A history and theological reflection of the Palestinian Christian Communities

Contents

Introduction

Where do Christian Palestinians fit in Christian Zionism? Do Christian Zionists wish they did not exist? What comfort can they offer to this community? What part might they have in God’s plans of salvation? What role might they have in God’s good plans concerning Israel? This book tries to answer these important questions.

Section 1, Biblical Foundations

Many Palestinian Christians strongly believe that Christian Zionism ignores them, or even wishes that they did not exist.

To quote two very well known Palestinian Christians;

Isaac Munther; “Christian Zionism has ignored us Palestinian Christians at best.”

Johnathan Kuttab; “There is no room in Christian Zionism for Palestinian Christians”

A significant portion of Palestinian Christianity feels that ‘if modern Israel is the fulfilment of prophecy, then we are disinherited, have no right to be here. Our very existence and validity depend on Israel not being of God! Otherwise, we would be squatters, strangers on a land given to others. We need Israel to be illegitimate, because otherwise we are. We cannot co-exist.’

Palestinian Christians have indeed too often felt ignored or viewed as an impediment to God’s will re Christian Zionism. The story of an American lady who told a Palestinian church “God wants you all to leave” has undoubtedly been weaponized, repeated to American audiences endlessly, but also contains a genuine perception, that Christian Zionists see Palestinian Christians as a spoke in God’s gear-box. This is horrific! As someone who has been a Christian Zionist for nearly 50 years, my emphasis has been on trying to convince an often-disinterested church about the blessings of God concerning the re-establishment of the Jewish state, that God is not done with Israel etc. Palestinian Christians have not been a priority in this, a message to the universal church about God’s continuing love for the Jewish people. I would like to rectify that.

This book will be looking at the story of the Palestinian church. What is their history, their future, what is their place in the big picture? Never forget also the remnant saved by grace! Palestinian pastor Hanna Massad said; “My father was a good man, and he prayed that there would be peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis in his lifetime. He died without seeing it.”

Dreaming of Mount Gerizim; the blessings and the important responsibilities Christian Zionism would see for the Palestinian Christians

Israel, a blessing

So, where do Christian Palestinians fit in Christian Zionism? Do Christian Zionists wish that the Palestinian Christian community did not exist? How does the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel affect the Palestinian Christians? What comfort can Christian Zionism offer to this community? What part might they have in God’s plans of salvation? The answer to this question lies in a specific application of the general, foundational principles of Christian Zionism.

1. Jews brought back to be a universal blessing

2. Jewish people being brought back to be blessed and saved!

3. Jewish people saved with aid of Gentile Christians

God has brought the Jewish people back to the land for their blessing and for the blessing of the nations, he has brought them back for their salvation, and for the salvation of the nations! Like the prophets of old, we need to search intently and with greatest care concerning this salvation. We need to examine the time and the circumstances, prepare our minds for action and be self-controlled, as we all live as strangers here in reverent fear!

For Christian Zionists, the presence in that land of a pre-existing Christian community should always have been viewed as an act of grace.

“What we need is not so much a theology of the land as a theology of salvation!”

As a Christian Zionists we need to move beyond a discussion of a theology of the Land, and focus rather on a theology of salvation. As we look at Romans 15, and its theological predecessor, Acts 15, we find something vital. God promises to restore the fallen tabernacle of David, to confirm the promises to the Patriarchs, why?? In both cases, so that the Gentiles might glorify God! So that the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name,

Romans 15:8-11; "For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs SO THAT the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy. Likewise, in Acts 15:13-17 James declares that the Gentiles are included in the Gospel on the basis of a promise to restore Israel; “Simon has described to us how God at first showed his concern by taking from the Gentiles a people for himself. The words of the prophets are in agreement with this, as it is written: " 'After this I will return and rebuild David's fallen tent. Its ruins I will rebuild, and I will restore it, SO THAT the remnant of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who bear my name, says the Lord, who does these things'

These verses are about the salvation of both Jews and Gentiles! The restoration of Israel is not irrelevant to Gentiles, rather they are its goal. Israel is restored so that Gentiles may be blessed! (God obviously loves the Jewish people also!!, but the thrust of these verses is clear.) As Evangelicals either we take the word of God seriously, or we do not. Both James and Paul declare that God will restore Israel SO THAT Gentiles might seek and glorify God. This was always central to God’s promises to Abraham – “And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, 'Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed.' (Acts 3:25 - a long time before Acts 15!) This is why Christian Zionism would hold that the regathered Jewish nation will be a blessing to all the world. It was never an end in itself! Micah 5:7 “The remnant of Jacob will be in the midst of many peoples like dew from the LORD, like showers on the grass.” Do we believe this is true for the Palestinians?? As the Christian community closest to the returning Jewish community, the Palestinian Christians could have been in a place of exceptional blessing! All they had to do was show love and mercy to the stranger, the refugee, their neighbour.

That is, while they may have been ignored by Western evangelicals,

The Arab believers were never ignored or unwanted by God!

Rather they could have been a first fruits of universal blessing! They could have found that God had given them special promises to help them through this difficult time; see Isaiah 14:1 “The LORD will have compassion on Jacob; once again he will choose Israel and will settle them in their own land. Aliens will join them and unite with the house of Jacob.” And Isaiah 56:6-8 “And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant-- these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.’ The Sovereign LORD declares-- he who gathers the exiles of Israel: ‘I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered.’"

The tragedy is that they largely chose to side rather with their ethnicity, with the Moslem community, rather than with the commands and promises of their God. This is their shame and this is their tragedy.

Beyond survival and blessing, there remains a glorious calling

"I will make you envious by those who are not a nation; I will make you angry by a nation that has no understanding." (Deuteronomy 32: 21, quoted in Romans 10:19)

So, where do Christian Arabs appear in Christian Zionism? What is their role in all this? Put another way, what is the role of Gentiles in the salvation of Israel?

Romans 11:11 Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. Romans 11:31 “so they [the Jewish people] too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you [Gentiles].”

Christian Zionism seeks a role for Gentiles in the salvation of Jews; Romans 10:19 "I will make you envious by those who are not a nation;" Romans 11:13-15 “I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.” (Again, see Acts 3:19-21!)

Envy for the riches we have in Christ is how the Jewish remnant are saved. Is it also how “all Israel” are made aware of the only name given under heaven by which they might all be saved?? It is the children of Israel, desperate for the food of the Egyptians that go down and seek out Joseph, still unaware of who he is, knowing only that they will die without his help, and without the food the Egyptians under his rule have gathered. Jesus says you will not see me again until you say; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! “And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?” As the Christian community with the greatest exposure to the re-gathered Jewish community, might not God have a special role for the Palestinian Christians in provoking Israel to envy?

Romans 11:30-36; Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! "Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" "Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

First fruits

In the Song of Moses and elsewhere, we see a restored Israel being a blessing to the nations (“Rejoice, O nations, with his people”). All this occurs after the return of Jesus. At present, we see only a remnant of Jews saved by grace, and across the nations we see only the scattered children of God (John 11:51-52). And so we read, Deuteronomy 32:21 “I will make them envious by those who are not a people.”

Let us now look therefore, not at the denominational splendour of the Palestinian churches, but rather at the still, small voice of the remnant.

In his article; “the 21^st century Palestinian church in Israel” [found in “Israel, the Church and the Middle East”] Tom Doyle writes of meeting with a small group of Palestinian Christians in Gaza in 2002. He speaks of their vibrant faith. They were led by Ali, a guitar-playing former Muslim from the West Bank. He also noted that the guitar had bullet holes through it. Ali explained that while he was entering through the crossing, he was speaking to a soldier, Aaron, whom he had gotten to know as he crossed back and forth. Aaron was concerned about his guitar case, as the week before, a terrorist had tried to smuggle a bomb through that way. He had the IDF robot put the bullets through it.

“Aaron was just doing his job. I didn’t get mad, and the Lord used it. I was able to tell this young Jewish soldier that I was no longer a Muslim. He asked if that was possible, and I said; “yes, I’m a Jesus follower now. … the Jewish messiah changed my life!” I then hugged him and told him he had a rough job and that I would be praying for him. Aaron was speechless. The Holy Spirit as dealing with him. How privileged I was to tell a young Jewish Israeli about Jesus. The bullet holes? Totally worth it!”

Another young Gazan, Sami, shortly after his conversion, was convicted by the Sermon on the Mount to pray that he would love his enemies. “I expected Jesus to forgive me for my hatred, and to change my heart in the process. He could do that, of course, but I thought I might merely tolerate Jews, and that would be the end of that. I was not prepared for the complete fulfilment of this prayer. Jesus not only took away my hatred for Israel and the Jews, but he replaced it with a love for them. This was unexpected. How could I love the Jewish people while living in the Gaza Strip?” When another young Palestinian Christian in Gaza was murdered by Islamic extremists, Palestinian churches and Messianic congregations came together to establish a trust for his wife and children.

Sami himself, along with the other young members of the Gazan Baptist Church, was relocated to the West Bank by Israel, for their own safety. “By the time I reached Jerusalem, I’d read through the Scriptures several times. How could I doubt that God loved the Jewish people? It was all over the Bible.” Today, Sami is passionate about reaching Jews. He is learning Hebrew and has a heart to reach out to Orthodox Jewish men. “Jesus has called Jews and Arabs in Christ to serve him together. This is deep within the heart of God. I used to hate Jews and run from them. Now I run to them. God has called me, a humble Palestinian to reach the lost sheep of Israel. I have trouble fathoming this at times. Recently, I shared with an Orthodox man on a bus. I told him I was from Gaza and used to hate him and all Jews. But then Jesus, the Jewish messiah came into my life and gave me a deep love and respect for Jewish people. I think he was in absolute shock. He finally asked me if I would come to his house that night and share my story with his family. I did come and was overwhelmed with the opportunity to share Jesus with an Orthodox family at their Sabbath meal. Me, a Palestinian from Gaza in an observant Jewish home in Israel and being invited to tell them about Jesus? Only God could have orchestrated this one.” Sami also speaks of a harvest among Muslims in Gaza. Speaking of witnessing to Jews, Sami stated that, rather than presenting the proofs for Jesus as Messiah, “I aim the Gospel at me, and tell them how Jesus changed me and took away my hatred for Jews and the State of Israel. … Can you imagine being Jewish and seeing how anti-Semitism is growing in Europe and soaring in the Middle East? Then to have someone confess their hatred to him or her from Gaza like us and ask for their forgiveness? The question I am always asked is ‘what caused your change of heart? Was it being in the West Bank and actually seeing Jews for the first time, other than just soldiers?’ Then I tell them that my change of heart happened when I lived in Gaza. The Jewish messiah set me free from my hatred of Jews and Israel. My wife and I have this deep burden for Jews to come to know Yeshua!”

Tom then asked him; “The team you serve with and lead in the West Bank has many former Muslims. Do they have the same heart you have to reach Muslims and Jews?” “Yes, one of the brothers named Mahmoud is also learning Hebrew like us. He has the Shema tattooed on his forearm in Hebrew. It is hard for Jewish people to fathom this on a former Muslim!”

Another Gazan Christian, Hanna, said “I knew in my heart that God was not finished with the Jewish people because of what I read in the Scriptures. Then, at a meeting, a messianic believer stood up and prayed; “Lord, give me so much love for my Palestinian brother here that I would be willing to die for him.” A Palestinian brother then stood up as well and said; “Lord, give me so much love for my Jewish brother that I would be willing to die for him too.” That is the body of Christ in action. Every time I meet with my messianic brothers and sisters The presence of the Lord falls upon us when we are together and we are overwhelmed by the love of God.” This is the new man the apostle Paul talked about. “If the world can see Jews and Arabs come together in love peace and harmony in Israel because of our Jesus, how can they doubt that this is a work of God?”

God has always chosen the things which are not to shame the things which are (1 Corinthians 1:27-28). The poor and despised to reach the rest. Might He not now choose the tiny faithful remnant of the Palestinian church (“I will make them envious by those who are not a people”), along with the tiny Messianic community to proclaim his love and mercy to Israel? The Messianic community, Simeon, held captive (“I Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ”) by Joseph in an attempt to draw the sons of Jacob back to him?

Think of the blessing Palestinian Christians could be! To the Jew first, and also to the Gentile (God loves Muslims also!!!) Think too of the Palestinians killed at the fence in Gaza – how quick we are to say “80% were Hamas!” So its all OK. What might a Palestinian Christian say? “They are my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh – I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart because they are not saved!” God desires all be saved – have we indeed ignored or dismissed the Palestinians in our love for Israel, or do we cry out to God for them? This does not mean we agree with or support Hamas!! Rather it means our God loves sinners! What an incredible blessing the Palestinian Christians could become!! Pray for them!!

For a more recent example, please see https://news.kehila.org/christian-arab-church-teams-up-with-jewish-city-for-passover-outreach/?fbclid=IwAR175W4Rs8Mec4H1H5BEJ_HezF7clS8K4uHumJQxHJAu22N0FQOPs_kTLOk

Remember this light as we now plunge into darkness.

Dying on Mount Ebal; The past and present reality of the Churches of Palestine – matters for confession and repentance

Tearing away fig leaves.

We all like to think there is something about us that sets us a little bit apart, that makes us special, something in us which God values. Palestinian Christians are no different, and we will start by tearing away some of their most treasured pretentions. This is never pleasant, but it is necessary if we are to be useful to God.

From the very beginning, fallen humans have wanted to appear before God wrapped in their own fig leaves. We are not totally naked and useless, we have some accomplishments, some points of worth, we can do some stuff for ourselves. As much as we prize them, fig leaves do not look good on us. On my first time to Israel, 21 and straight out of college, I thought I was basically unstoppable. The very next morning I woke up seriously ill. I remember looking up and smiling and saying thank you God, I needed that. And its not just me and Palestinian Christians. Jewish Christians can easily be deceived into thinking they are somehow better, more spiritual, closer to God than other Christians. Even little thing, like speaking words in Greek or Hebrew can make some Christians think that this makes them somehow more spiritual than others. One assumes Manasseh spoke fluent biblical Hebrew. It didn’t make him a good or Godly king. He was indeed the worst of all her kings. But that wasn’t the end of his story. 2 Chronicles 33;In his distress he sought the favor of the LORD his God and

humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. ¹³ And when he prayed to him, the LORD was moved by his entreaty and listened to his plea;

Psalm 51:17 a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

The pharisee who told God how devout he was did not receive his commendation, rather the tax collector who cried out have mercy on me, the sinner.

Fig leaves are poison! They hinder or even prevent God from blessing us. We need God to shed blood and clothe us with his righteousness. Anything which obscures our need for that covering works to our destruction. We need to build on the rock, not the sand. Boasting in your flesh is a bad idea!

Philippians 3:4-11 If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: … But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

The story of the Palestinian church could equally describe the lives of John Wesley, William Carey and a host of other believers who started out trusting in their flesh, suffered grief as a result, and through the process, came to base their lives on the more sure foundation of the blood of Jesus. Once that was achieved, they went on to tell others about Jesus. The children of Israel likewise, Paul tells us, tried to establish a righteousness based in their flesh, failed, and we now long for their true redemption, the salvation of all Israel, which occurs when they look on him whom they have pierced, when the deliver comes from Zion. That is, the failures of the Palestinian churches are neither unique nor necessarily fatal, but rather, when met with grace and faith, may yet prove to have been a necessary preparation for ministry.

So, knowing that we can place no confidence in our own flesh either, and aware of our own failures and shame, and how the undeserved mercy of Jesus met us and forgave us and gave us a hope and a future, let us look today with compassion and hope at the story of the church in Palestine.

Jerusalem – ground zero for replacement theology!

The central Palestinian Christian pretention is their claim to be the direct descendants of the original church in Jerusalem.To quote from Wikipedia; “Most Palestinian Christians nowadays see themselves as culturally and linguistically Arab Christians with ancestors dating back to the first followers of Christ.”[1]

Likewise, Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, founder and director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre, Jerusalem, has stated: “The Palestinian Christians of today are the descendants of [the] early Christians... They and their ancestors have maintained a living witness to Jesus and his Resurrection from the beginning of the Church.”

Hanan Ashrawi, 1991; “Jesus as the first Palestinian martyr” “I am a Palestinian Christian, and I know what Christianity is. I am a descendant of the first Christians in the world, and Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land. Bethlehem is a Palestinian town. So I will not accept this one-upmanship on Christianity.”[2]

Dr. Mitri Raheb; “In fact, most probably we are the descendants of the first Christian community that believed in Jesus as their Messiah.”

Father Elias Chacour; “We are convinced that we are the remnant of the first Christians! You remember in the Acts of the Apostles those were in the upper room and received the Spirit of God? … They were the first Christians. These were my forefathers – my own sisters and brothers.” In 1968, he wrote to Rome; “your eminence … it is Rome who is in communion with me.! Everything began in Galilee. I want you to know, Emimence, that the pope is sitting over there in that high building because of me. I am not here because of the pope. We in Galilee believed what happened in our streets and our villages, and we came to Rome to tell you about Jesus Christ, to give you the message, to give you Christ himself.”[3]

Michael Sabbah; “We are the mother Church.”[4] He also has written a hermeneutic to help his diocese be loyal to “church and society.”[5] Loyal to society? Conforming to this world! The present Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III (also known as Atallah Hannah) has likewise stated that the church in Jerusalem is “the mother of all Churches.”[6]

These messages are also directed at western evangelicals; to quote from an article in Christianity Today; “I wasn't until my freshman year at Wheaton College, when I asked for a missionary kid as a roommate and the college matched me up with a Palestinian Christian. My new friend soon informed me that Palestinian Christians had lived in the Holy Land since the time of Jesus.”

Concerning those claims, however, it needs to be stressed that;

Those claims are false!

Early church history

The church in Jerusalem did not just continue on historically in an unbroken line from the events of Acts 2. Not only was that line, that succession cut, it was done so in the most violent way. The initial break came as part of the wider catastrophe which followed the failure of Bar Kochbar’s revolt (136 AD). We read in Eusebius;

“And thus, when the city had been emptied of the Jewish nation and had suffered the total destruction of its ancient inhabitants, it was colonized by a different race, and the Roman city which subsequently arose changed its name and was called Aelia, in honor of the emperor Aelius Adrian. And as the church there was now composed of gentiles, the first one to assume the government of it after the bishops of the circumcision was Marcus.” The Church History Of Eusebius, 4, 6, 4.

So, the Jewish population, including those who believed in Jesus, were driven out by the Romans, forbidden to return on pain of death, and then the Romans brought in a replacement population of a different race. Augustine likewise wrote of Jerusalem about 250 years later, “no one of the Jews is permitted to come hither now: where they were able to cry against the Lord, there by the Lord they are not permitted to dwell.” This is a total break and replacement. This new Gentile population included some Gentile Christians (at a time when Christianist was still a minority, suspect religion), and Marcus was the first leader of this new, Gentile church. At the very most, it is from this replacement population of Gentile Christians which today’s Palestinian church in Jerusalem can claim lineage. They are therefore not the oldest church in the world (Antioch quite possibly would have that distinction).[7]

So, how did this replacement population feel about Jews? In general, there had been three wars against Jews in their part of the world in the previous 70 years. In particular, they were now benefiting from the destruction and removal of the Jewish population of Jerusalem – living in their houses, owning and farming their land etc. It would seem probable that this population in general were not pro-Jewish. But what of those within that population who were Christians? Who read the Jewish scriptures, worshiped the Jewish God. Did they share in the presumed general anti-Jewish sentiment of the wider population?

Three specific incidents, spread over the history of this community, from its beginning until it itself was conquered and dominated by Islam, provide strong indications of their sentiments regarding Jews.

1. The Gentile church which had replaced the Jewish church changed the date for Easter from the Jewish date for Passover. JB Lightfoot says the change was made in Jerusalem to avoid “even the semblance of Judaism,”[8] in order to separate themselves from Judaism in the popular mind. They wished to distance themselves both from the Jewish faith in general, and from the Jewish church in particular (which kept to the original date). It was this decision which ignited the wider Quartodeciman controversy. Epiphanius stated that the controversy; “arose after the time of the exodus [from Jerusalem] of the bishops of the circumcision.”[9] Further to this, when, 60 years later (around 200 AD), Jewish Christians (but not Jews in general) were permitted to return to Jerusalem, the bishop of the Gentile church in Jerusalem, Narcissus, appealed to Clement of Alexandria for help against “opposition from the Quartodecimans [Jewish Christians].”[10] Here we see that the Gentile church in Jerusalem not only opposed Jewish customs in general, they also opposed the return of Jewish Christians to the city. This is replacement theology incarnate. “The ancient heights are our, and you are not welcome!”

2. In 438 the Empress Eudocia removed the ban on Jews entering the city. As a result, thousands of Jews made pilgrimage that year for Sukkot. This in turn enraged the Christian monks in the city, who stoned these Jews, killing several. The following trial found that they had all died of natural causes, and the ban was re-instituted.

3. Lastly, in 630, Byzantine Emperor Heraclius travelled to Jerusalem.[11] There were Jewish forces at that time in Tiberias and Nazareth. These had been allied with the Sassanians in 610, helped them carry out massacres in Jerusalem, and then been abandoned by them in 617. Under the leadership of Benjamin of Tiberias, these Jewish forces surrendered to the emperor and asked for his protection. Benjamin obtained a general pardon for himself and the Jews, and then accompanied Heraclius to Jerusalem. He was persuaded to convert and was baptized on route in Nablus. However once Heraclius reached Jerusalem he was persuaded to go back on his promise to Benjamin of Tiberias. According to Eutychius of Alexandria (887-940), the Christians population and monks of Jerusalem convinced the Emperor to break his word. To break his oath of peace to the Jews. To smooth out any problems this oath-breaking might cause with God, the monks promised that they and all Christians in all countries would fast for him for a whole week every year to the end of the ages. Heraclius accepted their offer and broke his oath. A general massacre of the Jewish population resulted.The massacre devastated the Jewish communities of the Galilee and Jerusalem. Only those Jews who could flee to the mountains or Egypt are said to have escaped.

The patriarchs and the bishops then wrote to all the countries declaring that week of fast to be the first week of fasting before the Holy Forty days. Pope Andronicus the 37th Patriarch of Alexandria acknowledged this request and so the week of Heraclius or the preparation week was instituted and observed by the Copts to this day.

Luke 11:48 So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs.

So, the Gentile church which replaced the Jewish church in Jerusalem was no continuation of that original church but rather a complete break with it. This new church was different ethnically, opposed Jewish customs within the church, and opposed the return of Jewish Christians to Jerusalem. In the following centuries, these new Gentile Christians broke Byzantine law to murder other Jews returning to Jerusalem in 438, and finally, in 630 (just seven years before the city was conquered by Muslims), this Gentile church persuaded the Byzantine emperor to break his oath, so that Jews who had made peace could be massacred and driven from both Jerusalem and the Galilee.

Note also that during this time, the wider churches also placed themselves in opposition to any return of the Jews to the land of Israel, Chrysostom writing;

“We have said enough to prove that the temple will never be rebuilt. But since the abundance of proofs which support this truth is so great, I shall turn from the gospels to the prophets, because the Jews put their belief in them before all others. And from the words of the prophets I shall make it clear that the Jews will recover neither their city nor their temple in days to come.”^{^[12]}

The claim made by the descendants of this Gentile church that they are in fact the descendants of the original Jewish church in Acts 2 is false. Rather, they are a geographic, physical expression of replacement theology. The church they established was no longer the “mother” church, but simply an offshoot of larger, gentile churches.

The traditional churches in Palestine are proud of their own history, and that history has implications that are pertinent to modern history. They like to boast in their flesh! In this they present a disturbing reflection of earlier disputes. (Titus 3:9 avoid foolish controversies and genealogies. Philippians 3:3 For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh). For them to have welcomed or supported Jewish settlement in Jerusalem and beyond would have required them to renounce and repent of a core component of that very history. Tragically, this has indeed proved to be totally beyond them.

The depth of this is revealed when, as Yossi Klein Halevi notes, it was always the Christians and not the Muslims who kicked the Jews out of Palestine.[13]

Modern Palestinian Christian history

We now approach a more detailed look at the history of the Palestinian churches in modern times. This is divided into three sections;

· An historical introduction to the various Christian Communities within the Land of Israel.

· A brief look at intercommunal relations between Christians, Moslems and Jews, and

· A more detailed look at Palestinian Christian history from the Ottoman times to 1948.

There will of necessity be some overlap between these.

So, we will now look at the histories of the various denominations of Palestinian Christianity, concentrating on the Palestinian Anglicans. The motivation for this is that Palestinian Anglicans have been at the forefront of using their status as Christian as a weapon against Christian Zionism. This challenge needs to be seriously addressed and countered. When, for example, one reads that the combined heads of churches in Jerusalem have issued a statement condemning Israel, how much weight should we, as Christians, attach to that? I need also mention that there are several amazing Palestinian churches, and even more amazing Palestinian Christians, some of whose stories have already been highlighted. Praise God for them!!

Equally, I have written both to aid Palestinian Christians who wonder where their communities went wrong, for western Christians who question the lionization of these same communities by their own churches, and for Jewish believers to aid in their appreciation of blessing the Palestinian Christians could yet be for both themselves, and for the wider world. We need to learn from each other’s mistakes, and in humility to encourage one another to push on to the prize, which is Jesus. For now let us focus on the specific histories of the various Palestinian Christian communities.

A. Introductions; the various Palestinian Christian Communities

The Greek Orthodox

“having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.” (2 Timothy 3:5)

The Greek Orthodox were historically the largest Christian community in Palestine. By and large, they were the descendants of the Gentile Christian population which had been the majority until well after the Muslim conquest. Of all the Christian communities, they were the most rural and dispersed, and also the most assimilated into Muslim society. It was mainly Orthodox Arabs, for example, who joined in the Nabi Musa celebration with the Muslim community. (Nabi Musa was "one of the most important Muslim pilgrimages in Palestine.")[14] Their national feelings were the most profound and spontaneous. They were also the most likely to send their children to Ottoman state schools (as opposed to Protestant mission schools). Historically they had a general feeling of hostility towards Western Christendom dating back to the schism between the Latin Catholic and Orthodox churches of 1054, reinforced by the Crusades.

They were also the most dysfunctional. In 1923, W.P. Livingstone wrote; “As a whole these Christian Churches were corrupt and superstitious. The priests were often illiterate and degraded; their chief duty was not the care or cure of souls, but the management of the hospices, shrines, and other buildings associated with their religion, and attendance at the endless formal ceremonies and processions carried on in a spirit of coarse materialism. Both Jews and Moslems regarded Christianity, as they knew it, as infinitely inferior to their own faith: it seemed to them little better than heathenism.”^{^[15]} Mitri Raheb commented about his grandfather; “He missed the sermons, pastoral care and instruction – conditions in the Greek Orthodox had degenerated greatly.”^{^[16]} Naim Khoury, a Baptist pastor in Bethlehem, likewise writes of growing up in the Greek Orthodox Church; “I’d never read the Bible because I’d never had a Bible.”^{^[17]}

For this community, the central question for the past 100 years has concerned their ethnic identity[18] – who were they? This question had two contradictory answers. Were they essentially Greeks who had been Arabicised after the Arab Conquest of the Levant, or Arabs who had been Hellenised? The clergy maintained that the laity were ethnically Greeks who had forgotten who they were. The laity demanded that they were ethnically and culturally 'Arab.'^{^[19]} In the preface to her 1862 book, Mary Rogers opines; “but I may here mention, that the Christians of the land are said to be of pure Syrian origin, while the Moslems are chiefly descended from the Arabians who settled in the towns and villages of Syria and Palestine in the seventh and eighth centuries.”^{^[20]} Likewise in 1852, Hollingsworth had noted that; “in many of the ruined cities and villages there exists also, a limited number of Christian families, uncivilized, and not knowing correctly from what race they derive their origin. Poor, and without influence, they tremblingly hold their miserable possessions from year to year, without security, and without wealth, in a land which they confess is not their own.”^{^[21]} Mark Durie writes that “Other dhimmi communities steadily declined, gradually becoming assimilated into the Islamic community. Some changed their language and culture, like the Aramaic, Coptic and Greek speaking peoples of Syria, Palestine and Egypt, who adopted Arabic, and ultimately embraced Arabic identity in the twentieth century.”[22]

While it has deeper roots, the problem took centre stage in the 16^th century, when the Ottomans, for bureaucratic ease, combined the four existing Patriarchates into one administrative unit, headed by the patriarchate of Constantinople. From 1662 onwards, the head of the Jerusalem Patriarchate was thereby appointed from Constantinople and was an ethnic Greek. Indeed, “an Arab presence in the patriarchate in earlier times was concealed. Removal from the prayers of all names of the Arab patriarchs that had served before the 16^th century is but one example.”^{^[23]}

Interestingly, in Cappadocia and elsewhere within the Ottoman Empire, many Greek Orthodox Greeks spoke only Turkish (“there are many Greek villages where the inhabitants have forgotten the speech of their race.”^{^[24]}), and during the final decades of the nineteenth century, a process of “linguistic re-hellenization”^{^[25]} did occur. This was implemented through a vastly expanded Ottoman Greek schooling system, developed and run by Greek Orthodox clergy. The Athens based Association for the Propagation of Greek Letters helped in this nationalistic awakening. At the same time, the Arab peoples within the (Turkish) empire were also experiencing their own awakening and promoting Arab language and nationalistic movements. Palestinian Greek Orthodox were therefore being pulled in two directions as to their national identity and language, and the distance from Greece and pre-existing usage of Arabic determined the outcome. Being Greek offered no advantages to this community as compared with being Arab.[26]

For the local Palestinian Greek Orthodox, their big problem was that all of their higher clergy were appointed from Greece, preached in Greek, and local Orthodox were actually prohibited by law from becoming clergy. This caused real difficulties even in Ottoman times, and these were exacerbated during the Mandate. Equally, the reasonable push from the laity for the full or partial Arabization of the clergy fed easily into a support for a wider Arab nationalism. Generally speaking, Orthodox Arabs were the most fervent nationalists of Palestine's Christians. Even in Ottoman times, many Orthodox leaders were prominent in the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement. Local agitation against Greek language and leadership were linked to nationalistic movements in Albania and Bulgaria, and in 1893, the Arab laity of Antioch followed these examples by placing an Arab as Patriarch for the first time since the 16^th century, a development hailed as “the first real victory of Arab nationalism.”^{^[27]} Note also the comment by George Antonius, in his famous Arab Awakening; “The educational activities of the American missionaries in that early period had, among many virtues, one outstanding merit; they gave pride of place to Arabic.”^{^[28]}

This Orthodox Arab fight with their Greek clergy led to a neglect of communal religious life. Many villages and even towns were without a priest. Mutual boycotts and Orthodox infighting led many to emigrate, while about 1/3 joined other denominations (mainly Melkite and Anglican). With little spiritual teaching, their community became more and more political. The Arab Orthodox movement “remade their religious community as a political entity.”^{^[29]} They still valued their communal life and wanted to remain together. A British report in 1926 stated; “Like all young men of their time, they are full of the idea of nationalism. … They do not wish to abandon their church; on the contrary they are attached to its traditions and its rites.”^{^[30]} But both Muslims and some of their own number thought that converting to Islam would be the best thing for them.^{^[31]} A tragic indictment!

Note the development here – the Greek clergy preached Greek nationalism – language/culture etc. – they did not preach Jesus! It was not then that the local community failed to hear their message, it was rather that they did!! What they took away was that nationalism, language, culture, these were of prime importance. That this community then neglected spiritual matters and relentlessly pursued political/nationalistic matters is therefore hardly surprising – it was what their church had taught them!! Indeed, it could be said that the Arab Orthodox got the message from their church that nationalism was more important than belief; they simply chose a different nationality. Luke 16:13 "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”

This early adoption of nationalism meant that initially, their nationalistic impact within the wider Arabic community far outweighed their actual numbers (being about ten percent of the population). Importantly, 19 out of the 25 Arabic newspapers in 1908 were Orthodox Christian owned. Filastin, the most important newspaper in Palestine, was owned and run by Arab Orthodox and articulated a Palestinian Arab nationalism opposed to both the Greek clergy and Zionism. Writing of Filastin, and another early Orthodox Arab Palestinian newspaper, Al-Karmil, Rashid Khalidi characterized them as "instrumental in shaping early Palestinian national consciousness and in stirring opposition to Zionism." Khalidi contended that almost immediately after the publication of its first issue in December 1908, al-Karmil "became the primary vehicle of an extensive campaign against Zionist settlement in Palestine."^{^[32]} Al-Karmil was later owned by Arab Anglicans.[33]

On their part, from the beginning, the Greek clergy were less concerned with Zionism than with the movement for the Arabisation of the Patriarchate. A few years into the Mandate, in an effort to resolve its financial crisis, the Patriarchate began selling church properties to Jews. The Arab laity objected strongly,^{^[34]} and as a result, in 1922, it opposed the appointment of the Bishop Cleopas as Metropolitan of Nazareth. The importance of this dispute cannot be over-emphasised. “The land sales made the task of gaining Arab political ascendancy in the church seem immediately essential; Orthodox lay leaders, desiring to participate in the Arab politics … could not afford to be associated with an institution supportive of large-scale Jewish immigration and British imperial control. The Arab Orthodox now began to depict their Greek church hierarchy as a foreign oppressor (like Zionism) and to employ nationalist and anti-imperialist language in their struggle against the Patriarchate.”^{^[35]} As they would phrase it; “does the church belong to the Greek expatriates or to the Arab majority?”^{^[36]} In stark contrast, the Jerusalem Patriarch, Damianos believed that the Greek Orthodox were, like the Jewish community, a minority, and that they should cooperate. He was regarded as a friend by the Jewish community and described by Frederick Kisch as “a man of goodwill.”^{^[37]}

Tensions between the laity and the Patriarchy worsened in the early 1920s when the Greek patriarchate issued a statement of support for Zionism.^{^[38]} The metamorphosis of the Orthodox laity into a largely political entity can be briefly traced through the Arab Orthodox Congresses (distinct from the Arab Palestinian Congresses of the same era). The first Congress (in Haifa, July 1923), defined itself as a political movement, using nationalistic terminology. It called for the “full Arabisation of their church”,^{^[39]} a 1-year ban on land sale to Zionists and castigated the Patriarchy for selling them land. They “re-wrote their communities goals into anti-Zionism and anti-Imperialism.^{^[40]} Katz and Kark note the “dismay” of the first Orthodox Arab Congress with the patriarch, due to his; “friendly relations with Zionist leaders and favourable statements issued in regard to the Zionist movement.”^{^[41]}

Protests eventually gave way to a second congress, held in Ramallah in June of 1926, under the presidency of ‘Isa al ‘Isa, the proprietor of Filastin. By now the Orthodox cause was defined almost exclusively in nationalist terms. Among the resolutions passed was the demand that an Arab patriarch be elected, and that the Arab laity should participate in the election. In November 1927, the Orthodox People's Party was founded, which pledged itself "to restore the Arabs' national rights usurped by the Greeks."^{^[42]}

The Second Arab Orthodox Congress, in 1931 again called for Arab clergy. The Islamic Congress in Jerusalem, being held at the same time, and headed by Haj Al Husseini, responding to an appeal from them, congratulated them and acknowledged the Arab Orthodox cause as part of the broader Arab nationalist movement.^{^[43]}

This disconnect between the clerical leadership and the laity is why statements from the Palestinian Orthodox community are generally made by its secular leaders such as ‘Isa al-‘Isa, Sakakini and George Antonius, rather than by the clergy. In 1929, the Orthodox Youth Club of Jerusalem again protested the continuing Orthodox land sales to the Zionists.

For many Orthodox Arabs, the 'Arab Orthodox' cause, the nationalist cause, and the fight against Zionism were all part of the same struggle. Their struggle for the Arabisation of the Patriarchate was only one part of the larger struggle for Arab independence. They believed that their own communal goals would be realised in fulfilling Arab nationalist aspirations.^{^[44]}

More broadly, Orthodox Arabs regarded themselves as the Christian community closest to the Muslims, and in many respects, this perception was reciprocated. The fact that Orthodox Arabs defined their struggle in nationalistic terms significantly aided this feeling of empathy. Many Muslim organisations strongly supported the Orthodox cause. The 6^th Palestinian Arab Congress indeed recognised the Orthodox issue as part of the broader national cause. This greatly helped the Orthodox relations with the Muslim community (who had not been entirely convinced of the Orthodox commitment to the nationalist cause), especially since they were largely accommodating of the British Mandate. Having been used to support from Russia prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, many Orthodox indeed initially looked to Britain to fill that now vacant role. For others, the loss of Russian support meant they were largely on their own and they became even more nationalistic.

By 1935 Orthodox infighting between clergy and laity and mutual boycotts led to increased emigration as well as further defections to other denominations (mainly Melkite and Anglican). By 1943, many villages and even towns were without a priest.^{^[45]} In 1946, the Executive Orthodox Committee declared; “The aim of the Orthodox … [is] to become a strong community with a definite and clear Arab influence, and so as to be able to deliver its national message in a full and suitable manner.”^{^[46]} They then addressed the Arab League; “We as Arabs and our case being both nationally and politically an Arab affair … an indivisible part of the general Palestinian case.”

As seen, the Orthodox were early advocates of anti-Zionism.^{^[47]} “The Orthodox community would, over the course of the Mandate, prove to be the [Christian community] most committed to the nationalist cause; Latin Catholics, arguably the least.”^{^[48]} In 1921, for example, the Orthodox-run newspaper Filastin published in translated form the infamous anti-Semitic tract; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.^{^[49]} On August 5, 1922, al-Karmil published a song denouncing the Balfour Declaration and the danger of the Jews getting hold of the Christian and Muslim holy places (a highly incendiary topic!!). In 1923, ‘Isa al-‘Isa used Filastin to attack “Jews, using anti-Semitic attributes.” In 1931, six weeks before Passover, the paper even published a “blood libel” against the Jaffa Jewish community!!^{^[50]}

The Arab Orthodox community had made their choice. In 1947, at a meeting of Arab Orthodox clergy in Jerusalem, the Reverend Ya’qub al-Hanna declared; “the hour has struck to participate with the people in repelling the dangers encircling the dear homeland.” They sent out 3 telegrams; the first was to the Arab Higher Executive, led by Haj Amin al-Husseini expressing their “absolute confidence in its leadership” and announcing “to the whole world the cooperation of the Arab Orthodox Community in weal and woe, with its sister, the dear Muslim community.” The third, to the British High Commissioner, stated that the Orthodox community “supports the faithful leaders and the Arab Higher Executive, and rejects partition categorically, announcing its preparedness to safeguard Palestine’s Arabism and the Holy Places at any cost.”^{^[51]}

Their fight to be defined as Arab led finally to this step of full support for the Muslim community and for its Mufti, the war criminal Haj Amin al-Husseini. They rejected peace with the Jewish community and subordinated what remained of their faith to their nationalism.

Postscript, The present Patriarch of Jerusalem, Atallah Hanna, a Palestinian, has been viewed as a prime example of the “fusion between Orthodox fidelity, Palestinian identity, and opposition to the modern state of Israel.”^{^[52]} Atallah Hanna, as a spokesman for the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, called for “Christian Arabs and Palestinians to join the opposition against Israeli occupation, in every necessary form.”^{^[53]} He has also applauded suicide bombers as “Arab heroes,” while denouncing peace efforts: “Israel is the Great Satan, and therefore one is not allowed to negotiate with Israel or even consider a cease-fire. Any kind of peace with Israel means making concessions, and that defeats the Arab strategy to resist and oppose the Jewish state.”^{^[54]} No repentance here.

Greek Catholics (Melkites)

The Greek Catholics claimed to be the only wholly Arab Christian community in Palestine, one whose entire hierarchy and lay community was and had always been ethnically and linguistically Arab. Their clergy had a vigorous role in nationalist activity. During the Mandate, Bishop Hajjar was the only prelate who took part in nationalist activity. Though Greek Catholic support for the nationalist cause was determined in large part by a genuine sense of being 'Arab,’ as with Latin Catholics, it was also shaped by an antipathy towards Zionism.^{^[55]}

Early evangelical Protestant, Chalil Jamal was born into the Melkite church in 1840. He and his family converted to Protestantism through the teaching of the missionary, John Bowen. Jamal wrote that “[he] preached to us Christ and him crucified and explained the pure word of God to the family circle.”^{^[56]} He would later write; “I won’t give up the Bible, and am willing to part with any tradition that may be contrary to God’s precious word.”^{^[57]} He always opened and closed his Bible studies with prayer. For Jamal, the entire Bible was inspired and authoritative for matters of faith and practice. The problem was that there was a “dearth of Biblical knowledge.”^{^[58]} He also consistently witnessed to Muslims. Other early Protestants, Seraphim Boutaji and Michael Kawar were also from the Melkite church. Kawar mentioned in one letter a conversation he had with someone, which “led him to leave all the traditions of the Greek church and to follow the way of salvation as revealed in the pure word of God.”^{^[59]}

Latin Catholics

Luke 23:12 “That day Herod and Pilate became friends--before this they had been enemies.”

The Roman Catholic, or Latin, community in Palestine is a paradox. Historically, most of its members were foreign monks and nuns etc., and indeed, the community was not even recognized as indigenous by the Ottomans, both because of its foreign makeup, and also due to historic antagonisms; both Christian/Christian (Greek Orthodox vs. Catholics[60]), and Christian/Muslim, (the [Catholic] Crusades). They thus formed a somewhat isolated community, who mainly looked out for themselves. They had little to do with Muslims and were largely concerned with their status as a separate community. Nevertheless, they emerged from the Mandate period with greater political capital, and far closer to the rest of the Arab community than they had ever been before.

The Roman Catholic Church underwent a rapid expansion in British mandate Palestine. This was fuelled by a massive increase in their local, lay membership due largely to conversions from the Greek Orthodox community. The institutions destroyed during the First World War were rebuilt, and twelve new Roman Catholic parishes were constructed to minister to Palestine’s growing Roman Catholic population.^{^[61]} In an atmosphere of political stability, the Jesuits opened a Jerusalem branch of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, and a number of churches, monasteries, schools and hospitals were erected in Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth and Jerusalem.

Latin Catholics were poorly represented in nationalist organisations; indeed, their participation in the latter was generally discouraged by the Latin Patriarch. Once relations between Britain and the Vatican improved, Latin Catholic involvement in the nationalist movement diminished even further.^{^[62]} This, combined with their previous isolation, should have distanced them even further from the wider Arab community. In spite of all of this however, as noted, they emerged from the Mandate period with greater political capital, and far closer to the rest of the Arab community than they had ever been before.

This was because, while not interested in local politics, their leadership reflected the anti-Zionist attitudes of the Vatican, and of Catholic circles in general. After some early ambivalence regarding Zionism, the Vatican had adopted a strong position against the Balfour Declaration from the day of its announcement. The Vatican initially also opposed the British Mandate as a Protestant power pursuing a Zionist policy.^{^[63]} British Catholics also opposed Balfour Declaration.^{^[64]} On July 16, 1921, the New York-based Catholic journal The Tablet, ran a report under the heading "Christians are Menaced by Jews" which cited emigration statistics proving that Christians were leaving Palestine because they were "tired of Jewish interference.”^{^[65]} The Pope was warmly thanked by the 6^th Arab Palestinian Congress on 27 June 1923. In November 1924, the Pope openly expressed his fear of the decline of Christianity as a result of the promise of a Jewish National Home.^{^[66]}

The Vatican's own position on Zionism was very much shaped by a theologically-based anti-Semitism. Their view was that the Jews had been dispersed as punishment for their having rejected the Messiah and bore collective responsibility for His crucifixion. That they might become reconstituted as a nation without having accepted Jesus as the Messiah was considered theologically untenable. An article appearing in the Catholic newspaper, Civilita Cattolica in 1887, the same year as the first Zionist Congress stated: “One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven years have passed since the prediction of Jesus of Nazareth was fulfilled, namely that Jerusalem would be destroyed ... As for a rebuilt Jerusalem, which might become the centre of a reconstituted state of Israel, we must add that this is contrary to the predictions of Christ himself who foretold that “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled” (Luke 21:24), that is...until the end of the world.” The Church could not support the ultimate aims of the Zionist movement.^{^[67]}

In 1904 Merry del Val, the Vatican Secretary of State, explained to Herzl, since the Jews had denied the divinity of Christ, “How can we, without abandoning our highest principles, agree to their being given possession of the Holy Land again?”^{^[68]} The Pope agreed. “We cannot give approval to the movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it. The soil of Jerusalem, if it was not always sacred, has been sanctioned by the life of Jesus Christ. As the head of the Church, I cannot tell you anything different.”^{^[69]} “If you come to Palestine to settle your people there, we shall have churches and priests ready to baptize all of you.”^{^[70]} “we cannot recognize the Jewish people. Jerusalem cannot be placed in Jewish hands.”

From Herzl’s visit forward, the Vatican came to believe that political Zionism posed a greater danger to its interests in Palestine than did any other Christian group or the Ottomans. On

May 4, 1917 Pacelli (the future pope) indicated that the reserved area the Vatican sought, which would be off-limits to Zionist claims, was to extend well beyond the Holy Places themselves and would cover Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and its surroundings, as well as Tiberias and Jericho.^{^[71]} In concluding, he added that it was “difficult to take a piece of our hearts away from the Turks in order to give it to the Zionists.”^{^[72]} In January 1919 Cardinal Bourne sent a letter to the British prime minister and to the foreign secretary, writing that Zionism had not received the approval of the Holy See, and if the Jews would "ever again dominate and rule the country, it would be an outrage to Christianity and its Divine founder." When Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann requested an audience with Pius XI in 1934 the pope declined to receive him, stating; “we cannot stand on the side of the Zionists.”^{^[73]} Such sentiments could not but influence how Palestinian Catholics reacted to the Arab Revolt against Jewish immigration two years later.

All this also affected how the local Catholic population was viewed in Palestine. The Latin patriarch, Louis Barlassina, was an outsider appointed from the Vatican in March 1920. In his Pastoral letter soon after, he feared that Palestine was coming under the servitude of the Zionists, a worse yoke that the Turks.^{^[74]} As a result, he received praise throughout the Arab community for his political views.^{^[75]} The German ambassador at the Holy See noted in 1922 that Barlassina did "not miss any opportunity to speak out against the Jewish settlements and openly support the Arabs.”^{^[76]} During his visit to Rome 11 May 1922, Barlassina “openly attacked the Zionist movement in an extreme tone.”^{^[77]} The Arab delegation in London warmly congratulated him.^{^[78]} Inside Palestine, during 1921-2, he incited his community not to cooperate with the official education schemes on the grounds they were pro-Zionist. He also started a diocesan paper which attacked the Balfour Declaration. He was the only head of a religious community who abstained from official ceremonies. Did not attend the swearing in of the High Commissioner, or the Kings Birthday.^{^[79]} He opposed nationalism but encouraged his community in anti-Zionism.

