the Stations of the Cross on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa, following the traditional path that Jesus took to his crucifixion on Good Friday.

On my work blog I recently posted about some extremely unhelpful comments by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in regard to Palestinian Christians. The Archbishop hosted a conference last week where he offered some more helpful nuances on the issue. I know at least one of the Palestinian participants at the conference, who had a fairly ambivalent experience of the event. But the fact that his conference was being accused of . . .