HunterCA
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quote:
ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
FR
I could be wrong, but I have a tiny suspicion that some were not aware that there are in fact Christians in Palestine.
Historically, the church of the Nazarine in Bethleham is attended by a Moslem family. Each night they show up at the church and lock the church and every morning they attend the church and unlock it. The keys to the church are passed down through the male line of the family.
Thirty years ago a very good friend of mine was a member of that male line. In fact, his father held the keys. I used to go to mosque, here, with him from time to time. He once explained to me that while he was growing up, all the kids in the neighborhood used to go to church, mosque, synagog with their friends families all of the time. It was sorta like in my neighborhood growing up. Often times kids would jus pile into cars and go to whatever church with whatever family on any given Sunday. I must admit, I always felt very welcome at mosque. People went out of their way to make me comfortable. Of course, I was a male. I remember my buddies explained to me upon entering a mosque that they felt more comfortable taking off their shoes and washing their hands and feet, outside, before they entered to worship. I even remember one funny story, told by one of the guys as we walked to mosque how his first experience was when he came to this country and thought, "What the hell, it's all the same God and I don't see a mosque anywhere near so I'll go to a local church to worship God." The punch line of the story is he began to have doubts about the wisdom of his foray when the evangelical church wanted to put him in a white robe and dunk him in a bathtub. We all laughed.
In that group walking to the mosque were several Palestinian Christians who regularly went to mosque because, after all, it was a place to worship God in an atmosphere with an Arabic culture comfortable to them. And, at the time, the comfort and peace of worship of God was the point.
It's sad that all of that has been polluted. It's sad that the peace of the simple act of worshiping God has been polluted by politics. At the time I bemoaned when my Muslim Palestinian friends told me that they had to return home once every six months, by law, or lose their passports.
But, you know what. It's not just those dirty zionists, code word supplied from others. It's a great deal of history. Simply ignoring all of history and pointing at a group, any group, is really belittling the situation. After WWI and WWiI the victors made whole states out of the old Turkish caliphate. Isreal was just a very small state. When it was created something like five, (I'd have to look it up) neighboring countries vowed to obliterate it and marched on it with huge armies. Isreal prevailed. That's stuck in the craw of a lot of neighbors since. Isreal said any Jew from anywhere in the world may come here and be a citizen. Yet, persons displaced by the Arab invasion of Isreal in 1948 have never been given a place in any Moslem country. Isreal has a large population of Moslems that vote and have full rights of citizenship. People who are descendants of Palestinians didn't abandon their homes to make way for Arab invasion in 1948.
I'm completely aware of the full brew of people's in Isreal. I just scoff at racist who blame Zionist. It's easy to just blame this or that. It's easier to be racist and pick a side. I, personally, wish that the peace of worshiping as you please, the peace of being naive kids going to mosque, church or synagog, the peace of the promise of Abraham, for all of his defendants was brought back. And that will just not happen with blind ideology of blame and slurs like using the word zionists to belittle people.
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RE: Vatican to Recognize Palestinian State in New Treaty - 
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