More than most other Arab denominations, the Latin Catholic community showed strong anti-Semitic tendencies. Like that of their leadership, their opposition to Zionism often seemed more due to their disdain for Jews than the fact that it posed an obstacle to achieving nationalist aims. Generally speaking, Palestine's local Latin Catholics did support Arab nationalism, though their level of commitment always had a certain ambiguity to it. Latin Catholic support for Arab nationalism was largely motivated by their anti-Semitism and consequent anti-Zionism rather than by nationalist feelings as such. Indeed, Catholic protestations often came across more as an extension of the Vatican's anti-Zionist position than as something derived from organic nationalistic sentiment.^{^[80]} This is important to recognise, as today many Christian denominations couch their anti-Israel rhetoric with the explanation that they are simply responding to the cry of their Palestinian Christian brethren.

Palestinian Catholic outlets often carried anti-Jewish articles. On January 15, 1926, the Latin Arabic periodical Raqib Sahyun published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (already translated by the Greek Orthodox editor of Filastin, ‘Isa al-‘Isa in 1921). In October 1926, the Supreme Muslim Council published an article based on the article in Raqib Sahyun. Thanks to these Palestinian Christians, The Protocols are now popular across the Muslim world.^{^[81]}

So, almost against their will the Latin Catholics became closer to the Arab community due to the anti-Zionism of the Vatican and the increase in their local laity. Palestinian rights were seen as a tool against Zionism, so the Latin community was encouraged to identify with that community. In 1943, responding to a proposal to rescue Jewish children from Slovakia and divert them from Poland to Palestine, the Vatican’s first response was “The Holy See has never approved the making of Palestine a Jewish home ... And the question of the Holy Places? Palestine is by this time more sacred for Catholics than ... for Jews”.^{^[82]} Two weeks later, the second highest official in the Vatican, Cardinal Luigi Maglione wrote to the apostolic delegate in Washington. Control of Catholic holy places was his first concern, and the second was that a Jewish predominance in Palestine would offend Catholic piety. He concluded asking that the delegate make these objections known to the President and that he also alert the American bishops to be aware of any change in the public opinion of the American people toward Palestine which could be harmful to Catholic interests.^{^[83]} The Vatican concern here was not for “Palestinian rights”, but rather a concern that Catholic piety would be offended by Jewish children living in Palestine rather than dying in Poland. That the Mufti and the Vatican both worked to prevent Jewish children from escaping to Palestine is beyond repulsive. The Vatican was not pro-Palestinian, they were simply anti-Jewish, but that was enough for the Palestinians.

There is a long-standing, mutually abusive/destructive marriage of convenience between Palestinian Christians and Western denominations. Each use the other for their own ends; Palestinian Christians want western political support in order to make themselves valuable to their Muslim majority, while many western denominations have latched on to Palestinian Christians as a convenient, 'virtuous' mask for their own theological anti-Semitism. Both sides of this abuse continue to this day.

Interestingly, when the Vatican 2 council debated responding to the Holocaust by a statement repudiating Catholic anti-Semitism, specifically, by stating that the present Jewish people were not responsible for the death of Jesus, in Nostra Aetate, the Arab League objected strenuously.[84] This was because the Vatican based its rejection of Zionism on the idea that the Jewish people could not regain statehood because they were guilty of the death of Jesus. A Vatican renunciation of that doctrine would therefore presumably weaken its opposition to Zionism. The objections of the Arab League are interesting because Islam demands that Jesus was not crucified. Logic left the building as the Muslim delegates basically declared that "Jesus was not crucified, and the Jews did it." The Eastern Orthodox and Melkites also saw it as potentially weakening Catholic opposition to the Jewish state, and likewise petitioned Vatican 2 not to change its traditional anti-Semitism.[85] Catholic anti-Semitism formed the theoretical basis for its anti-Zionism, Arab anti-Zionism formed the practical basis of its support for Catholic anti-Semitism. The links between the two are again seen. – the Catholic Church didn’t care about the Palestinians, but did oppose a Jewish state, and so the Palestinians were happy to make common cause with them. Disgracefully, “The Arab Evangelical Church Council endorsed a statement opposing attempts by ‘Christian heads in the West’ to absolve Jews of the responsibility for the crucifixion of Christ.”[86] That is, Eastern Orthodox, Melkites and Arab Evangelical leaders all supported continued Catholic anti-Semitism precisely because this strengthened the anti-Zionism common to all. They publicly supported the continuation of Jew hatred!

The Druze

All this creates an interesting contrast with another small Arab community which also traditionally kept to itself. The Druze started the Mandate closer than the western catholic community to the rest of the Arab population but remained aloof throughout the Mandate and ended it as allies of the Israelis.[87] The main difference between these communities here was the intense theological and social anti-Semitism of the Catholic community and its leaders. Anti-Semitism is the glue holding the various Palestinian communities together.

Armenians

They did at times make common cause with the larger Christian community in their opposition to Zionism, which they saw as a threat to their more narrowly defined interests.

Maronites

Their tendency to dissociate from the larger Arab community arguably reflected a great deal more on the larger Christian community and its overall commitment to the nationalist cause. They showed that, under certain circumstances, other alternatives were possible. Maronites were not especially sympathetic to the Palestinian nationalist cause; neither to the idea of a pan-Arab state. During the latter part of the Mandate, in fact, many Zionists came to consider the Maronites their natural allies. From the perspective of Muslim-Christian relations, this raised uncomfortable questions concerning the basis of Christian loyalty. In the one place [Lebanon] where they made up the vast majority and the population was relatively homogenous the Christians themselves had likewise called for their own state. An obvious implication of this was that Christian loyalty was entirely dependent on there being a lack of any viable alternative. Given the underlying relationships between the Muslim majorities and local Christians, and the communal massacres of Christians by the Muslim majority across the late Ottoman Empire (see later sections), this is hardly surprising.

By the end of the Mandate, what had become increasingly evident was that the only Arab whose identity as such went unquestioned was a Muslim one. The fact of the matter was that, for many of the reasons noted above, an Arab national identity that emphasised the Arabs' ties with Islam resonated much more strongly with the great majority of Palestine's Arabs than one which tried to craft a more secular or ecumenical definition.^{^[88]} This again will be discussed in more detail later on.

Protestants/Anglicans

Origins; Evangelical and pro-Jewish

Protestants were the most recent Palestinian Christian community. The first Anglican work started in 1833, when John Nicholyson (with London Jews Society) established a work at Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem.^{^[89]} The Church Missionary Society (CMS) joined the work in 1842.^{^[90]} The initial focus of this work was the mission to the Jews. Indeed, the Prussian King Wilhelm IV, who was greatly interested and supportive of the mission, suggested that they name their church “The Consolation or Comfort of Israel,” or “Messiah’s Church.”^{^[91]} When the Ottomans regained dominion over Palestine due to British and western help, this enabled the establishment of a Protestant Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem. Influential in this was Lord Ashley, the Earl of Shaftsbury. His enthusiasm for this was based in his belief, drawn from the study of the prophetic Scriptures, that the Jews were to return to the Holy Land and there accept their Messiah.

Early Opposition – An exaggerated Ecumenicalism, elevated above the preaching of the Gospel!

The establishment of the bishopric was opposed by the [High Church Anglican] Oxford movement, as an encroachment on the Eastern and Catholic churches, and indeed its establishment was the cause for John Newman (of that movement) to leave the Anglican church and join the Catholic, where he eventually became a Cardinal.^{^[92]} Concerns about demarcation and ecumenical manners would persist, to its overwhelming detriment! Note that the first Bishop in Jerusalem was instructed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to focus solely on the Jews, and that he should not interfere in any way in the affairs of the Eastern churches.^{^[93]} It was indeed envisaged as a “Hebrew bishopric,” using the Hebrew language and traditions.^{^[94]} The “supreme motive” for the establishment of an Anglican work in Palestine “was the conversion of the Jews. … There was a widespread belief that if the Jews were converted and gathered in Palestine, this would signal the near approach of the second coming of Christ.”^{^[95]} The first bishop in Jerusalem, bishop Michael Solomon Alexander, “shared in the Protestant Biblical interpretation, stressing prophecies based in both the Old and New Testaments.”^{^[96]} “When he spoke of the revival of Israel in the future, his heart overflowed with warmth.”^{^[97]}

The Gospel breaks out and reaches the Gentiles!

With the appointment of the second bishop in Jerusalem in 1846, Bishop Samuel Gobat from Prussia, there was a change in emphasis, though not necessarily in goals. While he believed in the return of the Jews to Palestine, and in their conversion to Christ, he re-directed his work towards what were termed the “fallen” Eastern churches. “I was a debtor not only to the Jews, but also to the ignorant Greeks, Romanists, Armenians, Turks.”^{^[98]} His desire was to revive the Eastern churches through Bible distribution and evangelism. This has to be seen as a profoundly positive and Christian impulse. It is what Paul did in Acts 18:26, we are likewise instructed to “teach and admonish one another” (Colossians 3:16) and indeed, to “spur one another on toward love and good deeds.” (Hebrews 10:24). No fault can therefore be found in this Godly desire to aid these churches.

This arouses Opposition, both in Palestine and in the home Church

Gobat’s appointment was bitterly and publicly opposed by the Oxford movement. The CMS however were keen to aid the Greek Orthodox Church through Christian education, and the founding of Christian schools to this purpose. These schools, around fifty in number, were built in other Christian populated cities such as Beit Jala, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Ramla and Nablus.[99] The Greek Orthodox refused any assistance and were hostile to bishop Gobat. At first, he told Orthodox members who accepted Bibles and then asked for Bible teachers to simply remain within their church and continue reading the Bible. Sadly, his desire to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the Eastern Churches was rebuffed. Unlike Apollos, they were not willing to be taught. They expelled those they should have cherished; Acts 17:11.

It is revealing that rather than responding spiritually, the ancient churches chose to respond institutionally; “Indeed, it is impossible to understand the basis for the reestablishment of the Latin Patriarchate in 1847 and the return of the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem after years of residence in Constantinople without recognising the competition and religious and political motivations that followed the establishment of the Protestant Bishopric in 1841.”[100] Rather than welcoming the arrival of a few keen new Christians who were eager to help the spiritual growth of their congregations, with a few noble exceptions, they responded like institutions whose monopoly or copyright had been threatened. In this and in other ways (Cardinal Newman, the Oxford Movement etc) “Protestant missionary activity and its associated religious institutions were one of the key constitutive elements that transformed the religious context of Palestine before 1917.”[101]

A desire for the Gospel creates an Arab Anglican Communion

The majority of Gobat’s efforts soon centred on the schooling system and Bible distribution among the Orthodox. Converting Muslims was outlawed by the Ottomans, and a separate work for Jewish mission soon developed, underlining the change in Anglican focus. In light of these occurrences, the CMS would finally, reluctantly turn to proselytising local Christians, especially the dysfunctional Greek Orthodox. This however does not seem to have been their initial objective, but rather an undesired outcome. Writing back in 1815, William Jowett of CMS hoped that through education in the Bible, the children of Eastern Christians “would resume the duty, abandoned by their fathers for centuries, of converting the Muslims.”^{^[102]} The CMS believed that its calling was that by “journeys, by press and by education, to disseminate the knowledge of Scriptural truth, in order, by God’s grace, to raise the tone of Christian doctrine and practice.” Indeed, Bishop Gobat found that the distribution of Bibles and tracts “had produced its effect, and a good many members of the Eastern Churches were seeking more light.”^{^[103]} In 1850, he wrote that he did not interfere in other churches, and that while receiving requests from various parts of the country for teachers, and wished to come under his spiritual direction, he could not establish churches for them, and requested them to persevere in the reading of the Scriptures, and to remain in their churches.^{^[104]}

He had hoped that the encouragement of Bible reading would elicit a revival within the Eastern Churches. When Orthodox priests instead excommunicated any who read the Bible and would receive them back only if they promised never to read the Bible again, and kissed an icon, reluctantly, Gobat accepted them into the Anglican church, “as they believed in the truth as it is in the Bible.”^{^[105]} As he wrote to King Frederick William IV; “And now, what am I to do? I have never wished to make converts from the old churches, but only to lead to the Lord and the knowledge of His truth as many as possible. From henceforth I shall be obliged to receive into our communion such as are excluded for the Bible-truth’s sake from other churches: and I trust that in doing so, even though men should blame me for it, the Lord will grant his blessing.”^{^[106]} Gobat stated that he could not refuse pastoral care for those whose own churches had excommunicated them. Again, no fault can be found in this.

As a result, the early Anglican churches soon became comprised almost entirely of converts from the Greek Orthodox community. This gave them ties to the larger Arab community, a strong nationalist Arab identity, and a history of opposing their own leadership. St Georges, built 1898, is still centre of Arab Anglican life in Jerusalem. In stark contrast to the Greek Orthodox, the Anglicans poured their energies into raising and training local clergy and leaders. They were frequently accused by other Arabs of being pro-British (dangerous during Ottoman times, and also during the British Mandate, but for vastly different reasons), accusations they deeply resented and which they fought hard to erase. They were the best educated and most westernized within the Christian community (who themselves were far better educated than the Muslim community). They were also generally at odds with their mother [British] community (again, similar to the Greek Orthodox!).

In 1876, bishop Gobat handed over most of the schools he had established to the CMS. The CMS still wanted to encourage the Eastern churches through Bibles and teaching but did not wish for their members to join them. They ran a theological college and trained up a local clergy. From 1905 they began to hand over control to these clergy to the newly created PCNN (see below). Hopes for Hebrew congregations were not immediately fulfilled, and the diocese became based on Arab congregations, closely linked to the CMS.

A divide between the Jewish vision and Arab membership (clergy and laity) begins.

Though he tried, the next Protestant bishop, Joseph Barclay (1879-1881) was unable to bridge the growing divide between Jewish and Arab converts. These divisions are described as being “linguistic and national.”^{^[107]} Farah writes^{^[108]} of the expat missionaries being divided between supporters of the British Consul, James Finn, who was interested in encouraging Jews to settle in Palestine and witness to them, and bishop Gobat, who while sympathetic, was more focused on reviving the eastern churches. Again, we find there was a sizable missionary component who longed to aid and bless the returning Jewish people. Finn even established a farming community to help teach and show by example how to farm, the very thing many Jews both from Jerusalem^{^[109]} and those returning wanted to know!

The early Arab Anglicans were therefore entering a community which taught about and longed for the return of the Jews, and which was engaged in positive, practical steps to aid/bless this. Not only that, but these early hopes for a Jewish return to their land were also being realised before their eyes, yet with all of this, the vast majority of Arab Anglicans seemingly from early on rejected one of the central tenets of the group they chose to join! It may be that a sizable Jewish return started only in the second/third generation of Arab Anglicans, and that by then, the early zeal of their parents had cooled, and they also wished closer relations with their larger original community, and a shared Arab nationalism facilitated this desire. The call of their own flesh was seemingly too strong.

The shameful triumph of ecumenicalism (and the High Church) over the Gospel

The afore mentioned Bishop Barclay also started up a correspondence with an American society which wished to evangelise the Jews, with the hope of opening up an evangelistic work among them in Galilee. With Barclay’s death in 1881, the English High Church party again wished to end the entire endeavour. As it was, the bishopric was reconstituted in 1887, with an explicit instruction not to proselytize.^{^[110]} In this spirit, the next bishop, George Blyth (1887-1914) “put his foot on proselytism.”^{^[111]} This meant not witnessing to the local Christian communities, Orthodox, Catholic etc. He remained however committed to the evangelization of non-Christians. He also built schools and hospitals for Arabs and for Jews. On the 18^th of October, 1898, he preached at the consecration of St Georges, he spoke of the Apostolic command to preach to the Jew first and also to the Gentiles, and noted that, when the Eastern church was disobedient to this command, its missionary zeal died down.^{^[112]} He stressed the need for mission work among the Jews of Bible lands, and noted that “this does not exclude mission work among Moslems.”^{^[113]}

The more evangelical CMS and LJS refused his oversight. The CMJ trusted him, however, as he regarded the mission to the Jews as central.^{^[114]} In 1898 he preached on the urgency of missionary work among the Jews and believed that the Anglican church should take the initiative in recognising their duty towards them. He believed both that the Jewish people would “return to their ancient prerogatives” and that, their return to Christ could be the key to Christian renewal and unity.^{^[115]} In 1897, he wrote a circular which was sent to the clergy of the Anglican communion. It was titled; “The Jews and their Claim in 1897;”

“It is difficult to overstate the urgency of the work which concerns the Jews at the present day … the return of the Jews to the Land that is theirs (and which the Turks have owned, is God’s land in their trust) …and what are we, the mere handful that is here, that we should be able to reclaim from amongst them the “Church of the Hebrews” … at present the papers are full of the movement of the Jewish race … they have a very defined intention before them with reference to Palestine.”^{^[116]}

He believed that the return of the Jews to Palestine was “a sign to prophecies that are not yet fulfilled.”^{^[117]} That is, this bishop saw the return of the Jews as God directed, saw the need for Gentile Christians in the land to witness to them, and the universal blessings that would flow from all of this! Farah^{^[118]} also notes an Arab Christian, rev Joseph Jamal, who was active and successful in missionary work amongst the Jewish community. Such hoped for participation does not seem to have been widely emulated.

In general, Blyth fought with the CMS for better conditions for local Arab pastors and establishing congregations for them but was also against their witnessing to Orthodox people. Given the spiritual poverty within that church, this was a very serious error. It saw spiritually hungry people abandoned to a church he publicly acknowledged as having failed to keep the clear commands of Jesus. He saw his two main responsibilities as the evangelization of the Jews, and Christian unity.

Palestinian Protestantism

Almost from the start, Palestinian Protestantism was stridently nationalistic. In 1905 (while still under an Ottoman rule which frowned upon Arab nationalism) Arab priests wanting greater self-government and more Arabization formed the Palestinian Native (later changed to National) Church Council (PNCC) as an Arab body to self-govern under CMS spiritual guidance. Their 1905 regulations excluded all non-Arabs, the English-speaking expats, and specifically, the tiny congregations of “Hebrew Christians.” Again, a curious reverse-image of Galatians 2:11-12!

At the same time, and against the wishes of the Greek ecclesiastical hierarchy, there were continuing close, friendly relations between the local Anglican and Orthodox communities. A large number of Orthodox children attended Anglican schools, and Anglican Arab priests supported the Orthodox laity against the Greek clergy.

In all, it was an uneven, haphazard descent. 1907, at a CMS (Arab) conference in Jerusalem, a book critical of liberal scholarship, James Orr’s “The Problem with the Old Testament” was discussed. Stalder’s comments about this are interesting. He states that these Palestinian Christians had no difficulty with the Old Testament. “For them, it was the Word of God. It was infallible, inerrant and contained an anticipation of the Gospel. It was sufficient in all matters pertaining to salvation and matters of church polity. If there was a ‘problem’ of the Old Testament, it was that it was not read by Palestine’s inhabitants.” He also notes that in this, they “were different from Palestinian Christians after 1917 and 1948.”^{^[119]}

The absence of any British oversight during WW1 led to even greater self-sufficiency, and a far more awkward relationship after 1917, when the returning British Anglicans were then identified in the popular mind with the new British Mandate, and the Balfour Declaration. The growing Arab Anglican community “found it important to defend the national claims of the Palestinians and to participate in the political struggle against British Mandate policies and against Zionist aggressive plans.”^{^[120]}

The final triumph of Ecumenicalism - 1 Corinthians 11:18-19

Appallingly, during this tumultuous time, the head office again intervened to again close Heaven’s doors to the Orthodox community. Wanting a seat at the big table, “in December, 1919, the Archbishop of Canterbury appointed an official Committee to take cognizance of Eastern Church affairs.”^{^[121]} The price of admission was no proselyting, and as a result, the Arab Anglican church once more ceased its work among the Greek Orthodox. As seen, this policy had already been largely in place within Palestine, and now was extended universally. “And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14) To its shame, the CMS (again, as seen) largely went along with this apostacy. The clear commands of Jesus and Paul were ignored, and Greek Orthodox people, who had no priests or sermons or gospel, once more had the doors of the Anglican church closed to them. In 1922, for example, 800 Arab Orthodox from Bayt Sahur wanted to join the Anglican church but were refused!!^{^[122]} Stalder writes that “a growing ecumenical ethos pervaded MacInnes bishopric [1914-1931].”^{^[123]} In 1930, secretary of the CMS in Palestine, Wilson Cash, wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury; “During the past ten years … there have been practically no transfers from the Greek Church to the Native Anglican Church of the country.”^{^[124]} Likewise in 1932, a CMS official was “impressed[!!] by the disappearance of the desire to proselytize to the different sects.”^{^[125]}

This is profoundly opposed to the clear commands of God!

Isaiah 55:1 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!”

Matthew 28:18-20 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

2Timothy 4:1-2 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: ² Preach the Word;

Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

Acts 5:29 Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than men!”

Evangelism abandoned; nationalism chosen in its place.

Jeremiah 2:11-12 “But my people have exchanged their Glory for worthless idols. Be appalled at this, O heavens, and shudder with great horror,” declares the LORD.

Relations between local Arabs who were members of the Native Church Council and the CMS, which was its parent organization, were far from ideal: by 1906, “The English missionaries treated the native church members and clergy as children in need of guidance and supervision, while the locals wished to run their own affairs and did not regard it as their duty to engage in proselytizing.”[126] Indeed, “during the years between 1917 and 1948, Arab national sentiment began to pervade the ranks of the Protestant Church in Palestine more and more.”^{^[127]}

As Bishop Rennie MacInnes noted; “The national question preoccupied the native population far more than confessional details.”^{^[128]} Prior to arriving in Palestine, he saw the aims of the Anglican church there as Christian unity (no witnessing to Orthodox) and outreach to Jews and Muslims.^{^[129]}

Due to their CMS heritage, the Palestinian Anglicans remained self-consciously Low church, valuing lay participation, and anti-ritualistic. They continued to describe themselves as “evangelical” in their literature. From 1924 they sought independence to maintain CMS evangelical traditions^{^[130]} and opposed high church British influence. Specifically, they opposed the British bishop’s attempts to appoint High Church (Anglo-Catholic) priests.

With the loss of missionary fervour however, their first love died. It was replaced by what they had brought with them from the spiritually moribund Orthodox; political and nationalistic activism. “Arab Protestant community, itself carved out from the Orthodox Community with similar distribution in towns and more advanced rural areas, retained the features of the national attitudes and activities of its mother community.”[131] They became in effect Orthodox mark 2, except now with the access and vocabulary to influence western Christianity about what they were most passionate about; Palestinian political causes. They had avoided the High church only to opt for a lifeless liberalism. Tragically, the prior radicalization of their own converts (owing to their previous lack of spiritual teaching), and the forsaking of the proclamation of the Gospel combined to create Palestinian Anglicanism which claimed to be evangelical, but which preached only nationalism. Afraid of Muslims, hostile to Jews and uninterested in the spiritual life of the local Christians of other denominations, theirs became a barren, pointless existence. Refusing to preach the Gospel, to their shame they settled rather for preaching politics and Arab nationalism.

During the Mandate they strove to define themselves as authentically Palestinian Arab rather than as members of an English denomination. This was their passion, what they threw their energy into. Given that the bishop was still appointed from London, this was a hard objective to sell to the wider Arab community. It also contained curious resonances with the early Marcionite movement, which insisted that being a Christian in no way tied them to the Jewish community. In any event, they defined themselves primarily by their flesh, and not by the Gospel. They retreated from their baptism, and back into their ethnicity. They developed a self-consciously Arab ecclesiastical organization. The Palestine Native (now National) Church Council (PNCC) acted as the head of the Arab Episcopal Church and promoted an autonomous church independent of the British Jerusalem bishopric. They wanted to be recognised as a genuinely Arab Palestinian institution free from foreign influence. They defined themselves as a “Palestinian Arab” section of the Anglican church. They also rejected the designation 'Anglican' in favour of the title 'Evangelical Episcopal Arab Community,' a semantic change similarly adopted by the American Anglicans after the War of Independence, and for similar reasons. They also rejected integration with British and Hebrew Anglicans – “the PNCC did not want to belong to a global Anglican body; it wanted to be recognized as the head of an independent Palestinian Arab church.”^{^[132]}

The fruit of this failure would soon become apparent. “As early as 1922, the CMS was expressing concern about the extent to which Arab priests were engaged in nationalist politics.”^{^[133]} The CMS missionary conference 1922 passed a resolution “deprecating association of pastoral and political work, and urging paramount importance of whole time be given to spiritual work.”^{^[134]} In 1923, the Rev MacIntyre noted that; “missionaries, as Britishers, are thought to side with the British government, against the native [Arab] population, and the later are not disposed to listen to advice or council from the former.” In 1924, the PNCC considered pan Arab Protestant church, which would have been a union including Arab Presbyterians, Lutherans and Quakers. This failed to materialize, but in 1931, MacInnes reported to Canterbury that the PNCC had; “become very active, almost aggressive owing to the Nationalist Movement among the Arabs in Palestine.”^{^[135]} British missionaries were [often falsely] associated with the Mandate government, and its perceived policy of pro-Zionism. Many British missionaries were actually opposed to Zionism and came into conflict with the government on a number of occasions over Jewish migration.

During this time, the Arab Anglicans continued to grow numerically, going from 1,279 in 1922 to 1,843 in 1931.[136] That is, they remained a tiny (less than ½ of 1%) component of the Palestinian population.

Relationship with Jewish community

Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18)

The Anglican church had been founded for the express purpose of showing God’s love for the Jewish people, and the early bishops all believed that God would restore the Jewish people to Palestine. Their ‘inclusion of the Gentiles’ was, as seen, largely accidental and sadly resisted on false ecumenical grounds. Those Arabs who joined however, joined a group desirous and longing for the return of the Jewish people. They did so for the sake of the Gospel more generally, but that does not negate that love of the Jewish people remained a founding tenet of this society. On top of that, other British Christians such as James Finn gave early example of practical ways to encourage and bless the Jewish people. Beyond even all this, the very thing their spiritual fathers had been proclaiming, the wider return of the Jewish people as a fulfilment of prophecy, actually happened. Given all of these encouragements, the Arab Anglicans could have been a vital meeting point between the two communities. Tragically, this did not happen. The blessing that they could have been to both communities remained unrealised. The breach in the dividing wall between Jews and Arabs, that the Arab Christians should have incarnated as a direct consequence of their faith was rejected by them, as they collectively turned their backs on the Gospel.

This need not have been the case! In 1918, the CMS reacted to the British advance into Palestine, and the Balfour Declaration:

“The fact that Jerusalem and Bethlehem are now in Christian hands dominates all other events. … Fresh hope has been aroused that we are now on the eve of a great spiritual advance. Perhaps nothing has done more to inspire this new hope than the government’s declaration in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a ‘national home for the Jewish people.’

The miraculous preservation of the Jewish race, no less than prophecy, has produced a deep-seated conviction that the Chosen People are destined to be one of God’s chief instruments in working out his divine purpose for the human race. If these dreams are to materialise, a sustained effort must be put forward by the Christian Church to bring Israel into the fold of Christ.”^{^[137]}

After 85 years of waiting and hoping and praying, the chief purpose for which they had been established was materializing before them! Under Christian auspices, the Jewish people were returning and the CMS “were like those who dream.” (Psalm 126:1)

The ecclesiastical hierarchy in Jerusalem had however cooled in zeal. On December 13, 1919, Bishop MacInnes (who continued to believe in the Jewish return and conversion) met with Chaim Weizmann. The Bishop wanted to “Assure Dr. Weizmann of his sympathetic and friendly attitude towards the Jews.”[138] He told him that he “strongly hoped for the great future of the Jewish people and that a thrill of interest went through British Christians at the idea of a return of the Jews to Palestine.” He then proceeded to object “to certain features of current Zionism that had led to uneasiness among Palestinian people.”^{^[139]} He did not want the Jews to return by “tens of thousands at a time[U1] ,” and he was also concerned about a Jewish campaign against mission schools. The Jewish community were boycotting them, and exerting pressure upon any Jewish families who sent their children to them. Dr. Weizmann in turn well-articulated the Jewish case against sending their children to such schools; “You must remember our position. For two thousand years we have been persecuted, kept down, tortured. We entrench ourselves, we fight; our trenches are our Hebrew language, our Hebrew schools, our Hebrew families and children; anyone going over from us while we are fighting is like a traitor to the cause; every child we lose is a national loss …now after two thousand years we think we see a hope. But here in our own country, we find the process of attrition still going on … after we have our hopes, our home, perhaps an entente, I know not.”[140]

What a tragedy! The Jewish people are finally coming home, as he professes to believe, but rather than just rejoicing with Weizmann, and perhaps asking how they might be of assistance, he starts laying down rules, he does not want Jews returning in tens of thousands and complains that the Jewish people don’t want their children converted in Christian schools. He is vainly trying to put new wine into old wineskins! The Jewish people were not returning to Palestine only to be told by Christians what to do. For the first time in 2000 years, they considered themselves to be free, and they were not about to let themselves “be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1) Christians could rejoice with and help, and yes, most definitely share their faith, but not from an attitude of colonial superiority or religious superiority. Christians are supposed to embody humility!

Proverbs 18:17 “The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.”

Did MacInnes ever consider the Jewish case? It is a grief that 85 years after being established to bring the Gospel to the Jewish people, the Anglican bishop and his successors seemingly had no interest in or knowledge of the harsh realities of Jewish life outside Palestine. Did he visit Poland or Germany to ascertain some facts for himself? They are surrounded by people who have fled from the coming apocalypse in Europe, yet there only concern is for any disruption this rescue mission might have on the comfort of the local Arab community. Jewish lives mean nothing in the face of Arab inconvenience. Writing in the 1930s, the French author A. Londres (who did visit both Poland and Palestine) also noted the drastic change and “noisiness” of the Palestinian Jewish community; “your restless, impassioned spirit brushed aside twenty centuries with a flip of the mind … you had enough of living under a boot.”^{^[141]} After 2000 years of humiliation, they were home, and drunk on freedom. Why was there no understanding or compassion for their case also?

Mission schools were unquestionably conceived of as having both an educational and a missionary function. One can therefore understand the Jewish community not wishing to have its children attend such institutions. These institutions themselves also, like the rest of the Anglican effort, suffered an ongoing decay in their own missionary zeal. “The value of Jewish enrolment in Christian institutions appears to have been some-what mixed from the standpoint of the institutions themselves. [Susannah] Emery [of the (Anglican) Jerusalem Girl’s College] expressed her frustration with the non-Christian elements in 1935: ‘one third non-Christian is quite enough and the school is full enough’. ‘There are too many Jews’, wrote Emery again in 1941, ‘especially in the highest classes.’ Of the students to whom she refused entry in May 1942, all were Jews, again an indication that despite the small numbers, demand on the part of Jews for this type of education met or exceeded supply.”[142] In 1920, MacInnes wrote of the “failure of missionary work among Jews.”

In any event, the bishop’s early, provisional welcome soon wilted. Stalder comments that by the end of his bishopric “his disapproval of Zionist policies overshadowed his endorsement of their ideals.”^{^[143]} Eight months after the 1921 Jaffa riots, he wrote in a circular; “Palestine is so unhappily disturbed by the unjust and intolerable demands of the Zionists.”^{^[144]} Indeed, MacInnes seems to have blamed the Jews for both the Arab riots in Jaffa in 1921, and the wider Arab violence of 1929 (including the massacre of the Jewish community of Hebron), on the Jews themselves.[145] The Archbishop of Canterbury defended this letter to Churchill. MacInnes then wrote to the Archbishop; “we have noticed that their Zionism is generally political very often sordid and always noisy … I am forced to the opinion that Zionism has been weighed I the balance and found wanting.”^{^[146]} His canon, S. Waddy stated that Jews should not be given any powers of government over Palestine.[147] MacInnes even wrote a pamphlet justifying hostility towards Judaism as the result of the crucifixion of Jesus!![148]

Mark 14:37 "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour?

MacInnes had adopted a Manichean perspective on the Jewish return. Either it was 100% perfect from conception, or it was not of God, and should be rejected. How would he have coped with the less than perfect situation of the first return as recorded in Nehemiah Ezra and Haggai? Books that were in his Bible. How did he cope with his own church, which was clearly less than perfect? How did he cope with himself, a sinner saved by grace, and still not perfect? Why was it only the return of the Jews which must be immediately flawless? Equally, a friend, someone who had proved to be trustworthy, who rejoiced with the returning Jews, delighted in there presence, and was doing all in their power to aid them, might well have been able to occasionally offer helpful advice, and even used their own resources (their experience on the ground, their contacts with the Arab community and their finances) to help smooth the inevitable disruptions the return would cause, rather than almost immediately using the very existence of that disruption to denounce the entire project. The “sympathetic and friendly attitude” which he proclaimed to Weizmann was in reality dead on arrival.

Arab and British expat Anglicans oppose the Jewish return.

MacInnes therefore quickly turned to publicly supporting the Palestinian cause. Jews, he believed, were responsible for the hostility against them in Palestine. Through his mediation, the Muslim-Christian Association appealed to the Archbishop of Canterbury to support their struggle against Jewish immigration, and the promise of a national home. Arab Nationalist circles were encouraged by his attitude. Miss Frances Newton (an extreme anti-Zionist ex missionary)^{^[149]} became an advisor to a Muslim-Christian association in 1920. At the very moment when the prophecies they claimed to believe in were coming true, their faith and love cooled. The voice the Jewish (and Arab) people needed to hear was silenced by lack of faith, just as John the Baptist fathers’ had been in the Temple long ago.

Having rejected the narrative under which they were founded, the wider Arab Anglican community took the reality of the Balfour Declaration hard. Given that it was a British initiative, this also complicated their relationship with the new imperial power, which would otherwise have been much closer. During the late 1930s “British Anglican support in the metropole [England] for the Zionist project in Palestine caused a major breach between the Palestinian Episcopal community and its British parent church.”^{^[150]} Many Arab Episcopalians broke with the British mission institutions, some emigrated, others abandoned their faith entirely. That is, the Anglican response to Zionism was a huge issue for the Arab Anglican community. One has to wonder, did none of those who supported Zionism in England from a Biblical view think to examine how the Bible might view the presence of local gentile believers in that process? Within Palestine, did any of the British or local Anglican clergy search the Scriptures to discern what the role of Arab believers might be in regard to the Biblical restoration of the Jewish people (looking for example at Romans 11:31) and then explain this lovingly to them?? Did none of the Arab Anglicans recall the teaching and example of the early bishops and their Godly, Scriptural love for the Jewish people? Especially as the very thing they had hoped for and preached about was literally coming to pass?

In any event, the Arab Anglican community responded according to their ethnicity, rather than their faith. They were joined in this apostacy by increasing numbers of the British clergy there, who rather than bringing the Gospel to them, adopted instead the political views of the Arab community they had come to serve. In 1936 the PNCC sponsored a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury (when news of Nazi atrocities was already widely known in Palestine) requesting him to intervene with the British government to stop Jewish immigration; the “best solution to the present impasse is the immediate cessation of immigration.” This use of a church forum to promote nationalism concerned many British. But “many British missionaries in Palestine in both the CSM and the bishopric” agreed with the PNCC. Wilson Cash of the CMS wrote to the PNCC; “I think you have presented the case fairly, honestly and with great restraint … as you know, my sympathies in this controversy have all along been pro-Arab.”^{^[151]} By 1936, the PNCC “had unambiguously aligned itself with the cause of Arab nationalism and the point of view of the Muslim majority.”^{^[152]}

Theirs was not the moral stance they believed it to be. It was simply the stance of the Muslim community, adopted by the local Christian community, eager to find common cause with their own historic oppressors.

Christian Doctrines Affected.

All of this had theological consequence. Passages of Scripture which seemed to hold out hope and comfort to the Jewish people would now be regarded with suspicion and distain.[153] Theological solutions, both old (historic Christian anti-Semitism) and new (liberalism and its rejection of Scriptural authority) would now be explored, as the British and Arab Anglicans in Palestine sought solidarity with the anti-Jewish Muslim majority rather than fidelity to God’s word. Religion became the handmaid of nationalism. Both Bishops MacInnes and Brown, whose tenures covered the period 1914-1943 opposed Zionism. MacInnes especially communicated his deep resentment of his government’s support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. They would continue their involvement in Palestinian causes both from a secular level and a theological one. Eventually the activism of the Arab clergy would lead it into partial conflict with their British colleagues.

While Bishop MacInnes had expressed some vague support for the return of the Jews to Palestine, his successor, Bishop Francis Graham Brown (1932-1942), moved to a clear theological rejection of such. Lack of love and compassion had fatally white-anted Biblical doctrine and led to a church looking for ways to abandon God’s word, and to conform to this world. A church begun with such high hopes and faith fell to the point that it actively partitioned the government not to allow Jews fleeing the already unfolding Holocaust to find sanctuary among them.

Bishop Graham Brown was a constant critic of Zionism; “I have frequently expressed in public my views as to the unwisdom of many Zionist statements and actions.”^{^[154]} On October 12, 1936 he wrote to the Times in London stating that “Jewish immigration must be suspended.” He also contacted others in London at this time, seeking support for the stopping of Jewish immigration.^{^[155]} Like MacInnes before him, he also sought to justify his position theologically. On October 1936 he wrote to the Jerusalem and East Mission; “does not his [Jesus] teaching of a spiritual Israel really deny the basis of a ‘National home’ in Palestine? … the establishment of a national home in Palestine cannot be made to depend on the prophecies of the Old Testament.” He sent a similar letter on the 24^th of October to the World Missionary Conference. Mission leader (involved with the World Missionary Conference) Willian Paton replied; “I agree entirely … a Christian can hardly accept the view that Palestine is destined by the will of God to be a home for the Jews. … the promises of God were fulfilled in Christ … we cannot therefore as Christians accept the view that in endeavouring to make Palestine a Jewish home we are faithful to the revealed will of God.”^{^[156]} In 1937 (!) the bishop again wrote (in “Some Christian Considerations in regard to the partition problem” which was co-authored with Warburton, Bridgeman and Stewart) “The Jewish claim to Palestine on the basis of prophecy is declared throughout the New Testament to have been abrogated.”^{^[157]} In 1939, he again wrote to the Times; “It is the affirmation of the N.T. that ancient Israel, ‘Israel after the flesh’ has forfeited its claims to the promises … the prophecies were fulfilled spiritually with the coming of the Messiah.”^{^[158]}

Brown’s successor, Bishop Weston Henry Stewart (co-author of the above statement) wrote to the Anglo-American Committee in March 1946 that “there was no truth to the Zionist claims to Palestine, based on Old Testament history and prophecies. As far as the Christian understanding is concerned, the church became the new spiritual Israel and heir to the promises, where racial and other barriers are broken down.”^{^[159]} The Bishop did however protest a pro-Arab document circulated by the Christian Church Union in Palestine that claimed the Christian community was “in complete agreement both in principle and in deed with the Moslems[sic]” and was signed by members of the Arab-Anglican community.[160]

This fine distinction between opposing Zionism and supporting Arab nationalism was lost on the majority of local Anglicans, especially as the bishop’s anti-Zionism was often expressed in what were essentially Arab Nationalist forms such as opposing Jewish immigration. “In addition non-Anglican Arab Christians from upper class families, such as Khalil Sakakini, studied at Anglican institutions and joined the general discourse of activism found among their peers. The fact that these anti-Zionist Arab-Anglicans also received support rather than reprimands from the local English clergy can only mean that they were not only sympathetic but that anti-Zionism may have been a pre-requisite for advancement in the church.”[161] Najib Nassar, editor of al-Karmil in Haifa was also a convert to Protestantism.

Looking further ahead, in 1954, Bishop Stewart would, along with the Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon, object to references to “Israel”, and Jesus as “the hope of Israel” being made in the WCC Second Assembly. [Jesus as the "hope of Israel" is in fact a New Testament title, Acts 28:20 - Stewart was going against the New as well as the Old Testaments, both the revealed will of God!] Also at this Assembly, the Lebanese Christian Dr Charles Mallik was quoted as denying that the return of the Jews to Israel was “associated with the fulfilment of Christian hope.”^{^[162]} Here also, the representative of the Coptic Church in Egypt stated that it would both be a disservice to the cause of the World Council in the Near East to mention Israel, and that it would not be politically expedient to mention Israel. The motion eliminating references to Israel was carried 195 to 150.^{^[163]}

Palestinian Anglicans adopt replacement theology.

Palestinian Anglicans often adopted positions quite at odds with their 'mother’ churches. As seen however, the bishops sent from these mother churches increasingly pandered and found theological excuses for their weaknesses, rather than acting like Paul in Acts 20:20 “I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, … ²⁷ For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.”

Many Protestants worldwide were sympathetic to Zionism, which the Protestant Arabs adamantly opposed. “One might have anticipated that Protestant Arabs would be more amenable towards Zionism in keeping with the pro-Zionist tendencies of their broader Protestant communities. Quite the opposite was in fact the case. … Few were prepared to sacrifice their nationalist aspirations in order that Biblical prophecies concerning the 'homecoming' of the Jews might be fulfilled.”^{^[164]} Protestant Arabs tended to be highly fluent in English and well acquainted with sections of the British public, on account of which, they were often strongly represented in delegations sent to London for the purpose of representing the Arab cause before the British public and government.

While it was generally unusual to hear strong expressions of anti-Semitism among Western Protestants, the same did not hold true for Protestant Arabs. During a nationalist gathering in Nazareth held in March 1920, for example, the resident Anglican priest, As'ad Mansur, gave a speech in which he explained that the Jews had no right to Palestine as it had been taken from them on account of their having rejected the Messiah.^{^[165]} This was not just nationalism – it was Replacement theology by Christians in the land of Israel. They had thought about it, and decided they had a vested interest in denying the Jews a homeland! A few years later, the Evangelical Youth Club in Haifa would invite a Muslim speaker to deliver a talk along the same lines.

Protestant Arab scholars themselves, rather than also addressing this urgent and central question from a Biblical point of view, sought rather to glory in and turn the spotlight onto their own ethnicity. They focused on Palestinian folk culture to “showcase the centrality of Palestinian Arab Christian communities to the history of Christianity rather than highlighting the Biblical [Jewish] sites that were a more typical focus of Western Christian interest.”^{^[166]} Note that over the past 30 years, the term “living stones” to describe Palestinian Christians, first popularised by Elias Chacour, has likewise become a central element of the Palestinian Christian narrative to Western churches.

In the 20s and 30s the PNCC agitated to be recognized as an indigenous religious community This remains a problem to this day, as the Protestant community demand to be recognised as fully Arab. The CMS and bishopric considered this to be a backward step spiritually and opposed it as “primitive.” The Arab Episcopalians however wanted to make their ethnic and cultural commitment to Palestinian Arabism clear. They did not want to be associated with British or Zionist interests.

This need to be recognised and accepted by the wider Arab (Muslim) population was heightened during the 36 Revolt. In his submission to the Peel Commission in 1937, Graham Brown, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem wrote that the local Christians were not afraid of the educated Muslims, but the revolt was a religious war by the peasantry against Christians as well as Jews.^{^[167]} “But they have come to realize that the zeal shown by the Fellahin in the late disturbances was religious and fundamentally in the nature of a Holy War against a Christian Mandate and against Christian people as well as against the Jews.”^{^[168]} The Arab Anglicans believed that they needed to be seen to be fully Arab for their own safety, rather than trusting in Christ alone.

An address to the House of Lords by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang

In 1937, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang gave an address to the House of Lords in which he expressed moderate support for the Jewish National Home based on sympathy for Jewish victims of anti-Semitism in Germany, and a theological interpretation of the Jewish return to the Holy Land. He also stated his belief that parts of the city of Jerusalem should be included in the new Jewish state.^{^[169]} In the same speech he also expressed sympathy for the Arab population, although he did qualify that he believed them to be at fault in the concurrent Revolt;

how can we fail to sympathise with the ideals of Zionism? When we consider the history of that most remarkable race, one of the most remarkable in the world; when we think of the position they have occupied for centuries as, at the best, an unwelcome and sometimes a persecuted minority in many countries, and of the way in which, in spite of all, they have cherished their national ideals; when we think of their determination to find some means of securing for themselves a place of cultural influence and of political strength, can we wonder that they should long to have a home of their own in the original home land of their race? On the other hand, is it not equally possible to sympathise with the Arabs?

Certainly some episodes have been most blameworthy. I need not speak of the outbreak of the armed rebellion of 1936. I can but note the strictures passed by the Commission on the Mufti in Jerusalem with whom I had conversations some time ago. Here I must, in contrast, pay tribute to the extraordinary patience and self-restraint of the Jews during that most difficult time. [concerning] the position of Jerusalem itself. I am bound to say that it seems to me extremely difficult to justify fulfilling the ideals of Zionism by excluding them from any place in Zion. How is it possible for us not to sympathise in this matter with the Jews? We all remember their age-long resolve, lament, and longing: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.’

They cannot forget Jerusalem in any terms of partition, and, as has been pointed out, the actual population of Jerusalem at the present time is 76,000. Of these, 72,000—one-fifth of the present population of Palestine—dwell within that portion of Jerusalem which is outside the old city walls, outside the region for which the Mandatory Power must undertake special responsibility. There are only 4,000 Jews living within that area. Is it quite inconceivable that that large modern suburb, with these 72,000 people, and containing, I suppose, as it would, the great Hebrew University, should not be assigned to the Jewish State with access to the British Corridor? I feel quite certain, if that could be done, that the objections and difficulties of the Jews might be largely met.^{^[170]}

The consequences of abandoning the Gospel for Nationalism

This speech caused a serious rift with the Arab Anglican community. The PNCC letter said they were “sorry for the painful effect the words of his grace have had on the Arabs and especially on the Christians of Palestine … the Christians of Palestine [view these views] with abhorrence.”^{^[171]} Arab Episcopalians met with Bishop Graham Brown to object to the term “minority” to describe them – “the Christian Arabs are part of the Arab community.” The Women’s Arab Society also protested the speech. Tawfik Kana’an, in his pamphlet “The Palestine Arab Cause” wrote, “We Arab Christians … are those who at present hate most bitterly the unchristian policy of Great Britain.”^{^[172]}

At the same time, that is, during the Arab Revolt, the Arab Episcopalians strengthened their

ties with Haj Husseini. In 1937 Ilyas Marmura (Cannon of St Pauls and chairman of the PNCC) went at his request to London to the 50^th celebration of the Jerusalem Diocese to present the Arab case. He also wrote to Lang that “some ten thousand Arab Christian men are thinking of going over to Islam.”^{^[173]} It is of interest that he did not want the Partition ended because Arab Christians would be abandoned to Muslim or Jewish overlordship. What he wanted was a continued Mandate with much reduced Jewish immigration. “But for many Arab Episcopalians, the damage was done. Rather than engage in further political activity through the church, they began to consider the more radical possibilities of conversion to Islam or emigration … One of Graham Brown’s Palestinian friends told the bishop that the idea of ‘accepting Islam’ was being much discussed … In his own house in the last week, Christians had said it was their opinion that they must face the possibility.” Marmura, in a letter to Lambeth Palace “related that there was a movement of Arab Christians toward converting to Islam as a mode of joining in the nationalist movement.” He wrote “they urged Christians to unite with Moslems under the banner of Islam.”^{^[174]} “Although firm evidence is lacking on the question of precisely how many Palestinian Episcopalians may have converted to Islam, the frequency with which this theme occurs suggests that conversion to Islam had genuinely become a possible response to the situation in which the community found itself.”^{^[175]}

Four things stand out here. Husseini is at this time leading a violent revolt which has already seen many Jews murdered, and here this Anglican church official is happy to do his bidding. His letter to Lang states that “10,000” Arab Anglican men are prepared to abandon their faith over the issue. This confirms that their primary loyalty is to their nationalism/ethnicity, not to Jesus! This is no “going beyond the city gate” but rather a mass apostacy. That he wants the Mandate continued is interesting. While doing their bidding, he is also fearful of being ruled by the Muslim community! Given that millions of Christians had already been massacred by Muslims in the surrounding areas (Turkey, Iraq, Syria etc), and that this would continue right up until the present, such fears were well founded. They do however undermine the “we have always got on well” narrative proposed by so many Palestinian Christians. Finally, as will be shown, well educated, urban Christian leaders such as Ilyas were well informed as to events in Europe. Knowing that Jews are being terrorised in Nazi Germany, his response as a Christian was to offer them no room in the inn. No Arab hospitality here.

British Anglicans in Palestine; in the absence of their sharing to Gospel with the Arabs, the Arabs shared their own nationalism with them

British Anglicans in Palestine also objected to Lang’s speech. Graham Brown objected to its negative view of Husseini (!!) and to the idea of West Jerusalem in a Jewish state. With other senior British Anglicans in Palestine, he wrote a memo outlining the bishopric’s view on Partition. In “Some Christian considerations in regard to the partition problem” by Graham Brown, 1937 he wrote; “For many leading British Anglicans in Palestine, Zionism and the idea of a Jewish state seems to threaten Christian interests in the Holy Land.”^{^[176]} Graham Brown wrote to Lang in 1937; “Christian Arabs are under no illusion as to their possible ultimate fate. Although they realise that under an Arab National Government it might mean submergence or at least discrimination and persecution, yet they would prefer an Arab regime to a Jewish one.”^{^[177]} Mabel Warburton, the Middle East Adviser in London to Rev A C MacInnes, and Secretary of the mission likewise wrote; “of course immigration should have been suspended long ago. … I am very sorry for the Christian Arabs who find themselves in a great dilemma between their Christian principles and their national feelings.”[178]

Here again, ideas of Muslim/Christian harmony are discredited by the senior British Anglicans in Palestine at the time. Lang specified the Jewish new Jerusalem in his speech as being realistically belonging within the Jewish state. On what basis the British Anglicans objected to this are not clear. If Mable Warburton reflects wider British Anglican sentiment about the virtue of suspending Jewish immigration from Nazi Germany, this is again utterly shameful.

Their support however “could not undo the damage inflicted by Lang’s speech.”^{^[179]} Nicola Saba wrote to the CMS; “to end this note without some reference to the sufferings our congregations have to undergo on account of the theory now and anon expounded by certain dignitaries of the Church of England relating to the return of the Jews to Palestine. Although as individuals we do not believe this doctrine agrees with our interpretation of the New Testament, there can be no doubt that, being in communion with the Church of England we are as a body suspected of holding the same view. What makes it worse for us is that some of the missionary workers in Palestine stick to what is termed to be the declared doctrine of the Church of England.”^{^[180]} “In many people’s minds missionaries are regarded as political agents – associated with the move to make Palestine a National Home for the Jews …” This letter makes clear that the idea of the Biblical return of the Jewish people to the land of Israel was still being preached by some Anglican missionaries to the Palestinian church [and largely rejected by them] even during the 1930s.

April 1947, the PNCC sent a telegram to the UN referencing Palestine’s Christian history to call on Christians to support the Palestinian cause. “In the name of Christianity and from the city of Christ … declare Palestine an independent country.”^{^[181]}

Conclusion

“You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?” (Galatians 5:7)

The Anglican church began their work in Palestine with attitudes and a Biblical basis light years ahead of the ancient churches already there. A mission to the Jewish people, a belief that the Jewish people would return to the land of Israel, and a conviction that God would use this (Anglican) ministry to preach Jesus to them, as part of the prophetic plan of God as revealed in both the Old and New Testaments, was utterly foundational to the existence of Anglicanism in Palestine.^{^[182]} Rightly added to this came a desire to encourage and strengthen the ancient churches. How then did it all go so terribly wrong? Nearly killed off by the High Church, they nevertheless made the fatal mistake of placing High Church ecumenicalism over the clear demands of the Gospel. Once they did this, and deliberately with-held the life-giving waters from Orthodox people desperate for it, they largely ceased to have any reason or right to exist.

Faced with this self-imposed spiritual roadblock, with nowhere else to direct their energies, second and third generation Palestinian Anglicans reverted to the sins of their Orthodox ancestors; an obsession with political activism in the service of Arab nationalism. This in itself demanded a rejection of God’s promises to the Jewish people, and thus a further degradation of their original mandate. At present they expend their energies defending their own ethnicity, and Palestinian rejection of Jewish rights in the foolish hope that this will endear them to the Muslim majority. They act only in the interests of their own community.

Having rejected evangelism, they now celebrate their impotence. They refuse to share the Gospel with Muslims, Jews or even other Christians. Arab Anglicans essentially abandoned their baptism and defined themselves almost exclusively by their ethnicity, their flesh. This selfish and barren policy has been utterly destructive and needs to be repented of and rejected.

2 Corinthians 6:14-17 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? ¹⁵ What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? ¹⁶ What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people." ¹⁷ "Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you."

What followed was a virtual masterclass in the distortion of Scripture (2 Peter 3:16). Scripture was declared to only be the word of God when it affirmed their flesh! Any that challenged or convicted them were ignored or twisted. Given that the Holy Spirit came to convict the world of sin and righteousness, this would constitute blasphemy of the Holy Spirit! All they had to do was to welcome the stranger, the refugee fleeing pogroms and persecution. Beyond that, as Christians, they should have been aware of God’s promises, and also of the Jewish genealogy of Jesus. They could have taken comfort from the promises of God, seeing in the Jewish return proof of the faithfulness of their God. Like Pharaoh, they could have said, we love Jesus, we are so thankful to his family of the flesh, here, come and live with us, come, share, we want to bless you.

Genesis 45:16-20 When the news reached Pharaoh's palace that Joseph's brothers had come, Pharaoh and all his officials were pleased. ¹⁷ Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Tell your brothers, 'Do this: Load your animals and return to the land of Canaan, ¹⁸ and bring your father and your families back to me. I will give you the best of the land of Egypt and you can enjoy the fat of the land.' ¹⁹ "You are also directed to tell them, 'Do this: Take some carts from Egypt for your children and your wives, and get your father and come. ²⁰ Never mind about your belongings, because the best of all Egypt will be yours.' "

Jewish settlement was not intended to drive Arabs away, they bought the land legally, the local Christian population could have helped them, taught them farming etc, and forged a bond of friendship, such as the Druze have. Instead, they chose to side with the Muslim majority, often motivated by fear of Muslim violence against themselves, hoping thereby to ingratiate themselves and so avoid persecution. Given that Muslim communities murdered over 1.5 million Christians within the wider Ottoman Empire from 1886-1923 (crucial years for the creation of Jewish-Christian relationships within Palestine), and given that some of these massacres occurred in Lebanon and Damascus, this fear was solidly based, but a community of faith would have prayed for the strength to be faithful and do good. Beyond all this, they could have found in Scripture great purpose and destiny for their own community.

Romans 11:30-32 Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, ³¹ so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you. ³² For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.

Rather than demanding that Christian Zionism had no place for them, they could have prayed, read and wrestled with this issue (it was of vital importance to them!) and discovered that God planned to use Gentile believers to show mercy to the Jewish people, and thereby save them. What an incredible responsibility and privilege could have been theirs, but they chose to ally with the very people who were massacring Christians across the Middle East, and to resist and reject the gracious words of Scripture to them.

Many Arab Anglicans indeed chose emigration. Although Protestant Arabs tended to associate themselves with the West to a greater degree than did other Christians Arabs, they were also among the most ardent of nationalists. As the new kids, they wanted to show they belonged – they chose not to witness, and rather to stress Arab nationalism. They chose who they belonged to. The last, best chance was gone.

Palestinian Lutherans

[very incomplete]

Regarding the Lutheran church, the Jerusalem church/congregation went by the name “The Palestinian Lutheran Church of Jerusalem” while the Bethlehem church was called “The Lutheran Arab Church of Bethlehem.” According to Lutheran Palestinian Mitri Raheb, the names illustrate “how strong the self-awareness of the Arab Christian community had become. Both congregations highlighted their Arab identity, and the former showed “its sympathy with the Palestinian national movement.”[183]

In 1936, the Arab Lutheran pastor, Hanna Bachut, who had previously translated Martin Luther’s Prefaces to the Old Testament into Arabic, organised, along with others, a number of “Protestant Evenings” to discuss some of the questions that concerned the community at this time. They were held every second Thursday at the Arab Lutheran congregation in Bethlehem to examine “contemporary issues from the standpoint of a Protestant Interpretation of Scripture and understanding of Revelation.”^{^[184]} Among the topics discussed were; “Zionism and the prophets of the Old Testament”, “Luther’s view of Old Testament Prophecy,” “Luther and Judaism,” “Christ and Nationalism,” and “How did Jesus relate to his native land.”

This would seem to be an excellent undertaking, seeking to better understand God’s will for the present by examining the Scriptures. Exactly what we would want them to be doing! As Mitri Raheb wrote, “The Arab Protestant Church could not remain unaffected by the incessant waves of Jewish immigration, the determination of the British Mandate to establish a Jewish ‘national homeland’ in Palestine and [conversely,] the strengthening of the Palestinian national movement.”^{^[185]}

The problems emerge on several fronts; in the 1930s, German Lutherans were still positive about Luther’s views on Jews.^{^[186]} They were thus imbibing poison from a trusted source, a source beyond reproach. Mitri Raheb continues that, before Bachut’s sermon on the Old Testament, “numerous American and English missionaries had infiltrated the countryside and had heralded the influx of Jews to Palestine as a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy and a sign of ‘one of the last stages of God’s plan of salvation.’” That is, the truth was being proclaimed, and they chose to reject it!

Bachut’s studies were delivered into this context and sought to repudiate these claims as an abuse of the word of God. Bachut preached that the prophecies were “a thing of the past.” The Old Testament was not applicable to the present context but had ceased to be of any relevance. To maintain that these prophecies still had relevance was “as if Christ had not appeared, and as if the Christian Churches did not have a second part in their Bible.”^{^[187]} Concerningly, Stalder notes “the ease with which they [Palestinian Lutherans] drew strength from the Lutheran tradition.” If the PNCC were on the brink of losing their faith, the Arab Lutherans had no such problem. “They had no qualms about accepting and highlighting the tradition in which they were reared. They were stanch Lutherans.” They therefore concluded that “the Jews should not feel that they were heirs of the Holy Land.”^{^[188]}

“He [Jesus] must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets.” (Acts 3:20-21)

“For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God's truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs” (Romans 15:8)

Biblical Issues

George Habash; “When my land was occupied, I had no time to think about religion.”

The problem with defining yourself primarily by your flesh, as Palestinian, and only secondarily as Christian, has created many problems. This priority means that many Palestinian Christians are prepared to use their faith to further Palestinian national claims. To make the child of promise serve the child of the slave. God however refuses to take second place! Exodus 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before me.” God’s word itself suffers violence when we do this. How else can you ignore his promises?

In 1956, at a conference in Beirut of the Near east Christian Council, it was noted that many Arab Christians were having trouble with certain texts. One participant wrote that: “voices were raised … to try and persuade the Arb Christians and American missionaries working in that area that they are doing violence to Christianity in going to such extremes as to root out all references to Israel from the Psalms and liturgy of the church. Every word of admonition is bitterly resisted and resented.” Another participant noted that he had ben unable, when preaching at St. George’s Cathedral in Jordan to “use the first lesson from Genesis as assigned in the lectionary because in it, the Lord is quoted as promising to Abraham ‘and his seed forever’ this good land. We didn’t want half the congregation to walk out before the sermon was reached, so we used something innocuous from the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus.”[189] When Christians refuse to sit under the authority of the Scriptures, you know that serious damage is being done.

In 1989, the Catholic director of Al-Liqa in Jerusalem, Geries Khoury (who excommunicated Christian Zionists) stated in his book; The Intifada of Heaven and Earth that one of the important tasks of the "intifada" was "to write a Palestinian theology [that is] also an uprising against the exploitation of the Holy Bible to justify the [Jewish] settlement policy... Any believer who tries to justify through his theology the religious rights of Israel in Palestine is an infidel who denies God and Christ."[190] Christian Aid writer, Janet Morley apparently agreed, stating; "There has been much abuse of the Bible to legitimate modern policies. Palestinian Christians have found the issue so sensitive that many have ceased to use in their liturgies those parts of the Old Testament that speak of 'Israel'."[191]

Canon of St Georges Anglican Cathedral in Jerusalem, Dr Naim Ateek, has stated "how can the Old Testament be the Word of God in the light of Palestinian Christians' experience with its use to support Zionism?"[192] His solution? A "Palestinian" way of reading the Bible whereby "the Word of God incarnate in Jesus the Christ interprets for us the Word of God in the Bible." Ateek has also written that some Old Testament texts are “not morally edifying” and consequently should not be read in public. He adds; “they do not contain a word from God to us. Rather, they reflect primitive human understanding as well as the prejudice, bigotry, and racism of tribal societies . . . In no way do they constitute a word of God for us. They must be rejected. They have no spiritual or moral value or authority for any person.” Ateek concludes that “we can no longer say simply that the Bible is the word of God.”

This stands in direct opposition to Jesus (John 10:35 the Scripture cannot be broken) and Paul! (2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.)

That Palestinian Liberation "Theology" is a direct assault on the authority of God's Word is clearly seen in another quote from Ateek's book, where he writes," there are certain passages in the Old Testament whose theological presuppositions and even assertions need not be affirmed by the Christian today, because they reflect an early stage of human understanding of God's revelation that conflicts with the Christian's understanding of God as revealed in Jesus Christ." Or, as he wrote in 2013; “All of this led to an increasing number of people believing that the Bible was not meant to be taken as inerrant or infallible; and that the Bible does not present one consistent viewpoint. Rather, they believe it was written by many people and reflected people’s thinking about God. … At the same time, it is important to emphasize that faith for many Christians is not totally dependent on the historical accuracy of the biblical documents. They are liberated from the letter of scripture and they experience the liberation of the children of God. As Paul wrote, “…for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6).”

This debasing of Scripture, to the point where we can pick and choose which bits we will decide to give authority to, stands in total opposition to the words of Jesus Christ, who said, "the Scripture cannot be broken" (Jn 10,35). As the Apostle to the Gentiles declared; "But this I confess to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets." (Acts 24, 14.)

This desire to debar the Jews from the possession of their own religious books did not fall on deaf ears. In 1989, the Anglican church of New Zealand took upon itself the authority to delete the words "Zion"(87% of the time) and "Israel"(35% of the time) from the Psalms in its prayer book. (Psalms are Christian - not Jewish - or Zionist!) According to one of its authors, Keith Carley, “the references to Israel and Zion have been altered at the behest of Palestinian Christians, concerned at the identification some people were making between Zion in the Scriptures and the contemporary state of Israel.” The Church's own literature concerning this stated, "One element was clearly the potential link between "Zion" and Zionism, whereby it was claimed that the Psalms could be read as supportive of a particular political stance... In the light of the wish to avoid potential Zionist connotations, references to "Zion" in the sense of "the Nation of Israel" were modified, again, largely by the use of terms such as "God's people" or "your people" etc." The wider rationale for this was that; "Contemporary Christians do not naturally think of themselves as "Israel", though until the existence of the modern state of Israel, the Church interpreted the name spiritually as a reference to itself.” Disturbingly, this rationale of the Anglicans was essentially identical to that used by the German Christians in the 1930s, when they published a special edition of the Gospels, free from Jewish influence because quote; “Zionism had to disappear from the liturgy and the song material.”[193] As the Church of England Newspaper itself reported, "New Zealand's Jewish Council has accused that country's Anglican church of being anti-Jewish and of acting like the Germans in the Nazi era."

While it may be valid for Christians to debate as to whether or not the Scriptures support the return of the Jews to Israel, to change the very words of God so as to make only their conclusion possible, is stunning. The New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book also explicitly deletes verse 4 from Psalm 83, as "not suitable for use in the corporate worship of the church." Possibly because that verse describes their actions all too clearly; "They have said, "come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.""

According to the N.Z. Anglicans, the Bible is not allowed to state the divine promises to the Jewish people, or express the aspirations and longings of the Jewish heart. When this became impossible in the original, they changed the very words of God, so that His promises to Israel could no longer be found. Psalm 25 vs 21 no longer calls on God to "redeem Israel, oh God out of all their troubles". The sufferings of Israel (and how many of them were inflicted by the Church!) are again taken from them in Psalm 129.1. Mt Zion is no longer the "city of the great King"(Ps 48.2) and the Lord is no longer "great in Zion", for Zion is also excluded from the "history of redemption". Indeed, even the Psalm of exile, Psalm 137, no longer echoes the longing of the Jewish people for Zion, and neither can Israel rejoice in their Maker, or the children of Zion be joyful in their King (Ps 149.2), as the greatest sorrows and joys of the Jewish people are excluded from this book. The Anglicans have thus declared that "this is not your book and you are not in it." The Psalms are Christian, and not Jewish property, and the love of the Jews for the Land of Israel is not, therefore, Biblical. On pages 43 and 77 of the New Zealand Anglican Prayer Book, Isaiah 12, verse 6 is quoted. On both occasions, the very name of God, that He has chosen, is changed by the Prayer Book, as the Holy One of Israel becomes simply the Holy One. In Isaiah 55;5, 60;9 and 60;14, God specifically uses this name (The Holy One of Israel) in relation to Gentile nations. This is rebellion against God Himself, declaring that He has no right to His own naming. Well could Isaiah 30,9-15 have been addressed to the New Zealand Anglicans, " These are rebellious people... they say … stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel!"

More recently, the 221st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, (U.S.A.), was asked to

1. distinguish between the biblical terms that refer to the ancient land of Israel and the modern political State of Israel;

2. develop educational materials, with the help of our Presbyterian seminaries, for clergy, church musicians, worship leaders, and Christian educators regarding the “ancient Israel/modern Israel” distinction; and

3. inform our ecumenical partners of this action, nationally and globally—particularly within Israel and Palestine.

The issue was prompted by the heading “God’s Covenant with Israel” in The Presbyterian Hymnal. As one Palestinian American Presbyterian who is a ruling elder said in a letter to those responsible for the publication of the new hymnal:

“Because I am a Palestinian Christian, I am uneasy with the word “Israel” in “God’s Covenant with Israel”—I am always told, however, that what is meant by “Israel” is Biblical Israel and not today’s Israel; but do all Christians know this? With the prevalence of Christian Zionism, which the G.A. repudiated in 2004, I highly doubt it. Even if not intentional, this language is inflammatory, misleading, and hurtful”.

One proposed response was to rephrase it as “God’s Covenant with Ancient Israel,” or “God’s covenant with the Poor, or even “Our Covenant with the Oppressed.” While this was rejected, the underlying theme was confirmed when the General Assembly instructed the Office of Theology and Worship of the Presbyterian Mission Agency to develop a short insert or sticker for publications used in congregational worship and study with wording similar in meaning to the following:

“‘Please note in using these texts that the biblical and liturgical “land of Israel” is not the same as the State of Israel established in 1948, which is a contemporary nation state.”[194]

So, many churches have invested considerable resources and effort into attacking the state of Israel, and of trying to remove its name from their worship and prayer materials, to the extent of changing or deleting the very words of God!

The 2006 Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism reflected the almost unanimous voice of the mainstream Palestinian Churches. It was signed by; His Beatitude Patriarch Michel Sabbah, Latin Patriarch, Jerusalem, Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad, Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem, Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land.

"With urgency we warn that Christian Zionism and its alliances are justifying colonization, apartheid and empire-building. … We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation. … We affirm that Palestinians are one people, both Muslim and Christian. We reject all attempts to subvert and fragment their unity.”

As seen, Hanna Massad, a pastor in a small Baptist church in Gaza, had a very different take; “I knew in my heart that God was not finished with the Jewish people because of what I had read in the Scriptures.”

It again needs to be stressed that not all the Arab Christian community in Israel hold this view!! See George Deek! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m6ux-IeNo4. A recent survey conducted in 2006 found that approximately 70% of Palestinian Christians wanted to live peacefully alongside Israelis.

Righteous remnant

God did not leave himself without witnesses, and as always, there was and is a righteous remnant. Many of these are found within the small, evangelical Protestant denominations.

“most Israeli Arab Christians from an evangelical/fundamentalist background avoid the supersessionist theology. Pan-Arabism and the negation of Christian Zionism are not automatic within their circles. As a matter of fact, individuals and assemblies of Israeli Arab Christians, coming from different denominations, frequently acknowledge the continuum between biblical and modern Israel. Pastor Philip Saad of the Baptist church in Haifa, is a well-known representative of such a group. He interprets the Bible with full acceptance of God’s covenant and the election of Israel. In contrast to Palestinian Christians’ ‘liberation theology,’ Pastor Saad accepts the literal message of both the Old and the New Testaments, including the prophecies concerning the land as promised to the nation of Israel. Rev. Saad openly says: ‘I am sad about the past, when more than 50 years ago, Arab Christians did not help the Jews who were returning home. Together with the Moslems, they were fighting the Zionists. The root of the Arab-Israeli conflict is definitely religion. ... I even dare to say that there are Christian denominations in the country that have made an alliance with groups who oppose God’s plan.’^{^[195]}

Moreover, when the state of Israel celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence in 1998, Pastor Saad and ten other Israeli Arab Christians went to Jerusalem and asked the government for forgiveness in the name of their forefathers, who had been against the return of the Jews to the country. Also Pastor Samuel Aweida, of the Beth Eliyahu Congregation in Haifa and related to Lutheran Scandinavians, fully identifies with Israel’s national restoration to her biblical homeland.113 Other Arab Christian leaders in Haifa, for example John Christopher Khoury of the Beth Hesda congregation and director of Ebenezer Home for the Elderly, and Rev. Samuel Sabbah, of the ‘Brethren’ background, openly share the same beliefs. Such Israeli Arab evangelicals categorically reject the theological prejudice against Zionism and Israel which dominates the Palestinian churches.”^{^[196]}

Praise God!

B. Intercommunal (Muslim/Christian/Jewish) relations in pre-1948 Palestine.

“In the Palestinian historiography today the discrimination in past and present of the Christian Palestinians and the periodical tensions among the Muslims and Christians are regarded as taboo.”^{^[197]}

Intercommunal relations in historic Palestine have been the subject of much speculation. The purpose of this section is to briefly try to dispel some of these inaccuracies.

In 1923, Dr. Alexander Paterson reflected in general upon the inter-communal relations: “It was this age-long incompatibility, this irreconcilable enmity, that was more potent for evil than any other single factor, and harder to be dealt with than any other obstacle to mission work. The Moslem and Christian hated the Jew for denying and slaying the Messiah, the Christ. The Moslem and Jew hated the Christian for worshipping three gods. The Jew and the Christian hated the Moslem for his arrogance and fanaticism and oppression, from which they never felt safe. Of course, they commonly existed in an armed truce; life otherwise were impossible. But an anniversary or an indiscreet word, an un-equal deal in business, or a false report, and their passions were in full cry, too often the cry for blood. Here is a household tale. A Moslem and Christian and Jew agreed to offer each a petition to heaven. The Moslem, ‘May as many Christians perish as sacrifices are slaughtered at Mecca at the pilgrimage!’ The Christian, ‘May as many Moslems perish as Easter eggs are consumed at Jerusalem!’ The Jew, ‘O Lord, answer their petitions!’”^{^[198]}

The sentence from the above quote is important; “Of course, they commonly existed in an armed truce; life otherwise were impossible.” Concerning the Jewish community during Ottoman times, Yaari writes; “subjected throughout to severe disabilities, restrictions and humiliations, they were as a rule not seriously molested.”[199] Conditions did vary, both from place to place and over time. There were positive relations between members of the different communities, but everyone still understood the rules and knew the boundaries. Decent Muslims hid Jews during the 1929 Hebron massacre, but still the Muslim mob murdered 67-9 Jews. Likewise, during the 1834 pillaging of the Safed Jewish community, it is reported that Rabbi Menachem Mendel fled to the house of a Christian to escape the mob.[200] These positive, welcome exceptions do not nullify the more general situations described below.

Muslim Discrimination against Christians

Traditionally the Christians were a protected but discriminated against minority. They were a distinct subset of the Palestinian population, with little interaction or political agreement with the majority Muslim community. The Muslim community, or umma, was totally dominant. Christians could not hold the highest administrative posts, had to pay a special tax. Disputes with Muslims came under the jurisdiction of the Muslim courts, where Christians were not allowed to give evidence. Christians might also be barred from riding horses or wearing colourful clothing, be forced to provide food and lodging if a Muslim official demanded it, or even be forced off the road to give Muslims right of way.^{^[201]}

The Ottoman court system punished Christians if they tried to reject or minimize the obligations of dhimmitude. In 1876 for but one example, Armenians were punished for resisting Muslim raiders, or for trying to obtain payment when forced to lodge Muslims.^{^[202]} Such actions were indeed seen as violations of the natural order. To resist Muslim oppression, either passively or actively, was a violation of sharia law.

General descriptions

Gedaliah of Siemiatyc, Jews and Christians in Jerusalem, 1700.^{^[203]}

“No Jew or Christian is permitted to ride a horse, for [in the eyes of Muslims] Christians and Jews are inferior beings.” “The Muslims do not allow entry to the Temple area to any member of another faith” “The Christians are not allowed to wear a turban, but they wear a hat instead. ... No one can use green, for this colour is used solely by Muslims. The latter are very hostile towards Jews and inflict upon them vexations in the streets of the city. .. the common folk persecute the Jews for we are forbidden to defend ourselves. If an Arab strikes a Jew, he [the Jew] must appease him but must not rebuke him, for fear that he may be struck even harder, which they [the Arabs] do without the slightest scruple. This is the way the Oriental Jews react, for they are accustomed to this treatment. Even the Christians are subjected to these vexations. If a Jew offends a Muslim, the latter strikes him a brutal blow with his shoe in order to demean him, without anyone’s being able to prevent him .. the Christians fall victim to the same treatment and they suffer as much as the Jews.”^{^[204]}

Constantin de Volney; 1785 “Faithful to the spirit of the Koran, it [the government] treats the Christians with a severity which displays itself in varied forms. ... All kinds of public worship is prohibited the Christians, … They cannot build any new churches; and if the old ones fall into decay, they are not allowed to repair them, unless by a permission which costs them very dear. A Christian cannot strike a Mahometan without risk of his life, but if a Mahometan kill a Christian, he escapes for a stipulated price. Christians must not mount on horseback in the towns; they are prohibited from the use of yellow slippers, white shawls, and every sort of green colour. ... when they travel, they are perpetually stopped at different places to pay tolls, from which the Mahometans are exempt: … in judicial proceedings, the oath of two Christians is only reckoned for one, and such is the partiality of the Cadis, that it is almost impossible for a Christian to gain a suit. .. These distinctions, so proper to ferment hatred and divisions, are disseminated among the people, and manifest themselves in all the intercourse of life. The meanest Mahometan will neither accept from a Christian nor return the salute of Salam-alai-ki .. the usual salutation is only good morning or good evening, and it is well too, if it be not accompanied with a Djaour, Kafer, Keleb i.e. impious, infidel, dog, expressions to which the Christians are familiarized.”^{^[205]}

Mansour recalls a ‘pogrom’ against Christians in 1821 and 1823 due to the outbreak of the Greek war of independence.^{^[206]} “As a specimen of the old times, see Journal of Rev. P. Fisk who was in Jerusalem in 1823. He was seated with two friends on the Mount of Olives and while singing a hymn an armed Moslem came up and commanded they be silent, threatening Mr Fisk to strike him with his gun.”^{^[207]}

James Finn (British consul in Jerusalem, 1846-63), related several events from 1823; In that year the president of the Greek Orthodox Convent of Mar Elias was bastinadoed “to a fearful extent” in an attempt to discover hidden treasure. In the same year, some Christian villagers refused to pay “the excessive and arbitrary” taxation laid upon them (but not the Muslims). The soldiers then “caught hold of an infirm old peasant of the Christian village of Beit Jalla, shot him, cut off his head, and stuck it up inside the Jaffa gate of Jerusalem, where it was pelted and spit upon by boys of the street for three days. Christians passing by were melted into tears, but dared not give expression to their feelings.”^{^[208]}

J.L. Stephens, Concerning Visit to the Jews of Hebron (1836) wrote; “Muslim violence against local Christians was commonplace, and they were forbidden to visit many holy places. [concerning the Tomb of the Patriarchs] The Jews and the Christians are not permitted to enter.”^{^[209]}

For more on the persecution of Christians under the Ottoman rule, see Ottoman days, in the Recent Palestinian Christian History section below.

Muslim Discrimination against Jews

Muslim/Jewish relations were historically appalling. Within the Ottoman Empire, Jews, like Christians, were classified as Dhimmis, and forced to live a life of miserable subservience. As with the Christian communities, it was when they rejected this, and demanded equal rights that the Muslim community responded with genocidal rage. Muslims indeed considered Jews to be inferior even to Christians, a belief shared by the Christian communities. A major difference between the Christian and Jewish communities, is that while the Christians lost their battles with the Muslim majority, suffering genocide as a result, in 1948 the Jewish community won theirs, and thereby avoided annihilation.

Elsewhere in the Arab world

As part of the Muslim, Arab world, Jews in Palestine were treated in a similar manner to Jews elsewhere in the same conditions.

Writing about their experiences in Egypt, from 1825-1835, Edward Lane and Edward Poole described the conditions of the Jews there; “They are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general, … the Jews are detested by the Muslims far more than are the Christians. … Not long ago,^{^[210]} they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering disrespectful words against the Kur-an or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and, after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew…^{^[211]} He also recorded how the cursing of Christians and Jews was part of the education of the Muslim children. “I am credibly informed that children in Egypt are often taught at school a regular set of curses to denounce upon the persons and property of Christians, Jews and all other unbelievers in the religion of Mohammad.” These curses, recorded by Lane, were virtually catechistic in nature, and were prayers that Allah would give to the Muslims the infidels, their women and their possessions “as booty to the Muslims.”[212]

Writing in 1835, the British diplomat Percival Barton Lord recorded how Jews in North Africa still had to walk barefoot when passing a Mosque, while in some cities such as Fez, they were forced to go barefoot at all times. In 1877, Jews were still prohibited from wearing shoes outside their own homes. “it is impossible to imagine the suffering of these wretches who, amid the jeers of the Muslim population along the road, jump and cringe with pain, their feet torn and their nails crushed by the stone.” In Yemen in 1910, Jews were still forbidden from walking publicly in shoes.^{^[213]} In 1888, Arthur Cohen wrote to lord Salisbury concerning these grievances of the Jews of Morocco; “Moors frequently amuse themselves by throwing live coals, broken glass, old tinware and such things in the thoroughfares traversed by Jews and enjoy the fun of seeing the later smart under the burn or wound inflicted on their bare feet.”[214]

There were pogroms in Lebanon and Jerusalem in 1847 and Syria in 1848 and in 1850 (the same year as attacks were also carried out against the Jews of Morocco).^{^[215]}

In Palestine

A collection of observations from various writers.

Isaac ben Samuel of Acre (1270-1350) “they strike upon the head the children of Israel who dwell in their lands and they thus extort money from them by force. For they say in their tongue, mal al-yahudi mubah, ‘it is lawful to take the money of the Jews.’ For, in the eyes of the Muslims, the children of Israel are as open to abuse as an unprotected field. Even in their law and statutes they rule that the testimony of a Muslim is always to be believed against that of a Jew. For this reason … Rather be beneath the yoke of Edom than of Ishmael.” When Acre was taken by the Mamelukes in 1291, ben Samuel fled to Italy and then to Christian Spain.^{^[216]}

In 1516, the Ottomans, under Selim I conquered Jerusalem. The sultan’s deputy, Murad Bey, was installed as the governor in Jerusalem. A letter signed by Jewish contemporary Japheth ben Manasseh describes what followed for the well-established Jewish community in Hebron nearby:

“In the seventh month, on the holiday of Succoth in 1517, the cruel tyrant; the Wrath of the Holy One Be He, Murad Bey, deputy of the Sultan and ruler of Jerusalem, decided in his heart to take out his fury on the Jews in his city and those living in Hebron. And he said 'I will take booty from them and take the Jews in the two cities captive so long as they have the power to see me.' And he carried out his decree. On that day, his men came to Hebron and killed many of the Jews who fought for their lives and plundered all their belongings until not one refugee or survivor was left in the Land. And a small remainder of those not felled by the sword fled to the Land of Beirut.”[217] The community of Safed in the Northern Galilee suffered a similar episode. Retreating Egyptian Mamluk forces, convinced that the Jews had conspired against them, vented their rage on the 300 Jewish families of Safed. Rabbi Joseph Garson records that the Jews of Safed were “evicted from their homes, robbed and plundered, and they fled naked to the villages without any provisions.”[218]

Samuel b. Ishaq Uceda 16^th century; “The nations humiliate us to such an extent that we are not allowed to walk in the streets. The Jew is obliged to step aside in order to let the Gentile [Muslim] pass first. And if the Jew does not turn aside of his own will, he is forced to do so. This law is particularly enforced in Jerusalem.”^{^[219]}

George Sandys, writing in 1610; “here also be some Jews, yet inherit they no part of the land, but in their own country do live as aliens.”[220]

Gedaliah of Siemiatyc, 1700. “We [Jews] were obliged to give a large sum of money to the Muslim authorities in Jerusalem to be allowed to build a new synagogue. Although the old synagogue was small and we only wanted to enlarge it very slightly, it was forbidden under Islamic law to modify the least part. No Jew or Christian is permitted to ride a horse, for [in the eyes of Muslims] Christians and Jews are inferior beings.” “The Muslims do not allow entry to the Temple area to any member of another faith.” “No one can use green, for this colour is used solely by Muslims. The latter are very hostile towards Jews and inflict upon them vexations in the streets of the city. ... the common folk persecute the Jews for we are forbidden to defend ourselves. If an Arab strikes a Jew, he [the Jew] must appease him but must not rebuke him, for fear that he may be struck even harder, which they [the Arabs] do without the slightest scruple. This is the way the Oriental Jews react, for they are accustomed to this treatment. Even the Christians are subjected to these vexations. If a Jew offends a Muslim, the latter strikes him a brutal blow with his shoe in order to demean him, without anyone’s being able to prevent him .. the Christians fall victim to the same treatment, and they suffer as much as the Jews.”[221]

J.S. Buckingham, 1816. “these persecuted people [the Jews] are held in such opprobrium here, that it is forbidden to them to pass a mussulman mounted, while Christians are suffered to do so either on mules or asses, though to them it is also forbidden to ride on horseback”^{^[222]}

In 1824, the Anglican clergyman, W. B. Lewis told how any Arab, no matter how humble, could stop a Jew in the streets of Jerusalem and claim money from him. “The Jew’s testimony that he was not indebted would not carry weight against a Muslim.”[223] Lewis indeed campaigned for a permanent British consular presence in Jerusalem as the only way to mitigate some of these constant abuses.

James Finn; “The Egyptian Government [1831-1840], with its rigour and rough justice, afforded much relief to all non-Moslem inhabitants of Jerusalem; and the institution of consulates in the Holy City a further blessing to non-Turkish subjects of all religions, but especially to the poor, oppressed Israelites.”^{^[224]}

The Peasants Revolt, 1834

The Peasants Revolt against Egyptian rule is seen by many as the first landmark of modern Palestinian history.[225] As previously noted, one significant cause of the revolt was the granting by Egyptian authorities of equal civil rights to the Christian and Jewish communities. Within this context, much of the revolt became simply an enormous pogrom against the Jewish communities of Palestine. “The most severe events took place in Galilee, climaxing with the 1834 looting of Safed which was mostly an attack against the Jewish community of Safed.”[226] Indeed, the “1834 looting of Safed was a prolonged attack against the Jewish community during the 1834 Peasants Revolt… It began on Sunday June 15 and lasted for the next 33 days. Most contemporary accounts suggest it was a spontaneous attack which took advantage of a defenceless population in the midst of the armed uprising against Egyptian rule. ... The event took place during a power vacuum, whilst Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt was fighting to quell the wider revolt in Jerusalem. The 1850 account of Rabbi Joseph Schwartz stated that ‘Everything was carried off which could possibly be removed, even articles of no value; boxes, chests, packages, without even opening them, were dragged away; and the fury with which this crowd attacked their defenceless victims was boundless...’ Accounts of the month-long event tell of large scale looting, as well as killing and raping of Jews and the destruction of homes and synagogues by local Druze. Many Torah scrolls were desecrated, and many Jews were left severely wounded. These pogroms/massacres directed at Jewish communities spread to Ramla, Lydda, Jaffa, Acre and Tiberias, where Christian members of the local clergy noted that the perpetrators ‘robbed the Jews, who lived in these towns, of immense property.’”[227]

According to Avraham Yaari; “Revolt broke out on the 15th June, 1834. The Arab villagers, together with the townspeople, armed themselves and attacked the Jews, raping their women and destroying their synagogues. The riots in Safed went on for 33 days, but in Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias they ended sooner.”[228] When the sultan’s troops retook Hebron, they again looted and raped the Jewish community there.[229]

These attacks against Jews were not merely opportunistic – they addressed one of the central grievances of the revolt – the local Muslim outrage at the granting of equal rights to the Jewish community, the defining of a Jew as the equal of a Muslim. This point is not always appreciated; “However, the insurrection soon lost its original purpose and turned into bloody rioting and excesses directed against the Jewish population. Arab villagers joined with the townspeople to attack the Jews, raping, looting and destroying synagogues. The rioting was most severe in Safed, where assaults and vandalism forced many Jews to flee to safety amount the friendly Arabs of the nearby village of Ein Zetim.”[230]

Ottoman rule was re-established in 1840. Conditions did not improve. “The re-establishment of Turkish rule saw the restoration of the old abuses, if anything, in an even acuter form.” The few years between this event and the Turkish capitulations to the foreign powers (starting in 1838 and granting more rights to minorities) “saw the sufferings of the Jews plumb new depths.”[231]

As noted, Jews and Christians were not allowed under Ottoman rule to build houses of worship, a ruling upheld in Jerusalem as late as 1838.^{^[232]}

1839. A.A. Bonar and R.M. M’Cheyne; “We were much impressed with the melancholy aspect of the Jews in Jerusalem. The meanness of their dress, their pale faces, and timid expression, all seem to betoken great wretchedness.”[233]

Looking back from 1852, Arthur George Harper Hollingsworth reflected on this change; “During the comparatively enlightened government of the late Pasha of Egypt, the Jew was treated with some justice. Before that period ‘in our bedrooms our lives were not safe’. But since his relinquishment of Syria, and its present possession by the Sultan, the condition of the Jew has become worse than before.”[234] Rav Moshe Reischer wrote of the time before 1847, when the Tanzimat reforms were confirmed and somewhat enacted; “I shall recount some of the suffering of our brethren in Hebron, Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberius, which my ancestors have related to me or which I have seen with my own eyes … It was a great danger for Jews to venture even a few yards outside the gates of Jerusalem because of the Arab brigands. They were accustomed to say ‘strip yourself, Jew’ and any Jew caught in such a predicament … would strip while they divided the spoil between them and sent him away naked and barefoot. They call this kasb Allah, that is, Allah’s reward. … If a Jew encounters a Muslim in the street and passes on the latter’s right, the Muslim says ishmal, that is, ‘pass on my left side.’ If he touches him or bumps into him… then the Muslim attacks him and strikes him cruelly and finds witnesses to the effect that the Jew insulted him, his religion, and his prophet Muhammad, with the result that a numerous crowd of Muslims descend upon him and leave the Jew practically unconscious. Then they carry him off to jail where he is subjected to terrible chastisement. When a Jew passes through the market, stones are thrown at him, his beard and ear-locks are pulled, he is spat upon and jeered at, and his hat is thrown to the ground. The poor Jew is so in fear of his life that he dares not question their conduct lest they murder him … [he] thanks God that at least his soul is saved, and all these tribulations he is ready to suffer for love of the Holy Land.”^{^[235]} “No Jewish woman dared venture abroad.”[236]

Writing of their present condition in 1852, Hollingsworth wrote; “This Jewish population is poor beyond any adequate word; it is degraded in its social and political condition, to a state of misery, so great, that it possesses no rights. It can shew no wealth even if possessed of it, because to display riches would secure robbery from the Mahometan population, the Turkish officials, or the Bedouin Arab. … No advancement is made by the Jew of Palestine, in trafficking, in commerce, in farming, in the possession of settled houses or lands. … where in all other countries a Jew thrives and increases in wealth, in that one he is spiritless from oppression, and without energy, because without hope of Protection. He creeps along that soil, where his forefathers proudly strode in the fulness of a wonderful prosperity, as an alien, an outcast, a creature less than a dog, and below the oppressed Christian beggar in his own ancestral plains and cities. No harvest ripens for his hand, for he cannot tell whether he will be permitted to gather it. Land occupied by a Jew is exposed to robbery and waste. A most peevish jealousy exists against the landed prosperity, or commercial wealth, or trading advancement of the Jew. Hindrances exist to the settlement of a British Christian in that country, but a thousand petty obstructions are created to prevent the establishment of a Jew on waste land, or to the purchase and rental of land by a Jew. … If he appeals for redress to the nearest Pasha, the taint of his Jewish blood fills the air, and darkens the brows of his oppressors; if he turns to his neighbour Christian, he encounters prejudice and spite ; if he claims a Turkish guard, he is insolently repulsed and scorned. …Now, how is this poor, despised, and powerless child of Abraham to obtain redress, or make his voice heard at the Sublime Porte? The more numerous the cases of oppression, (and they are many), the more clamorous their appeals for justice, the more unwillingly will the government of the Sultan, partly from inherent and increasing weakness, partly from disinclination, — act on the side of the Jew. They despise them as an execrated race; they hate them as the literal descendants of the original possessors of the country.”[237]

Recalling his own visit to Hebron in 1852, Rabbi Hyam Zvee Sneersohn (alternatively spelled Haim Zvi) noted that “The Jews never take part in the [Muslim funeral] procession, neither do they venture to show themselves in their midst when their minds are affected by any public or private, festive or grievous occasion, be it a funeral or a wedding, a meeting or a religious holiday; and truly it would be dangerous for any Jew to come near them. Any Mohammedan could insult or maim him with impunity.”[238]

For the Jewish community, conditions did fluctuate. There were better years as well as terrible ones. In 1853, Miss L. M. Cubley described a very friendly visit with the Jewish community of Hebron, where she found the Jewish community to be “polite, poor and religious.”[239]

1854 Jerusalem. Because the Crimean War started with a religious dispute centred on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, Karl Marx wrote about the city and its population. He stated that its “sedentary population numbers about 15,500 souls, of whom 4,000 are Mussulmans [Muslims] and 8,000 Jews. … the Mussulmans, forming about a quarter of the whole, consisting of Turks, Arabs, and Moors, are, of course, the masters in every respect.” He then continued: “Nothing equals the misery and the suffering of the Jews of Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud . . . between the Zion and the Moriah . . . [They are] the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks [Othodox], persecuted by the Latins [Catholics], and living only on the scanty alms transmitted by their European brethren.” Marx concluded by quoting from a French author: “Attending their death, they suffer and pray. Their regards turned to that mountain of Moriah where once stood the temple of Lebanon, and which they dare not approach; they shed tears on the misfortune of Zion, and their dispersion over the world.”^{^[240]}

July 18, 1855, A Jewish crowd greeting Sir Moses Montefiore outside the gates of Jerusalem “Never before in modern times had there been a Jewish demonstration publicly made, for in former days of oppression and sorrow, it would have been as impolitic as impossible.”^{^[241]}

In 1856 James Finn wrote that “the Jews are humiliated” by numerous forced payments to stop Muslims desecrating their graves, for not damaging the Sepulchre of Rachel near Bethlehem, for not molesting Jews on the road to Jaffa etc. The town cesspit was also situated in the midst of the Jewish quarter. “it was distressing to behold the timidity which long ages of oppression had engendered. Many times a poor Jew would come for redress against a native (Moslem) and when he had substantiated his case and it had been brought by the Consulate before the Turkish authorities, he would, in mere terror of future possible vengeance, withdraw from the prosecution, and even deny that any harm had been done him.”^{^[242]}

In 1874 John MacGregor visited Palestine and wrote; "Men in Palestine call their fellows 'Jew,' as the very lowest of all possible words of abuse."^{^[243]}

1879. Writing of an aristocratic Muslim family, “They are wicked haters of Jews. When they need to have something carried from the market to their house they wait around until by chance they see a Jew, even an elderly man. … they strike him to their merriment until he is forced to carry the burden on his shoulders to their house. … If they see a Jew dressed in green they take hold of him violently and strip him of his garments and have him imprisoned. ... Likewise it is impossible for Jewish women to venture into the streets because of the lewdness of the Muslims. There are many more such sufferings that the pen would weary to describe. These occur particularly when we go to visit the cemetery [on the Mount of Olives] and when we pray at the Wall of lamentations, when stones are thrown at us and we are jeered at.”^{^[244]}

Anti-Jewish pogroms were sparked by the 1840 Damascus Blood Libel. The Libel was started by Catholics, but the majority Muslim community soon joined in the “torrent of violence,” and it spread across Syria,[245] and there were widespread attacks across the Ottoman empire and north Africa. In Palestine, they occurred in Jaffa (in 1876), and three times in Jerusalem (in 1847, 1870 and 1895).^{^[246]}

In 1880, in Hebron and Jerusalem there were still severe restrictions still in place over when and where Jewish people could pray.

Hebron and the Seventh Step

For an example of inter-communal relations prior to Zionism, within Hebron Jews were banned from entering into the Cave of the Patriarchs, and only (as a sign of their degradation) permitted to go up to the seventh step of the entrance outside it. As they went up these steps, Muslim boys were encouraged by their elders to hit and throw stones at them, to remind them of their proper place.^{^[247]} Speaking of his visit to Hebron in 1852, Rabbi Hyam Zvee Sneersohn said; “The Jews are not only not allowed to enter the Cave of Machpelah, they cannot even tarry long outside without the risk of being insulted by Arabian boys, who would vex them by throwing stones. And this may be done without fear of punishment.”[248]

The prohibition upon entering the Cave of Machpelah was entirely religious, as was the ban from 1266 on Jews entering the Temple Mount.^{^[249]} Both were designed to show the religious supremacy of Islam over the Jewish religion, and that Islam was the true heir to the biblical account. The Muslims these exclusions proclaimed, are the true children of Abraham.

J.L. Stephens, in his Concerning Visit to the Jews of Hebron (1836) wrote; “I was among the unhappy remnant of a fallen people, the persecuted and despised Israelites. … My Jewish friends conducted me around their miserable quarter … [concerning the Tomb of the Patriarchs] The Jews and the Christians are not permitted to enter.”^{^[250]} “The doors were guarded with jealous care by the bigoted Mussulmans; and when, with my Jewish companion, I stopped for a moment to look up at the long marble staircase leading to the tomb of Abraham, a Turk came out from the bazaars, and, with furious gesticulations, gathered a crowd around us; and a Jew and a Christian were driven with contempt from the sepulchre of the patriarch whom they both revered. A special firman from the pacha, or perhaps a large bribe to the governor, might have procured me a private admission; but death or the Koran would have been the penalty required by the bigoted people of Hebron. …

I cannot leave this place, however, without a word or two more. I had spent a long evening with my Jewish friends. The old rabbi talked to me of their prospects and condition, and told me how he had left his country in Europe many years before, and come with his wife and children to lay their bones in the Holy Land. He was now eighty years old ; and for thirty years, he said, he had lived with the sword suspended over his head had been reviled, buffeted, and spit upon; and though sometimes enjoying a respite from persecution, he never knew at what moment the bloodhounds might not be let loose upon him ; that, since the country had been wrested from the sultan by the Pacha of Egypt, they had been comparatively safe and tranquil; though some idea may be formed of this comparative security from the fact, that during the revolution two years before, when Ibrahim Pacha, after having been pent up several months in Jerusalem, burst out like a roaring lion, the first place upon which his wrath descended was the unhappy Hebron; and while their guilty brethren were sometimes spared, the un-happy Jews, never offending but always suffering, received the full weight of Arab vengeance. Their houses were ransacked and plundered; their gold and silver, and all things valuable, carried away; and their wives and daughters violated before their eyes by a brutal soldiery.”[251]

Likewise in 1839, M’Cheyne wrote of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron that; “the Jews are permitted only to look through a hole near the entrance.”^{^[252]} Contrast this to the facile words of one of the early leaders of CPT; “For centuries Jews and Muslims lived together peacefully in Hebron. … relationships between Palestinian Arabs and Jews were generally positive.”^{^[253]}

The changes wrought by Zionism

Mandel notes that traditionally, Muslims regarded Jews as “distinctly inferior,” and under obligation to “deport themselves as held appropriate by people tolerated by the true believers.”^{^[254]} A significant portion of the personal antagonisms between Muslims and Jews during the 1900s can be traced to the overthrow of this stereotype. Emboldened by Zionism, many Jews simply ceased being victims, ceased acting as dhimmis. This profoundly offended many Muslims, who felt it an offence against God and his order. In 1902, the prominent Muslim reformer, Muhammad Rida wrote that Jews were no longer the submissive people they had been, and Arabs had to wake up to this.^{^[255]} In 1905, a prominent member of the Husseni family objected when turned down for a loan by David Levontin, a Jew, in Jaffa. When al-Husseni objected angrily, Levontin replied; “you are an educated man, yet you deal with us like a fellah [peasant] from the village.”^{^[256]} Writing in the 1930s, French author A. Londres also noted the drastic change in personal and inter communal relations, as [addressed to the Palestinian Jewish community] “your restless, impassioned spirit brushed aside twenty centuries with a flip of the mind … you had enough of living under a boot.”^{^[257]} "The main insight of Jews from Islamic lands was that inverting the pyramid in the Arab world so that Jews no longer submitted to Muslims was going to create a permanent source of conflict."^{^[258]}

For much of the 1890s, land sales to Jews, both expatriate and subjects of the Ottoman Empire, were blocked by the then Mufti, Muhammad Tahir al-Husayni. Described in 1893 by the German consul in Constantinople as “one of the leading representatives of the fanatic faction among the local Mohammedans,”^{^[259]} his ban on selling to local Jews went against Ottoman laws (the ban on land sales to Jews had been struck down by the Tanzamit reforms decades earlier). While his banning of land sales to foreign Jews could be seen as a very early anti-Zionist measure, that the ban also applied to local Jews shows that it was also motivated at least in part by base anti-Semitism. The two are usually inseparable in practical terms anyway. It is mentioned here because of its religious aspect (“the fanatic faction among the local Mohammedans.”) al-Husayni was offended by Jews experiencing new liberties. He wanted then to remain incapable of buying land, stuck in their ghetto. The same attitude as was seen concerning Muslim/Christian relations after the Tanzamit reforms.

Concurrent with the violence and legal discriminations, communal boycotts of Jews were also an early and enduring form of Muslim community rejection of greater Jewish freedoms and dignity. On February 5, 1909 the American Jewish Yearbook recorded that; “In Hebron, where out of a total population of 18,000 about 2000 are Jews, the Arabs decide to boycott Jewish merchants.”[260]

Christian Discrimination against Jews.

The Jewish community existed at an even lower level than the Christian community and could therefore also be discriminated against by them. While also under the Muslim yoke, and therefore not free to act simply according to their own desires, the Christian community in Palestine humiliated, persecuted and at times even sought to murder either individual Jews, or to incite massacres of the Jewish community generally. It should also be noted that while they themselves were also shamed and persecuted by the Muslim majority, still they found time in their misery and humiliation to inflict their own torments on their Jewish neighbours. Their own suffering at the hands of the Muslim majority did not make their hearts tender towards others also suffering the same humiliations. “Do not oppress a stranger for you know what it feels like to be a stranger.” Exodus 23:9. Indeed, it appears that as well as initiating their own persecutions, they would also join in Muslim persecution of Jews, finding in such persecutions a moment of bonding, not with the persecuted but with the persecutors, a habit that has continued. They likewise did not make the Jewish people envious of the riches they had in Christ, nor did they help them to receive God’s mercy “as a result of God's mercy to you.” (Romans 11:31)

General descriptions – constant humiliations

1836 Colonel P. Campbell, A Visit to Israel's Holy Places (1839) “The Mussulmans [of Syria-Palestine], … deeply deplore the loss of that sort of superiority which they all and individually exercised over and against the other sects. … from the bottom of his heart he believes and maintains that a Christian, and still more so a Jew, is an inferior being to himself. … the conditions of the Jews “cannot be said to have improved … due to the feelings “of all the Christians and other sects in Syria against them.”^{^[261]}

1852. Arthur George Harper Hollingsworth, “if he [a Jew in Palestine] turns to his neighbour Christian, he encounters prejudice and spite.”^{^[262]}

Marx, 1854. [They are] the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks [Orthodox], persecuted by the Latins [Catholics].

Mary Rogers, the sister of the British vice-Consul, wrote in 1862; “I mingled at the same time with European and native Christians, and especially with the Sakhali family, and with devout Jews, who kindly helped me to understand all the laws and the fasts and the feasts which they observed. The Oriental Christians are unhappily very bitter in their hatred of the Jews. They generally treat them with great contempt, and make a merit of avoiding association with them, but they agree with the Moslems in admitting that the Jews throughout the East are, as a body, remarkable for the purity of their lives, the simplicity of their manners, and the strictness with which they observe their religious services.”^{^[263]} She also wrote that, during her stay in Palestine in the mid- nineteenth century, Muslim and Christian children rarely played with one another, and would "only unite to persecute the poor little Jews."^{^[264]}

In the mid-1800s, the Russian Orthodox increased their presence in the land, and this also added to the anti-Semitism. For example, The Russian Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, established in 1882 supported over 100 Greek Orthodox institutions. The Societies’ clinics were open to all sections of society, except the Jews.[265]

In 1887, Laurence Oliphant concluded that Jerusalem’s Muslims were more tolerant of its Jews than were its Christians.^{^[266]} Mandel believes that Europeans working in Levant at the turn of the century infected Arabs with modem anti-Semitism. He singles out the Jesuits, but also mentions Christian missionaries of other denominations, teachers, officers at consulates, clerks working for foreign banks and alike.^{^[267]} He quotes from as early as 1899, when Eli Sapir, an Arabic speaking Jew from Palestine wrote that “foreign missionaries and priests were heightening Arab feeling against the Jews.”^{^[268]} He singles out the Catholics, especially the Jesuits, in this regard. Pere Lammens was a Belgian who taught at the Jesuit university of Beirut. In 1897, he wrote an anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist article, “Zionism and the Jewish colonies” for Etudes, the Jesuit journal.^{^[269]}

In the 1880s “most Muslim and Christian Arabs” treated Jews “with distain because both Islam and Eastern Christianity predisposed their respective adherents in that way.”^{^[270]}

Blood libels – lying to murder Jews

“Because of the violence against your brother Jacob, you will be covered with shame;” (Obadiah 1:10)

In 1840 members of the Christian community, trying to avoid a Muslim backlash against their own recently improved status, started the 1840 Blood Libel against the Jewish community in Damascus.^{^[271]} To quote from the Jews of Damascus at the time;

“Truly this is a time of great trouble and distress; for every Israelite dwelling in Damascus is in great dread lest he should be falsely accused: for there is none to say unto the Christians, Why do ye thus? It has been openly declared by some of them that they will grant Israel neither peace nor rest. Even already they have begun to conspire against the best, the most honourable, and esteemed of our community.”^{^[272]} “We know not what is to become of the people of Israel when the Christians see there is no hope for them, but their false accusations are listened to from the judgement seat; but to the voice of Israel there is none to give ear, to reply-none to pity.^{^[273]}

It is generally believed that it was Catholics under the protection of France who introduced this European anti-Semitic charge into the Muslim world.^{^[274]} Note however that the evidence produced by the Orthodox in Jerusalem in 1847 (see below) would seem to refute this notion, and that the libel seems also to have been a part of Orthodox anti-Semitism. “Christian Arabs were divided among a number of denominations of Eastern Christianity, and whilst there was often no love lost between them, they had in common a deep religious prejudice against Jews. Inter alia, this sentiment manifested itself in the ‘blood libel.’”[275]

In 1862 and in 1890 blood libels resulted in Christian attacks on the Jewish quarter of Beirut. In 1890 order was restored by the Turkish authorities and the rioters were arrested. ^{^[276]}

Turning specifically to Palestine, in 1847 it seemed probable that the Christian pilgrims, instigated by the Greek ecclesiastics, tried to reproduce the horrors enacted at Rhodes and Damascus in 1840 [against the Jews].^{^[277]} It started when a Greek Orthodox boy, on pilgrimage in Jerusalem, threw a stone at a Jewish boy. As the British Consul, James Finn wrote at the time; “Strange to say, the latter had the courage to retaliate by throwing one in return, which, unfortunately hit its mark, and a bleeding ankle was the consequence.”

“Direst vengeance was denounced against all Jews indiscriminately for having stabbed (as they said) an innocent Christian child with a knife in order to get his blood for mixing in their Passover biscuits.” (Passover, which was taking place at the same time.) The police took both parties to the Seraglio (court) and the case was discharged as too trivial for notice. Dissatisfied with this peaceful end of the incident, the clergy stirred the matter up again, proving from their ancient books to the Pasha (Ottoman ruler) that the Jews were addicted to non-Jewish blood. The Pasha commanded the Jews to give a response the following day. “The Greek ecclesiastical party came down in great force and read out of Church historians and controversial writings of old time direct and frequent accusations levelled against the Jews for using Christian blood in Passover ceremonies.”

“In the meanwhile,” continued Finn, “Greeks and Armenians went about the streets insulting and menacing the Jews, both men and women, sometimes drawing their hands across the throat, sometimes showing the knives they generally carry with them, and, among other instances brought to my notice was that of a party of six catching hold of the son of the late Chief Rabbi of London (Herschel) and shaking him, elderly man as he was, by the collar, crying out, ‘Ah! Jews, have you got the knives ready for our blood?!’”

The next day, the rabbis, “pale and trembling, arguing from the Old Testament and all their legal authorities the utter impossibility of the perpetration of such acts by their people.” The rabbis concluded by appealing to the Sultan’s Firman (Edict) of 5601/1841, which declares that after investigating the matter after the Damascus Blood Libel, the Jews were found innocent of the crime attributed to them. Since the next day was Friday, the Moslem day of rest, the Jews were instructed to bring the Firman to court on Shabbos.

“I then arranged with the Pasha that I should be present at the meeting and early on Saturday went down to the Seraglio,” Finn recorded. “But earlier still, His Excellency was happy (he said) to acquaint me that the Firman had been produced, and on his asking the accusers and the Effendis in council if they could venture to fly in the face of that document, they had, with all loyalty pronounced it impossible. He therefore had disposed of the case by awarding a trifling fine for the medical treatment of the wounded ankle.” Finn’s wife affirmed in a footnote that it was chiefly her husband’s interest in the incident that led to this swift conclusion.^{^[278]} Had the British Consul, James Finn, not intervened, matters could well have resulted in a massacre. Indeed, given the recent history in the area of massacres started by this exact libel, it is hard to see that another such massacre was precisely what the Orthodox wished to provoke. This did not end the matter as far as the Orthodox were concerned.

In 1909, “The usual blood-accusations were levelled at the Jews of Jaffa and Haifa; their groundlessness was amply proved. At Jaffa, indeed, an organized attack was made against the Jews on the eve of Purim”[279] Note that “thirteen Jews were wounded,” either through neglect or connivance of the Turkish governor.[280] On May 29, 1909 “Former Governor of Jaffa, Palestine, indicted and to be tried by court martial, on charge of having organized attack on Jews in Jaffa, March 16, 1908.”[281]

Around 1911 Greek Orthodox Najib Naser, the editor of Al-Karmil, led a “systematic campaign”[282] against the Jewish moshav of Merchavia. The charges included distributing poisoned sweets to the children of the nearby Arab villages. It appears that a blood libel was then manufactured, as the moshav was then charged with murdering a one-year old Arab child, and indeed, a dead child’s body was secretly buried near the moshav to back the claim up. Further information on this incident is difficult to obtain.

Note however, that in 1913 the Filastin ran three front page articles by Yusuf al-‘Isa on the blood libel of Menachem Beilis in Russia. The second article was titled; “The Disgrace of the Twentieth Century.” While “unambiguously anti-Zionist” the Filastin defended “not only Beilis but also Judaism and Jews from this slander.”[283] In this, al-‘Isa was guided more by his secular belief in science and progress, rather than by his Orthodox identity. “His determined modernist outlook, reliance on reason and logical thinking, strong faith in progress and science, and his antipathy to ignorance, superstition, and fanaticism did not allow for wavering or ambivalence. He writes: ‘We said in the previous issue and repeat that their accusing the Jews of shedding blood to perform religious ritual is a fabrication with regard to those who believe it; an abomination with regard to those who spread it; and a disgrace to the twentieth century, during which, if minds are not liberated from the shackles of ignorance, God will never liberate them.’”[284] This motivation is also revealed when, in 1914, Filastin carried an interview with Beilis conducted by ‘Aziz ‘Arida.

He informed Beilis that “progressive Palestinian youth, whichever religious creed they belong to, were touched by what happened to you and did not believe what you had been accused of.”[285] “We highly esteem the Jews as adherents of a religion” “Everyone who follows what this newspaper writes knows that we have spared no effort in criticizing the Israelites as a people [umma] isolated from the rest of the peoples [a reference to Numbers 23:9, seemingly used in an anti-Semitic way!], and in the fight against those among them we call Zionists”[286] This was an Enlightenment stance; to the Jews as individuals (or a religion, defined in individualistic terms) everything, to the Jews as a people, nothing.

Tragically, this principled, secular opposition to anti-Semitism was unable to withstand the growing hatred of the Arab communities, and in 1931, Filastin itself would be accused of spreading a blood libel. Indeed, in 1931, six weeks before Passover, the Greek Orthodox paper Filastin published a “blood libel” against the Jaffa Jewish community!!^{^[287]} It concerned the alleged kidnapping of two Arab children, was described by Frederick Kisch at the time as “terrifying.” “Intense excitement spread throughout the country and a massacre seemed imminent.”^{^[288]} It led to the temporary suspension of the Filastin. The Palestine Bulletin (pre-curser to the Palestine Post and then the Jerusalem Post) reported on March 6 that “the instigators felt that nothing less than a religious libel would bring about a recurrence of the bloody events of August 1929.”[289] That is, two years after Jews had been massacred in Hebron, Jerusalem, Safed and elsewhere, this was an attempt by the Christian community to try and stir up a new massacre of Jews, using traditional Christian anti-Semitism! This is utterly horrific! Large numbers of innocent people could have been murdered! See also the excellent editorial of the Palestine Bulletin, August 11, 1930, predating this libel.[290] On April 13, 1931, the Palestine Bulletin editorial also mentioned the blood libel printed in the Falastin, and also noted that during the recent Nebi Moussa festival, “the crowd shouted ‘Palestine is our and the Zionists are our dogs. We have weapons enough, slaughter, be not afraid.’ No one was arrested, Falastin praised the behaviour of the crowd.”[291]

That is, between 1847 and 1931, the Orthodox Christian community tried to provoke a massacre of the Jewish community in Palestine on at least four occasions. Note that more recently, other supposedly Christian Palestinian organisations have likewise been similarly accused.[292]

Death for a Jew walking past a Christian Church

“but that Greeks, Latins and Armenians, all believed a Jew might be killed with impunity under such conditions.”^{^[293]}

Unwritten rules coded the ritual humiliation of the Jews. Because everyone knew them, they are little recorded, and only brought to notice through the actions of visiting Jews who did not know about them, and who therefore unwittingly transgressed them. The British Consul, Finn, intervened and recorded such an occasion in 1847 (just after the blood libel case discussed above had been rejected). A Jew, newly arrived from Europe, had not yet had time to learn the rules and did not know that walking past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was, for Jews, forbidden. After he crossed the far side of the open square in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, without warning, he was attacked and almost killed by a crowd of Christians. This site was strictly out of bounds to Jews although not, of course, to Moslems. He appealed for justice to the British Consulate. In response, Finn writes “I appealed to the Pasha.” “The Greek ecclesiastics pleaded before him that the passage was not a public thoroughfare but part of the Sanctuary of Christianity, and only used for transit on sufferance. They even dared to send me word that they were in possession of an ancient Firman which fixed the ‘Deeyeh,’ or blood-fine, to be paid by them if, in beating a Jew in that vicinity for trespass, they happened to kill him, at the sum of ten paras, about one halfpenny English.”

After an inquiry was sent to Constantinople to ascertain whether this claim was true, word came back that no such document existed. “Thus that mischievous untruth was silenced,” Finn concluded. “But the incident shows the disposition of the high convent authorities towards the Jews. It may be that they themselves believed there was such a Firman: if so, what degree of pity or liberality could one expect from the multitude of brutal pilgrims? The Pasha said that he knew of no such Firman as that referred to, but that Greeks, Latins and Armenians, all believed that a Jew might be killed with impunity under such circumstances.”^{^[294]}

Christian ecclesiastical authorities were again prepared to fight legally for their ‘right’ to beat and even kill Jews who walked past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre! Their argument that the street outside formed part of the church simply means that they believed in beating/killing any Jew who entered a church – this is Christian how??? We only know about the first instance because of the presence of the British Consul. Had he not been there, there would be no record of it, except perhaps buried in some forgotten Ottoman archive. Given the swiftness of the Orthodox response to the Jewish ‘intrusion,’ and their readiness to defend their rights to beat up any such Jew, one must wonder how often such events occurred unrecorded.

Even during the Mandate, Christians still forbade Jews from entering the Holy Sepulchre and the street leading to it. Indeed, Agustin Acre witnessed Greek and Armenian monks attacking a Jew who entered it in 1927.^{^[295]} Interestingly, a Palestinian paper also references this custom. Portraying it as a Jewish foible rather than a Christian rule. It quotes Mr. Havelio, an observant Palestinian Jew living in the Old City, prior to 1948; “Should we have to walk to the Christian Quarter from Suq Khan al-Zeit, we would avoid passing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, though it is a shortcut, and would go around the long way from Al-Dabbagha.”^{^[296]}

Speaking of Christians beating up Jews, see also the Jaffa riots of 1921.

Conclusion

The idea that Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together as one before the advent of Zionism is a lie. While inter-communal relationships both varied from place to place, and also fluctuated within any given area, Christians and Jews in Palestine during the Ottoman time experienced constant discrimination and periodic persecution, including murders, robbery, massacres and expulsions. Numerous contemporary sources note the fury of the Muslim community over the very idea that the other communities should have the same rights and protections as themselves. The ongoing Christian persecution of the Jewish community right through the era of Muslim domination is also shamefully ignored. No repentance has been offered.

The Muslim community in general viewed, and still view the days before the Tanzimat reforms as idyllic. After the massacre of Armenians by Muslim Kurds in the Sason area of Turkey in 1894-96, a Kurdish chieftain lamented the loss of “love and perfect confidence” that had prevailed “for hundreds of years between us and the Christians.” In a petition to the great powers, he wrote “peace and safety existed among us, so that each one of us owned a Christian, and every year exacted a fixed amount for protection afforded, yet we cared for them more than for our own children.” As to the view of the persecuted of this same situation, a Sason Armenian wrote of their lives as being “persecuted in all sorts of ways.” On top of government taxes, they; “had to pay tribute to some seven different Kurd[ish chieftains] … and at the same time we were continually exposed to their plunder, rape and murder.”^{^[297]} That is, contrary to the prevailing Muslim view, the situation prior to the reforms was not idyllic. The non-Muslims lived a life of humiliations, persecution and abuse. Robbery, rape and murder were all too common, and went unpunished by the Muslim courts, where for example, a Christian or Jewish woman would have had to find four Muslim men ready to testify for her and against a fellow Muslim man if a charge of rape were to be upheld.

Shamefully, the false narrative of the oppressor has been adopted by the Palestinian Christian community, one of the oppressed. See for examples the recent comments by two professors from the Bethlehem Bible College. Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac; “What distinguishes Palestine with its history and present is religious and cultural pluralism, and we have stressed in our first meeting that diversity is a source of wealth,” and Professor Daniel Bannoura; “Historically, we have a very good relationship with Muslims, but after ISIS, Christians have become ignorant and fearful of Muslims.”^{^[298]}

Like an abusive husband and an abused wife both swearing to the police that everything is fine, Palestinian Christians now insist that, prior to Zionism, unlike the situation in the rest of the Ottoman empire, everything was fine. They do this for a number of reasons; they remain a tiny minority, still actively afraid of offending the Muslim majority. Also, they have they have bet the farm on Arab nationalism and hope that by agreeing with their oppressors about the past, they will be able to steer them towards a less violent future. They continue to hope for a bonding moment with their Muslim oppressors based on a mutual hatred of the Jews. Finally, because as the son of a leading Palestinian Christian once told me, they would rather be wiped out by the Muslim Arab population than thrive with the Jewish population. And so they lie about their past, and heap blame on the community which historically was the most persecuted, and most abused.

Palestinian Christians - First in their opposition to Zionism

Nehemiah 2:10 “When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites.”

“Christians were among the first to raise the alarm.”[299]

We will now look in more detail at the responses of the Palestinian Christians to the early Zionist movement. For the Christian communities, traditional anti-Semitism flowed seamlessly into opposition to Zionism. They hated this community, so naturally they did not want it to prosper or expand. Anti-Semitism fueled their anti-Zionism. They were not, as has been alleged by sympathetic westerners, anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic, rather they were anti-Zionist because they were anti-Semitic. Tragically, shamefully, the Palestinian Christian communities, with noble exceptions, and with varying intensity, hated the Jewish community.

Christians were aware of their communal rivalry with Jews, so that in 1835 the appointment of a Jew to charge d’affaires in Ramle by the United States led to “dissatisfaction of the local Christians.”[300]

More positively, in 1872, the Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem “appreciated the Jews’ desire to resettle their country” and aided them in an attempt to acquire land near Jericho.[301]

The Christian editors of the journal al-Muqtataf received a letter in the summer of 1882 about the “increased flow of Jews through Beirut on their way to Palestine.”[302] In 1898 the same Christian paper would claim that the Jews who had already settled in Palestine had already taken over most of the trade and commerce, and that if their numbers increased, they would monopolise business there.[303]

During the late Ottoman period, Christians were more vehement than Muslims in their opposition to Zionism; early on in fact, many Zionists were convinced that opposition to Zionism was limited almost entirely to Christian Arabs.^{^[304]} One of the earliest organised efforts against Zionism was initiated by Christians in 1891, an official protest against Jewish immigration directed at the Ottoman Government.^{^[305]} Christians would remain at the forefront in the struggle against Zionism well into the twentieth century. Prior to 1914, the campaign against the sale of land to the Jews was initiated by Christians in the north.

Yusuf Diya’addln Pasa al-Khalidi was among the first Arab intellectuals who responded to the formation of political Zionism. He did so on March 1st, 1899 in the form of a letter to the Chief Rabbi of France Zadok Kahn. Here, he wrote; “Turks and Arabs in general sympathize with Jews. But some of them were affected by the fever of hatred for Jews, as it happened to the most advanced of the civilized nations. Also the Christian Arabs, especially the Catholic and Orthodox, hate Jews very much.”[306] Yusuf al-Khalidi a leading Muslim moderate in Jerusalem, wrote to the chief Rabbi of France in 1899. He feared violence in Palestine, ‘sparked off by Christian extremists.’[307] Moreover, there were in Palestine Christian “fanatics” especially among the Orthodox and Catholics, who resented the Jews and “do not overlook any opportunity to excite the hatred of Muslims against the Jews.”[308] Note also Mandel’s comment that “Christian Arabs … had in common a deep religious prejudice against Jews.”[309]

1891 saw the first Arab protest against Jewish immigration.[310] In 1899 the Jerusalem Mufti proposed that the Jewish newcomers be “terrorized and expelled.”[311] Zionism came to be perceived as a specifically ‘Arab’ problem, and as such, helped to foster a sense of Arab identity.^{^[312]}

By 1903, certain Christian Arabs in Jaffa were well informed about Zionism.[313] Najib Azoury, a Maronite Christian originally from Lebanon married to a Palestinian Christian, was both an early anti-Zionist, and a traditional anti-Semite.[314] In 1905 he wrote (in “The Awakening of the Arab nation”[315]) against Zionism from a nationalistic and religious viewpoint. In 1909, Farid Kassab (an Orthodox Arab from Beirut) responded that Azoury was a “Catholic bigot” believed that Jews were diecides and therefore eternally damned, and “not only anti-Jewish from the religious point of view, but also anti-Semitic.” Kassab also defended the Jews of Palestine as being “peaceful and inoffensive, belonging to the same race as the Arabs. Whatever good their industry and agriculture did by reviving their ancient and barren land benefited both the Empire and themselves.”[316] Again, moderate people saw no fundamental conflict, and assumed Jews and Arabs could live together.

Nevertheless, Jewish advancement/prosperity did offend many. In 1908 about 46 Jews were hoping to move to a vacant sand-dune outside of Jaffa. Having legally bought the empty land, their plans were delayed when the Ottoman government built a police barracks in the middle of the area. When the station was completed, “a festive procession was arranged by the Muslim and Christian Arabs, … it included sheikhs, imams and Christian priests, and also a band. The Arab youths were overjoyed. They sang and danced … and hurled abuse at the Jews.”[317]

Almost from the start, Christians played a prominent role in opposing Zionism. This was done first and foremost through the Arab press. The vast majority of newspapers in Palestine were owned and run by Christians, and almost all were stridently anti-Zionist.^{^[318]}

Greek Orthodox Najib Nassar (who later converted to Protestantism) began his campaign against Zionism in 1905. He published articles on the subject in newspapers in Cairo and Beirut. In 1908, he founded the Haifa paper al-Karmil. This printed the first articles on Zionism in Syrian and Palestinian newspapers. This was the first public call against Zionism by an Arab. In 1910 he organised the first association aimed at persuading the Government to prohibit the sale of land to Jews.^{^[319]} In the spring of 1911, he wrote a series of articles against Zionism in al-Karmil and later the same year he published them as a book (Zionism: Its History, Aims and Significance). They were an abridged translation of the article on Zionism from the Jewish Encyclopedia, accompanied by his commentary. He also pushed for Arab unity and was known for his “unceasing anti-Zionism” (70 articles against it in 1911 alone^{^[320]}). In 1914 he compared those who sold land to the Jews to Judas Iscariot, but his criticisms were generally nationalistic, not religious.^{^[321]} In 1920, he called for the boycott of Jews.^{^[322]} He also wrote in 1924 to the Pope asking for money to combat the Zionists.

Also in 1911, Orthodox Christian Issa el-Issa and his cousin Yusef ei-Issa founded Filastin in Jaffa, “primarily as a tool to attack Zionism.”[323] These two Christian papers led the calls against Zionism. While these early alarms originated within the Christian community, they did not remain there. Isaac Nahon, who managed the Alliance school in Haifa, remarked in the summer of 1911 that al-Karmil’s accusations had spread among the Muslim population. In January 1912, Shimon Moyal noted that “a spirit of enmity had begun ‘to gain a foothold among the masses because of the influence of the antagonistic press.’”^{^[324]} In a June 1911 report, Albert Antébi, a prominent representative of the Sephardic community, noted that “In all eyes the Jew is becoming the anti-patriot, the traitor prepared to plunder his neighbour to take possession of his goods. The Christian excels in these accusations, but the Muslim follows on his heels.”^{^[325]}

“They were served by a combative media that was mainly owned by Palestinian Christians. This was the case of Falastin (Palestine) newspaper, published in Jaffa since 1911 by Issa al-Issa, whose editorial line not only included strong opposition to the Zionist project but also a whole section called “Orthodoxiat” on the struggle to end the discrimination against Arabs in the patriarchate. Najib Nassar published a prominent essay against Zionism in 1913 in his magazine Al Karmel. A report of Zionist intelligence agents identified Palestinian Christians, such as Issa al’Issa, as their most active opponents.”[326]

Curiously, in Beirut, the Christian community favoured a Jewish state in Palestine as it would weaken Muslim hegemony. While generally, after the Balkan wars, Ottoman Christians and Muslims grew even further apart (the path leading to genocide), within Palestine, the opposite happened as “numbers of Muslim and Christian Arabs came closer to one another through their common opposition to Jewish immigration.”[327] In 1913 Falastin ran an article by Arif al-Arif (a prominent Muslim) opposing land sales to Jews.[328] The Falastin and other Christian papers repeatedly demanded that Arab nationalism was a religious duty for both Muslims and Christians, and that opposition to Zionism was vital.[329]

In 1914, Rashid Rida told Jewish Palestinian Nissim Malul that there were differences between the Moslem and Christian Arabs, noting that; “The Christians were the Zionists greatest enemies.”[330] The effect of this agitation was that by 1914, “Arab opposition to Zionism had emerged.”[331]

The possibility of a “Muslim-Jewish” or “Arab/Zionist” entente was briefly explored 1913-14. It was the two Christian newspapers of Palestine which provided the greatest opposition to the idea.[332]

In 1918, Nazareth was 66% Christian. Writing about 1921, Shmuel Dayan commented that; “Nazareth was a hotbed of Arab anti-Jewish agitation.”[333] Already in 1918, the small Jewish community felt the need to look more closely into “the influence of the Christians on the population at large.”[334] They already viewed it as a negative and were concerned about how much it might influence the wider Arab population.

European anti-Semitism entering the Palestinian world[335]

From the 1900s onwards, European anti-Semitism added its own distinctives to the already deeply rooted local (Muslim and Greek Orthodox) anti-Semitism. Silvia Haim and Moshe Perlmann believed [modern] anti-Semitism entered the Arab world through the anti-Dreyfusard clergy “so well represented among the missionaries.”[336] The German Protestant “Templars” seemingly did not like Jews, although the evidence is much less clear.[337] In 1900, “Jerusalem already possesses its German anti-Semitic club.”[338] As seen, the early Anglican missionaries stand out as a stark and blessed contrast to this.[339]

Indeed, with the exception of the early Anglicans, cooperation between local Christians and the Zionist movement was uncommon.^{^[340]} Frantzmann[341] makes the point that the Vatican opposed Zionism and was anti-Semitic, and this influenced the Catholics in Palestine, while most of the early Jewish immigrants were affected by the Russian pogroms, encouraged by the Russian Orthodox, who also were developing very close ties with the Greek Orthodox Palestinians at this time. “Thus the final conclusion must be that Jewish-Christian relations were not defined in terms of violence, but deep scars remained due to Jewish experience with Christians in Europe”[342]

In conclusion, what are we to make of the role of the Palestinian Christian communities in promoting opposition to Zionism? As noted, it certainly flows seamlessly from their already ingrained anti-Semitism. Was it simply that, as the more educated sector of Arab society, they were the first to notice it, and as owners of the newspapers, they were also best placed to publicise it? Or that as the other persecuted community in Palestine, they were quicker to notice slight changes in the balance between them and the Jewish community, changes which did not yet interest the dominant Muslim population? Comments such as “also the Christian Arabs, especially the Catholic and Orthodox, hate Jews very much” seemingly point to something deeper.

Muslims certainly utterly despised Jews, but since the death of Mohammad, they had had no cause to fear them. They saw Christians as a threat (the Crusades, colonisation etc), but the Jews? No. Local Christians, not Jews were viewed as traitors, asking for help from the Christian west. Even when Jews began returning in the 1880s, they came as refugees fleeing pogroms, not victorious outriders of a powerful benefactor. There were no powerful Jewish states backing them. Again, to the local Muslims they presented no obvious menace.

The Christians, on the other hand, both theologically and historically, saw the Jews as a much more potent threat. The Jews retained a deceptive, hidden danger to them. Traitors, God killers whom they had also struggled against right up until the Muslim conquest. On top of that, the Christian scriptures also spoke of a restoration of the Jews to their land, the land the Christians currently lived on, and had done so since their ancestors had driven the original Jews away. Did all of this make them more open to the possibility of the Jews as a threat? More attune to a fear of their return? To posit this is to assume they knew both their history and their Scriptures, most unlikely in a downtrodden and largely illiterate community. Their educated, Greek-speaking leaders, who might have had recourse to Chrysostom, (“I shall make it clear that the Jews will recover neither their city nor their temple in days to come.”)^{^[343]} were in fact generally far more positive about Zionism than their uneducated flock. I fear at this stage, no definitive answer can be given, except the deep hatred they evidenced. Note also the ambivalence between Mark 12:7 and Acts 3:17.

What can be said is that many of the local Protestants knew these prophecies and had heard teaching affirming it. Try hard as they might to explain them away, still their rejection of Jewish refugees was a rebellion against God.

Mark 12:7 "But the tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.'”

The path not travelled.

Palestinian Christians, first in their recognition of the hand of God in the restoration of the Jewish people.

OK, When the Jewish people started to return to the land of Israel in the 1890s, what other responses might the Palestinian Christians have made? Well, we could have hoped that the local Christian churches would welcome and aid them. Because we should love our neighbour, the stranger and help those fleeing persecution (the Russian pogroms etc). And because they read their Bibles and knew God’s promises! Already in 1899, certain British Jewish Christians were seeing in the then return of Jews to Palestine a sign of the faithfulness of God.[344]

Across the wider Arab world, what an impact Arab Christians could have had! Imagine if when the Jews first started to return, they had stood up and said “this is of God!, you cannot oppose Him, you will not succeed.” They would have been mocked and hated, some killed (1.5 million Christians would be killed by the Ottomans anyway) but when Israel became a nation in 48, and survived the ensuing war, and then again, in 67 and 73, - the Arab world was rocked to the core – as religious people, they sensed the finger of God, that something spiritual had happened, but had no framework to place it in. They needed the voices of those local Christians, proclaiming God’s faithfulness, but they never heard them. Like the crowd waiting outside the Temple when Zechariah met the angel Gabriel – their lack of faith meant the Muslim world never heard the words they so desperately needed.

Their leaders at least had the Scriptures! Were they always dimly aware that the children of Israel might return and claim their inheritance? Was it that they lived on Jewish land and feared God’s promises to them? Instead of knowing God’s blessings and trusting in him?

As seen, the return of the Jews to Israel was first opposed by the Christian Palestinians. Before the vast majority of the international Jewish community were even aware of it, or the Muslims appreciated it as a potential threat, the local Christians were aware and opposing it. Asking for soldiers to be set to guard over the grave.

Basically, in the beginning, they had three choices.

The Pharaoh option; Genesis 47:5-6 Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Your father and your brothers have come to you, ⁶ and the land of Egypt is before you; settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land.

To show welcome and aid their return.

The Gamaliel option; Acts 5:38-39 in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. ³⁹ But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God."

Do nothing – you know the Scriptures, this might be of God.

The Chief Priests/tenants option; John 11:48-50 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." ⁴⁹ Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! ⁵⁰ You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."

Luke 20:14 "But when the tenants saw him, they talked the matter over. 'This is the heir,' they said. 'Let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.'

Actively oppose them.

Palestinian Christians overwhelmingly chose the third option. After murdering, despising and persecuting them for 1800 years, their response was never in doubt.

What other choices/options could the Palestinian Christian community have made in the formative years, 1920s+?

(A quick peek at Zionist thought during this time)

Religion played a greater role in the return of the Jewish people than is often recognised. The first return from Russia was named BILU, after Isaiah 2:5.

Minorities such as the Druze, Circassians and others show a welcoming approach was possible. Certainly also, in the minds of the Jewish olim violence was never perceived as inevitable. Situations not perfect!! But total war not the only option!!

In 1926, Ben Gurion wrote that; “the Arab community is an organic, inextricable part of Palestine.; it is embedded in the country where it toils and where it will stay. It is not to disinherit this community nor to thrive on its destruction that Zionism came into being … Only a madman can attribute such a desire to the Jewish people in Palestine. Palestine will belong to the Jewish people and its Arab inhabitants.” In 1937, he wrote; We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption – proven throughout all our activity in the Land – that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.” Again in 1937, at the Twentieth Zionist Congress, he declared; “No Jewish State, big or small, in part of the country or in its entirety will be [truly] established so long as the land of the prophets does not witness the realize of the great and moral ideals nourished in our hearts for generations; one law for all residents, just rule, love for ones neighbour, true equality.” In 1938, in its submission to the Peel commission, the Zionist movement undertook “not only to respect the civil and religious rights of its non-Jewish citizens, but also to safeguard and, to the best of its ability, to improve their positions.”

Ze’ev Jabotinsky foresaw the Arab minority as full citizens, participating on an equal footing “throughout all sectors of the country’s public life.” As early as 1905 he stated that “we must treat the Arabs correctly and affably, without any violence or injustice.”

Interestingly, he believed that a weak Jewish community would always be rejected by the Arab community, and that only a strong Jewish community would be able to live in peace with its Arab neighbours. In his famous article; “The Iron Wall” he argued that the Jewish community needed to be as strong as an iron wall. “not till then will they [the local Arab leaders] drop their extremist leaders, whose watchword is ‘never!’ And the leadership will pass to the moderate groups who will approach us with a proposal that we should both agree to mutual concessions. Then we may expect them to discuss honestly practical questions, such as a guarantee against Arab displacement, or equal rights for Arab citizens, or Arab national integrity. And when this happens, I am convinced that we Jews will be found ready to give them satisfactory guarantees, so that both peoples can live together in peace, like good neighbours. … I consider it absolutely impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine – which is good enough for me, provided the Jews become the majority. … I am prepared to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, that we shall never try to eject anyone. This seems to me a fairly peaceful credo.”

In 1934 he presided over the drafting of a constitution for Jewish Palestine. According to it, Jews and Arabs were to share the prerogatives and duties of statehood. Hebrew and Arabic were to enjoy the same legal standing. He also affirmed to the Peel Commission his view that “on a long view, the Jewish village cannot prosper unless the Arab village prospers with it.”

In his 1922 White Paper, Churchill wrote; “Unauthorized statements have been made to the effect that the purpose in view is to create a wholly Jewish Palestine. Phrases have been used such as that Palestine is to become “as Jewish as England is English.” His Majesty’s Government regard any such expectation as impracticable and have no such aim in view. Nor have they at any time contemplated, as appears to be feared by the Arab Delegation, the disappearance or the subordination of the Arabic population, language, or culture in Palestine. They would draw attention to the fact that the terms of the Declaration referred to do not contemplate that Palestine as a whole should be converted into a Jewish National Home, but that such a Home should be founded in Palestine. In this connection, it has been observed with satisfaction that at the meeting of the Zionist Congress, the supreme governing body of the Zionist Organization, held at Carlsbad in September 1921, a resolution was passed expressing as the official statement of Zionist aims, “the determination of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people on terms of unity and mutual respect, and together with them to make the common home into a flourishing community, the upbuilding of which may assure to each of its peoples an undisturbed national development.”^{^[345]}

James Parkes adds; “That this world was still-born was not the fault of the Jews.”^{^[346]}

World War I (Berkeley: University of California

C. Recent Palestinian Christian history

“Let us recall the destruction of Christian communities under Diocletian in the fourth century, under the Persian invasion in the seventh, under the Muslim Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim in the tenth, and under Bibars in the thirteenth. Not to mention other cruel regimes, invasions, massacres, plagues and famines. …” [347]

Having been introduced to the various Christian communities, and also looked at their intercommunal relations, we will now look more closely at recent Palestinian Christian history. How did they interact with the wider historical events happening around them? This is not a history of Palestine as such, but of the Christian communities living in it.

Ottoman days

The religious basis of the Muslim/Christian relationship within the Ottoman Empire; Dhimmi status – general observations.

The pact between the Muslim ruler and the non-Muslim communities which regulated under what conditions they would be permitted to continue within the Muslim state. “The basis of the contract was the recognition by the Dhimmis of the supremacy of Islam and the dominance of the Muslim state, and their acceptance of a position of subordination, symbolised by certain social restrictions and the payment of a poll tax (jizya).[348]

Reforms, repression etc

All this changed, at least theoretically, starting in 1836. After centuries of Islamic persecution, the Ottoman Tanzimat reforms established full equality for all citizens. This caused a massive social upheaval. “For the first time in the history of any Muslim state, in 1839 the Ottomans implicitly accepted a revolutionary political equality of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects. They declared this equality more explicitly in 1856 and finally, announced it constitutionally in 1876. The jizya, or poll tax on non-Muslims, was abolished in 1855. A concept of secular Ottoman citizenship was introduced in 1869. The Ottoman purpose in this massive ideological and legal reordering of the empire or Tanzimat was clear: it was to stave off further European intervention and to consolidate imperial power.”[349]

Suddenly the Christian community was upwardly mobile, urbanizing and generally doing rather well. “Christians benefited economically more than their Muslim neighbours and became more confident in their social and religious expression.”[350] This improvement was due both to the disproportional impact of western mission schools, and more broadly, because the reforms removed the artificial constraints from the Christian community, restraints which were never on the Muslim majority. “By the end of the nineteenth century, the situation of Christians had markedly improved.”^{^[351]} In Mandate Palestine, for example, an absolute majority of the new, urban middle class were members of the Christian communities, even though these communities made up only 11% of the total population.[352]

This offended[353] the Ottoman Muslim majority deeply.[354] In their mind, the reforms opposed the natural, historical and religious order of things. This provoked the Muslim majority against them.[355] In 1897, (after the Tanzimat reforms had been revoked) in the Ottoman towns of Yozgat and Sason, local officials “perceived a hint of assertiveness and a wish for equality” among the Armenian Christian minority. This “alarmed the Palace considerably,” and in both cases, local Muslims responded with “unprecedented ferocity” to what they viewed as “mortal threats.”[356] After a massacre of Christians in 1895 “Muslim women came to jeer and laugh at the sufferers.”^{^[357]}

“The relaxing of the millet laws by Egypt in the 1830s, and the Tanzimat reforms of 1839 and 1856, whilst giving new freedom to Christian and other non-Muslim communities, destabilised Christian–Muslim relations.²⁶“The reforms allowed freedom of worship, and granted equal political status to the ahl aldhimma. Given the number of Jews and Christians in government service, and the economic advantages and higher education that many possessed, many Muslims feared that equal status would damage the Islamic character of the state and endanger the dominant position of Muslims in administrative circles. Taking advantage of this new freedom, simple acts such as the ringing of Church bells or public Christian processions helped result in serious Muslim riots against Christians in Aleppo and Damascus in 1850 and 1860.”[358]

As Colonel P. Campbell, A Visit to Israel's Holy Places (1839) wrote; “The Mussulmans [of Syria-Palestine], … deeply deplore the loss of that sort of superiority which they all and individually exercised over and against the other sects. … from the bottom of his heart he believes and maintains that a Christian, and still more so a Jew, is an inferior being to himself.”^{^[359]}

This will also be seen in 1853, with the Muslims of Nablus; “They shouted ‘look at the Dragoman sitting on a chair – kill him, kill him. Did you ever see a Christian like that before?’” The depth of the deep-seated fury at seeing non-Muslims assuming the rights equal to Muslims remains a bedrock issue to this day. (See for example the rage inspired by non-Muslims praying on the Temple Mount.)

Foreign factors

Larger patterns imposed themselves upon this local scene. With the decline of Ottoman fortunes, western nations had ‘appointed’ themselves as the protectors of different Christian communities within the Ottoman empire. There was some genuine cause for concern on the part of Muslims. Christian majority provinces were able to secede from the Ottomans empire with western support. Prime examples, Greece in 1830 with Russian, French and British aid, and Bulgaria 1878 with Russian help. Indeed, the Tanzimat reforms themselves were often seen as a concession to the Christian European powers, privileging Christians and promoting Christian separatism.[360] “Tensions between Muslims and Christians became particularly acute during the Balkan Wars and the war against Italy. Both were represented as a religious war of Muslims against Christians, and many Muslims identified local Christians with the Empire's enemies.”^{^[361]} Note that Western interference on behalf of various Christian communities was often an exasperating mixture of altruism and self-interest.[362] By using marginalized communities to further their own goals, foreign powers exaggerated their already precarious position, and left them open to attack from the offended majority.[363] Foundational to this was the fact that, under Islam, Christians had been robbed, raped and treated like filth. Had they simply been treated reasonably, there would have been no grievance for the Christian west to intervene over/exploit.

Looking more locally, in 1840 European powers forced Muhamad Ali to relinquish control of Syria and Palestine back to the Ottomans. In return, the Ottomans reluctantly conceded to Russia a claim to be the protector of the Orthodox Christians in the area. In 1851, France likewise claimed to be the protector of the Catholic Christians in the Holy Land. These rival claims then became the immediate cause of the Crimean War, as Russia in 1853 demanded that the Sultan favour the Orthodox over the Catholics, and the Sultan, backed by France and Britain, refused. In this atmosphere, it is perhaps unsurprising that in 1841, “Christians in Syria circulated a petition calling on Europe to place Palestine under Christian rule!”^{^[364]} and “this fostered a great deal of resentment among Muslims, many of whom began to suspect local Christians of conspiring with their European co-religionists to dominate the Ottoman Empire, not only economically, but politically as well.”^{^[365]} One can see why the Muslim majority would feel this, although again, had they simply treated their minorities with respect, none of this would have occurred. One cannot blame the Christians for wanting to escape the horrors of Ottoman rule!

The Muslim and Christian communities also often differed over politics and foreign affairs. A British report from 1904 about the Sino-Russian war stated, "the Christians with very few exceptions [were] fervently praying for the success of Russia [their protector] … by contrast, the sympathies of most Muslims, were with Japan [because it opposed Russia].”^{^[366]} Russia had helped return Syria/Palestine to Ottoman rule, but the Muslims deeply resented the price that had to be paid, and the humiliation of needed such help in the first place. In 1911, Christians of Haifa were likewise accused of disloyalty concerning the Italian occupation of Tripoli.

Palestine, 1830 +

Several years before the beginning of the Tanzimat reforms, in 1831, the Egyptian governor, Muhammad Ali “freed the Christians and Jews from their second-class citizenship.”[367] This equality caused deep resentment within the local Palestinian Muslim community. It provoked Muslim communal violence against the local Christians “because of the efforts of the Egyptians to give equality to the Christian communities.”[368] The landmark 1834 Palestinian revolt against Muhammed Ali was indeed “a bloody attempt to stave of the momentous changes.”[369] Due to the Ottoman reliance on European powers to regain these lands from Ali however, these liberties nevertheless would be reinstated even after they reverted to Ottoman control.

The 1834 Peasant’s Revolt.

Described as the first of the three struggles which defined modern Palestinian society, the Peasants Revolt had a number of causes, and multiple effects. On one level, it was a revolt against an unpopular Egyptian rule, and the taxes and conscription they had enforced on the country. Significantly, it also had a fundamental sectarian basis – the Egyptian ruler, in an attempt to enlist the political support of Britain and France, had made all subjects equal under the law. As previously noted, such equality infuriated the Muslim majority community, who viewed it as blasphemous. The Revolt therefore targeted both the Egyptian governance, and also the ‘illegitimate beneficiaries’ of that governance, the Christian and Jewish communities (see earlier for its effects on Jewish communities). Beyond even that reasoning, a time of civil unrest presented sections of the Muslim community with the opportunity to rob, ransack and rape, and the despised dhimmi communities were the traditional and obvious targets for such activities.

“following the uprising attacks broke out on the weaker members of Palestinian towns, namely the Jews and Christians.”^{^[370]}

This pillaging again revealed the fundamental disharmonies and fractures present within the traditional wider Palestinian society. Muslims, Christians and Jews were neither equal nor friendly. Again, if intercommunal relations were as good as they now tell us, why were Jews and Christians singled out in a time of unrest for rape and destruction? If intercommunal relations were so good, why would the granting of equal rights be any big deal??

It is a profound indictment that the celebrated first act of Palestinian self-determination was an attack by its Muslim majority upon its Christian and Jewish communities.

From the 1850s onwards, news of large scale, continuing massacres of Christians in other parts of the Ottoman empire made the Palestinian Christians increasingly nervous. The American Protestant missionary, Henry H. Jessup, wrote that; "the new liberties granted to the Christian sects, their growth in wealth, the appointment of their prominent men to foreign consular offices... all these and other causes had kindled [among the Muslims] fires of fanatical hatred."^{^[371]} Disturbances in Aleppo in 1850 targeting Christians and Mosul in 1854, targeting Christians and Jews, were seen as attempts by the traditional Muslim community to restore their old position. It was this same desire which contributed to massacres of the Maronite Christians in Lebanon in 1860 (20,000 killed, 380 Christian villages and 560 churches destroyed), the Christian communities in Damascus (also in 1860, 25,000 killed), and the Armenian Christians (1894-1896, 1915-1916 – over 1.5 million killed). Concerning the Maronite massacres; “Bitter conflicts between Christians and Druzes, which had been simmering under Ibrahim Pasha’s rule (mostly centred on the firmans of 1839 and later more decisively, of 1856, which equalized the status of Muslim and non-Muslim subjects, the former resenting the implied loss of superiority) resurfaced under the new emir.”^{^[372]} Even closer to home, “the establishment of European consulates in Jerusalem in the middle of the nineteenth century was greatly resented by local Muslims.”^{^[373]} As the Rev. Arthur George Harper Hollingsworth wrote in 1852; “No Christian is secure against insult, robbery, and ruin.”[374]

In 1838, the British representative in Jaffa put forward the case that Britain should guarantee the rights of Protestants and Jews in Palestine. “Britain is the natural trustee for both of them.”^{^[375]} Lord Palmerston likewise thought that Britain could assume the role of protector of the Jews in Palestine, and that would grant them similar rights as those exercised already by France and Russia.

At the 1856 peace conference which ended the Crimean War, the Ottomans were forced to confirm the equality of all citizens under the law and guarantee full freedom of worship. While this equality “was not carried out in practice”^{^[376]} the “Muslims of Jerusalem in 1856 accused the Sultan of treachery for his being submissive to the dictates of foreigners, and for not applying Muslim law strictly on Christians and Jews.”^{^[377]}

In 1858 James Finn wrote; “In continuing to report concerning the apprehensions of Christians (in Jerusalem) from revival of fanaticism on the part of the Mahometans, I have the honour to state that daily accounts are given me of insults in the streets offered to Christians and Jews, accompanied by acts of violence. ... there is no clear case yet known of a Christian’s evidence being accepted in a court of justice, or in a civil tribunal against a Moslem. … only a few days ago, his Beatitude, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch was returning through the streets from the Cadi’s court of judgement … but had to pass through a gauntlet of curses hurled at his religion, his prayers, his fathers etc.,”^{^[378]}

In 1858 the two villages of Zebabdeh and Likfair (where the inhabitants are Christian) “were utterly sacked, men and women stripped even to their shirts and turned adrift. This was done by the people of Tubas and Kabatieh ... and no redress or punishment has yet been given by the military force. I need not say that none is afforded by the civil authority, himself a factious leader.”^{^[379]}

Also in 1858, a Greek Orthodox construction and renovation was destroyed in Gaza.^{^[380]}

Local Christians were viewed as being disloyal, and as being a serious weak link, which aggressive foreign powers could exploit for their own advantage. This in turn provoked further attacks on the local Christians. For example, following sectarian violence in Lebanon in 1860, the French sent in troops and forced the Ottoman Sultan to grant the Maronites self-autonomy.^{^[381]} It was outrage at this which led to the massacre of 25,000 Christians in Damascus. At a result of the 1860 conflict in Lebanon, “tensions were also raised in other coastal cities such Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Tripoli, Sidon and Tyre, but their proximity to European warships in the Mediterranean helped maintain calm. Nonetheless, Tyre and Sidon were at the brink of civil war due to violence raging between Sunni and Shia residents and Christian refugees fleeing the war. Hundreds of Christians opted to leave Syria altogether, boarding ships to Malta or Alexandria. In the Galilee, peace was maintained by a local Bedouin chieftains, such as Aqil Agha, who assured Christians in Nazareth and Acre of his protection. However, in the village of Kfar Bir’im near Safed, three Christians were killed by Druze and Shia Muslim raiders, while the mixed village of al-Bassa was also plundered. A violent incident occurred between a Muslim and Christian man in Bethlehem, ending with the latter being beaten and imprisoned.” The authorities maintained calm in Jerusalem and Nablus “by introducing additional security measures.” In Nablus, the Ottoman governor was keen to maintain order, but his garrison was too small to ensure security in the city. That is, he needed more troops to protect the local Christians from the local Muslims. Instead, “many Christians pooled money together to pay for protection by local Muslims, who formed an ad hoc police force. [to protect them from the Muslim majority in the city]”^{^[382]}

Following a later episode of sectarian violence in Crete, Muslims in Damascus again threatened the local Christians, who, according to one missionary account, began fleeing "by the hundreds to the mountains and Beirut, fearing a repetition of the massacre of 1860.^{^[383]}

Ottoman Muslims continued to view the world through a religious lens. News of the 1875-78 Balkan Wars was “relayed to the Muslim population throughout the empire as a sign of yet another Christian onslaught against Islam. The intensified draft of soldiers into the ranks of the Turkish army and the pressure of added taxation to pay for the wars, carried out with great cruelty, caused the population to blame all Christians, including Christian Arabs, for their suffering.”^{^[384]} Note that taxation and drafting of soldiers were also prime causes of the 1834 rebellion.

Historical memory of the Crusades and more recent events informed this resentment on behalf of the local Muslims. “The visit of a French consul almost a hundred and fifty years earlier, in 1701, had produced similar outrage. Then, the local notables had responded with a petition stating that, "our city is the focus of attention of the infidels" and that "this holy land [could be] occupied as a result of this, as has happened repeatedly in earlier times."^{^[385]}

Jews and Christians were also not allowed under Ottoman rule to build houses of worship, a ruling upheld in Jerusalem as late as 1838.^{^[386]}

In general, Muslims were unwilling to accept Christians in positions of authority. For example, James Finn noted that the body-guards employed by consulates needed to be Muslims, as these might "safely strike or lay hands on an unruly Moslem, or arrest him if a thief, which a Christian could not [do] without provoking a riot if not worse."^{^[387]} Palestinian (Muslims) resisted the edict establishing religious equality so strongly it had to be put in place very slowly, over a number of years. Outbreaks of intercommunal violence often followed its implementation.^{^[388]} “Muslim-Christian riots are found to have occurred every decade or so and disturbances between the communities were common.”^{^[389]}

In the 1890s, Ottoman soldiers closed down Anglican church schools in Jaffa (for an unknown period of time), and the governor announced that he would not be responsible if Muslims attacked Christians.^{^[390]}

Within Ottoman Palestine, Muslims and Christians were not the same, and their relationships prior to Zionism were not perfect. In reality, the different elements in the community were separated in their social relations by unbridgeable gulfs.

Interestingly, in 1995 CPT leader Arthur Gish records going to St Georges in Jerusalem and meeting with “Palestinians who identified themselves as Christians.” “When they heard we are living in Hebron, they couldn’t believe it. They informed us that Hebron is Muslim, and no Christian can live with Muslims.”^{^[391]} Seemingly unaware of his immense privilege as an American citizen, Gish seems to have treated this local advice with distain.

The example of Nazareth

As with everywhere else, the Christians of Nazareth were not allowed by the local Muslim authorities to repair or renovate their churches. In 1636, Catholic priests “were incarcerated by Muslims, who insisted that the church must remain the same as in ancient times.”^{^[392]} In 1696, the Christian community of Nazareth fled “in the face of persecution” but returned the next year.^{^[393]}

Standing up to Muslim violence guaranteed a pogrom. In 1708, there “was a brawl between the Christians and the Muslims of Nazareth; the covenant was pillaged again, and abandoned for a year.”^{^[394]} After better relations in the mid-1700s, relations again deteriorated; [after 1775] “it was especially bad on Fridays after prayer when Muslims, often villagers in town for the Friday sermon, would riot and attack Christians.”^{^[395]} The early Anglican priest, Michael Kawar mentioned in his autobiography that anti-Christian riots in Nazareth had forced his father to flee to Lebanon in the 1820s.^{^[396]} Relations were again reported to be better in the mid- 1820s. Note however that even in the good times, things could go suddenly bad, as when the Muslims in 1828 entered the church on Easter Sunday and robbed the Christian women of their jewellery.

The unproved accusation of blasphemy was always a frightening threat. In 1828 a Christian girl was accused by a Muslim boy she had rebuffed of insulting Mohammad. She was killed by tying her to a horse and dragging her through the streets.^{^[397]} This would have served as a lesson to all other Christian girls not to resist a Muslim man. Also in 1828, according to the Palestinian Rafiq Farah (an Archdeacon Emeritus of the Jerusalem Diocese of the Anglican Church); “The Arab Christians suffered a great deal under the rule of Abdullah Pasha, the governor of the Acre district of Galilee (1819-1831). He pulled down the Carmelite monastery on Mt Carmel, incited the Muslims of Nazareth to attack the Christians in 1828 and forced Christian and Jewish women not to dress like Muslim women.”^{^[398]} In the Peasants Revolt of 1834, the Christians of Nazareth sided with the Egyptians (who had given them full civic rights).^{^[399]} In 1864, relations were again described by Tobler as generally good, but added; “from time to time there were always occasional dark spots.”^{^[400]}

Writing in 1876, P.J. Newman noted that Christians comprised three quarters of the population of Nazareth, and that as a consequence; “the Christians assert and defend their rights. In nearly all other parts of Palestine, the Christians are cringing and fearful.”^{^[401]} In 1881, some Muslim notables of Nazareth demanded the slaughter of the Christians, but this was rejected by the local sheikh.^{^[402]}

The expulsion of Protestants from Nablus, 1856

“whereas many villages in the district of Nablus have a few Christian families located in each, such families were subjected in every direction to plunder and insults.”^{^[403]}

On the 3^rd of November 1853, the local Greek Orthodox beat the local Protestants in their schoolhouse, “and drove them out of the premises.” At a general meeting called by the Governor, the Mufti signalled to the crowd outside who thought the meeting was to oppose the Greek Orthodox. They therefore shouted “as to the necessity of destroying Christian Churches, or at least of diminishing their privileges and lowering their doors and windows. They shouted ‘look at the Dragoman sitting on a chair – kill him, kill him. Did you ever see a Christian like that before?’ (The Dragoman [interpreter/guide] was a Protestant from Syria.) The Mufti then drew up a fatwa that; “it is against the honour of the Moslem religion to permit Christian Churches to be erected, but only to tolerate such as were found in the country at the time of the Mohammedan Conquest.” He continued that Protestants should not be allowed to worship in any place of general meeting, and even in their own homes not above three together, and in a subdued voice. The local governor was then ordered by the Pasha in Jerusalem that the Protestants were not to meet again for prayer in the school room and were forbidden a special room for worship.^{^[404]} The sight of an Arab Christian sitting in a chair(!) was enough to drive them into a killing rage!

In 1855, Muslim mobs attacked a Greek church, the Protestant missionary house and school.[405] R. Farah comments on the Nablus riots; “On the 4^th of April, 1856, a fanatic Muslim mob at Nablus, who were incited by their leaders after the Sultan gave all Ottomans equality before the law … attacked the Christians in Nablus, especially the Protestants. They had to flee the town; their homes were ransacked and at least two were killed. The persecutions stopped after 1865.”^{^[406]} (The Christians of Damascus were massacred by Muslims in 1860 for the same reason.[407])

In 1858 James Finn reported; “the house of the Christian priest (Greek) was taken in his absence and his stores of grain and oil for his household during the winter were taken, not to be consumed by the soldiers (for that would entitle the owner to a claim on the Government) but were mixed into one heap .. by the Muslims of the city and thrown into the street. I feel myself more and more to be warranted in attributing the riots of Nablus in 1856 to an anti-Christian feeling. In conclusion, I have the honour to quote the perpetual expression of the Christians in Palestine, that their lot has become far worse since the termination of the Russian war than it was before that period extending back to 1831.^{^[408]}

The Nablus Protestants sent their own petition (“The humble Petition of the Protestants of Nablous”) to the Sultan. In it, they spoke of “their afflicted and calamitous state … the injuries inflicted on them, the loss of their freedom, the insecurities of their lives, property and families, all of which they presently endure (and for the previous 5 months). Since the issue of the Firman (February 1856) declaring religious liberty, the Mohammedans of Nablus have been filled with rage against the Christians, insulting his majesty the Sultan and crying; ‘No obedience to a creature who causes disobedience to the creator.’” On Friday, April 4^th, most of the Ulamahs of Nablus assembled in one of the Mosques … after this the call was given by one of them going through the streets; “Oh religion of Mohammad, attack the Christians.” At the same time, all the Mohammedans being assembled for prayer, the Ulamahs stopped the Muazzins and made them come down from the Minarets, saying there shall be no prayers for the religion of Muhammad is dead.” They aroused the populace “to fury, that they might fall upon the Christians.” They destroyed the school of bishop Gobat, and the attached chapel. They also killed a number of Christians, burying one boy in lime. The shouts of the mob were “frightful, together with those of the females who shrieked on the terraces to excite and encourage them.” The Greek Orthodox “from fear, have appeared outwardly satisfied with the Mohammedans, and have made no claim [of] satisfaction for the injuries done.” [That is, the local Christians, from fear, did not even attempt to gain compensation through the court, but simply accepted the murder, violence, robbery and destruction of property they had been subjected to. Such was their life under Muslim rule. Note also the cry from the crowds that if they are unable to persecute Christians, then Islam is dead.]

The entire Protestant community were forced to flee Nablus; “They have continued to regard the Protestants with an evil eye.” The Petition concluded; “The Mohammedans make no distinction between the Christian nations, in their general hatred and enmity against that religion.” “The injury done is not to your humble servants alone … your humble petitioners have become a proverb and a taunt to all who are round about, everywhere now if a Christian disagrees with a Mohammedan, the later say to him we will do to you as it has been done in Nablus, and therefore in numerous places Christians have been maltreated since this disturbance.”^{^[409]}

The Jerusalem Protestant community (including Nicolayson) sent a separate appeal on behalf of the Christians of Nablus. In it, they noted that; “the fury of the rioters was indiscriminately directed against all Christians without distinction … the Greeks church together with the house of the Greek priest were … ransacked.” They likewise mentioned the firman of 1856 as having “inflamed” the local Muslims. Speaking on behalf of “the Protestant communities in Palestine and Syria” they continued “We are fully sensible of the necessity of the greatest caution, forbearance and prudence on our part towards the Moslems in avoiding every demonstration that would needlessly irritate their pride, prejudice and jealousy.”[410]

“Most Muslims were having difficulties coming to terms with the idea of non-Muslims as political equals.”^{^[411]} That is not to say friendly relations were absent, or areas of commonality did not exist,[412] but the relations between the two communities remained difficult, as both tried to adapt to the changing situations. Small village inter-faith relations were paradoxically more personal and more traditional. Local Christians were generally not supportive of Western missionary activity.

Obstacles to Dhimmi Emancipation in Palestine

When fears of a new war with Russia surfaced, Finn recorded that the Muslim street believed that “every Moslem was to consider as his enemy every native Christian, or at least those who had any relations with Russia (Greeks and even Armenians). The timorous and panic-stricken Christians helped forward this idea by the very excess of their fears. They had not the sense to conceal their dread of a probable approaching massacre in which scenes of horror and bloodshed were to be enacted, such as their fathers had endured in consequence of the war of Greek independence about thirty years before. … Fear had been suckled with their mother’s milk, in days gone by, and now it overpowered them. If this was the case in Jerusalem, … it was tenfold worse in all distant towns and villages.”^{^[413]}

“A great change had passed over the land, as well as Jerusalem, with respect to toleration of religion in the existing generation, not only caused by (the Ottoman reforms of 1838) but also by the surviving effects of previous Egyptian dominion between 1832 and 1840, which had swept away much of the bigotry and tyranny of former ages. There has been since 1845 a profession of equality for all religions in the administration of local government, and certainly less of insult and injury from the Moslem populace to the Christians. Their functionaries were no longer endured as intruders into Christian houses for food, lodging and money, remaining there till their demands were satisfied. Christian women were not now dishonoured with impunity of the offenders [as was the norm earlier]. Levies of money at any irregular time or place without reason assigned, were no more suffered. Christians were not now pushed into the gutters of the streets by every Moslem taking up the best part of the pavement and with a scowl crying out, “Shemmel-ni ya keleb” neither were Christians debarred from riding horses or wearing cheerful colours. … Christians had felt in 1852 much more secure in life and goods than their fathers had been.” James Finn.^{^[414]}

Christians then were starting to benefit socially and economically, but still retained the memories and the fears of what had been commonplace only a few years before (“Fear had been suckled with their mother’s milk, in days gone by, and now it overpowered them.”). As the experience of Christian communities in the rest of the Ottoman Empire would show, these fears were terrifyingly valid.

Tanzimat – a reflection

Romans 7:10 I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

The Tanzimat reforms gave the Christian communities something to lose. After centuries of no civil rights, of humiliations, robberies rapes etc, now they were educated, socially upward and doing well. They knew the horrors they had escaped from and were desperate to retain these new rights/freedoms. They now had something to lose. And when push came to shove, if pushing the Jews under the bus would endear them to the Muslims, it was a price they were prepared to pay. They had never liked the Jews anyway, and it was expedient that the Jews should die to preserve Christians gains.

The Tanzimat were also a reflection of Ottoman weakness. The product of both western pressure and also of a desire to emulate the more powerful west, they infuriated the Moslem majority who were the core constituency and powerbase of the empire. This was why the reforms were discarded in 1878, and a new/old policy of explicitly favouring the Muslim community was brought back. The anger engendered by the reforms would feed directly into the Armenian massacres of 1894-1924.[415] That is, the Tanzimat reforms, by granting liberty to the minorities, first allowed them to flourish, but this in turn created the conditions which ended in their massacre.

It was this perceived weakness, visible in the shrinking land area of the empire, which itself spurred on the Arabs and others to abandon Ottomanism and seek their own destiny apart from Turkish rule. In many ways, Arab nationalism was in fact another expression of that same underlying weakness. For numerous Muslim Arabs, it was a frustration with the Young Turk's secularising tendencies that led them to become Arab nationalists.^{^[416]} Many Muslims viewed the Ottoman cries of “Jihad” as a cynical exploitation of Islam coming so late in the game. For too many years, their reform efforts had worked to undermine religion as a governing principle; as such, they had lost a great deal of their credibility among Muslims. Arab nationalism was viewed by many as the best way to reassert Muslim supremacy. As a result, from around 1908 many Muslims joined Arab nationalist movements, and there was increased Muslim involvement in the nationalist movement. This was particularly evident in the emphasis given the idea of resurrecting an Arab caliphate. The British promoted these for their own self-interest (as a weapon to weaken the Ottomans). Younger Palestinians soon also saw in Arab unity the best possible defence against Zionism.

Ongoing effects

“Despite the abandonment of the Millet system in the 19th century, the ‘culture’ of the system still influences the customs and expectations of communal dynamics in the region today.”[417] As has already been seen (“Fear had been suckled with their mother’s milk, in days gone by, and now it overpowered them.”^{^[418]}) and will be seen repeatedly in the following pages, there has been a cumulative effect of a thousand years of persecution, humiliation and massacre. Writing in 2021, Andrew Ashdown notes “Despite the fact that the massacres resulting from the Tanzimat reforms took place over 150 years ago, they have left a lasting memory. In one of the Christian villages that was attacked and suffered sectarian murder at the hands of jihadi groups during the recent conflict, a villager said to me: ‘We are afraid that this will happen again. They attacked us a hundred years ago. They have turned against us now. And we are afraid that they will wait for the next opportunity to do the same again’. I have heard similar comments in different parts of Syria.”[419] Even in so called good times, or good decades, there is a fragility and fear foundational to the Christian communities experience of living in Muslim majority lands. They remain a small, shrinking and despised minority. As the Palestinian Christian Al-Sakakini wrote in 1932 concerning his status in the eyes of the Muslim majority; “if I were to struggle with a Moslem who is less founded in knowledge and heritage than I, I would not doubt that they would prefer him to survive … No matter how high my standing may be in science and literature, no matter how sincere my patriotism is, no matter how much I do revere this nation, even if I burn my fingers before its sight, as long as I am not Muslim, I am naught."^{^[420]} Arab Christians, including Palestinian ones, are aware of their communal history, and very aware of the tenuous nature of the peace and prosperity they may be experiencing. Push the limits, be identified with the West (even though they are indigenous) or just be in the wrong place in a time of increased Muslim emotions, and fears of mass violence resurface. One reads of “the talk” that black parents give their children in America, and Jewish parents give their children world-wide. Christian parents in Muslim lands also rightly pass down their fears and nightmares. Awad describes how beneath the rich history of plurality for eastern Christians, there hides a “parallel history of suffering, uncertainty, fear, pressure, difficulty, death and perpetual strife for survival as a minority in a non-Christian majority world.”[421] Christian strategies of Arab nationalism and anti-Zionism cannot be fully understood apart from this overwhelming fear, a fear which for obvious reasons is rarely mentioned in public. That said, the 1800 years of local Christian persecution and contempt for the Jewish community needs likewise, shamefully, to be recognised. For far too many, the sight of Jews happy, free and prospering is as deep an offence, as profoundly ‘wrong’ as it is to the Muslim majority.

World War 1

The period immediately prior to the First World War saw a worsening of the situation of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. There was an intensification of Islamic sentiment, much of it in reaction to the loss of the greater part of the Empire's European (that is, Christian) territories. Consequently, Muslims were also increasingly sceptical as to where the loyalty of the Empire's Christians truly lay.^{^[422]} An article appearing in the Greek Orthodox Filastin in Jaffa accused Muslims of religious fanaticism and of behaving in a hostile manner towards non-Muslims, an attitude stemming in large part apparently from a belief that Christians were not loyal Ottoman citizens. In Palestine overall, relations between the two communities were tense. The Spanish consul in Jerusalem reported in 1914 that the Christian residents were profoundly frightened.[423] One visiting European wrote that in mixed towns, Muslim and Christian children rarely befriended each other, and it was not uncommon to hear Muslim children singing disparagingly of the Christian faith.^{^[424]} Elsewhere within the Ottoman empire, Christians were being slaughtered.

All this exploded during the actual war. The Ottoman government officially described it as a jihad (returning to their core constituency). The Young Turks had, in the period leading up to the war, begun to encourage feelings of loyalty towards the Ottoman Empire among its Muslim subjects by appealing to religious sentiment. During the same period, the Young Turks sought to discredit reformists by characterizing them as agents of Christian powers. It was reported in 1913 in an Egyptian paper that an Arabic-language pamphlet entitled `al-Haqq yä alte' ('Truth [God] Will Triumph') was being circulated in Syria with the aim "to stir up Moslem fanaticism by stigmatising all the Christians of Turkey as secret agents of Europe and the betrayers of the Moslem fatherland.”^{^[425]} Across the empire, Christians were increasingly attacked. Armenians (1.5 million murdered), Syrian Orthodox in Anatolia, Nestorian Christians, Jacobites and Chaldaeans were all targeted. Lebanon’s Christian population also suffered greatly.

During the war, hundreds of thousands died of starvation in Lebanon, Damascus etc.[426] In 1915, two Anglican priests and many of their congregation were deported from Palestine to Ufra in Turkey, near where the Armenian massacres took place.[427]

The Christians in Palestine could not but be aware of these terrible events, and fearful for their own safety. Their response was generally to try and stress their Arabism as a common, uniting identity. For example, when approached by a delegation of Orthodox clergy and laity arriving from Jaffa in March 1914, with the purpose of forming a political party that would look after Christian interests, Khalil al-Sakakini responded that, “if your aim is political, then I do not approve it, because I am an Arab first of all, and I think it preferable that we should form a national party to unite all the sons of the Arab Nation, regardless of religion and sects, to awaken national feelings and become imbued with a new spirit.”^{^[428]} The Christian Arab attachment to Arab nationalism began therefore under Ottoman rule, under fear of Muslim massacre, both before and during the war, and remained vitally relevant during and after the British colonial rule.

A New Identity – Arab nationalism

On 30 October 1918, the campaign in the Middle East officially came to an end. Turkish rule and Ottomanism, had collapsed. The details of its successor, Arab nationalism had yet to be worked out. The British took over a society which was profoundly disunited. Sir Mark Sykes Arab Latin Catholic advisor, Yiisuf Albina (himself a resident of Jerusalem), described the situation in Palestine at the beginning of the British military administration as "a pot-pourri of sects and heterogeneous elements bearing an innate hatred against each other and in perpetual conflict against themselves."^{^[429]}

“Arab Christians joined the emerging Palestinian National movement in the hope of breaking the yoke of their marginality in a Muslim society.”^{^[430]}

So, after the Ottoman empire, rather than just returning to being disparate religious communities, millets (“we are Muslim, or Christian or Jewish”) for the Christian community, secular nationalism (“We are ALL Arabs [except you Jews]!”) was a way of securing their place in the wider society, of protecting their new-found freedoms/equality/prosperity. It helped that secular Arab nationalism was also the solution being offered by the Western, Christian powers that they were close to. The push for Arab nationalism came initially from the Greek Orthodox, supported by the Melkites. They put much effort into trying to craft a broader Arab identity which would encompass and unify it’s various Christian and Muslim components. “The Arab Christians wholly identified themselves with their Muslim countrymen.”^{^[431]} Greek Orthodox community leader Khalil al-Sakakini frequently met with the Grand Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. Al-Sakakini was an “ardent anti-Zionist and Palestinian nationalist.” “This religious unity would prove to be an essential goal of Palestinian Christians throughout the mid-20^th century.”^{^[432]}

Palestinian Christians hoped for a role in determining the actual character of the state. Shomali lists the five aspects of the Arab cultural revival in Palestine, and Christian Arabs were leaders in the first four; education, the printing press, literary clubs and newspapers.[433] Stalder writes that, “benefiting from the educational opportunities presented [by Western missionaries] to them, they [Christian Arabs] were active in their role in the incipient Arab Awakening and subsequent rise of Arab nationalism.”[434]

At the same time, but for very different reasons, Muslim Arabs were also attracted to Arab nationalism. They viewed it quite differently however and sought contradictory outcomes. The Christians hoped for a secular version which would guarantee their rights as Arabs, regardless of their religion (as an enshrinement of the Tanzimat equality) while the Muslim majority viewed it as a means to return to the pre-Tanzimat days of total Muslim dominance – as a total repudiation of the Tanzimat. Many Muslims saw Arab nationalism as a means to restoring Islamic government (as opposed to the secularism of the Young Turks). This was particularly evident in the emphasis given the idea of resurrecting an Arab caliphate. Pan-Arabism was attractive, but with Islam as its core. For the Christians and Muslims, therefore, the struggle would be over which type of nationalism, secular or religious, would prevail. Given the overwhelming disparity in their numbers and power, this discontinuity was never going to end well for the Christians. Here the Christians would fight an endless series of rear-guard actions, as each fall-back position was overwhelmed, and the hope of secular nationalism crumbled.

From the start, many Muslim Arab nationalists were sceptical of Christian intentions. For an Arab Muslim, to be an Arab was to be a Muslim. The two concepts were identical. The Arabic speaking Christian minority were seen as definitely inferior, possibly traitors, at best an insignificant, defective anomaly. 'Arif al-'Arif, a prominent Muslim nationalist, stated that in his view, the so-called unity with Christians had had no practical foundation; moreover, the Christians had preferred to cooperate with the British, who are Christian like them.^{^[435]} Many in the Muslim majority still viewed Christians as uppity and disloyal, a pro-western 5^th column (a view formed during Ottoman days). Clearly, these negative views would be exacerbated during the British Mandate.

In spite of their differing definitions and uneasy misgivings, both Muslims and Christians came to support Arab nationalism. Their unity was essentially a profoundly temporary marriage of convenience. So, why have a marriage at all?

Enter the Zionists. They presented a common threat, forcing them both together. "The Christian editors of Falistin would call on all Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, to unite against Zionism on grounds of local patriotism."^{^[436]} As noted, Zionism not only gave them a common enemy, it greatly increased the Christians value re soliciting outside, Western Christian help. Their faith gave them access that the Muslim community simply did not have. Zionism both provided a means of showing their loyalty to the Arab nation, and also, due to initial British support of the Zionists, handed them the task of influencing both the British government and British (Christian) public opinion. Anti-Zionism was great for Palestinian Christians! And this at a time when Christian Arabs were having their loyalty questioned, their identity as Arabs doubted, and their ties to the West mistrusted! It was expedient to throw the Jews under the bus to save their own community. John 11:50. The Muslim community likewise [for pragmatic and short-term political reasons] sought to include the Christian community “hoping to use their Palestinian Christians’ religious heritage to appeal to British Christians for support against Zionism.”^{^[437]}

Many Christians did quietly indicate a preference for indefinite British rule. Once it became clear that British rule also entailed Zionism however, Christian support for an independent Palestine increased. The Muslim threat was greater, but they preferred Muslim Arab rule to Jewish. While British colonialism may have gone, the bargain continues to have currency to this day, as Muslim Palestinians still see value in using the Palestinian Christians to undermine American Christian support for Israel. Even as Christian communities across the Middle East are decimated, the Palestinian Christians continue to seek out their own security on the basis, not of their faith, but of their utility to the Muslim majority. With the collapse of their numbers, their influence has shrivelled. There is no organic reason to grant them any rights, their only value remains as a means of soliciting Western support for the Arab cause. Without that, they are indeed nothing.

Choosing teams

In the brief interregnum between Ottoman and British rule, the possibility of a union with Syria (initially under French mandate) was briefly floated (by the French). The reactions to this by different sections of Palestinian society was instructive. It was supported by the more extreme Muslims, who would later coalesce around the Haj Amin al-Husseini. This was because Muslims saw a single, larger state as the basis of pan-Arabic, Muslim nation. That is, many Muslims saw Arab nationalism simply as a means of returning to an Islamic government. A specifically Palestinian nationalism was not a priority here. As one British officer noted, support for complete independence was strongest among "extreme and more fanatical Moslems.”^{^[438]} Union with Syria was also supported by the Latin Catholics, though for very different reasons. Latin Catholics favoured union with Syria because it was to be a French mandate, and the French were pro-Catholic. It was a false alliance between contradictory short- and long-term objectives, as indeed was the opposite alliance of conservative Muslims and the Greek Orthodox. Supporting the British mandate, were the traditional Palestinian, moderate Muslim leadership, led by the al-Nashashibis, whose rivalry with al-Husseini would dominate Palestinian politics throughout the Mandate and beyond. The Nashashibis wanted to retain their own power, and not be subject to Damascus. Supporting them were the Greek Orthodox and Protestant communities. They again however hoped for a permanent mandate, but as a protection against Muslim rule. Note that within Syria itself, the same dynamic existed; “the Catholic denominations that ‘by and large welcomed French rule,’ and the Orthodox Christian communities that ‘sought to strengthen ties to their Muslim compatriots in the name of Syrian and Arab identification.’”[439] In each case, the Orthodox went with the Arab identity party, and the smaller Catholic and Protestant communities supported their respective colonial backers. All alliances were deeply pragmatic and would drift, attracted to success, as the Mandate progressed. The different Christian communities would throw their increasingly irrelevant support behind which ever Muslim party was either the most nationalistic/secular, or, finally, which ever was simply the least Islamic. In today’s terms, that translates as supporting the Palestinian Authority rather than Hamas.

This temporary convergence of interests was seen in the Jaffa Muslim-Christian Association, where both Muslims and Christians (Protestants as well as Orthodox) specifically requested British protection. One British official noted, a "strong combination of Christian and enlightened Moslems [called] for local autonomy under the guidance of one of the great Powers with a view to future independence as soon as the country [was] able to stand alone."^{^[440]} Overall, Christians but not Muslims supported the idea of some form of continuing mandatory control over complete independence – memories of the massacres of Christians under the Ottomans persisted! This became immediately evident during a special meeting of the Jerusalem MCA, convened in early 1919, for the purpose of putting together a delegation to represent them at the First Syrian Congress. The Orthodox representatives were initially so opposed to an independent Arab government that they refused to send any delegates at all, and only agreed in the end in order to avoid friction between the two communities. A general perception existed among Christian Arabs that the British were pro-Muslim, and the French, pro-Christian.^{^[441]}

This confusion of attitudes continued into the Mandate. Many Christians liked and profited from the Mandate [442], although other sources state that; “most Christians remained staunch opponents of the British.”^{^[443]} Throughout the Mandate, Christians tended to rally for the Nashashibi clan (the National Party), who were moderate, middle class, urbanised, and whose leader had a Christian wife, against the Husseinis, led by the Mufti, Amin al-Husseini, head of the Supreme Muslim Council.^{^[444]} But again, many Christians, especially the Orthodox, supported the Mufti. The heads of the Syrian Orthodox, Coptic, Armenian and Greek Orthodox all supported the Mufti’s nomination. Interestingly, these were all expatriate leaders. In 1924, Christian Protestant editor Bulus Shihada condemned anti-Judaism but supported anti-Zionism (all the while receiving money from Zionist organisation.^{^[445]}) Note also his comment; “There is no liberation for us except if Muslims and Christians are Arab before all things.”^{^[446]} Throughout the Mandate, the Christians were confused, pragmatic, united only in opposition to Zionists, and in a growing commitment to Arab nationalism as the only other option for them.

For the Muslims, “national unity was important, but it had to be based on acceptance of the superior status of the countries Muslim majority.”^{^[447]} In the first Arab congress of 1913 Nadhra Mutran, a Christian, remarked that “the Arab’s pride of race takes precedence over religion.”[448] This is a profoundly un-Christian sentiment, and yet even this compromised formulation would fail to satisfy Arab Muslims, who would repeatedly show greater integrity in this respect. Note the following discussion between two of the founders of the Syrian Ba'athist Party; Anton Saadeh, a Muslim, said to the Communist Christian Michel Aflaq “Your slogan is ‘One Arab nation with One Eternal Mission’; one Arab nation, very well. But what is the eternal mission, if not Islam? –which has nothing to do with you, Christian that you are!”[449]

Both Muslims and Christians opposed the Balfour Declaration and the Zionist movement and viewed them as a threat. A British official in 1919 wrote; “In brief, practically all Moslems and Christians of any importance in Palestine are anti-Zionist, and bitterly so.”^{^[450]} For some observers, the mere fact of Muslim-Christian unity was a measure of just how serious a danger both considered Zionism. As one visiting European commented, "[t]he fact that Moslems and Christians were working together for a common cause was a sign that the nation was roused by what was felt to be a common danger, and that there were men ready to sink all differences of outlook in the effort to win through.”^{^[451]} Muslims and Christian converged over their opposition to Zionism. (Luke 23:12 “That day Herod and Pilate became friends--before this they had been enemies.”) Christians like Najib Nassar, George Antonius and Emil Habibi spearheaded the anti-Zionist movement in the first decades of the 20th century, both as political activists and publishers of Arab newspaper in Palestine. According to Haiduc-Dale, the Christians themselves “were unified only in their opposition to Zionism.”^{^[452]} He also speaks of the “consistent Christian opposition to Zionism.”

It was into this atmosphere that the King-Crane Commission arrived in Jaffa on 10 June 1919. It travelled throughout Syria and Palestine. In Palestine, the one point on which both Muslim and Christian communities could agree was their opposition to Zionism.

In 1920 a letter of protest was issued from Nazareth denouncing Zionism. Before the meeting, As’ad Mansur, the Anglican priest “explained that because the Jews had rejected the Messiah, the land had been taken from them, and the Talmud taught the Jews to prevent strangers from entering the land as long as they had the power to do so.” Mansur then used this to suggest that while the Arabs had the power, they too should use it to prevent the strangers, or Jews, from entering the land.[453]

“Arabness is the space of the Palestinian Christian faith and this faith needs Arabness for its human depth.” This leads the Palestinian churches to develop an Arabist rather than a biblical theology. Such an approach cannot avoid xenophobic anti-Zionism and anti-Israelism.[454]

Muslim Christian Associations – the best it ever gets for Palestinian Christians

Because of this mutual opposition to Zionism, the nationalist movement was initially characterised by a sense of unity between Muslims and Christians. This was most pronounced in the formation of the Muslim-Christian Associations (MCAs), the first of which was established in Jaffa in March 1918. They articulated the core political demands of the Palestinian Arabs; opposition to the Jewish `National Home' and to Jewish immigration. They were described by Cohen as “the hard kernel of the Palestinian Arab national movement.”[455]

The MCAs would result in the formation of the Arab Executive. Christian Arabs were well represented within the MCAs, and it was probably they who had prompted their establishment. For the majority of Palestine's Arabs, this was the first experience of political collaboration between Christians and Muslims. Overall, Christian representation exceeded their proportional numbers in Palestine. Muslim Christian Associations hoped to use their members’ Christian heritage to appeal to British Christians against Zionism.

1918-1922 was dominated by the MCAs, and thereby marked by attempts to give Christians an equal position. The first Muslim Christian association in Jerusalem met in March 1918. Christians were welcomed by the Muslims who wanted;

a national (inclusive) body,
their greater education and
their contacts with the Christian west.

For moderate Muslims, the shock of Christian (British) rule created a genuine moment of unity. However, even in the politically moderate MCAs, Christians as well as Muslims were required to take an oath on the Qur'an in addition to the one made on the national covenant. Importantly, they immediately sought to garner international support among western Christians, mostly British and American, against the Zionist program. They sent delegations to the Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury etc. They demanded the forbidding of land sales to Jews, and the limiting or ceasing of Jewish immigration. Note the Christianised wording of this 1919 statement by the Jaffa MCA; “From over the Mt of Olives Christ gave salvation life and peace to the world and all the world owes its life to this sacred source. Will therefore the British nation … give free hand to the Zionists so they may pour death and vengeance from over that sacred place on both the Muslims and Christians of Palestine?”^{^[456]} In 1920, the heads of five Christian churches in Nazareth wrote protesting to the deputy British governor.[457] The Palestinian Women’s Movement also formed their first national committee in 1920. "We are Muslim and Christian women, we do represent the rest of the Palestinian Women, we do protest seriously against the British Policies."[458] They also took part in the Jaffa riots of May 1921, in opposition to Jewish immigration.

Joint political opposition to Zionism was already evident when in 1922, Churchill’s White Paper called for "the establishment of a Legislative Council containing a large proportion of members elected on a wide franchise.”^{^[459]} The Arab population in general rejected this proposal, as, by including within it Jewish members, it was viewed as implicit acceptance of Zionism. Christians participated fully in the 1923 MCA boycott of proposed legislative council.[460] Indeed, in Haifa and Jaffa, two cities with substantial Christian populations, their attitude towards the elections was more extreme than that of Muslims; there, no Christian secondary electors were nominated at all.

Even during periods of tension between Muslims and Christians, delegations sent abroad had an over-representation of Christians. Their purpose was to make the case for Arab nationalism in terms agreeable to the West. Orthodox George Antonius, in his extremely popular book The Arab Awakening, described the Arab Revolt in clearly secular nationalistic terms. This was how sympathetic Westerners liked/wanted to see it (like the “Arab Spring”).

Sadly, the British viewed the local churches as divided, petty and squabbling. “The feelings between Catholics Orthodox and Protestants were too strong to overcome.” “Unhappily, faction plays a large part in the life of the Christian east.”^{^[461]} Fights between different denominations involving beer bottles and chamber pots were also described. Beyond that, the Christian leaders had demonstrated early on their opposition to Jewish immigration, a core commitment of the Mandate. These Christians placed themselves in opposition to the Mandate, and were seen as troublemakers, hopelessly fragmented, and inflammatory (not as peacemakers, a blessing etc). The British simply refused to monitor the Christian courts, despite constant complaints of corruption and inefficiency.

Under the British Mandate, the Christian community was prospering, but also feeling nervous. With a new, Christian imperial power in charge, concerns of disloyalty were heightened, but so paradoxically was their practical value as a go-between. In fact, this paradox served to render the Christians even more eager to prove their loyalty and their worth to the Muslim majority. Predominantly, their support was needed to combat western support for Zionism. It was their mutual opposition to Jewish settlement that enabled this un-natural alliance to both exist and continue. Christian Arabs had already comprised almost half of the delegates to the 1913 Arab Congress in Paris. They wanted to prove their loyalty to the Arab/Muslim majority, who viewed them with suspicion, but who were also coming to appreciate their utility as advocates of the Arab position to the Christian British government (as they saw it), and also to the wider British Christian community. This has remained the case till this day.

1921+The Muslim Supreme Council – Islam reasserts itself, Christians immediately cave

The establishment in 1921 of the Muslim Supreme Council (just two years after the establishment of the British Mandate), and the acceptance of the Grand Mufti as the national leader by Christians and the Mandate government weakened the MCAs and meant Christians were “drawn back to their marginality.”[462] The Christian minority had failed to impose its more secular vision on the majority. They had lost the best chance they had to actually influence the events around them. Arab nationalism became increasingly Islamic, and the Christian community tried to accommodate this increasingly unfavourable reality. Arab nationalism now gave pride of place to Muslim Arabs. The Muslim celebration of Nabi Musa was accepted as a National holiday.[463] Islam was dominant, but Christians were still valued.

Christians themselves quickly recognised the need to acknowledge the special place of Islam in a shared Arab heritage. Najib Nassar (Protestant ex Orthodox), editor al-Karmil wrote that Arabs were divided into 2 groups;

those who accepted Muhammad’s religion, and
those who accepted his gospel in everyday life and national commands but remained true to their original religion. Arab Christians celebrated Muhammad’s birthday[464] – the greatness of Muhammad formed the basis of Arab national emergence.^{^[465]}

Kimmerling has claimed that “Islam’s rise in the emerging national movement was not lost on Palestinian Christians. In part they responded by joining in acts whose origins lay in Islam but that came to be reinterpreted as national events-the development of a kind of civil religion…Some Christians even began to speak of Islam as a national Arab culture that they, too, could embrace.” George Antonius remarked on the “genius of the Prophet Muhammad.” [466] The majority of Arab Christians continued to identify themselves with the Muslim majority, while at the same time wanting to preserve their Christian communal identity. They tried to prove themselves good Arab nationalists, bearing “the deficiency for being non-Muslims.”[467]

Freas makes an important point; “Their ability to role as far as shaping Arab identity was largely predicated on to what extent they were able to appropriate Islam as a part of their own national heritage. At minimum, this meant trying to redefine Islamic festivals as nationalist ones-not only the Nabi Musa festival, but even the Prophet's Birthday; at most, a relinquishing of one's faith and conversion to Islam.”[468]

Nor was this behaviour confined to Palestinian Arab Christians. The Syrian Christian, Michel Aflaq, founder of the Baath Party, wrote; “Muhammad was the epitome of all the Arabs, so let all the Arabs today be Muhammad … Islam was an Arab movement and its meaning was the renewal of Arabism and its maturity … [even] Arab Christians will recognise that Islam constitutes for them a national culture in which they must immerse themselves so that they may understand and love it, and so that they may preserve Islam as they would preserve the most precious element in their Arabism.”[469] Leaving aside Muhammad’s personal history, given that he taught as absolute doctrines which directly contradicted Christianity (Jesus as son of God, Jesus death on the cross etc) this idea itself directly contradicts Christian scripture; “But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:8) Given Muhammad’s personal history, in this context especially the battle of Khaybar and its continual referencing my modern Muslims as license to attack Jews, this quote from a Christian Arab is even more horrific.

The question for Palestine’s Christians was “to what extent was nationalism becoming a euphemism for apostacy?”

The Nabi Musa celebrations

The Christian participation in the nationalized Nabi Musa[470] celebrations make an interesting example of this. As previously noted, it was mainly the Orthodox who began to join in this Muslim festival.[471]

“Particularly during the early part of the Mandate, when Muslim-Christian solidarity was still strong, Christians were inclined to participate in the Nabi Musa celebration. Though ostensibly a religious festival, it quickly came to serve as a symbol of Muslim-Christian solidarity. …It thus had about it the air of a national holiday, and this is in fact how many Christians saw it. Christian Arabs generally came out to watch the festival's conclusion in Jerusalem [as they were not allowed to enter the actual sanctuary]. In her memoirs, Hala al- Sakakini, Khalil al- Sakakini’s daughter, recalled with great fondness sitting by St. Stephen's Gate to welcome the procession. She characterised the event largely in nationalistic terms: “Everywhere you could see the Arab flag with its green, red, white and black colours: fluttering high above the heads. The scene filled us with enthusiasm and national pride. Every now and then strong young men would link their arms together and, forming circles, would start dancing the dabkeh and singing. It was thrilling to watch and wonderful for the spirit. Although the Nabi Musa feast was supposed to be a religious occasion, it was in fact a national day in which all the Arabs of Palestine, Christians and Muslims alike, shared.”[472]

Christians may have had to accept second class status, not going on the actual march, or being allowed into the sanctuary, but the genuine happiness of her account cannot be doubted.

The festival also (as seen above) became increasingly nationalistic, a fact which in no way compromised its Islamic roots. In 1920 [several years before the above recollection], the climax of the celebrations turned violent, in what has become known as “the Nabi Musa riot.” “The crowd returning from Nabi Musa into Jerusalem reportedly shouted ‘Independence! Independence!’ and ‘Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!’ Arab police joined in applause, and violence started. The local Arab population ransacked the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. The Torath Chaim Yeshiva was raided, and Torah scrolls were torn and thrown on the floor, and the building then set alight. During the next three hours, 160 Jews were injured. Khalil al- Sakakini witnessed the eruption of violence in the Old City: ‘[A] riot broke out, the people began to run about and stones were thrown at the Jews. … The riot reached its zenith. All shouted, "Muhammad's religion was born with the sword". … I immediately walked to the municipal garden. … my soul is nauseated and depressed by the madness of humankind.’"[473]

Violence was welcomed and often encouraged at such Muslim events. “For many Muslims, nationalist sentiment often found its strongest expression during Islamic religious festivals.”[474] Even the Palestine Communist Party felt it necessary at its Seventh Congress to call for increased propaganda efforts at the mosques during Friday prayers and at popular religious festivals such as the Nabi Musa festival, noting that it was "during such mass celebrations that the fighting capacity of the fellahin [was] appreciably aroused."[475]

Sadly, this violence does not seem to have dampened Orthodox Christian participation in it. The year after the riot, signs reading “Moslems and Christians are brothers” were held, and a Christian, Jubran Kosma, spoke in favour of Arab farmers and against Zionism.[476]

Orthodox Christians were apparently happy to continue participating in a festival which had seen Jews murdered and their holy places trashed. This in itself is horrific but notice also two additional problems. The festival celebrates the Muslim tomb of Moses. Deuteronomy 34:6 “And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said. He buried him in Moab, in the valley opposite Beth Peor, but to this day no one knows where his grave is.” According to their own Scriptures, Moses is not buried there.[477] They are participating in a festival whose basis contradicts their own religion. They were prepared to sacrifice fidelity to their faith for a chance to show solidarity with the Muslim majority.

The second, more pragmatic problem was one they were well aware of. A Muslim crowd, once aroused, could very easily turn against Christians as well as against Jews. As the Muslim/Christian detente of the early 1920s fractured, in 1928, thousands of Muslims on the pilgrimage chanted “down with the Missionary Conference” (which was taking place in Jerusalem at the same time), and also “down with the missionaries.”[478] In 1931, the Nabi Musa festival, “once considered an expression of Muslim-Christian unity, now became an occasion during which agitators ‘urged the multitude to fall upon the Jew and Christian infidels and slay them.’"[479] The Orthodox were debasing their own religion and selling their birthright for worthless dreams. In the end, they would have nothing. This could be seen as a minor affair, but given Jesus view of the Torah (Matthew 5:18), and the increasing difficulties Palestinian Christians were having honouring the Old Testament as God’s word, celebrating a blatant contradiction of its teachings for the sake of unity with Muslims was a really bad idea.

Frantzman sees parallels between the Palestinian Christian behaviour here and the embrace of Communism by the Jews of Eastern Europe. Like the Palestinian Christians, the Jews formed a national minority historically discriminated against, but within several social niches, they embraced communism to blur the lines between them and the majority, as Communism, like Arab nationalism, promised to erase communal identity.[480]

The Christians had made themselves prominent in the nationalist movement, and they wished to prove their loyalty to a greater Arab nation. The Mufti, Hajj Amin al-Husayni while leading an explicitly Islamic nationalism, was also eager to enlist Christians as loyal and useful dhimmis. He was quoted as saying “We even feel ourselves called upon to protect the Holy Places of the Christians.”

“The Mufti was not the originator of the Muslim-Christian Associations (MCAs) that began to pop up beginning in 1918, but he worked hard to collaborate with them. MCAs were established in many major cities, primarily Jerusalem, Jaffa and Nablus. The MCAs were prominent in the establishment of the Palestinian Arab Congresses (first in January 1918), worked with the King-Crane commission in 1919 and helped create the Arab Executive in December 1920. Ann Lesch claims that they declined in the late 1920s, were revived in the early 1930s but were then taken over by radicals and militants and lost their Christian flavour.”[481]

Note also that as well as liberal nationalism, another type of nationalism was also growing in Europe. Fascist nationalism, with its emphasis on power, its anti-Semitism and its opposition to Britain would become a very attractive alternative for many Arabs (all the more so because of the good German ties from Ottoman days).

The 1921 Jaffa riot

“On May 1, 1921 . . . hundreds of Arabs rampaged through the streets of Jaffa with clubs, knives, metal bars, and pistols. With an unstoppable drive for murder, the rioters stabbed helpless Jews to death, cruelly beat infants and the elderly, raped women and girls, and burned and looted anything they could get their hands on. Forty-three Jews died that day, and many others were wounded or died later on from their injuries.”^{^[482]} The riot mainly involved Muslim Arabs and Jews.

Murderous mob violence was celebrated and never repented of.[483] It underwrote all of the Muslim communities demands, “give us what we want, or else.” In general, the Christian community struggled with this violence. Aversion to it impeded their desire to participate fully in the cause. Historically, they had good reason to fear Muslim violence, and their religious scruples against it often seemed to be an unwanted hinderance. It has also become a standing reproach from the Muslim community, who saw in their reticence signs of disloyalty. During the Second Intifada, many Muslims complained of the lack of Martyrs [suicide bombers] from the Christian population.[484]

This reticence was unfortunately by no means absolute. The Anglican missionary C. Martin reported on the Arab riots in Jaffa in 1921; “A large number of the Jews are terror stricken … Unfortunately for the work, Arabs, who call themselves Christians, united with the Moslems in their endeavours to shed Jewish blood, so we have the unpleasant task of explaining and apologising for the falseness of this un-Christlike Christianity.”^{^[485]} Makhoul, on the basis of very little, also and disturbingly writes; “We can also say that there was a Muslim-Christian solidarity in the Jaffa riots.”[486]

Continued Christian opposition to Jews and Zionism

In November 1923, Frederick Kisch, head of the Palestine Zionist Executive, wrote to the High Commissioner that Christians were “intensely hostile,” and decrying their “undue influence over administrative machinery.”^{^[487]} “One Zionist in 1925 lamented; ‘Christians are, from first to last, our deadly enemies … Catholic or Greek Orthodox or Protestant, they have one thing in common: a fanatical religious hatred of the Jews. … Muslims generally do not hate the Jew to the extent to which the Christians hate him … whereas it would be hard to find a case of real friendship between a Christian and a Jew, sincere friendship between a Moslem and a Jew is far from being a rare thing.’”^{^[488]} Two years to the day after the 1921 riots, Filastin ran a front page editorial entitled Martyrs Day; “One hundred brave sons of Palestine became martyrs – and now Palestine sees them as having died for the sake of salvation. … The memory of that day … restores … our enthusiasm and pushes us forward.”^{^[489]} This is a disturbing and profoundly Islamic usage of the word “martyr.” Why would a Christian paper say that Muslims dying fighting Jews were martyrs? 1922, Arab Christians called for an economic boycott of the Jews, but this was not adopted by the Arab Executive Committee, which believed it to be unrealistic. Christians were again ahead of the crowd, leading the charge for anti-Semitism!!

Other Jews thought there might be some hope; in 1922 a member of the Zionist Executive wrote that “we should try to bring the Protestant and Orthodox Arabs to our side, as anti-Semitism in Christian circles was mainly originating from Rome.”^{^[490]}

Writing in 1923 D.G. Hogarth found that “the alliance between Moslems and Christians is not too stable; interests of Moslem landowners and Christian traders are by no means identical; Christian supporters of the pan-Arab movement in Syria, as in Palestine, has been decidedly lukewarm, and a pro-Turkish or pan-Islamic movement could find no Christian backing whatever. The influence of the Islamo-Christian Society on the country as a whole can easily be exaggerated. … the cause of Christian hostility to the Zionists is Jewish competition. As shopkeepers, craftsmen, skilled laborers, traders, the Jews are the rivals of the local Christians.”[491]

In November 1924, Najib Nassar wrote a series of articles appearing in al Kamil, addressed to the Pope. He tried to draw the attention of the world to the dangers of Jewish immigration and land purchases. He warned the country would soon become empty of Christians and Muslims. He ended with a call to Western Christendom, headed by the Pope, to come to the aid of Eastern Christendom, in saving the Christian character of Palestine and the sanctuaries sacred to both the Muslim and Christian world.^{^[492]}

In 1925, the mufti of Gaza, Muhammad al-Husseini, issued a fatwa that Jews had ceased to be a protected minority (dhimmies). Christians who aided them would therefore be expelled from the country, and Muslims who aided them had abandoned their faith, and would not be permitted their wives or a Muslim burial.[493] This ruling was affirmed and expanded upon in the first assembly of Muslim religious scholars in Palestine in 1935. Hajj Amin was the first to sign it. A short time after this, in February of the same year, a congress of Christian Arab clergy issued their own declaration forbidding the sale of land to Jews. As Cohen notes; “the sanctity of land was not restricted to Christianity’s holy sites but applied to the entire country; whoever sells or speculates in the sale of any portion of the homeland is considered the same as one who sells the place of Jesus’ birth or his tomb and as such will be considered a heretic against the principles of Christianity and all believers are required to ban and interdict him.”[494]

A marriage of convenience

For diverse reasons, Muslim/Christian relations during the Mandate were reasonable, but not ideal. Interestingly, there was more anti-Christian feeling when Zionism was less threatening, showing again the importance of anti-Zionism as an external unifying factor.

In 1923, more Jews left Palestine than arrived. This led to a cooling of relations between the Christians and Muslims. The Muslim community started making demands on the Christians. They believed that Christians were faring much better than Muslims under the Mandate. In particular, Christians were getting too many government jobs. Due mainly to their westernized missionary school education, Christian Arabs dominated the urbanized middle class. Around 50,000 Arabs lived in the bourgeoise neighbourhoods of the three principal cities, of these, 35-40,000 were Christians. They also did dominate government jobs. As a result, they were accused of dual loyalty to Britain. At a time when Christians comprised 9% of the population, in 1921, they occupied 2/3rds of government jobs, this figure falling to ½ by 1938.^{^[495]} In 1923, Samuel noted that he was "continually receiving representations on the question of the small number of Muslims employed in positions of responsibility."^{^[496]} These demands would continue and get stronger as the Mandate wore on.

Adnan Abu-Ghazaleh has recalled that “the visibility of Christian officials aroused the suspicions of Palestinian Muslims, who accused the British of favouring the Christians community and of trying to elevate its economic and social position at the expense of that of the Muslims. Thus Palestinian society became more divided along religious lines during the Mandate.”[497] Christian education resulted in success but too much success gave rise to accusations of collaboration or favouritism.[498] Successful, visible Christians were an enduring offence to Muslims.

In 1923, with Jewish immigration stalled, a Palestinian state suddenly seemed possible. Christian concerns about how an actual Arab state might treat non-Muslim minorities took on greater urgency. As Hourani expresses it, Christians could never "be certain that Arab nationalism would not turn out to be a new form of Islamic self-assertion."^{^[499]} After 1924, Arab nationalism become increasingly Islamic, but Christians remain committed to it, or emigrated.

This lessening of the “Zionist threat” between 1923-27 allowed each side (Christian and Muslim) to view each other more clearly. Muslim nationalism became more Islamic (“we don’t need you”), the Christians found British rule to be more attractive (“please stay and protect us from the Muslims”). These discoveries impacted on how both groups then faced the renewed Zionist activity from 1928 onwards.

In the final analysis, the Christians of Palestine would rather be wiped out by the Moslem Arabs than thrive with the Jews, because when push came to shove, they were Arabs first, and Christians second. They chose nationalism over faith.[500] In 1923, the Zionist Executive believed that Arab Christians working in the British administration were responsible for the harassment and firing of moderate/sympathetic Arab officials, including the dismissal of the mayor of Haifa, Hasan Shukri, who believed that the Jews were a blessing and not a curse to the Arab people.[501]

Indeed, faith became the handmaid to their wider Arab nationalism; they were prepared to place its deepest truths and symbols at its service. Again, see the modern abuse of Christmas and Easter by these churches and their Western allies for examples of this continuing problem. [Christmas is about the separation wall near Bethlehem, Easter about Palestinian suffering.] Seeking the praises of men, they do not even realise that their fellow Muslims despise them for so degrading their own religion. The Hajj is neither cancelled in protest, nor re-defined in terms of Palestine.

Now, most Muslims were certainly sincere in their commitment to an Arab state inclusive of Christians. The vast majority of Muslims had simply not thought through the question beyond vague assurances (and a false mythology) that the situation of Christians (as with other 'People of the Book') had always been secure under Islam.[502] Christians had little leverage in this respect. They were becoming marginalized. Most Muslims were quite happy to make common cause with their Christian compatriots, even while seeing their Arab identity as something inherently 'Islamic.' Christians themselves were finding it increasingly necessary to take a radical a stance against the Government. Otherwise, they were suspect.

Coinciding with the movement's Islamisation was indeed a growing Islamic hostility towards Christians. Even while working together, most Muslims definitely viewed them as inferior. During the latter part of 1932, Christians were subjected to sporadic attacks by gangs of Muslims in a number of Palestinian towns, and in Lydda, a church was desecrated. As noted by one British official in January 1933; "the existing discord between Moslems and Christians in this country [was] only kept beneath the surface by the constant efforts of political leaders.”^{^[503]} In November 1932, the Congress of the Educated Muslim Young Men was established. From the start, it took a strong anti-Christian tone. Alfred Rok, a Melkite, member of the Arab delegation to London, an associate of the Mufti and later member of the Arab Higher Committee, referred to the Young Men's Muslim Association in Jaffa as the "root of the evil."^{^[504]} When some Muslims, writing in the newspaper al-J'ami ah al-Islamiyyah, blamed the Christians for their lack of jobs, the Christians in turn blamed the Jews[505] (echoes of the 1840 Damascus “Blood Libel.”)

Wider problems

It was not only the Christian Arabs of Palestine that were experiencing problems. The situation of Christians throughout the Middle East had again begun to deteriorate. Sporadic massacres of Christian broke out across the former Ottoman empire. With the pull-out of the British in Iraq in 1930, for example, anti-Christian sentiment swept the country. Attacks on the Assyrian Christians in the north culminated in the machine-gun massacre of hundreds of Assyrian men, women and children by the Iraqi army at Simayl in 1933. The Nestorians were forced to flee into French Syria. In 1937, a massacre of Christians in 'Amuda would lead to a strong movement for local autonomy and even independence, led by the Syrian Catholic Patriarch.^{^[506]} The Christians in Palestine watched, and drew their own lessons.

At the extreme, in 1926 Khalil al-Sakakini urged Palestinian Christians to convert to Islam for the sake of unity in the national movement. On October 5 of 1930, the editor of al-Karmil, Najib Nassar likewise wrote a series of articles asserting that the only solution to the 'disputes' between Muslims and Christians was that "the Christians adopt the Islamic faith. In this way the constant conflicts which hinder the development of the national movement [would] be brought to an end.”^{^[507]} Arab Orthodox Khalil Iskandar al-Qubrus in 1931 issued a pamphlet entitled “A Call on the Christian Arabs to Embrace Islam.”^{^[508]} In it, he denounced European Christianity as a corrupt religion and accused European monks and missionaries of sowing discord between Palestine's Muslims and Christians. By contrast, he described Islam as a benevolent and egalitarian religion, and concluded by calling on all Arab Christians to become Muslim "in order to free them from the trivialities of the foreigners and to rid them of their corruption.” Note that calls, or threats that Palestinian Christians will convert to Islam if Western churches are not more anti-Zionist have continued from then, through the 30s and 40s up to the present. It is the attitude of those who do not know the Gospel (Mark 10:28, Philippians 3:8). They needed to choose the praises of God not men! To their shame, they chose rather to conform to this world. Friendship with this world does not work! In their 1937 “Letter to the bishops of London,” the Anglican PNCC wrote; “After the fate of the Armenians, the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Assyrians, the Abyssinians and the Arabs of Palestine, the faith of our Christians is also being shaken … in the value of Christianity itself …we are greatly afraid that the tide of nationality will carry many off their feet into unbelief or apostacy. … Palestine has become a theatre of politics where people have little thought for anything else. This is making the work of the Church well-nigh impossible.”[509]

Many Muslims were also becoming increasingly anti-Christian. The Hizb al-Istiqldl (Independence – Arab nationalist) Party organised a demonstration in Nablus protesting the dedication of the Y. M. C. A. in Jerusalem.[510] The Palestinian journalist Muhammad Tawil wrote in 1930 attacking the Christians and the MCAs and what he viewed as “the unnatural bond the nationalist movement had created between them and the Muslims. … Christians had joined the nationalist movement only to advance their own narrow interests.”[511] Many Muslim nationalists including Hajj Amin al-Husseini, were concerned about the growing hostility towards Christians. They considered it vital to present a united front to the British, and attempts were made to ease tensions.

The Missions Conference

At the end of March 1928, an international conference of Protestant missionaries convened in Jerusalem. Muslim agitation began even before the Conference had started. [They wanted to pick a fight.] Demonstrations took place throughout Palestine for the duration of the Conference. At the Nabi Musa pilgrimage, which took place almost concurrently with the Conference, thousands of Muslims chanted 'down with the Missionary Conference.”^{^[512]} A week after the conference, Muslims in Jerusalem closed their shops in protest against the Conference and against missionary activity in general.

An important goal of the Conference, stated by Dr. Mott at the opening meeting, was the promotion of greater cooperation between the churches of the East and West, so that the "missionary enthusiasm which characterized the churches of early Christianity [might be] set free."^{^[513]} A common theme was the special role of indigenous churches in promoting Christianity in their home-countries. Most Christian Arabs in Palestine rejected the idea and several articles appeared in Christian run newspapers equating missionary activity with colonialism. Not a single Christian from Palestine attended the Missionary Conference.^{^[514]} [Again, note that in the 2018 CATC conference in Bethlehem, a local bishop proclaimed; ‘we do not convert Muslims.’]

Shamefully, the Conference showed that when push came to shove, the local churches would absolutely refuse to do anything which would antagonise the Muslim majority, especially on such a sensitive matter as conversion.[515] They would refuse to obey the clear and urgent command of the one they called master (Matthew 28:18-20). Local churches would not preach the Gospel but would preach Arab nationalism.

As the 1920s progressed, Palestinian nationalist activity in general increasingly took on a religious character. It became more centred round Islamic institutions such as the mosques the YMMAs and the Supreme Muslim Council (SMC). Muslims were also increasingly expressing their grievances in religious terms. For example, the belief that they were being discriminated against ‘as Muslims’ with respect to government positions. By the end of the 1920s, nationalist demonstrations were also increasingly being organised around the Friday prayers at mosques.^{^[516]}

1929 Western Wall Riots; Islam supreme, Christians submissive

The decisive event as far as the nationalist movement's Islamisation, however, would not involve Christians at all. The 1929 Riots began in August of that year at the Western Wall. The disturbances soon spread to the rest of Palestine. The worst attacks took place in Hebron, where more than sixty Jews were murdered, and the rest forced to flee. By 30 August, the disturbances had finally come to an end.^{^[517]} To quote from Wikipedia; “The riots took the form, in the most part, of attacks by Arabs on Jews accompanied by destruction of Jewish property. During the week of riots from 23 to 29 August, 133 Jews were killed and between 198–241 others were injured, a large majority of whom were unarmed and were murdered in their homes by Arabs, while at least 116 Arabs were killed and at least 232 were injured, mostly by the British police while trying to suppress the riots, although around 20 were killed by Jewish attacks or indiscriminate British gunfire. During the riots, 17 Jewish communities were evacuated.”[518]

The Western Wall Riots had a major impact on the internal political struggle within the Arab leadership, increasing the power of Haj Amin al-Husseini. They again intensified religious sentiment among Muslims and showed that religious sensibilities ran a good deal deeper than nationalistic ones. There was virtually no Christian involvement. In a few cases, they helped to limit the violence. The city of Acre, for instance, was largely spared the worst of it thanks to the actions of the Christian Arab District Officer there. Wasserstein however noted that “Christian involvement was slight. Indeed, we may properly call these riots Muslim-Jewish rather than Arab-Jewish since Christians in general remained ostentatiously neutral.”[519]

“For Christian Arabs, the riots presented a dilemma. On the one hand, they were under great pressure to demonstrate their solidarity with their Muslim compatriots. On the other hand, many found it difficult to condone the religiously fanatical violence of the incident. Such fanaticism might just as easily be directed against them. Muslim chants during the rioting of ‘Friday... death to the Jews; Saturday, death to the Christians... and Sunday, death to the Government officials’ must have been concerning. At the same time, they also felt the need to show some support. The Christian press therefore put the blame on the Jews. Additionally, they stressed the incident's nationalist aspect.”[520]

This stressing of the “nationalistic aspect” of what was clearly primarily a religious dispute over the Western Wall would see the Christian community capitulate to the Muslim majority to the point where Muslim Palestinian religious demands became by definition Palestinian nationalist demands. This extended to the Muslim ban (still in effect during this time) on both Jews and Christians praying in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. It still extends to supporting the ban on Jews (and Christians!) praying on the Temple Mount. Official Palestinian Christian support for this ban has again been restated in 2021.[521] Given that Jesus said, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17), this support for their own being banned from praying on it (in the name of Palestinian nationalism) highlights the apostacy of the Palestinian Church leaders.

On the 27^th of October, 1929, the president of the Arab General Assembly, Yacoub Farraj (an Orthodox Christian), stated; “The Buraq (Western Wall) is a purely Moslem Place and is part of the Masjid al-Aksa. The rights of the Moslems in the Buraq are indisputable. … In the cause of the Buraq the Moslems and Christians are one and the same racially, nationally and politically.”[522] Filastin editor Issa el-Issa signed and published a similar statement declaring that “Moslems and Christians alike are concerned [about al- Buraq] from a national, patriotic and political point of view.”[523]

In a joint letter to the Arab Executive, “Muslim, Christian and Druze representatives from Shefaʿamr (where there was a Christian majority) gave the issue a nationalist interpretation by confirming their support for Arab claims to al-Buraq and blamed British inaction for allowing the violence to erupt. The ‘Christians and Muslims of Birzeit’ (another largely Christian village) sent a telegram to the high commissioner protesting the government’s position. Those branches of the MCA still in operation also filed protests in support of Arab claims. Christians certainly wanted to make it clear to the wider Palestinian population that they stood behind Muslim concerns about Zionist designs for the Western Wall and temple area. … Episcopal lawyer Mughannam Mughannam was among the signatories of an Arab Executive telegram to the high commissioner declaring the innocence of all Arabs in the August violence. Husseini supporter, Arab Executive member and head of the Christian Committee for the Relief of Moslem Sufferers at Jaffa, Alfred Rok (a Latin Christian) also organised a meeting of Muslims and Christians in Jaffa to send formal protests to the Colonial Office.”[524]

Palestinian Christian testimonies to the Shaw Commission also asserted Muslim ownership of the Western Wall as an integral part of al-Aqsa Mosque. The Supreme Muslim Council made much of these supposedly unbiased testimonies, complaining after the release of the Commission's findings that “the Moslem side [had] procured unbiased witnesses, Palestinian Christians as well as foreigners, including Priests, Monks and guides to prove that [Jewish claims to the Wailing Wall were unfounded]... [but] the Commission [had] paid no heed to such evidence although the majority of these witnesses were impartial non-Moslems, Palestinians as well as foreigners."^{^[525]}

Christian Arabs began to recognise the need to accommodate this decidedly Muslim concern. Articles began to appear in the Christian press explaining why Christians should care about the Muslim holy sites on nationalistic grounds. They argued that Islam was an 'Arab' religion, and since the Christians living in Palestine were Arabs, they had a duty to respect Islam and preserve its holy places.[526] They kowtowed to the violent majority and became dhimmis once again.

This marked an important moment for the Christians. Their hopes of promoting a largely secular nationalism had failed. Dreams of equality and a common cause with the Moslems likewise. Till then, it had been possible for Christians to see for themselves a role in helping to direct the nationalist movement; in shaping the nature of Arab identity and in determining the nature of any future Arab state. From this point on, Christians would become increasingly marginalized, able to do little beyond following the lead set by their Muslim compatriots. “There had always been a concern that aroused Muslim feeling might turn against them. But from now on, there was no way to prevent Muslim leaders from using religion as a means of appealing to the masses. The only way for Christians to maintain a role for themselves within the nationalist movement was to somehow demonstrate that a special relationship existed between them and Islam. By the end of the 1930s, Christian Arabs would be more concerned with trying to define their relationship to Islam than with defining a model of Arab identity intrinsically inclusive of non-Muslims.”^{^[527]} “For many months the national movement focused on a specifically Islamic issue. Christian identification with the nationalist movement required a greater willingness to accept Islam, rather than Arabism, as a central focus of the movement. … An important result of these riots was that the Zionist–Arab conflict became a Jewish–Muslim conflict in the eyes of many Palestinians.”[528]

The Palestinian Christian’s response to these deadly attacks by Muslims upon Jews was to support the Muslims. One hundred and four Jews were murdered by Muslims, and the Palestinian Christians justified it. Romans 1:32 “Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”

They were on the side of the Moslems, and they supported the Muslim claim to the Western Wall. Once again, speaking “as Christians” they towed the Muslim line, and white-washed murder. They also willingly offered themselves to the Muslim community, to be presented as “impartial” witnesses to the British (thought by the Muslims to be Christian) government. They were Arabs first, Christians second or purely in a community sense. They conformed to this world. Note recently (September 2015) Naim Ateek has echoed the Muslim charge that “the settlers are out of control, they are assaulting the Haram area on a continual basis.”[529]

Following the murders, 58 men were convicted of murder or of abetting murder, and 26 of these (including one Jew) were sentenced to be hung. The British High Commissioner then commuted all but three of these sentences, deciding that only those who had committed the most serious crimes should be executed. On June 17, 1930, henceforth known as “Red Tuesday” in Palestinian iconography, three Palestinians were indeed hanged for the crimes of murder. At each death, church bells rang throughout Palestine. A funeral procession of thousands then escorted the bodies to the Acre cemetery. The parade was led by school children, followed by members of the Muslim-Christian Association.[530]

The murder of al-Bahri

This obsequiousness spread; In September 1930, Jamil al-Bahri, a Melkite Christian, journalist, editor of the newspaper al-Zuhur and noted playwright, was murdered by Muslims over a land dispute in a cemetery. Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim, the superintendent of the Haifa Waqf and member of the Arab Executive, and Ramzi Amir, the Secretary of the local Young Men's Muslim Association were formally charged with instigating the offending mob, 15 of whom were later charged with murder. To make matters worse, a Muslim policeman present at the scene had helped some of the Muslims involved escape. “Strangest of all was when both Rashid al-Haj Ibrahim and Ramzi Amir, while being transferred from the Police Station to the Court Magistrate after having turned themselves in, expressed a preference that the Christian policeman accompanying them in the car be replaced by a Jew.”^{^[531]} Local Moslems defended the murder and gave “fiery speeches” that the Christians were a “corrupt race.”^{^[532]} Violence spread to Jaffa, and the Christians were afraid it would mushroom, as it had in Lebanon in the previous century.

This then was a serious threat to Muslim/Christian harmony. A local Christian had been murdered by the head of the Waft, this murder was aided by a Muslim policeman, and defended by local Muslim community, in anti-Christian terms. Would the Christian community simply accept the murder of one of its own, or would they stand up and demand better? Sadly, they responding to Muslim violence just as they had been forced to do for the past 1400 years. The main Christian voices (especially the Arab Orthodox) utterly abandoned the Catholic victim and re-pledged their support for the Muslim majority.^{^[533]}

Individual Christians and Christian leaders in private, did respond differently. Immediately following the murder, the British Government began receiving petitions from Christian Arabs disavowing any connection with the national movement as well as with Muslims.[534] The following year, the High Commissioner commented that; “Christian Arab leaders ... have admitted to me that in establishing close political relations with the Moslems the Christians have not been uninfluenced by fear of the treatment they might suffer at the hands of the Moslem majority in certain eventualities.”[535]

The Melkites did attempt to make a unified response. The New York Times reported that following al-Bahri’s death, they “immediately sought to build a pan-Christian coalition.” Melkite and Latin Catholic leaders met at the home of Melkite Archbishop Gregorios Hajjar to solidify a Christian stance against Muslims. The Society of Christian Youth in Haifa, a group with clear ties to the Melkites, “wrote a strongly worded letter to the Mandatory government complaining that the Arab leadership was not taking the situation seriously.” The Society rejected the leadership of the Arab Higher Committee (led by Islamic leader Haj Amin al-Husayni). They asserted that the British could better serve the Christians interests and declared their desire “to have [their] rights protected by the mandatory power to whom [they] swear allegiance.”[536]

This nascent protest was utterly rejected by the rest of Palestine’s Christian communities. The Orthodox Christian leaders were infuriated. “Christian Arabs don’t support any group of Christians who try to view the Haifa event as a purely sectarian occurrence,” declared ʿIsa al-Bandak, editor of Bethlehem’s Swat al-Shaʿb. The Filastin editor ʿIsa al-ʿIsa, blamed the Zionists. Even the Catholic Christian Khalil Sabbagh insisted that “All Christians of Tulkarm disapprove of the work of the group of men in Haifa and their absurd demands. [The Christians] declare publicly their support for the path of unity of Muslims and Christians under the Arab Executive of Jerusalem.”[537] Haiduc-Dale summarized; “Whether because of AHC intervention or the Melkites’ inability to garner Christian support, Muslim–Christian relations did not spiral into violence.”

The local Christians largely kept quiet and did nothing about the murder of al-Bahri. They hoped thereby to avoid further violence, and to show the Muslim majority that they were good dhimmis. That you could murder them, and still they would not complain. They also hoped that this silence would prove their greater commitment to the nationalist cause. “Orthodox Christian insistence on nationalist over communal identification was a common occurrence during the British Mandate period. … the overwhelming public narrative pushed by Arab Christians throughout the Mandate was that Christians fully embraced their nationalist credentials.”[538]

This contrasts greatly with the response and self-respect of the Druze community. “When the Revolt of 1936–1939 fully ceased, the Druze were quick to remember the persecution they had faced at the hands of largely Muslim rebel groups and sought to strengthen their ties to the Zionists.”^{^[539]} Indeed, the Druze subsequently allied themselves with Israel in 1948. Christians did not draw similar conclusions. Many Christians still saw Arab Nationalism and Communism as their best bets towards full membership in Arab society. For them Zionism offered no advantages.^{^[540]}

The supposed Muslim/Christian unity was always paper thin. The Christian al-Zuhour (formerly edited by al-Bahri) ran an article strongly questioning the value of supposed Muslim-Christian unity. Zionist Executive Chairman, Frederick Kisch, wrote on October 3, 1930; “if the Christian Arabs now realize that they have been unwise to stimulate Moslem fanaticism, I believe that such a change of attitude is for their own eventual safety.”^{^[541]} In 1932, there was talk in Haifa of Christians boycotting Muslim businesses, and there were street fights between Muslim and Christian youth. Nevertheless, the Mufti likewise continued to value Christian participation in the nationalist movement.

The MacDonald Letter

On the 13^th of February 1931 the MacDonald Letter reaffirming British support for Jewish migration to Palestine was sent to Chaim Weizmann.[542] In March, a nationalist conference was convened over how best to respond to it. Some members called for a policy of civil disobedience and non-cooperation with the Government. Others suggested that reaction be limited to a political and economic boycott of the Jews. Christians figured prominently among the latter.^{^[543]} That is, Christians remained wary of communal violence (which could turn against them), and again advocated boycotting Jews as they had done in 1920 and 1922.

Most Christians continued to favour moderation. The growing bloodshed concerned many of them. They could see that the nationalist movement was becoming increasingly violent and Islamic. Unlike the Druze, they did not consider aligning themselves with the Jewish people. Rather, faced with increasing violence from the Muslim community, and a leadership which continued to advocate for Arab solidarity even as they were attacked, emigration to South America became a common response for the average Palestinian Christian.

Infamously, this emigration itself was then blamed, not on the Muslim community (which was also carrying out sporadic attacks upon local Christian communities across the Middle East), but rather on the Jewish community! This had been the case since 1924, when in his “Open Letter to the Pope” (published in his al-Karmil), Najib Nassar warned that Jewish immigration would lead to the complete extinction of the Christian community.[544] This theme was also promoted by the Catholic Church internationally. For example, on 14 June 1921 the Pope declared the Vatican's opposition to Zionism and claimed that "the new civil arrangements [in Palestine] aim ... at ousting Christianity from its previous position to put the Jews in its place."[545] On July 16, 1921, the New York-based Catholic journal, The Tablet, likewise printed an article with the unbelievable heading "Christians are Menaced by Jews." This cited emigration statistics to prove that Christians were leaving Palestine because they were "tired of Jewish interference." This continues to be a common charge made by local Christian leaders to try and minimize Muslim/Christian tensions, and also by foreign Christians who are theologically opposed to a Jewish state.

The World Islamic Conference

In December 1931, two conferences were held. The World Islamic Conference was held on December 7, 1931. It was a personal triumph for Hajj Amin and served to redefine the Palestinian cause as an international Islamic one. He declared that Zionism posed a threat to the Islamic integrity of the third holiest city in Islam. Jerusalem and Palestine became central to the international Muslim world. "[the] aim [of the Conference was] to show to the Zionists a united Muslim front, and to make Muslims all over the world notice the injustice being done to their Palestinian co-religionists.”^{^[546]} Palestine was no longer simply a parochial issue of concern only to Palestinians. Within Arab nationalism, it was an issue for all Arabs (as was Syria and Egypt etc), and as a Muslim issue it was of concern to all Muslims. Arab nationalism was subservient to Islam. This had profound consequences for Arab Christians who supported Arab nationalism. For a Palestinian Muslim, of course Islam had always been the pinnacle of Arab nationalism, but for Arab Christians hoping to avoid a religious definition, it was the end of secular nationalism.

Hajj Amin was genuinely concerned that the Conference should not alienate Palestine's Christian Arabs. It passed a resolution expressing gratitude to Palestine and Transjordan's Christians for having supported the Conference, together with a message of congratulations to the Second Arab-Orthodox Conference, then taking place in Jaffa. In return, many of Palestine's Christian Arabs publicly declared their support for the conference. The nationalist cause was being transformed into an Islamic one, with Christian approval. This change did generate regional support (something the Christians would obviously welcome), but also had the effect of further marginalizing Christian Arabs.

The Second Arab Orthodox Congress took place in Jaffa at the same time. It promoted a strong sense of Arab-nationalism within the Orthodox community. Many felt a sense of common purpose with the World Islamic Conference, then taking place. Indeed, the Arab Orthodox Congress demanded that the Islamic Conference address the authorities on their behalf regarding the election of a new Patriarch. The Orthodox cause "ought to be the cause of all the Arabs, Muslim as well as Christian.”^{^[547]} In response, the World Islamic Conference resolved that "the Orthodox question [be considered] as part of the bigger Arab question, and to draw the attention of the Government to the right of Orthodox Palestinians to elect an Arab patriarch."^{^[548]} The Second Arab Orthodox Congress had sought to redefine a 'church' issue (the question of the succession of the Patriarch) in nationalist terms, the Islamic Conference had done exactly the opposite, redefining the Palestinian/nationalist cause as an Islamic one. Palestinian Christianity had become the handmaid of Palestinian nationalism, which in turn was now revealed as the handmaid of Islam.

Palestinian Christians responded to the World Islamic Conference by highlighting the worldwide Christian significance of Palestine/Jerusalem, as complementary to Palestine's worldwide Islamic significance. This was clearly also an effort to show their own continuing importance, and to shore up their value to the Muslim majority. Arguably, Christians hoped in this way to maintain for themselves a role in the nationalist movement in spite of its increasing Islamisation and their diminishing numbers on the ground. Thus, for instance, many called for an Islamic-Catholic alliance against Zionism. A lengthy editorial in al-Karmil called on Haj Amin al-Husseini to seek out an alliance with the Vatican. In other cases, Palestinian Christians called on Protestant Britain to “wake up and reject Zionism.”[549] Nor were these overtures without success; "The belief that such an alliance was possible was not entirely without basis, as indeed the Vatican had often expressed its concern about Zionism.”^{^[550]} Over the following decades Palestinian Christian pretensions would repeatedly find willing allies in the bad theology of a shamefully large number of Western denominations.

Both of these responses, however elevated the religious over the Arab or the Palestinian issue. By stressing the religious element, Palestinian Christians were once again assuming the role of a subservient, minority community. Their hopes of controlling, or even contributing to the definition of who they were within the larger Palestinian community had proved wholly illusionary.

This return to sectarian identities carried with it a whole raft of further ramifications. The Arab claim to Palestine was clear, but the Christian Arab claim to the Holy Land was more complex. As a religious community, their one demographic constant was that they would always be a minority, under either Muslim or Jewish domination. Their past 1400 years of experience could make one wonder on what basis they would agitate for its continuation as opposed to testing the claims of Jewish tolerance. Equally, why should the international Christian community fight to see local Christians placed under Muslim rather than Jewish rule? Religious definitions raised awkward questions! For the Christians (who desperately needed the international support of fellow Christians to show their value to the Muslim community), these questions were then answered on the basis of nationalism. Christianity became subservient to Arab nationalism at precisely the same time that Arab nationalism became subservient to Islam. All ground for mutual respect was gone.

What began as a strategy to safeguard their newfound equality ended in the most traditional and ingrained of relationships; the Christians cow-towing to their Muslim masters and sticking the boot into the Jews. “Muslim and Christian children rarely played with one another and would ‘only unite to persecute the poor little Jews.’" Matthew 12:43-45 "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. ⁴⁴ Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. ⁴⁵ Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation."

With that sorted out, beginning in 1933, external factors again became significant. Following the establishment of the Nationalist-Socialist regime in Germany, there was a large jump in Jewish immigration to Palestine, up from 9,553 the previous year to 30,327.

In general, Palestinian Muslims became more extreme, while Palestinian Christians reluctantly followed. As will be repeatedly seen, Christians had very little participation at the street level. This lack of participation, of street cred, was most definitely noticed by the Muslim community, and caused the already crumbling reputation of the Palestinian Christians further massive harm. There were several reasons for this lack of participation;

The majority of demonstrations were organized on Fridays following Islamic prayers.
Acts of violence were also most likely during Muslim festivals.
They rightly feared Muslim mobs – they had been eyewitnesses to Muslim violence in Syria and Lebanon in the 1860s, and of the ongoing anti-Christian violence around them, Anatolia 1922 etc. (In 1924, Palestinian Muslims collected for the Turkish victims of the Turkey/Greek war, while the Palestinian Christians collected for the Greek, Christian victims.)
Groups which linked nationalist feelings with Islamic passions and were more fervent than those organised by the Muslim-Christian Associations (itself a significant and ominous development).

In this context, it is important to remember the 1931 blood libel which the Filastin tried to spread. Possibly in response to the growing Muslim charges of lack of involvement in the struggle, this Orthodox paper attempted to ferment a specifically Christian violence against the Jewish community.

On the surface, cooperation between Muslims and Christians continued, though not at the same level as during the early part of the Mandate. Muslim-Christian solidarity was most apparent in women's organisations. For instance, on 15 April 1933 (three weeks after Hitler became dictator in Germany via the passing of the Enabling Act of March 24), Muslim and Christian women organised a coordinated protest against Jewish immigration. In general, however, the great majority of Christian Arabs were not happy with the increased violence and Islamism growing within the Nationalist movement.[551] They were being forced back into a subservient and powerless dhimmitude. As noted, they also continued to emigrate in large numbers.

For their part, many Muslims became increasingly anti-Christian. The Istiqlal Party organised a demonstration in Nablus protesting the dedication of the Y M C A in Jerusalem.^{^[552]} Resentment at being ruled by a “Christian” power fed directly into this. In his 1924 letter to the Pope, Nassar had already expressed a concern that the good relations between "Muslims and Christians, who had lived side by side under Muslim rule for hundreds of years, would not survive a further twenty years under Christian rule.”[553]

The great majority of Christians still supported political moderation. The Christian-run paper Mirat al-Sharq went so far as to demonstrate a strong willingness to compromise with the Zionists.[554] Other Christians supported the Husseini camp, and a number were appointed to the party bureau for the Palestine Arab Party. These included Alfred Rok (as might be expected[555]), but also Emil al-Gawhri, a Latin Catholic and the Party's Secretary, and Michel 'Azar. This both reflected the historical tendency of Catholics to affiliate with the Husseini family, and the radical politics of these individuals. While the base of Hajj Amin's support was the Muslim peasantry, their inclusion could be seen as an attempt to reach out to the Christians, whom he valued for their contacts with the West.

The final factor in the increasing extremism which would lead to the General Strike and the Great Revolt was 'Izz-id-din al-Qassam. Al-Qassam was a militant Islamic reformer who led the Young Men’s Muslim Association based in Haifa. "He preached a reformed and more fundamentalist Islam and believed that only those who were themselves pious could be the salvation of the country.”^{^[556]} He appealed mainly to the rural and urban poor, and led a band based in rural areas outside Haifa. After several years attacking Jewish targets, in October 1935 he killed a Jewish police sergeant, and was himself killed in November 1935 by the British. At his funeral he was hailed as a national hero. His militia band anticipated and inspired the more general Arab Revolt of 1936. His grass roots popularity among conservative villagers and urban poor were immense, and it was these who would provide the backbone of the Arab Revolt. His was an explicitly and exclusively Islamic uprising against both the British and the Jews. Palestinian Christians as such had no role in this.

1936 Arab Revolt –

Spurred by increased Jewish immigration, the Revolt had three specific demands.

(1) the prohibition of Jewish immigration.

(2) the prohibition of the transfer of Arab land to Jews.

(3) the establishment of a National Government responsible to a representative council.

The Revolt itself had 3 stages.

Stage 1; April to October 1936.

This consisted of a general strike, augmented by attacks against Jews, Jewish property and the government. Led by the Higher Arab Committee (which included two representatives of the Christian communities, the Greek Catholic Alfred Rok (affiliated with Hajj Amin's Palestine Arab Party) and the Greek Orthodox Yaqub Farraj (of the Nashashibi camp, who along with Nashashibi would support the idea of a small Jewish state in 1937[557]).^{^[558]} The 6-month general strike was enforced by local committees, clubs, associations etc. The Strike concluded due to Arab fatigue and the appointment of a royal commission to address Arab concerns.

The violence included setting fire to Jaffa’s Jewish quarter, shooting attacks on Jewish civilians, spreading nails on streets, burning Jewish crops etc. It affected the whole country and was significant in the amount of rural/village participation. Foreign involvement from other Arab lands was also important, and included fighters from Syria, Jordan, Iraq as well as diplomatic representations by their governments in support of the Palestinians.

Stage 2. Between November 36 and July 37.

A lull while everyone waited for the Peel Commission’s report.

Stage 3. July 37 to mid- 1939.

Arab rejection of the Commission’s report led to renewed violence, starting with the murder of a British official, Lewis Andrews, in Nazareth. The AHC was outlawed, and rural, peasant leaders took over control of the revolt. The extremist/moderate Hussaini/Nashashibi rift came out into the open. This in turn led to the Nashashibi’s (including his Orthodox supporters) withdrawing from the AHC, and even to the forming of “peace bands” to fight the AHC (with Zionist support). Calls were heard for a Jihad and much of the rebellion was encouraged by preaching from the mosques. By 1938, Britain had lost control of major areas of countryside. This in turn led to a change in High Commissioners (with the appointment of Sir Harold MacMichael), and a British military crackdown.

By the summer of 1938, most of the Palestinian highlands were in rebel hands, and by September, even in the urban centres, government control had virtually ceased. As the Revolt progressed, its religious character became increasingly prominent. “As noted by the High Commissioner, Harold MacMichael, the leaders of the revolt were ‘more and more stressing the religious aspect of their struggle.’"[559] It was generally in the name of Islam, often as expressed by religious functionaries, that the masses were called upon to support the revolt and join its ranks. Much was made of alleged insults to the Qur'an and mosques by British troops. Likewise, it was asserted with great frequency that the Muslim Holy Places would be lost if Zionism were allowed to prevail.[560] The peasantry had never endorsed a secular brand of nationalism. As observed by the High Commissioner, 'among the village population Moslem religious sentiment is a stronger, more unifying and more universal sentiment than Arab nationalism.”[561] In any case, for most, their sense of Arab identity was defined primarily by its association with the period of 'Islamic glory,' when the Arabs were exalted as the carriers of the Islamic faith. In general, it would seem that, at least over time, the Revolt had the effect of heightening tensions between Muslims and Christians.^{^[562]}

The subsequent British military victory plus British diplomatic concessions led to its demise. The May 1939 White Paper limited Jewish migration and decided against partition.

The Paper was itself rejected by the Mufti, but the Palestinians were exhausted. Up to 200 Jews and 4,500- 5,000 Arabs died in total. A large number of Arabs (1200) were killed by Husseini's faction, which killed more Arabs than Jews. By the end of the Revolt, Arab attacks on other Arabs were nearly as common as attacks on British and Zionist forces.[563] Vast numbers of trees which had been planted by the Jews were also destroyed. On one occasion alone, “50,000 Jewish forest trees” were destroyed.[564]

The revolt has come to be seen as one of the rural peasantry allied with the Mufti, against the Zionists and the urban dwellers and those they labelled ‘collaborators.’[565] The roots of the revolt may very well be the formation of rural Fellahin parties in 1924, such as the Nablus Peasant Party and the Hebron Peasant Party. These rural parties were primarily Islamic, and none of them had any familiarity with Christians or the intellectual roots of Arab-nationalism.[566]

Christian Involvement in the Revolt

Christian involvement in the General Strike was initially fairly strong. Christian sports clubs helped to direct the strike at the ground level. “British reports in 1936 highlight Arab Christian participation in joint Muslim/Christian rallies (against Jewish immigration etc).”^{^[567]} These occurred in Gaza, Nablus, and Jaffa, with marchers often starting or ending at a church or Orthodox club. Christians also played an important role in perpetuating the general strike.^{^[568]} Leading Christian women were also notable in enforcing the boycott through violence. The Christian mayor of Nazareth was believed to be helping the Mufti’s men and pressing local Christians to assist them. “Occasionally Christian religious leaders also spoke out in favour of the rebellion.”[569] During the Arab Revolt [some] Christian women wore the veil to show unity with Muslims and that Arab culture is unified, despite religious differences. Also during this time, Christians de-emphasised their religion in order to promote Arabic and Arab culture.^{^[570]} In June of 1936 a total of 137 “senior Arab officials” had signed a letter to the Mandatory authorities stating that they were in sympathy with the Arab Higher Committee that was involved with the continuing violence. Many of these officials were Christians.[571]

On August 19, 1936, Christian leaders from across Palestine appealed to the world to recognise the danger of Zionist control of Palestine. They used traditional anti-Semitic arguments to insist that the international Christian community should prevent Jewish immigration, stop them from “defiling” the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and prevent the neglect of the holy sites that would occur under Jewish rule. “An impressive list of Christian leaders from the Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Anglican and Maronite communities signed a ‘Call of Palestinian Christians to the Christian World to Save the Holy Places from Zionist danger.’”^{^[572]} In a more local show of interdenominational support, Acre’s Christians united to demand that the government disarm the Zionists.^{^[573]}

The Mufti sent a delegation of Orthodox Palestinians to visit eastern European (Orthodox) cities to garner support.[574] He also included Christians in his delegation to London. Most interaction with European leaders at this time was carried out by Christians.

The notable exception to this inter communal solidarity was Haifa. This quickly became a source of tension. Muslim-Christian solidarity in Haifa had never been particularly strong. Instead of an MCA, Haifa had from the beginning two separate Muslim and Christian Associations. The Strike placed Arab government officials, the majority of whom were Christian, in a particularly difficult position. While some in the Public Works Department went on strike, they were the exception. The vast majority refused to join in, rather agreeing in the end to relinquish a tenth of their salaries to a strike fund.[575]

Christian enthusiasm for the strike diminished after a time, as Christians suffered from the disruption of economic activity more than the Muslim community. Before long, many were resisting compliance. It was also not uncommon that Christians were threatened by Muslim gangs demanding money as a demonstration of their loyalty. Towards the end, Christians were generally reluctant to carry on with the strike, something that again caused tension with the Muslim majority. The Christian-run Filastin was the first newspaper to call for its end.^{^[576]} While supporting the strike fully, the Anglican PNCC refused to resist the British violently, and as a result, were accused by the Muslims of being British spies.[577]

While most of the Christian population seems not to have been in favour of violence, early in the revolt, Greek Orthodox al-Sakakini wrote in admiration of a grenade attack on Jerusalem’s Edison theatre, which left three dead; “There is no other heroism like this, except the heroism of the Sheik al-Qassam. … They throw bombs, shoot, burn fields, destroy Jewish citrus groves, topple electric poles. Every day they block roads and every day Arabs display a heroism that the government never conceived of.” And, writing to his son; “Two anonymous heroes, threw a grenade at a passenger train full of Jewish civilians and the British soldiers who were escorting them. Who would have believed there are such heroes in Palestine? What a great honor it is, my Sari, to be an Arab in Palestine.”[578]

Concerning the Peel Plan, “For the most part, Christians were opposed to the partition plan, though to a large extent, this reflected the fact that the Galilee, an area heavily populated by Christians, had been allocated to the Jewish state. As soon as the extent of the territory being allocated to the Jewish state became apparent, most Christians came out against it. In the end, the partition plan actually had the effect of closing ranks between Christians and Muslims. Among other things, Christians were concerned about the impact partition would have in dividing what was already a small community.”^{^[579]}

This temporary closing of ranks did not last long. After some support for the first stage of the Revolt, very few Christian Arabs participated in the third stage, which was both much more violent, and often openly anti-Christian. Porath argued that the Christians remained “aloof.”[580] Nevertheless, unlike the Druze, the Christian community did not actively resist the rebel groups.^{^[581]} Many Christians simply moved to other countries. For example, during the revolt it was reported that “the rich families of Haifa departed en masse in August 1938.”[582] "The Christians [of Jaffa] had participated in the 1936 -1937 disturbances under duress and out of fear of the Muslims. The Christians' hearts now and generally are not with the rioting," reported the Haganah Intelligence Service.[583]

In this atmosphere, Christians increasingly felt a need to demonstrate that they were as committed to the nationalist cause as the Muslims. An article appearing in Filastin in July 1936, for instance, recounted an interview conducted by an American journalist in which a Christian youth indicated emphatically that he stood side by side with his Muslim brothers in his willingness to sacrifice everything for the national cause.[584] While they would not participate in the violence, the churches would issue an ecumenical appeal to the world’s Christians to support the goals of the revolt. The PNCC members “abhorred the tide of Jewish immigration.”[585]

Christian involvement in the various militant groups was minimal. The great majority of the rank-and-file of came from the Muslim peasantry. They were more inspired by Islamic sentiment than secular nationalism.^{^[586]} Porath notes that out of a total of 282 officers, only four were Christian (at a time when Christians were approximately ten percent of the population).

Muslim organisations now led the Nationalist struggle. Disturbances, usually violent, were regarded by the Arabs as the primary expression of Arab nationalism. Organising and communications (where the Christians contributed) not so much. Separate Christian organizations were rejected, while common bonds with Muslims (enmity to Zionism) was emphasised. Palestinian Christians participated in the national movement, accepting the marginal and secondary position to which they were doomed as the result of being a religious minority group.[587]

Christian/Muslim violence

Controversy over the Missions Conference in 1928 had almost led to a boycott of Christians and now in some places the true feelings of many of the fellahin and other rebels came out. They directed their slander and curses at the Palestinian Christians, accusing them of being collaborators or not being sufficiently committed to violence.[588] As a result, the Christians found themselves increasingly subjected to harassment and accusations of disloyalty. Relations deteriorated as the Revolt lengthened. Muslims already resented the over-representation of Christian Arabs in the government bureaucracy (jobs[589]), and the presence of foreign Christian missionaries in the country.

Some rebel leaders sought to expand the boycott to also target Christians. As early as December 1936, a group called the “Carriers of the banner of al-Qassam” called for a boycott of Christians; “Oh Muslims, Boycott the Christians. Boycott them. Boycott them.”^{^[590]} They were accused of “a lack of dedication to nationalism.”

While rejection of the Peel partition plan had temporarily closed the ranks between Christians and Muslims, the resumption of the revolt quickly saw a revival of tensions between Muslims and Christians. Muslims became outraged, for example, when Christian priests refused to join in political demonstrations.[591] Some Christian villages refused to supply food and arms to rebel bands. This saw acts of retaliation against them, including the uprooting of vineyards and the raping of two Christian girls.[592] There were scattered attacks on Arab Christians by Muslim gangs.[593] Another Zionist intelligence worker reported that Ahmed Salmeh al- Khalidi, a member of the prominent Muslim Jerusalem family, ‘spoke with terrible unhappiness about the Christians’, arguing that Muslim hatred for Christians far outweighed their hatred of Jews.[594]

The Christian mayor of Bethlehem twice escaped assassination. The Central Committee told the Christian mayor of Ramallah to resign. Christian policemen were killed. According to one British police-officer, it was generally held among Muslims that Christians were traitors to their own people. He described the relationship between the two as being one of “savage and bitter feeling,” Often, a British constable was posted to the house of a Christian Arab to act as a bodyguard. Christian notables were targeted in particular and "were suspected of all manner of anti-Moslem activities, such as helping the British, or even selling land to Jews." The Nabi Musa festival, once considered an expression of Muslim-Christian unity, now became an occasion during which agitators "urged the multitude to fall upon the Jew and Christian infidels and slay them."[595] Christian schools in Jerusalem were harassed and the Terra Santa College was forcibly closed. In 1938 two Christians Arabs were kidnapped in Kafr Yasif, one a government worker and policeman. Christians were murdered in Nazareth and Safad in 1939.[596]

One British official told 1937 Peel Royal Commission that Christians had "come to realise that the zeal shown by the fellaheen ... was religious and fundamentally in the nature of a Holy War against the Christian Mandate and against Christian people as well as against Jews.”[597] Christians were also greatly disturbed when a rebel band marching through the Christian village of Bir Zeit sang “We are going to kill the Christians” instead of the more usual “We are going to kill the British.”[598] Note that in 1938, the Christian editor of Filastin, Isa al-Isa (editor since 1921), had to flee the country due to fears of the Muslim village bands.[599] While very popular, Filastin was viewed by the population as a Christian paper.[600] It nevertheless tried hard to represent and to appeal to the broader community. Likewise, a report from the 6^th of November 1938 refers to “attacks on Christians.”[601]

In spite of all of this, the Christian community by and large continued in its support of the nationalist cause. The district commissioner of Jerusalem, Edward Keith- Roach received a letter demanding that the government guarantee the permanent appointment of a Muslim mayor. The letter was signed by two prominent Protestants. The Druze efforts to support the government against the rebels caused a serious rift between them and the Christian minority who inhabited the same towns in Galilee. “By and large, the Christian community maintained its support for the Palestinian Arab cause despite anti-Christian sentiments and incidents, and [because of] a fear of communal violence.”^{^[602]}

“A few even turned against the nationalist movement and supported the British or Zionists outright.”^{^[603]} Selim Ayyub, a Christian Arab, wrote in 1936 to a Zionist leader about Christian participation in the revolt; “80-85% of them were motivated by fear. They lived in mixed quarters and were afraid of the Muslims, but they really had nothing against the Jews.” He also said they preferred British rule to Muslim.[604] This is hard to evaluate. In general, Christians were inclined to blame the Jews for their situation. Thus, for example, the Greek Catholic bishop of Galilee, Yusuf Hajjar, blamed the weakening of the Christian position on Jewish immigration. Certainly, most Christians do seem to have preferred British rule. “Indeed, Christians took almost no part in the 1936–1939 rebellion.”[605]

In May 1938, Bishop Hajjar protested to the Mufti concerning “the Arab Christians of Palestine.” Also in May 38, the British district commissioner wrote that bishop Hajjar would speak on behalf of all Arab Christians to the Peel Commission, because “none dared speak for themselves.”^{^[606]} Likewise, the district commissioner for Jerusalem strongly believed in June, 1939 that the Christians were only supportive of Arab nationalism out of self-preservation, that they were “obliged to adopt publicly the policy of the Muslims.”[607] According to Morris, a major reason for the failure of the Revolt was that it ran out of money. He then notes that the wealthy were disproportionately Christian, and reluctant to support the Revolt.[608] Indeed, the Revolt was only able to continue for so long because of Nazi funding given in 1938.^{^[609]}

The Muslim leadership generally wanted the Christians on side, but at the local level, many gangs were quite independent, and anti-Christian. Hajj Amin and around 200 Muslim members of the Arab leadership did indeed try to counter this general sentiment. How successful they were in this respect is debatable.[610] On at least one occasion, the Mufti reportedly ‘directed mosque preachers throughout the country to preach for peace and brotherhood among Muslims and Christians.’[611] In both Lebanon and Damascus, Palestinian officials intervened to lessen Muslim/Christian tensions.[612] Again in September 1938, the Central Committee forbade the rebels from disturbing “Churches, convents, Patriarchate priests, monks, nuns, either by collecting money or by trespassing on their personal or religious liberty.”[613] Note that the Christian el-Issa was praised by Muslims for writing that “saving Palestine through an Islamic path is closest to saving it through a national road.”^{^[614]} He also called for the turning of the Easter services “into national demonstrations which shall prove to our opponents the power of the Arabs in Palestine.”[615] Note that Christians have again more recently cancelled Easter celebrations in Bethlehem to further nationalistic goals, and corrupted Christmas to become a vehicle of nationalist propaganda. Their faith must serve their nationalism. "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24).

The Round Table Conference

With the publication of the Woodhead Partition Commission report in November 1938 declaring partition technically infeasible, and the British government's accompanying announcement to hold a Round Table Conference in London, the Revolt lost momentum and eventually collapsed. The British Government proposed a drastic cutting back of Jewish immigration and land purchases, making future Jewish immigration dependent on Arab consent and the eventual creation of an independent united Palestinian state. Jews were to be given veto-power over the latter as a counterbalance to Arab control over immigration. In the end, the Jewish delegation walked out of the Conference. In lieu of a settlement, the Government issued a White Paper along the lines of what had been proposed during the Conference. What came to be known as the MacDonald White Paper (named after the Colonial Secretary, Malcolm MacDonald) was issued on 17 May.

The decision by the Higher Arab Committee to take part in a conference in London gave the Christians some temporary leverage with respect to the national movement, as it was considered imperative by the Arab leadership that the HAC should appear representative of a united Palestinian-Arab people. In a startling sign of just how serious the anti-Christian violence had become, when the Christian leadership was asked to downplay the less savoury aspects of the Revolt with respect to Christians, they threatened to send a separate delegation to the London Conference. The threat worked, and at the end of December, the Arab leaders in Jerusalem published a declaration condemning the various anti-Christian acts that had been committed in connection with the Revolt. (At the same time, they attributed such acts to renegade individuals whom they characterised as “rascals.”) Hajj Amin al-Husseini also tried to exert pressure on his followers to behave more tolerantly towards Christians. In the end, the Palestinian Arab delegation sent to the Conference did give the impression of a united front.^{^[616]}

After the Revolt, the Palestinians were exhausted, World War 2 was starting, Palestine became a British garrison (a vastly increased troop presence), and the Christian community withdrew into itself, and reflected upon what had just happened. They were aided in this reflection by the generational change in Palestinian Christian leadership which also occurred at this time. Many of the Christian notables had fled, along with the Mufti in the late 1930s. Many others were busy with the Palestinian agenda in London and New York.[617] This reflection could only go so far. Unhappy with the level of street violence they had both witnessed and increasingly experienced, they nevertheless remained committed to the cause of Arab nationalism, and anti-Zionism. This left them needing to prove their loyalty to an increasingly hostile Moslem majority, with no plan B except immigration. It seems that traditional Christian anti-Semitism meant that allying with the Jewish community was never seriously explored by the majority of the community. Indeed, Porath concluded that “In this way they [the rebels] were aided by two basic facts: Christian opposition to Zionism, and Christian self-identification, alongside their community identity, as Palestinian Arabs.”^{^[618]} The revised strategy that emerged was that they would continue to pursue nationalist goals (never really in question) but this time through organizations which were clearly identifiable as Christian. By stressing their religious affiliation as a primary label, they sought to ease communal tensions and draw Muslim attention to their participation in the nationalistic struggle. While an earlier generation of Christian leaders had eschewed such sectarianism, preferring that Christians and Muslims all simply join nationalistic organisations “as Arabs,” the Muslim violence that had been directed towards them necessitated this rethink, and a depressing retreat from their ideal, of Christians and Muslims all fully equal, religious affiliation not even noticed.

Palestinian Christian anti-Semitism and opposition to Zionism remained central in their desire for relevance and integration/acceptance into the wider Muslim society. Nor was this pattern unique to the Palestinian Church. To quote from my book on the Roles of the European Churches and the Holocaust; “much of the Catholic Church in Germany at this time viewed anti-Semitism both as part of the heritage, and also as “a vehicle for keeping in touch with the times.”[619] … This was also true in Austria, where “Members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy were anxious to convince young people that the church had been anti-Semitic centuries before anyone had heard of National Socialism.”[620] The majority of wider/international denominations with which the Palestinian churches were affiliated with were also theologically and institutionally anti-Semitic at this time. While these denominations may have repented of this anti-Semitism re Europe they emphatically have not done so re Israel.

Discussion

The Christian response to the Arab Revolt was profoundly nuanced and reflected a community which well understood its own identity and self-interest. Palestinian Christians were opposed to both Zionism and to Muslim domination. Christians generally saw the Mandate as a protecting power rather than a repressive yoke. It did not provoke in them the fundamental offence that it did among the Muslim community. The Christians liked British rule, it gave them good jobs, personal safety and the rule of law. They also liked the British. They had been educated in British mission schools, and often worked with and had friends among the British officials. They did not wish to kill them, or to drive British rule out of Palestine, hence their lack of support for the violence against the British during the third stage of the Revolt. The extent to which this divergence from the Muslim community was a thought-out strategy, as opposed to a more intuitive response, is unclear. The Christians had pursued separate foreign policies previously, and for all the hype, were not simply an indivisible part of the Arab nation. Their fallback position of contributing through clearly identifiable Christian organisations was in retrospect a more appropriate strategy. It better allowed for community distinctives.

How much should be read into the divergence being over violence? Did this simply highlight a difference of opinion over the British, or did it reveal a more profound rift? As already noted, (see the discussion on the 1921 Jaffa riot), the Palestinian Christian communities have not embraced violence against the Jewish community to the same extent that the Muslim community has, and this is a standing cause of offence to the Muslims. Christian violence is by no means unknown (see George Habash and the PFLP[621]), but a quantitative difference remains evident.

Their quarrel with British rule was far more narrowly focused. They wanted Jewish immigration stopped. In pursuance of these aims, they fully supported the general strike, but did not support the accompanying campaign of violence against the British. In these responses, we see the Christian community no longer defining themselves as an indivisible part of the Arab nation, but rather as a distinct subset of it, with their own priorities. Priorities which did not align with those of the Muslim majority. These differences would not be proclaimed from the rooftops, due to their fear of the Muslim mob, but are clearly seen in their actions on the ground. Many of the rioters were poor rural Muslims, while most of the Christians were urbanized and middle class and feared for their own property. At that point, the more crucial question became, would the Muslim middle class, the Nashashibi supporters, join with the mob, or with their own interests in safety and security. In its third stage, the Revolt directly targeted these moderates, and over one thousand were murdered. The Christians who had also failed to join in the violence were likewise targeted. That both moderate Muslims and Christians were relatively wealthy was an added incentive to the Islamic mob. Muslim political leaders tried to limit the damage, but the two communities moved further apart. Note also that when the British did indeed leave, the cause of the friction was removed, but the damage had been done.

For the Christian community the focus of the Arab Revolt of 1936-39 was not British rule as such, rather it was specifically related to one issue: Jewish immigration. It is this attitude which must now be considered. This immigration did not happen in a vacuum. By opposing Jewish refugees fleeing from Germany in 1936 onwards, the Palestinian Christian communities also force us to confront their views about;

Nazism and Hitler.

In 1938, an American writer wrote: “What is to be done with these people, with the millions who are clawing like frantic beasts at the dark walls of the suffocating chambers where they are imprisoned? The Christian world [not just Palestinians!] has practically abandoned them and sits by with hardly an observable twinge of conscience in the midst of this terrible catastrophe.”

What was known

About the war in general

The claim that the Palestinian Arabs were remote from and knew nothing about outside matters is false. Possibly, isolated rural areas such as the southern Hebron hills might have had little knowledge, but that is an argument unavailable to the Christians of Palestine, who were the most urbanised and best educated in the wider Palestinian community.

This idea that the Palestinians were largely unaware of events in Europe is again refuted by the great interest shown by the Palestinian press in the Spanish civil war. The Palestinian press gave extensive coverage of these event, with background pieces on the opposing sides, with emphasis and support for the Nationalist (fascist) forces. The Filastin devoted its back covers to photos of the war, described as “no small feat at the time.”^{^[622]} Palestinian sympathy was, as with Nazism itself, initially one of enthusiastic support, waning over time to disappointment and antagonism.^{^[623]} The Spanish Civil war began in 1936, just as the Palestinian Revolt and general strike were most popular. The Palestinians saw similarities between their own struggle and that of the Nationalist forces, the Filastin even stressing the roles of “Jewish soldiers”^{^[624]} in the Republican camp. Through this linkage, they both hoped to gain German and Italian support for their own cause, and to encourage their own supporters that the Spanish example showed that success was possible. In this vein, Filastin even described the Republican forces as “enemies of the Arabs.” All of which is to say that the Palestinian press and community were by no means unaware of events in Europe. The reference to “Jewish soldiers” in this conflict is also interesting. Jews comprised 0.018% of the Spanish population. Ideas of Jewish soldiers was a specifically Catholic charge^{^[625]} and intended to make the link between Jews and communists. Again, a specifically Christian anti-Semitism was being propagated by a Palestinian Christian paper, based on a mutual hatred of Jews.

Mary Wilson, a teacher at Biezeit throughout the revolt, noted that most of her students were pro-Nazi and approved of Hitler.^{^[626]} Zionist intelligence files cite numerous specific Arab Christians who were supportive of Germany.^{^[627]} Khalil al-Sakakini, a Christian Jerusalem educator, jotted down in his diary, "rejoiced [as did 'the whole Arab world'] when the British bastion at Tobruk fell in 1941 to the Germans." One of the first public opinion polls in Palestine, conducted by al-Sakakini's son, Sari Sakakini, on behalf of the American consulate in Jerusalem, in February 1941 found that 88 percent of the Palestinian Arabs favoured Germany and only 9 percent Britain.[628] Sakakini’s children learned the German national anthem. Discussing the growing popularity of Nazism, one British official that "the anti-Semitic character of present-day Germany, the pre-war German sympathies of the former Ottoman subjects, and a desire to seize upon any opportunity for change, were amongst the motives.”^{^[629]}

The war itself reached into Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, and in 1940, the Italians bombed Tel Aviv, causing 137 deaths, including seven Arabs. Palestine was a British troop garrison, its population had ringside seats. “All Palestinian newspapers reported in detail on the progress of the war.”^{^[630]} An editorial in Filastin pointed out the importance of the outcome of the war for the Arab nations.^{^[631]} Filastin supported the British against the Nazis, and also ran articles detailing Nazi acts against Muslims in Russia. Clearly, informed Palestinian opinion was well aware of the momentous events taking place all around them.

The question then has a more narrow focus;

“what did the Palestinian community know about Nazi anti-Jewish atrocities?”

The Palestinian community was initially sympathetic to Hitler because he hated Jews. In 1933, just after Hitler took power, the Mufti “conveyed his admiration and support to the Hitler government, praising in particular the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis.”^{^[632]} Indeed, the Mufti contacted the German consul to declare his support and to offer his services.^{^[633]} The Palestinian newspaper al-Jami’a al-Arabiyya, the official paper of the Supreme Muslim council, wrote in 1933; “As is well known, Herr Hitler and his party are the most violent adversaries of the Jews … As far as the position of the Arabs … because the Jews are our enemies our wish and our hope rest of course on Hitler.”^{^[634]} Indeed, Palestinian notables met with the German Consul in Palestine in 1933 as they wished to learn more about the German boycott of Jewish goods, and to offer their help in this. The Consul reported that the Mufti wanted to join the boycott and offered to spread the word through special emissaries if necessary.

Also in 1933, Bishop Graham Brown wrote a discussion with his Palestinian theological students. “I was speaking to them about the position of Christian minorities in Iraq, and they fully approved of the need of securing that their rights as citizens should be maintained. When I applied the same principles to the rights of the Jewish minority in Germany at the present time they were unwilling to apply the principles accepted for the Christian minorities in Iraq and explained their reason for this was as the Jews had betrayed the Germans in the War they were now receiving their due punishment as God said it would extend even to the third and fourth generation.”[635] So much for their not knowing what was happening in Germany!!

Note that at this time, the Germans offered very little to the Palestinians, when indeed, they were keen to expel their own Jewish population. Indeed, up until late 1941, there were no practical reasons or benefits to the Nazi/Palestinian relationship. Up till then Hitler’s policies actually worked against Palestinian interests. It was more of an in principle supporting of a likeminded fellow traveller – The Mufti could affirm the German goal of expelling Jews as being identical (if not helpful) to his own. Indeed, in a second meeting with the consul, the Mufti did try unsuccessfully to impress upon him his demand for a cessation of Jewish immigration to Palestine from Germany.^{^[636]} This rebuttal did not however cause a weakening of the Mufti’s support for Hitler. It was not until the Revolt of 36, when the Mufti became far more anti-British than before, that contacts with Germany really began to deepen.

In 1936, the Arab Chamber of Commerce petitioned the German consul to stop Jewish migration. They were given a sympathetic reception (again, sympathetic because they both hated Jews!), but again without success. In 1937, a Palestinian delegation met with the German emissary to Iraq. This combined with the Peel report, which would have seen an independent Jewish state in Palestine, caused a rethink by the Germans. The German foreign minister announced his rejection of a Jewish state. This in turn led the Mufti to suggest sending a delegation to Berlin, an offer declined by the Germans. What you have at this stage is, rather than an alliance based on mutual self-interest, is an empathy based on mutual belief, and that belief was hatred of the Jews. They were united by their anti-Semitism, and this gave them a comradery which was still struggling for a more concrete expression.

In September 1938, Hitler told the Sudeten Germans; “Take the Arab Palestinians as your ideal. With unusual courage they fight both England’s British Empire and the world Jewry.”^{^[637]} Hitler could admire the anti-Jewish Revolt, but he still sought to avoid antagonizing Britain, with whom he hoped to avoid an all-out war. The Palestinians could admire Hitler’s anti-Semitic acts, but did not like one of its consequences, an increase in Jewish migration. With relations with Britain souring over Czechoslovakia, the idea of encouraging instability with the British empire became more appealing. Admiral Canaris of German counterintelligence met secretly with the Mufti in Beirut in 1938. Financial aid was given, as was an unsuccessful offer of military aid. All the while, Jewish immigration continued at an increasing rate.

Further sources available to the Palestinians

Hitler’s persecution of Germany’s Jews was also obviously widely reported in the Palestinian Jewish press. The Palestinian Jewish paper Ha ‘aretz carried an article titled “On Hitler’s rise to power” dated Feb 1, 1933. In it, the writer noted that Hitler “Has terrified all Jews in the world.”^{^[638]} “In February-April 1933, both Davar and Ha’aretz carried copious front-page reportage of the German authorities’ persecution of Jews and oppositionists.”^{^[639]} On March 17, the Palestine Post wrote; “It would be futile optimism and foolish blindness to conclude that there is nothing but hysteria and exaggeration behind the news pouring out of Germany about violence and murder, and a virtual reign of terrorism, aimed at the Jewish citizens of Germany.”^{^[640]} February 10, 1933, Do’ar ha-Yom noted “The Nazis’ mayhem in the streets, the assaults, the murders of little children.”

Outside of Germany itself, of all peoples, it was the Palestinians who had the greatest exposure and access to information as to what was happening to the Jews of Germany – Palestine was where the desperate refugees were going! They just had to ask!

How then did they respond to Jewish claims of persecution in Germany, especially as these persecutions were being used to justify Jewish immigration into Palestine? Sakakini mocked them as paranoid; they were “always wailing about being persecuted by the Germans.”^{^[641]} Nor did this change when confronted by the facts. Sakakini could not “forgive the Jews, even when he learned that the Nazis were killing them.” On reading of the sinking of the Sturma, he wrote that, had they had self-government, the Arabs would have mined the waters to prevent it reaching Palestine.^{^[642]} He ridiculed the public day of mourning held by the Jewish community in Palestine, and wrote a sarcastic article published on the front page of Falastin (the English language edition of Filastin); “Welcome cousins, we are the guests and you are the masters of the house. We will do everything to please you. You are, after all God’s chosen people.” The article was extremely popular, and he received widespread praise for it.^{^[643]} Reports of up to 60% of Palestine’s Arabs supporting the Nazis are difficult to evaluate, but Sari-al-Sakakini wrote at the time that the Arab national movement was pro German, not because of bribes or German agents, but because the Germans opposed the Jews, and so “the Arabs had turned to Germany.”^{^[644]} Indeed, after German army successes of 1939/40, Hitler was described as “an Arab hero.”

More diplomatically, writing from Jerusalem in 1938, leading Greek Orthodox thinker George Antonius (author of The Arab Awakening) wrote a draft letter to the president of the United States. In it (and formulating arguments that would be used extensively after the Holocaust) he argued that “we are shocked at the way Christian nations are treating [the Jews], … the treatment meted out to Jews in Germany and other European countries is a disgrace to its authors and to modern civilization …but the cure for the eviction of Jews from Germany is not be to sought in the eviction of the Arabs form their homeland.”^{^[645]} The degree to which Palestinian Arabs were shocked by the German treatment of the Jews is debatable, given that their leaders supported it and desired to emulate it, but they were useful sentiments to write to the Americans. Far more significantly, written in 1938 from Jerusalem, it again confirms that educated Palestinians were well aware of the horrors being visited upon the German Jewish community, and that they hardened their hearts and refused shelter to those who were dying. The English language Falastin also contained clear anti-Semitism, from its first edition which claimed that the Jews control the world’s media, to the edition which headlined “Bolshevism is Jewish.”^{^[646]}

The Palestinian community knew that Hitler was persecuting the Jewish people, and that some of these Jews were trying to flee to save their lives to Palestine. This elicited from them only mockery and ridicule.

Discussion

“British reports in 1936 highlight Arab Christian participation in joint Muslim/Christian rallies (against Jewish immigration etc).”^{^[647]}

On August 19, 1936, Christian leaders from across Palestine appealed to the world to recognise the danger of Zionist control of Palestine. They used traditional anti-Semitic arguments to insist that the international Christian community should prevent Jewish immigration, stop them from “defiling” the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and prevent the neglect of the holy sites that would occur under Jewish rule. “An impressive list of Christian leaders from the Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Anglican and Maronite communities signed a ‘Call of Palestinian Christians to the Christian World to Save the Holy Places from Zionist danger.’”^{^[648]}

The PNCC members “abhorred the tide of Jewish immigration.”[649]

Palestinian Arabs were intimately affected by the Nazi persecution of the Jews. They were living with one of its consequences (increased Jewish immigration), this topic really mattered to them. They were concurrently the closest to the testimonies of the victims, and their own press and the local Jewish press gave much information. When they found out, they did not express horror or outrage, rather they gave massive approval. They inquired as to how they might assist and emulated them. They clearly knew something about Hitler’s April 1 boycott of Jews in 1933 and arranged to meet with German officials to learn more. The Mufti congratulated Hitler in a way that showed he knew and approved of Nazi anti-Semitism. How could this be if the Palestinian Arabs knew nothing of what was happening in Europe? Clearly, they did.

Different options, anti-Zionism verses anti-Semitism

Given that Jewish refugees arriving in Palestine during the British Mandate desired the formation of a “Jewish national home” within Palestine (something which occurred in no other land where Jewish refugees went), one can posit the proposition that in rejecting the arrival of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, the Palestinian community were anti-Zionist, but not necessarily anti-Semitic.

This could be a complicated theoretical discussion, but history gives us a clear, unambiguous answer. Basically, to be anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic, the Palestinian Arab communities would have objected to the idea of Jewish national home within Palestine, but wished Jews well, elsewhere. To be anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, they would have had to not only oppose the Jewish community within Palestine, but to also oppose Jews wherever they lived.

In 1898 a German reader asked the Christian Arab editors of al-Muqtataf for their response to the first Zionist Conference. They replied that they thought the prospects for Zionist success remote, and that they would “do better to ameliorate the conditions of Jews in Russia, Rumania and Bulgaria.”^{^[650]} This attitude was also well represented within the various Jewish communities of Europe during this time. For example, Edwin Montague, the Jewish member of the British Parliament who served as Secretary of State for India (1917-22) similarly thought Zionism should be rejected, and Jewish energy put into improving their place within those lands where they lived.^{^[651]} This option would be tragically shown to have been a false hope by the events of the Holocaust. That event was still in the future however, and many people saw the idea of aiding Jews where they presently lived as a legitimate counterproposal to Zionism.

Were the Arab communities then simply anti-Zionist, opposing the creation of a Jewish State, but wishing Jews elsewhere well? The Palestinian community might have held this view. Or were the two concepts, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, essentially identical for them? If they were not anti-Semitic, but simply anti-Zionist, then they would then have opposed an ideology (Nazism) which was responsible for increasing the very thing, Jewish immigration, that they were struggling with. Christian (and Muslim) Arabs could well have decided that their best option was indeed to help ameliorate conditions for Jews in Germany, as this would vastly reduce the number wanting to flee. While by no means an ideal position (such as welcoming and valuing the fleeing refugees), it could have been an option. They did not have to make common cause with Hitler. His early activities were profoundly detrimental to their own perceived best interests. Shamefully, the strong public support for Hitler from the 1930s to the present, shows the Palestinian and Arab communities to have been massively anti-Semitic, not just anti-Zionist.

Likewise, in early 1948, Arab governments uniformly threatened publicly at the United Nations that should the UN Partition vote pass (recognising a Jewish state), they would exact reprisals against the Jewish communities living in their lands. These reprisals, often starting with deadly riots, soon became mass expulsions. Roughly 850,000 Jews were forcibly driven from Arab lands, where they had lived for generations. Arab states punished local Jews because of Israel. Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism were indistinguishable. Note also that, like the early effects of Nazi policy, these expulsions were to the direct detriment of Palestine’s Arabs. The expelled Jews found a home in Israel, greatly strengthening it.

One could fairly say that supporting anti-Jewish measures harmed the Palestinian cause. No Arabs viewed it as such, however – attacking Jews was an obvious reaction for them against the creation of the Jewish state. If any distinctions can be drawn, they would be that anti-Semitism was a higher priority than anti-Zionism for these communities, although again, I doubt they saw it in such terms.

This distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is largely a Western construct devised by people who wish to hate the Jewish state, but not suffer the opprobrium of anti-Semitism. The Palestinian Arab community, like the Arab communities in general, had no problem with hating Jews (that was a European reaction to the Holocaust) and were generally both anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. The minute distinctions between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism (or Jew-hatred) are simply not a pre-occupation for the vast majority of Arabs (unless when talking to Westerners!). They have no qualms about hating Jews in general and see such hate as part and parcel of their struggle against the Jewish State.

In fact, they voted with their hearts. The Arab communities across the Middle East (in Iraq, Syria, Egypt and elsewhere), including the Christian Arabs in Palestine, saw in Hitler a kindred spirit, someone who shared their hatred of Jews, and they embraced him as such. Hitler got it. He understood. He shared their worldview. For this reason, they gave him their love. Al-Husseini, the official leader of the Palestinian Arab community, advised Hitler that the best way to win Arab hearts was to preach hatred of the Jews.^{^[652]}

Conclusion

The Arab Revolt was a seismic event in Palestinian history. The one demand of the Arab Revolt of 1936 that the Christian community full heartedly supported was the demand for the banning of Jewish immigration. When they made this demand, the Palestinian community in general, and the Christian Palestinian community in particular were well aware and even supportive of the anti-Jewish nature and policies of the Nazi government in Germany. The Christian Arab community, fully aware of what was happening, did not have to go along with this. Yet Palestinian Christian leaders unanimously supported the anti-immigration policies of the Revolt; opposed giving refuge to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. It is hard to set the bar for morality lower than that. In supporting this cruel policy, they turned their backs on the refugees, on the commands of Jesus, and denied their faith.

Showing love to one's neighbour and love to the stranger, aid to one “fainting before murderers” should not have been beyond them! They could simply have acted on Psalm 37:3 “Trust in the LORD and do good;” Had the Christian community opened their doors and hearts to these people, and welcomed them in, how different history might have been! But even recently I have heard a well know Palestinian Christian defend the “Arab Revolt” of 1936 and the Christian participation in it; defend killings aimed at stopping Jews fleeing Nazi Germany from finding refuge! This cannot be defended in terms of their faith (which commands the opposite!), but only in nationalistic terms. It needs also be stressed that their failure was by no means unique! Jewish migration to Palestine indeed presented the Arab population there with unique challenges; nowhere else did Jewish immigrants desire a “national home.” Yet no nation on earth would receive them. With their initial widespread support of the Revolt and General Strike, the Christian community showed that not only were they prepared to place nationalism above their faith, they were prepared to choose it even when it directly opposed their faith. That the chaos they supported soon turned on them also shows only that “if you do not stand by faith, you shall not stand at all (Isaiah 7:9).”

In the 1930s, the Jewish people fell into the hands of robbers. "Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." "Then the King will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, … for I was a stranger and you did not invite me in.”

By 1936, when these Jews were fleeing clear Nazi persecution, we could have hoped that the local Christians would have given them refuge and helped and welcomed them, as the teachings of Jesus would require. To do so, however, would have required a renunciation of their own history from its very beginning. It would also have placed many of them in direct conflict with their wider denominational policies. Tragically, it did indeed prove to be beyond them. Their false theology, itself based in selfishness and venal self-interest, meant they stood with their ancestors who had stoned Jews trying to return to Jerusalem, and persuade a ruler to break his oath so that Jews might be murdered or expelled from Jerusalem. Who had persecuted them relentlessly, even as they themselves were being persecuted by Islam. Who had gone to a Muslim court 1847 (less than 90 years earlier) to demand of the Muslim rulers their right to kill Jews who walked past their main church, and who had beaten a Jew who stepped inside as little as 9 years earlier. This is the grief and the tragedy of the Arab church in Palestine. Like the churches in Europe, the churches in Palestine raced forward towards inevitable failure.

For the Palestinian Christians, preventing Jewish immigration before and during World War 2 was the priority, not British colonialism. In the late 1930s, Jewish refugees were trying to enter the only place on earth that might give them refuge. Local Christian leaders played a prominent role in the 1936 General Strike opposing refuge for these Jews fleeing Nazi Germany, a fact approved of by many in the Christian the anti-Israel crowd of today. Given that those Jews were trying to flee the genocide of the Holocaust, that those who could not flee were murdered, how should we view this Palestinian stance? Palestinians need to own up to their Jew hatred and repent.

During the War

On April 28, 1939, Hitler made a speech to the Reichstag violently attacking British policy towards Palestine. The speech “electrified” Palestinian opinion. With the defeat and exhaustion of the Palestinian forces in the Revolt however, even the Mufti counselled that the Arabs should remain neutral in the coming war unless an Axis victory was assured.^{^[653]} In June 1940, the Mufti, then residing in Iraq, sent a letter to the German embassy in Turkey. It congratulated Hitler on his victory in France, and asked that he now address the Arab question. He signed it as the president of the Arab Higher Committee of Palestine. The German ambassador showed a distinct lack of interest in this overture.^{^[654]} Again in August 1940, an envoy was sent, this time to Berlin. He sought assurances from the Germans, including “a recognition of the Arabs right to solve the Jewish problem in Palestine in a manner which conforms to the national interest of the Arabs.”^{^[655]} In return, he promised the resumption of the Arab revolt in Palestine, a cause for which he then requested money and munitions. On October 21, the Germans finally committed themselves to “full sympathy” to the cause of Arab independence. This was less than the Arab leaders were hoping for. In an interesting move, the Mufti then wrote again to Hitler in January 1941, this time essentially abandoning demands for Arab independence from (Vichy) France, and Italian north Africa. In now mentioned only those parts of the Arab world under British rule. The German reply in April stressed their common enmity towards Britain and the Jews.

On November 28, 1941, in response to a request from the Mufti, Hitler stated that the objective of a German advance in the Middle East would be the destruction of Judaism in Palestine.^{^[656]} During the war, the Mufti broadcast on over 6 stations, telling his listeners to “kill the Jews.”^{^[657]}

The Mufti and the Holocaust

The Mufti was not in Palestine during the war, so his views and actions are not necessarily representative. That he would return to Palestine after the war^{^[658]} and is revered by them to this day (his photo is given pride of place in the offices of PA president, Mahmoud Abbas) is what makes his actions during the war of wider significance. “In November 1943, when he became aware of the nature of the Nazi final solution, the Mufti said: It is the duty of Muhammadans in general and Arabs in particular to … drive all Jews from Arab and Muhammadan countries…. Germany is also struggling against the common foe who oppressed Arabs and Muhammadans in their different countries. It has very clearly recognized the Jews for what they are and resolved to find a definitive solution for the Jewish danger that will eliminate the scourge that Jews represent in the world.”^{^[659]}

Finally, in November 1941, the Mufti arrived in Berlin, where he would stay till the end of the war. He was given an official reception, luxury accommodation at the Castle Bellevue, and an annual stipend of the equivalent of $12 million a year.[660] In their first meeting, Hitler agreed with the Mufti that they were fighting a common enemy, “the Jews.” The Mufti approved of and visited concentration camps and desired one for Palestine.^{^[661]} Already in 1937 he had issued an ‘Appeal to all Muslims of the World’, urging them to “cleanse their land of the Jews.”^{^[662]} By May 1942, both Hitler and Mussolini had officially agreed to his request to liquidate the Jews of Palestine.^{^[663]} Again during the war, he urged “the expulsion of all the Jews from all Arab and Muslim countries”, and stated that the Germans had found a definite solution to the Jewish problem.^{^[664]} This was not Anti-Zionism, simply wishing that Jews lived happily elsewhere, but not in Palestine. This was global genocidal anti-Semitism. Again, the Mufti pressured the Axis forces to murder the Jews of the Middle East wherever they were able. Walter Rauff, who had invented the mobile gassing vans, visited Rommel in 1942, but was thrown out. He nevertheless was appointed head of the Gestapo in Tunis, and in this capacity murdered 2,500 Jews in Tunisian, and deported to Europe a further 350. After the war, he worked for Syrian intelligence. On June 24, German forces crossed into Egypt. The next day al-Husseini’s “Voice of the Free Arab” radio station told its listeners in Cairo to start making lists of the home addresses and workplaces of every Jew there, so they could all be annihilated.^{^[665]}

The Mufti wrote that Eichmann (the architect of the Holocaust) was “a rare diamond, … the best redeemer for the Arabs.”^{^[666]} He intervened numerous times to prevent Jews from fleeing Axis lands and specified that they should be sent to Poland instead, a destination he knew equated to death. Writing of his efforts to prevent Jewish Bulgarian children from being allowed to flee Europe, German Foreign Office Councillor, Wilhelm Melchers, who worked closely with him in this, stated “the Mufti was a sworn enemy of the Jews, and made no secret of the fact he would rather see them all killed.”^{^[667]} Writing of these events after the war, the Mufti viewed them favorably “my letters had positive and useful results for the Palestinian problem.”^{^[668]}

Within Palestine, during the war sentiment generally appears to have become more pro-British, especially as the Nashashibis were present and the Mufti was in exile.^{^[669]} This is interesting, as the Arab revolt against the British had just ended. There were several factors responsible for this. The largely middle class urban Palestinian population had been alienated by the extremism of the last stages of the Revolt. Equally, the Nashashibi support for the British had delivered an obvious victory in the form of the British White Paper, which halted Jewish immigration and cleared the way for Palestinian statehood.[670]

With the Jewish immigration out of the way, the Palestinian urban middle class, of whom the Christians were a large portion, found British rule by no means unbearable. Most Palestinians were essentially content with a British rule leading to eventual independence. For the Christians especially, the Mufti’s anti-British stand did simply did not resonate. The Christians liked the British but wanted them to be more anti-Jewish. A nuance well captured in Sakakini, who worked for the mildly pro-British Arabic radio station in Ramallah, yet also wrote that Hitler “opened the eyes of the world”^{^[671]} to the true position of the Jews. The massive British military presence in the country also had a calming effect. Indeed, after the fire and fury of the Arab Revolt, the war years, full of fire and fury elsewhere, were looked back on by the Palestinians as a time of calm between the storms.

Elsewhere in the Middle East.

In Egypt, there was “diffuse pro-German sentiment as widespread at the outbreak of the war.”^{^[672]}Also during the war, fascist forces sacked the Jewish quarter of Benghazi, and over 2,000 Jews were deported to European concentration camps. In Syria, the New York Times wrote that “the whole country is a hotbed of Nazi propaganda.”^{^[673]} In June 1941, there was a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq, and during the anti-Jewish riots known as the Farhud, hundreds of Jewish men, women and children were murdered. Pro-Nazi movements expressed themselves in anti-Jewish riots. It was precisely this aspect of Naziism which most appealed to them. In 1939, King Ibn Saud sent one of his government ministers, Khalid al-Qarqani to meet with Hitler in Berlin. When Hitler told him of his plan to expel all German Jews, Qarqani repeated the King’s view that Muhammad had carried out the identical policy in the Arabian Peninsula centuries before.^{^[674]} Hitler told the representative from Saudi Arabia that Germany had warm sympathy for the Arabs “because we are jointly fighting the Jews.” All this is absolute anti-Semitism, not just an objection to Zionism. Also, in Syria, posters in Arabic stating "In heaven God is your ruler, on earth Hitler" were frequently displayed in shops in the towns.^{^[675]}

Note also the pan-Arabic intellectuals who affirmed the Iraqi army in 1933 when it ‘supressed’ the Assyrians, and the Baath party covenant which called for the expulsion of non-loyal non-Arab minorities.^{^[676]}

There was therefore significant support for the Nazis across the Middle east, and Nazi anti-Semitism was an explicit reason for that support.

After the war

On June 2, 1946, the Mufti returned to the Middle East and resumed leadership of the AHC. In 1948, Anwar Nusseibeh wrote that the Mufti had not gone beyond the principles of Arab patriotism by collaborating with the Nazis.^{^[677]} What is also highly relevant here is Rubin’s comment about the Nazi collaboration of the Mufti and his circle; “Yet al-Husseini and the other Arab and Muslim collaborators would emerge from the war not only unscathed but with their political careers intact. Indeed, their prospects actually improved.”^{^[678]} Whatever false claims for Palestinian ignorance during the war existed, none existed now, yet still there was no repentance, no second thoughts.

On May 12, 1947, the AHC Secretary-general, Palestinian Christian Emile Ghouri addressed this very issue at the United Nations General Assembly’s special session on Palestine; “The Jews are questioning the record of an Arab spiritual leader. Does that properly come from the mouth if a people who have crucified the founder of Christianity?”[679] To this day, Hitler and Mein Kamph remain popular across the Middle East, and among Palestinians. In 1999 for example, Mein Kampf was “sixth on the Palestinian best-seller list."^{^[680]} Recently a Palestinian journalist was fired from the BBC for posting that “Hitler was right.”[681] There is a deluge of posts on Facebook, TicToc etc by Palestinians proclaiming their love for Hitler. In Gaza there is a fashion store named Hitler. Young Palestinians who visited the shop told Reuters they were drawn to the place as a symbol of their solidarity "The name of the shop is 'Hitler' and I like him because he was the most anti Jewish person.”[682] Also recently the “official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida had warm words for a member of the Atwan family who chose to name his son Eichmann, after SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, one of the key Nazi major officials who propagated the Holocaust.”[683] This popularity is iconic. It is not because of the political and economic theories laid out in Mein Kampf, it is due solely to Hitler’s hatred and murder of Jews, a hatred and a goal shared by far too many. They continue to recognise in him a kindred spirit. This again gives lie to the idea that Palestinians are anti-Zionist, but not anti-Jewish. Had they been so, they would have opposed Hitler and hoped that the Jews remained happy in Germany.

This support highlights the hypocrisy of the many Arab calls for Jews to “go back to Europe.” They supported the Nazis in Europe! “Go back to where we supported your murderers” means only one thing – widespread Arab support for eliminationist anti-Semitism.

Intercommunal relations after the Revolt, after WW2, before the War of 1948

From the heights of the CMAs in 1919, Christian/Muslim relations had reached their nadir by the end of the Revolt. Mutual distrust and intercommunal acts of violence, overwhelmingly Muslim against Christian, became common. After the Revolt, relations settled down somewhat. The Christian communities went out of their way to swear fealty to the Muslim majority, under the banner of nationalism. The anthem of the Orthodox Union Club, Jerusalem, 1942 declared; “We are the army of the nation … Arab is our core, brothers in the jihad … our blood is for the country.”[684] In 1944, the Union of Arab Orthodox Clubs decided to adopt a logo. All patterns considered combined a cross with the Palestinian flag. The majority of Union committee members rejected them all, “if an emblem with a symbol of the cross is adopted, … their Moslem brothers would become angry.” “Christians of all denominations, who had witnessed the increase in sectarian violence and communal identification during the Revolt, even the Orthodox community, whose members had generally insisted on their Arab-ness, were shaken by the increased anti-Christian sentiments.”[685]

Muslim Arabs during this time also complained about the Christians. There was a decrease in Muslim/Christian violence, but the rift from the Revolt continued. Arif al-Arif, the district commissioner in Beersheba, spoke against Arab Christians. They held too many government jobs, and “cheated” on the Muslims, putting on “the national cloak as an excuse,” but in reality, shying away from open revolt or sacrificing anything important. “Zionist intelligence also claimed that Arab Christians were fearful of Muslims: ‘Jews who are close to the Christian circles’, a 1941 report suggested, say that ‘Christians are starting to fear that the Muslims will inflict punishment on them when the opportunity arises.’ A report from Tiberias in the same year attributed Christians’ ‘lack of loyalty’ directly to Muslim pressure on that community, suggesting that the two ideas are directly connected, without revealing which one drove the other. An informant recounted a conversation he had with a Christian mukhtar in Bethlehem about recent ‘cases of theft by Muslims’. As he spoke, the report explains, ‘one could sense the fear in which Christians live because of Muslims. Although [Christians] are a majority in Bethlehem, in the region they’re a minority and that puts them under constant fear.’”[686]

The imploding situation still did not lead any Christian institutions to question their fundamental loyalties. “Christians were no more likely that the Muslims to support the Zionists.”[687] Interestingly, with nationalism having failed to provide an embracing, secular identity in which Palestinian Christians could live as equals, a significant number of Christians now turned to the Arab Communist party in the hope that it in turn would deliver a secular alternative. Arab Orthodox comprised 50% of its membership into the 1960s.[688]

In 1940 the Melkite Bishop Hajjar died and was replaced by the Reverend George Hakim as the new Melkite bishop of Galilee. He continued Hajjar’s tight-rope act of both strongly supporting Palestinian nationalism while also trying to stand up for the rights of his confessional community. In 1945, he appealed to the British for help against what he called “anti- Melkite activities” in some villages in the Galilee. Having asked for British help, he then blamed the British occupation for increased hostilities between Muslims and Christians (who had lived “for hundreds of years past in perfect harmony”) and demanded that the government step in to protect the Christian population. He further wrote that he had worked with the Muslims of the area to alleviate anti-Christian behaviour, and had even paid a large sum to them (!!), but his efforts were in vain. “Despite this issue, there is no evidence that the Melkite community diverged from its consistent support for the national project. Bishop Hakim continued to present the Melkite position as identical to that of the rest of the Palestinian community.”[689]

In early 1946, speaking on behalf of the Christian Arabs of Palestine, Reverend Hakim made a statement before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. His prepared speech had no objective other than to demonstrate Christian solidarity with Muslims. He began by asserting that in spite of being Christian, he was an Arab; “I am an Arab and my connections with the Byzantine Church do not deprive me of being an Arab with Arab blood running in my veins-just as an Englishman is English whether he is Roman Catholic or Anglican.”[690]

Beyond that, he “limited his statement” to three points, which clarified the basis and extent of Christian involvement in the nationalist movement.

First, that "the Christian Arab in Palestine had everything in common with their Moslem brethren and that religious beliefs did not in any way make of them two peoples."

Second, that "Zionism was a menace to the Christian as well as to the Moslem population in Palestine.”

Third, that "the Zionists claim to Palestine was based on Biblical promises in the Old Testament and that all promises given to the people of Israel in the Old Testament have been annulled by the advent of Christ.”

The Reverend Nikola al-Khury, Secretary of the Arab Greek Orthodox Clergy, immediately added that: “we Christian Arabs in Palestine are very happy living in this country with our Moslem brethren. We are being treated well, and we have been living for hundreds of years amicably together, with no differences between us, and our Holy Places have been guarded, and we have no molestation from any sect so far. I believe that the country should be left to its inhabitants, whoever they are, as they are living well together. As far as the Moslems and Christians are concerned, we have been living very well together, and there have been no differences between us for many hundreds of years. We are all as one nation.”[691] As already noted, Anglican Bishop Stewart also wrote to the Anglo-American Committee in March 1946 that “there was no truth to the Zionist claims to Palestine, based on Old Testament history and prophecies. As far as the Christian understanding is concerned, the church became the new spiritual Israel and heir to the promises, where racial and other barriers are broken down.”^{^[692]}

So, a year after the situation between Melkites and the Muslim majority were so bad that, after bribes had failed, he was compelled to ask the British for help, Reverend Hakim told the public Inquiry that they were one with the Muslims, and the Secretary of the Arab Greek Orthodox Clergy likewise proclaimed that “As far as the Moslems and Christians are concerned, we have been living very well together, and there have been no differences between us for many hundreds of years.” That is, they lied in open inquiry to spare their communities further violence. They embraced their slavery and affirmed their dhimmitude. They and the Anglican Bishop all opposed Jewish self-determination in religious terms, thereby affirming the theological anti-Semitism common to all three, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant.

In May 1946, the AHC and the opposing 'Arab Higher Front' were replaced with the AHE ('Arab Higher Executive') to represent Palestinian Arabs. The chairman of the AHE was Haj Amin al Husseini.[693]

In 1947 at meeting of Arab Orthodox clergy in Jerusalem, Reverend Ya’qub al-Hanna stated; “the hour has struck to participate with the people in repelling the dangers encircling the dear homeland.” The Conference sent out 3 telegrams; 1^st to the Arab Higher Executive, led by Haj Amin al-Husseini (the wanted Nazi war criminal!) expressing “absolute confidence in its leadership”, and announcing “to the whole world the cooperation of the Arab Orthodox Community in weal and woe, with its sister, the dear Muslim community.” 3^rd to the British High Commissioner, the community “supports the faithful leaders and the Arab Higher Executive, and rejects partition categorically, announcing its preparedness to safeguard Palestine’s Arabism and the Holy Places at any cost.”[694]

The Arab Anglicans also pushed a strong nationalist agenda throughout the 1940s. Bishop Stewart (who also opposed a Jewish state) feared that “their nationalist spirit is both strong and wrong.”[695] “However Bishop Weston Henry Stewart, who was in Palestine during the 1948 war, protested a pro-Arab document circulated by the Christian Church Union in Palestine that claimed the Christian community was ‘in complete agreement both in principle and in deed with the Moslems[sic]’ and was signed by members of the Arab-Anglican community.”[696]

In 1947 the Latin Patriarch’s secretary wrote to the AHC assuring it that they would never sell land to the Jews.[697]

After the War, as noted, there was no change of heart, no repentance. No grief that millions had indeed died, just as the Jewish community had been so desperately saying. No shame that multitudes had died who might have lived, had the Palestinians not closed their hearts and borders to them. Rather, there was a continued total affirmation of the Nationalist/Muslim agenda, and public proclamations of loyalty to the known war criminal who led it. Their only response once the horrors of the Holocaust were known was to publicly support an enthusiastic advocate of that very Holocaust! The Latin Catholics, meanwhile, the official representatives of the Vatican, felt compelled to inform this wanted Nazi war criminal that they would in no way help the Jewish survivors of said Holocaust. No guilt, no remorse.

In the fleeting years of 1945-47, the consequences of what they had done in working to prevent Jews finding refuge among them in the 1930s, combined with the Muslim majority opting for the leadership of a Nazi war criminal did not cause the Christian communities to re-think the direction they had chosen. While many Palestinian villages throughout the country signed “non-aggression pacts”[698] with Jewish villages, in violation of the Arab national leadership, no such overtures or peace feelers were extended by the Christian communities. Given a last chance to reconsider their ways, and the starkest of choices over whom to follow, they hardened their hearts, excluded compassion and doubled down on wickedness. And then war engulfed them.

Jeremiah 13:16-17 “Give glory to the LORD your God before he brings the darkness, before your feet stumble on the darkening hills. You hope for light, but he will turn it to thick darkness and change it to deep gloom.

But if you do not listen, I will weep in secret because of your pride; my eyes will weep bitterly, overflowing with tears, because the LORD's flock will be taken captive.”

A different option

After the World War was over, something amazing happened in the Palestinian Christian communities. They had fully participated and even led the General Strike of 1936 against allowing Jewish immigration into Palestine, they had been victorious in this, as the 1939 British White Paper stopped all Jewish immigration. They had mocked and dismissed Jewish cries for help, and now, after the War, the reality of the Holocaust was revealed. Six million Jewish men, women and children had been murdered, in part because they had been prevented from fleeing. For the Christian communities of Palestine, this news, proclaimed there more fully and more viscerally than anywhere else, elicited no remorse, no grieving, no repentance. Knowing full well who he was and what he had done, they threw their full support behind the Mufti, the friend of Hitler, who had called on Arabs to kill the Jews, and had wanted Hitler to build gas chambers in Palestine. And to this day they feel no guilt over this and refuse to repent. Neither the reality of Islamic persecution, nor of Jewish suffering could sway them.

In 1945, the Christian Arab community could have said to the Jewish refugees; “In 1936 we ignored your cries for help, we shut our doors in your faces, and now we know that you died there in your millions. Please forgive us, come, take the best of the land (Genesis 45:18), come, your survivors will always have a home with us.” Had the Palestinian Christians shown mercy and generosity to the struggling Jewish refugees, what a blessing might have resulted! What unbreakable bonds of friendship and love might have been forged! They would always have had an honoured place within the land of Israel. See the endless mutual generosity, mutual blessing in the economy of God! Jews are blessed through Gentiles, Gentiles are blessed through Jews, all together praising God! God indeed has no favourites (Romans 2:11), rather we are in an endless cycle of love and affirmation!

Franklin Littell wrote concerning the Christians during the Holocaust; “Those Jews who suffered and died in Hitler’s Europe perished for what the Christians would have suffered for had they remained Christians: the truth that the initiative, the direction and the judgment of history lies in the hands of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Jew was recognized by the Adversary, the enemy of humanity, even when he did not (personally) understand himself, as a sign of the Holy One of Israel. The Christian, who had been grafted into that history by virtue of his baptism, could take on again the protective coloration of heathen ethnicity, could betray his baptism and retreat into non-history, could become an apostate and betrayer. And millions did so, leaving the Jews of the first covenant and a few faithful Christians of the second covenant exposed to the wrath and destruction of the demonic power in whose countenance confessors like Barth and Bonhoeffer recognized the outlines of the Anti-Christ ... For the Christian, the agony of the religious crisis is the inescapable record that while the church ran away in the hour of her visitation, the Jewish people bore the burden of being witnesses in the flesh to the Truth which both peoples professed with their lips. And now the voice of our brother’s blood cries out to God from the ground.”

The Palestinian Christians likewise found themselves in a profoundly difficult situation. They (especially their leaders) had recourse to their faith, to their understandings of God and history, yet they chose to respond as Arabs, rather than as Christians, and their leaders encouraged this! That the mainline church denominations in Europe and America now support them in this is a doubling down on their own complicity in the Holocaust.

“If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.” Christians are repeated warned; “do not be conformed to this world … go beyond the city walls … narrow is the path.”

1948

James 1:15 “and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”

Two adjectives never used to describe the Palestinian Christian communities were “warlike” and “violent.” Thirteen hundred years of being forbidden to bear arms, and having to endure endless robberies, rapes and other humiliations were in part responsible for this. Christian marriages were required by Islamic law to be quiet, while the Muslim marriages were full of guns being fired into the air. Equally, full equality came under British rule, which stressed the rule of law. They were urban middle class, with no tradition of arms. While their enthusiastic support for the General Strike would be indirectly responsible for countess deaths, they had not participated in the more violent aspects of the Arab Revolt. All of which virtually guaranteed that they would fail to carry their weight in a cause to which they were fully committed, the Palestinian side of the 1948 war between Arabs and Jews.

“The Christians, concentrated in the towns, were generally wealthier and better educated. They prospered under the Mandate.”[699] “It is likely that the majority of Christians would have preferred the continuation of the British Mandate to independence under Husseini rule; some may even have preferred Jewish rule. All were aware of the popular Muslim chant: ‘After Saturday, Sunday’ (meaning after we take care of the Jews it will be the Christians’ turn). To compensate, Christian community leaders repeatedly went out of their way to express devotion to the Palestinian national cause; indeed, a coterie of Christian notables was prominent in the Husseini camp.”[700]

As the level of violence increased, many Christians, scarred by the failure of an inclusive Arab identity, and fearful and mistrustful of any future in Palestine, sold up and left. For the majority who stayed, increasing random violence and failure of basic municipal services bore witness to the escalating degradation of life as it had been. Gangs of irregular Muslim fighters, some hired from Palestinian villages, others armed groups from Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, were suddenly everywhere, purportedly to fight the Jews. They came from cultures where plunder was still held to be a worthy aim of battle,[701] and their feelings of loyalty or kinship with urban middle-class Christians were virtually zero. The Christians indeed were more likely to be plundered than protected. This in turn further weakened the Christians desire and ability to take part themselves in the armed struggle, even as their religious leaders proclaimed their devotion to the Arab nation. In truth the Christians had been feeling increasingly marginalized since they failed to join in the Great Revolt, and Muslim suspicions of them only grew during this war.

“When the battles began, interfaith tension worsened.”[702]

“In 1948, as some Muslims had anticipated, the Christian community leaders, notably in Haifa and Jaffa, by and large were far less belligerent than their Muslim counterparts. Zionist leaders repeatedly tried to exploit the rift[703] but at the last moment the Christians almost always shied away from advancing from conciliatory private assurances to moderate public action. During the first weeks of the war, Christian-Muslim relations deteriorated against the backdrop of Jewish-Arab violence and Muslim suspicions that the Christians were collaborating or might collaborate with the Jews. A report in Jerusalem found; ‘The Christians continue to complain about bad behaviour by Arabs towards them. Many of them wish to leave their homes. The gang members [i.e., Arab irregulars] indeed threaten to kill them after they finish with the Jews.’ The Christians further complained that the Muslims were ‘incapable of any sort of organisation and every activity turns into robbery. The only ones capable of organising are the Christians and they are denied access to these positions [of power].”[704]

“There were Muslims who argued that the Christians did not take part in the national struggle and ignored the boycott of the Jews. Sometimes it was true. On the other hand, the centrality of Islam in the Palestinian national movement was among the reasons for this alienation.”[705]

“There were Druze and Christians who feared that, after an Arab victory, the Muslim’s weapons would be directed at them. This was sufficient reason for them not to take part in the fighting.”[706]

In Jaffa, the situation between the Muslims and the Christians was “not good, though outwardly appearances of coerced friendship were maintained. …there was no contact (apart from commercial relations) between the two communities … The Christians hearts now and generally are not with the rioting, because most of them are in commerce and might be harmed.”[707] By early February, Jaffa had no "housing for the refugees and no hospitalization for the wounded, and commerce was paralysed. ... In Jerusalem there was complete chaos. The fighting had deepened the traditional Muslim-Christian rift. In Jerusalem, the Christians were eager to leave, but the Muslims threatened to confiscate or destroy their property. Outside the town, Muslim villagers overran the monasteries at Beit Jimal and Mar Saba, in the former "robbing and burning property," in the latter "murdering [monks] and robbing." The daughter, living in England, of one middle-class Muslim, identified as "Dr. Canaan" — possibly Tawfiq Canaan, a well-known physician, political writer, and folklorist — of Musrara (Jerusalem), wrote to her father: "Yes, daddy, it is shameful that all the Christian Arabs are fleeing the country and taking out their money."[708]

In February 1948, a Muslim leader in a national committee called all Christians “traitors and pimps for the Jews.”[709] The Christians of Haifa were accused of treason, and a battalion commander in the Arab Liberation Army ordered that only Muslim volunteers be allowed in his unit.[710] This inter-communal tension affected the cities’ morale.[711] Christians in Nazareth and the Orthodox in Jerusalem formed their own defence forces.[712]

All this did not lead the Christian communities to aid the Zionists. “Yet as Arab Christians show over and over throughout the Mandate, fears of intercommunal violence did not lead Christians to aid Zionists during the war. Rather, the Christian community rallied against Zionist aggression.”[713]

In March 48, the heads the Greek Orthodox, Latin, Coptic, Anglican, Melkite, Armenian and Maronite churches in Jaffa wrote to the High Commissioner complaining about acts of violence from the Zionists.[714] In June (shortly after the declaration of Israeli statehood), the Christian Union “composed entirely of Arab Clergy who identified themselves completely with the aims of the Arab Higher Committee” was established.[715]

The North

Early in the 1948 war, Arab Christians in the Nazareth district were robbed by Husseini gangs, forcing many to flee to Lebanon.[716] Already in early November 1947, an official reported chaos in the largely Arab-staffed Nazareth District administration; the offices had ceased to function. “The Christians in Nazareth, among them most of the high officials in the district administration, live in fear for their property and lives (in this order) from the Muslims. The Husseini terror has increased lately, and large sums of money are extorted from the Christians. Christians with means are trying to flee the country, especially to Lebanon and the United States."[717]

According to the IDF, in July 48, during the Ten Days truce, many of the Nazareth townspeople were unhappy with the ALA [Arab Liberation Army], "who had behaved tyrannically toward them . . . especially toward the Christians."[718] Against the backdrop of ALA demoralization and disintegration and the flight of Husseini-supporting families, Israeli agents maintained continuous contact with Nazareth's notables about a quiet surrender. Nazareth, with its Christian majority, had traditionally been non-belligerent toward the Yishuv (though sometime in June or early July some locals had murdered a Jewish farmer and dragged his body through the streets behind a motorcycle, to the cheers of bystanders), and the IDF had no reason to unleash its firepower on the town.[719]

Nazareth fell on 16 July, almost without a fight. Thousands of inhabitants, most of them Muslims, streamed out, in cars and by foot … "A wave of true happiness passed over the town, joy mixed with dread in expectation of what was to come. The inhabitants really were joyful that they were rid of the regime of tyranny and humiliation of the [ALA] Iraqi [troops] who used to hit, curse, shoot, and jail the quiet inhabitants without reason. The dread stemmed from [fear] lest the reports they had received about Jewish behaviour in previously occupied areas should prove true;[720]

In Galilee, Christian villagers were more likely to avoid resistance and stay in their homes. They (therefore) also received better treatment than the Muslims. “A number of Israeli officials specifically noted this difference and encouraged better treatment of Christians than Muslims.”[721] “Christian villages, which were usually friendly or not hostile to the Yishuv (Jewish community), were generally left in peace by Yishuv forces.”[722] In operation Hiram, 1948, most Moslems fled to Lebanon, most Christians stayed.[723] Also during operation Hiram, twelve Christians were executed by the Israeli forces.[724] In general, they were less likely to resist Israeli forces, and also less likely to be expelled.

Shefaʿamr

The history of the small village of Shefaʿamr traces the history of Muslim/Christian relations during the Mandate. They began with Christian solidarity for a Muslim religious cause;

In 1929, “Muslim, Christian and Druze representatives from Shefaʿamr (where there was a Christian majority) gave the issue [Muslim riots at the Western Wall] a nationalist interpretation by confirming their support for Arab claims to al-Buraq”[725] The relationship soured, however, and in October 1946, Arab boycott inspectors in Shefa’amr found Jewish goods in two businesses, one owned by a Christian, the other by a Muslim. The Christian was humiliated in public and forced to pay a fine. No action was taken against the Muslim. The inhabitants were convinced that this was religious discrimination. Another resident reported a wave of thefts against Christians, justified on the basis that the goods came from Zionists.[726] In February 1947, after the murder of a Christian by Muslims in the village of Shafa ‘Amr, inter-communal relations there became toxic. “The mutual boycott between Christians and Muslims is stronger than that between the Arabs and the Jews. Therefore the Christians are thinking of leaving Shafa ‘Amr and building for themselves a new village.”[727] In July 1948, in Shefa’amr, the Christian mayor encouraged the Druze and Christians to stay, while the Muslim minority fled.[728]

Haifa

“Every effort is being made by the Jews to persuade the Arab population to stay and carry on with their normal lives, to get their shops and businesses open and to be assured that their lives and interests will be safe.” British district superintendent of Police, April 1948[729]

Of the three main cities, Haifa had the most problematic relations between its Christians and Muslims yet was also a centre of Christian nationalistic support for an Arab Palestine. Reality had not behaved in the way their ideology had hoped for. Inter-communal relations had worsened after the murder of al-Bahri. The local Muslim community had never shown real interest in friendship and were quick to make accusation of disloyalty towards the Christians. For all this, the Christians would nevertheless abandon their homes and livelihoods and follow the Muslims into self-imposed exile.

At the start of 1948, Haifa had about 70,000 Arabs and 74,000 Jews. Of the Arabs, there were about 40,000 Muslims and 30,000 Christians. From as early as October 47, the British noted the leaving of Arab notables and their families from the city. These people generally believed that war was coming, and that while the Arab forces (probably those of the surrounding Arab states) would win, it would be messy and dangerous, and wise to be elsewhere while this occurred. A month before the UN Partition resolution, a meeting of Christian leaders resolved to set up a Christian militia to “protect the lives and property of the Christians. Outwardly the call [for recruits] would be to prepare for attacks by the Jews, but in truth they want to defend themselves against attacks that the Muslims might launch against them if a situation of anarchy prevails during the withdrawal of the British army.”[730] By November, “many Arabs” were reported to be “evacuating their families to neighbouring Arab countries in anticipation of the disorder they foresee.” By mid-December, the number who had left had risen to between 15 and 20,000, and it increased to 25,000 in January. Karsh notes that Haifa’s “Muslims and Christians [led] a mutually antagonistic and largely segregated existence.” As urban Arab life crumbled, each community withdrew further into itself for self-preservation.

“The Christians, erecting clear boundaries between themselves and the Muslims, refused to feed the Arab Liberation Army’s Syrian Lebanese and Iraqi fighters.” They also declared that they would not initiate violence with the Jewish forces and established a special guard to protect themselves from Muslim violence.[731] When supporters of the Mufti broke a local truce and bombed a Jewish commercial centre, a new wave of hundreds of mostly Christian families left. As the situation in Haifa worsened further, a group of Christian residents beat up a group of Arab fighters who were trying to use their street to shell Jewish targets.[732] In March, the AHC ordered the removal of women and children from Haifa.[733] Shabtai Levy, mayor of Haifa, who had tried to negotiate a local truce in December 47, now issued another plea to his Arab colleagues to return to the city.[734] On the eve of renewed fighting, sparked by news of a British withdrawal from major parts of the city, the Arab military commander and two of his deputies also fled the city, prompting a new wave of Arab departures.

On April 22, 1948, after having been defeated militarily in Haifa, the remaining Arab leadership (a mixture of Muslim and Christian notables, led by the local Muslim Brotherhood leader, Sheikh Murad) asked the British to negotiate a truce with the Jews. Under the auspices of the British, the leaders of its Arab community then met with the leaders of the Jewish community. The Jewish community offered them a future “as equal and free citizens of Haifa.”[735] The Jewish Mayor, Shabtai Levi, further expressed his desire that the two communities continue to “live in peace and friendship” and gave “an impassioned plea for peace and reconciliation.” After breaking to consult, the Arab notables, now all Christian,[736] re-assembled and stated that could not sign the truce, and that the Arab population wished to evacuate Haifa. Levi begged them to reconsider, he said they should not leave the city “where they had lived for hundreds of years, where their forefathers were buried, and where, for so long, they had lived in peace and brotherhood with the Jews.” Both the Jewish mayor and the commander of the Jewish forces in Haifa then asked the Arab negotiators to reconsider this course of action. They said they were committing “a cruel crime against their own people”, and that, if they stayed, “they would enjoy equality and peace.” The British mediator at the talks added; “You have made a foolish decision. Think it over, as you will regret it afterwards. You must accept the decision of the Jews. They are fair enough. Don’t permit life to be destroyed senselessly. After all, it was you who began the fighting and the Jews have won.” The truce terms included that Arabs were expected to “carry on their work as equal and free citizens of Haifa.” The Christian Arab leaders replied that they had no choice, and within a few days, only 3,000 Arabs remained within the city.

Strenuous efforts were then made by the Jewish community to convince the Arab population to stay.[737] Bizarrely, the Arab leadership saw the departure (rather than agreeing to a truce), as a victory, and the Jewish community saw their leaving as a defeat. Force was used by the Arab leadership to compel some Arabs to leave. For example, “shortly after announcing their intention to remain in their workplace, the Christian employees of the British army’s northern headquarters began leaving en masse. Asked for the reason for their sudden change of heart, they said they had been threatened with severe punishment if they did not leave.”[738]

“Without doubt, the notables were chary of agreeing to surrender terms out of fear they would be dubbed traitors or collaborators by the AHC.” One of the participants subsequently told how they had been instructed or brow-beaten by Sheikh Murad, who did not participate in this second part of the townhall gathering, to adopt this rejectionist position.”[739]

The reasons for the Arab decision to evacuate Haifa were stated at the time. The British withdrawal was almost complete, and once they left, the Arab armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon would invade. Better to leave for a few days, than sign a treaty with the soon to be defeated Jews. The Palestinian militias might have lost their battle with the Jewish forces, but the Arab armies were expected to win.[740] One of the Arab negotiators told his Jewish counterpart; “they had instructions not to sign the truce … as this would mean certain death at the hands of their own people, particularly the Muslim leaders guided by the Mufti.”

Flight

Mass departures prior to the violence were by no means confined to the Christian population. Across Palestine, the drift of the middle class out of Palestine, especially the sending of their sons to get them away from the war, concerned the AHC. On March 8, the Mufti raised the issue with the governments of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. He wrote about the preference “of a great number of Palestine’s sons to leave their cities and settle in neighbouring Arab countries.” He wrote that the AHC had decided that no one would henceforth be allowed to leave Palestine without it approval, and that “the numerous Palestinians who had left since the start of the fighting” were to be compelled in the national interest to return. Typical of the corruption that has always been endemic to the Palestinian leadership, the Lebanese consul to Jerusalem wrote in the same month of the growing bitterness among the population towards the AHC, whose leaders were fleeing the country.^{^[741]} It is hard not to contrast this with the moral seriousness of the Israelis. At the end of his last meeting with her, the British High Commissioner spoke with Golda Meir about her family. “I understand your daughter is in a kibbutz in the Negev. There will be war and they stand no chance in those settlements. The Egyptians will move through them no matter how hard they fight. Why not bring her home to Jerusalem?” Golda Meir replied “Thank you, but all the boys and girls in those settlements have mothers. If all of them take their children home, who will stop the Egyptians?”^{^[742]}

Also, while not a majority, many Arabs (not just the Christians), including many regional leaders throughout Palestine rejected the leadership of Amin Husseini, and did not take part in the attacks upon the Jewish community in 1947/8. Hillel Cohen notes the “very low participation of Arabs in the armed struggle against the Jews in 1948 … Only a few thousand Palestinians out of a population of 1.3 million volunteered for the Arab Liberation Army led by Fawzi al-Qawuqji, or the local militias that went by the name Holy Jihad. It also helps explain the non-aggression pacts that were reached between Jewish and Arab villages throughout the country, in violation of the Arab national leadership’s orders.”^{^[743]} Regardless, the passivity and flight of the Christian community was noticed and denounced by the Muslim majority.

Other options

Unlike their denominational leaders, the Palestinian Christian population was far from monolithic. Different individuals and different communities explored different possibilities. A few Christians did work with the Israeli forces.[744] Such heretics have been largely ignored and forgotten. A Haganah list from the mid- 1940s of Arabs with a "tendency to cooperation with the Jews" included "many . . . Christians" but few Muslims.[745] The same report continues; “The reason for this is that the Christians suffered a great deal under the Muslims . . . But there are few willing to express their opinion publicly for fear of the reaction of the Muslims.”[746]

In general however, the Christians continued to state their support for the Palestinian cause but were also more likely to surrender to the Jews. This again led to charges of disloyalty. Christians were accused of having aided the Western 'imperialist' powers in establishing the state of Israel. In Jerusalem though, Christians fared no better than their Muslim neighbours.[747] Those Christians who did stay in Israel were also accused of adjusting too easily to their new circumstances. Even now, among Israeli-Arabs, Christians are generally seen as being more moderate, and in fact, they have been known in some cases to volunteer to serve in the Israeli army.

In other cases, resentment was felt over the fact that Christian refugees tended to be absorbed into the larger existing populations much faster than Muslim ones. At the same time, many Christians, particularly from the Orthodox and Protestant Anglican communities, have continued to act on behalf of the nationalist cause, even in some cases, taking part in and leading militant activities.

Conclusion

Once again, the Christians would not abandon the cause they failed to aid. Why did the majority of Palestinian Christians publicly and loudly affirm their total solidarity with the Muslims against the Jews? Why for example did the Christian communities of Haifa flee with the Muslims rather than stay with their homes and jobs, under an honourable peace with the Jews? There are several answers to this. Many, especially among the early evacuees, left because they could see a better long-term future for their families in South America or elsewhere. Of those who left in April, some were forced out by Muslim threats, others by a belief in the standard Arab view of the time that a violent war was coming, and it would be better to be elsewhere during it, and to return after the Arab armies had destroyed the Jews, still others left because they also believed in the Arab victory and were afraid of Muslim retaliation if they stayed. For many, it was a combination of all of the above. The Christians of Haifa had been the first to object to the Jewish return. They were not close to the Muslim population, but the idea of siding with the despised Jews against the Arab cause, the idea that the Jews might actually win against the massed Arab armies, was simply unthinkable. Everything in their past and present spoke against it.

Whatever the reason, in general the Christian Palestinians would neither fight with the Muslims, nor stay without them. They proved incapable of acting decisively on their own behalf. They were incapable of waging either war or peace. They would remain what they had always been, impotent dhimmis. A minority despised and mistrusted by the Muslim majority they reluctantly left everything to follow.

From 1919-1939, Christian Arabs moved from being a full part of the Arab nation back to being dhimmis of their Muslim overlords. The shock of the Muslim Ottoman empire being replaced by “Christian” British and French rulers, and the sudden usefulness of their Christian minority enabled the golden years of the MCAs. With the rise of the Supreme Muslim Council, the World Islamic Conference, and, at the grass roots level, the popularist al-Qassam movement, this brief age was over. From now on, they would be increasingly despised, perceived as disloyal, and periodically threatened. The same pattern, in fact, as was being played out across the Arab Muslim world, both then and through to today. Across the Middle East, Christian communities would continue to be annihilated. For the Palestinian Christian community, the one saving factor was Zionism, the return of the Jewish people to their homeland. The Christian British then American support for this movement meant that the local Christians, who had initially raised the alarm, could be very useful in attacking the religious basis for that support within those nations. This was a role the local Christians and Churches were only too happy to play – they not only believed in it, it also gave them a paper-thin commonality with and usefulness to the Muslim masses that their co-religionists in the rest of the Arab world lacked.

Historical summary

From 1831 to 1948, the sectarian communities of Palestine lived through a cascade of tumultuous event. The previous 1300 years had taught the Christians a humiliating, servile obedience to their Muslim masters. The Muslims had likewise learned to treat all others with utter contempt; the Christians existed for Muslims to rob, rape and murder. Any objections to this would be answered with genocide. Into this situation, under western pressure which also saw the opening of western mission schools, came first the Tanzimat reforms, granting equality to all. This led to those Christians who had indeed been educated in those schools suddenly rising socially and financially, and actually prospering. This in turn enraged the Muslim majority. The reforms were cancelled, and the seeds of the 1880-1921 genocide of over one and a half million Christians were planted.

The very weakness which led to the Ottomans granting such reforms in the first place persisted, however, and as Ottomanism and Turkish rule faded, Arab nationalism was seen by both Palestinian Muslims and Christians as the way forward. For Muslims because it promised a return to an Arab Caliphate and to the good old days before the reforms, and to the Christians because secular nationalism, as practiced in the west, held out the hope of a more equal relationship with the majority Muslim community; “we are all Arabs, regardless of our religion.”

Having already experimented with such a strategy during the dying days of the Ottoman rule, and especially through the terrifying early days of World War 1, the Christians then carried it over into the new shock, that of Christian British rule during the Mandate. This new upset seemingly put the whole Muslim/Christian relationship up for re-negotiation. MCA’s were formed, Arab unity was treasured, and the Christians rejoiced. The Muslim motivation for this however was not Christian happiness (at best an irrelevance to them) but rather the shock of the loss of Islamic rule, and the emergent threat of Zionism. As go-betweens to the English, their Christians had become useful.

Failing Jewish migration in the mid-20s, and the murder of a Christian notable by a Muslim leader in 1930 served to clarify this new nationalistic relationship for both the Muslims and the Christians. Failing Jewish migration lessened the external threat, and therefore the value of Christian intercession. Its temporary and wholly pragmatic nature became evident to both. The specifically Muslim riots of 1929, and the murder of al-Bahri showed up even more clearly the limits of any Christian/Muslim partnership. It must be based on Muslim (not Palestinian or Arab) issues, and any hopes of equality were gone. For the Christians, a return to dhimmitude, as the only basis for an unequal coexistence re-emerged. That, or emigration.

In all this, the other obvious possibility for a minority was never explored. An alliance with the new and growing power of the Jews. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, the Christians, especially the numerically dominant Orthodox, lived as a minority within Muslim villages and suburbs. They were far more intermingled than the more discrete Druze. A pact with the Zionists would therefore see riots and the losses of their property and many lives. Pre-dating this concern, and far more importantly, it never occurred to the Christians because if the Muslims had spent 1400 years hating and despising them, the Christians had spent 1900 years hating and despising the Jews. They actually led the Muslims in their rejection of a larger Jewish presence. They would prefer what they knew, a grovelling dhimmitude to Muslims, rather than explore equal or near equal relations with the Jews. Even though their own religion contained the promise of a Jewish restoration that would be a blessing to all mankind, and also commanded them to love the stranger and their neighbour. At the end of the day, they would prefer to be abused by Muslims than to be embraced by Jews.

This above all is the catastrophe, or nakba of Palestinian Christianity.

Discussion

We can see the Christian community in Palestine behaving as a minority community, stressing commonalities and hoping to avoid violence. Bishop Munib Younan at the 2018 Christ at the Checkpoint stated that Christians should not witness to Muslims or Jews. (Arab Anglicans refusal to share their faith goes back to the 1900s).

What we do not see is any of the Christian communities responding (morally or theologically) as Christians! Palestinian Christians (rightly?) complain that they have been largely invisible to Christian Zionists, but as far as their faith is concerned, Palestinian Christians have all too often, by their own deeds, chosen to be invisible. As already seen, there could be enormous significance and blessings for them if they can now place Christ, and not their own ethnicity, first. Equally we need to acknowledge that the Western churches likewise failed in this area, and under far less stress than that faced by the Palestinian Christians. This is a Christian problem, not just a Palestinian Christian one!

In general, the local Christian communities in the Land of Israel did not show compassion and welcome to refugees fleeing certain death, did not then show love to their Jewish neighbours, and are presently waging a campaign of spiritual and political opposition to the Jewish state. Their official support for the BDS also means in practical terms that they desire their people to neither buy from nor sell to their Jewish neighbours. Rather than encouraging social contacts, sports meetings etc, in a hope of overcoming hatred, they have chosen to support the opposite.

They did not deviate from their earlier, supersessionist founding and history.[748] God’s promises to the Jewish people, found within the Scriptures the Christians also claim to revere, do not seem to have played any role whatever in influencing how the Palestinian Christians initially viewed the return of the Jewish people. They never seem to have wondered if this might, indeed, be of God. Instead, it was called a great catastrophe – a great catastrophe of faith! Nor were they encouraged to do so by their expatriate governing religious bodies. Theirs was an almost inevitable failure, as, like the majority of their co-religionists in Europe, they betrayed their baptism and retreated into the protective colouration of their ethnicity.

This is the story of the Palestinian churches. Rather than seeking council in the words of their God, they chose to be like the nations. False pride in their flesh, (“we are the original church”) a false defining themselves by their ethnicity (“we are Arabs”), not their faith (“their mind is on earthly things”), disobeying the commands God’s re witnessing, and re hospitality, a refusal to acknowledge the promises of God to Israel.

Conclusion

Some Palestinian Christians believe that within Christian Zionism, God either wants them gone, or ignores them – nothing could be further from the truth! They are in fact in a place of enormous blessing and responsibility! But by acting in selfishness and out of fear of men, many have squandered the promises God had waiting for them! Christian Zionism believes that no fight between Jews and Palestinians was ever necessary – that the return of the Jewish people could have been (and for many Christian Israeli Arabs, has been) a blessing for both peoples. It is only as Palestinians opposed the Jewish return that Christian Zionism finds reason to grieve. Christian Palestinians need to reject the narrative that says this conflict is inevitable – they could then live this out, by showing love and welcome to the Jewish communities within the West Bank, rejecting BDS, and gladly trade with their Jewish neighbours.

They ask; “where are we?” in Christian Zionism. To be honest, they (and we!!) had 1800 years to ask this question! “Are you Israel’s teacher and do not understand these things?” Some of the British Anglicans in Jerusalem were Christian Zionists – did no one ever ask; “where do the local Arab Christians fit in?” Ask in faith, not doubt, reading Romans 11 etc?? “I’d read through the Scriptures several times. How could I doubt that God loved the Jewish people? It was all over the Bible.” “I was not prepared for the complete fulfilment of this prayer. Jesus not only took away my hatred for Israel and the Jews, but he replaced it with a love for them. This was unexpected.” They had the Bible, they had prayer! They were the first to sense the finger of God, and they were the first to oppose it. “then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." Did they fear Muslim violence should they support the return, that God was not able to guard them and accomplish his will?

In terms of their overall representation within the wider Palestinian community, their numbers have shrunk from around 11% total (27% in Jerusalem) to now about 1.5%. Pastor Salman in 2018 estimated a mere 1200 Evangelical Christians among the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank. From playing a central role in 1917 to being totally marginalised by 1948. Post 1948, Christians have continued to migrate at twice the rate of Muslims. Christians emigrated from the Jordanian occupied West Bank, and in Jerusalem their population more than halved between 1948-61, falling from 29,300 to 10,982.[749] Within Israel, their percentage within the Arab community fell from 21% in 1950 to 9%. At present, three times as many Christians as Muslims planned to emigrate out of Israel. They have indeed been reduced to a stump in the land. Isaiah 6:13, 11:1. As the Lord told Ahaz; “If you do not stand by faith, you will not stand at all.” Isaiah 7:9. Indeed, by seeking their own safety, (“it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.") they have lost what they surrendered their faith to keep.

The Palestinian Christian community disappeared because it chose nationalism/ethnicity over faith. What we are left with today is a tiny remnant, most of whom are likewise apostate. Until our Lord returns, Christians will always be a minority within the Middle East, but too many Palestinian Christians would rather be a minority among Muslims than a minority among Jews. Recent Mid East history has shown the folly of that approach.[750]

Internalized dhimmitude

For nearly 100 years, Palestinian Christian, like many other of the Christian communities of the former Ottoman Empire, have looked to secular nationalism as a way out of the oppression and humiliation of living as a persecuted minority under Islamic law. From welcoming the Tanzimat to advocating for a “secular, democratic state of Palestine”, this has been their preferred alternative. It is never going to happen. It conflicts with a fundamental aspect of Islam. The Tanzimat led to the 1894-1924 genocide of Ottoman Christian communities. Conquest by a supposedly Christian power in 1918 led to a brief possibility explored from 1921-23, but then Islam reasserted its dominance, and the Christians were left always backing the least Islamic of the various Muslim contenders. Having spent the past 40 years backing the PA, many are now turning to Hamas[751], and hoping that they can ingratiate themselves sufficiently to survive. Dhimmitude however entails a spiritual as well as a social enslavement. Criticism of Islam was prohibited. Being subservient, keeping quiet, submitting to countless minor humiliations, not resisting even when beaten or community members are raped, all of this has profound effects upon the self-image of those subjected to it. They come to believe that they are indeed inferior, that Muslims are indeed superior.

“Dhimmis can appear to collude to conceal their own condition, finding themselves psychologically unable to critique or oppose it. The psychology of gratitude and inferiority can manifest in the dhimmi as denial or concealment of the condition. … the psychology of inferiority can mean that people from a dhimmi background are themselves the least able to analyse or expose their own condition. A powerful silence rests over the whole subject like a thick blanket or a strong dose of anaesthetic.”[752]

Sadly, the Palestinian Christian communities, their leadership, and many of their members, witness to this internalized oppression all too frequently. They may well rationalize it by believing that by agreeing with the Muslims, they are protecting their communities from even greater harm, but their calling is to preach the truth, not to fear men.

Being generally better educated, and qt the same time, desperate to ingratiate themselves, Palestinian Christians have indeed often taken the lead in defending Islam to the west. Western Christians all too often view such Christians as co-religionists, an unbiased, but knowledgeable reference for all things Muslim, especially on the treatment of Muslims to non-Muslims. They also trust their views on the Arab Israeli conflict for the same reasons.

Bat Ye’or notes how Syrian Christians have “dedicated themselves to extolling at both a political and a literary level the greatness and tolerance of Islamic civilization.”[753] This is also seen in Palestinian Christian Edward Said’s book Orientalism.[754]

More recent history

In 2005, a Christian village, Taiba was “ransacked” by more than 500 Muslim men chanting “Allahu akbar” because a Christian man from that village had a romantic relationship with a Muslim woman.[755]

Also in 2005, Justus Reid Weiner investigated the human rights of Palestinian Christians living under the Palestinian Authority. He reported that “there is a widespread distrust of religious leaders among Palestinian Christians, who ‘obfuscate the situation as it affects their constituents.’ One Christian man said, ‘our leaders are liars: They tell the newspapers that everything is OK. But when Christians go to the market they’re afraid to wear crosses.’”[756] Weiner attributed this to both fear (“they can kill you simply for speaking bad about them”) and, more insidiously, to the effects of dhimmitude. One Christian cleric “compared the behaviour of Christian dhimmis to that of battered wives and children who continue to defend and even identify with their tormentor even as the abuse persists.” Mark Durie then gives several miserable examples of Christian leaders, both Palestinian and Coptic, insisting in the face of increasing abuse that everything is wonderful. He also reflects that “The battered woman is conditioned to believe that her punishment is her fault, and she should feel grateful to her abusive partner for sparing her. The only strategy she is allowed to use to protect herself is to appeal to his good side through soft talk and grateful praise, all the time acknowledging her own guilt. She can never confront and challenge his bad side with direct truth.”[757] Weiner concluded that this dhimmi strategy of trying to buy immunity, to curry favour through constantly trying to justify and explain Muslim behaviour as reasonable “may prove self-destructive in the long run.” That is, the Palestinian Christians are returning to dhimmitude even as their leaders deny that dhimmitude as such exists. Nor is such behaviour limited to Islamic oppression. As early as 1935, Jesuit Father Pribilla had condemned the policy of silence in order “to prevent worse.” “For ultimately, the worst that could really happen is that truth and justice would no longer find spokesmen and martyrs on earth.”[758]

In 2008, the BBC reported from Gaza that the churches there now stopped ringing their bells, lest Muslims hear them and take offence.[759]

If Christians cannot criticise Islamic practices, moderate Muslims can. In 2008, Palestinian Muslim ‘Abd al-Nasser al-Najjar, writing about the confiscation of Muslim lands in Bethlehem and elsewhere, reported that the Christians were “silent, so as not to attract attention” and that if they do take steps to reclaim their lands, they can be subject to death threats.[760]

For an even more recent round-up of Muslim attacks upon Palestinian Christians, see https://besacenter.org/persecution-christians-palestinian-authority/

Haggai 1:5-9 Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. ⁶ You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it." ⁷ This is what the LORD Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways. ⁸ Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored," says the LORD. ⁹ "You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?" declares the LORD Almighty. "Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.”

The letter to the Hebrews is written to a [Jewish] Christian community who are considering abandoning their faith and returning to their pre-Christian identity. The writer not only reminds them of how wonderful Jesus is, but also notes that all who would follow him must go beyond the city gates, bearing the shame that he bore. Tragically, the story of the Palestinian Christian communities is that they chose, unlike Abraham and unlike Jesus, to return to the city from which they came. They ceased witnessing to others and made the spirit within them subservient to their flesh. They used/abused their faith to promote their nationalistic goals, and to curry favour with the Muslim majority, rather than preaching the glories of Jesus. This is a tragedy and a sin in its own right, and the focus of this paper, but their failure is not theirs alone.

Mainline western denominations, many of whom have also abandoned Jesus' clear command to witness, and who are also seeking the praises of men rather than God, have adopted the Palestinian Christian cause as their own, and celebrate their apostasy, because it mirrors their own. Foundational to all of this, for why adopt the Palestinians out of all the Christians in the world, is the resurgence of theological anti-Semitism, largely repudiated by these churches after the Holocaust, but now reinvigorated by rebirth of the Jewish state. Any wishing to abandon the clear word of God as it applies to their own cultures and morality will be offended by those to whom it was entrusted, and whose rebirth affirms the clear simple truths they now reject. For them, the rebirth of Israel is a standing and intolerable offence, because it proclaims the truthfulness of God's word. Put another way, the same God who said "Hear the word of the LORD, O nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: 'He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.' (Jeremiah 31:10) also declared that "you shall not commit adultery (Exodus 20:14)" and warns us to "flee from sexual immorality" (1 Corinthians 6:18 etc). A church wishing to celebrate the latter will be offended by the former, for the in-gathering of Israel proves the veracity of God's word ("Hear the word of the LORD, O nations").

The wider impact of dhimmitude – the moral and spiritual nakba of Palestinian Christianity as revealed by ‘the Jewish question’

“and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” (James 1:15)

Having (in their eyes) been humiliated by the Jews for over 100 years, if Islam (Hamas/Hezbollah/PA whatever) succeeded in taking back control of Jerusalem, will they want this to be seen as a triumph of western democratic secular values, or as a triumph of Islam?? Palestinian Christians need to think about this, they know the answer! Wake up, there is not going to be a secular, democratic state of Palestine. “The fact is that if the Islamists ever fulfilled their dream of defeating the Israelis and hurling the Jews into the sea, they would hardly be predisposed to share power with Palestinian Christians, secular or otherwise. … the mirage of Palestinian nationalism will not save the Christians from the oppression that awaits them at the hands of the radical Islamists who are increasingly calling the shots in Palestinian society.”[761]

How Christians deal with their own persecution is up to them. In light of the second Commandment, the real question Palestinian Christian leaders need to ask themselves (given that they are working tirelessly to harm Israel) is; “If [God forbid!!] Islam triumphs, how will it treat the defeated Jewish population??”

Again, they need to think about this, because deep down, hidden under layers of servile dhimmitude, they know the answer. Genocide. The Muslim Palestinians make no secret about it! Sermons about trees telling Muslims to kill Jews behind them, “the army of Khaybar” etc etc etc! You know this! The PA have stated that there will be no Jews within any territory they control. They reward with large sums of money any Palestinian who murders Israel civilians, including 3-month-old children. Statues are put up of, streets and soccer clubs are named after Palestinians who murder Israelis. Listen to Hamas sermons about killing Jews worldwide. They are not trying to hide this.

So Palestinian Christians, think clearly. Palestinian Christian organizations like CATC exists to weaken western Protestant evangelical support for Israel. This is largely to show to the Muslim majority that you have value, so you will not suffer the same fate as the Christian communities of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon Egypt etc. They exist to harm/weaken Israel. Shamefully, this is not just their dhimmitude in action. As well as that, far too many Palestinian denominations, like Christian denominations worldwide, have yet to acknowledge and repent of their own anti-Semitism.

The question you need to ask is “am I working and doing all of this year in and year out, is what I am doing enabling, empowering Genocide???”

Remember, one day, each one of you will have to answer to the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. You do not want to face him with that on your resume! I do not think it will happen, but that is the goal you are working to further.

The other option, taught by your Anglican founders, proclaimed God’s faithfulness to the Jewish people. When the Muslims were defeated by the Jews in 1948, and again in 1967, they knew something spiritual had happened. They interpret reality in spiritual terms. Had you spent the previous 100 years proclaiming God's faithfulness to the Jewish people as part of the Gospel, they would not have liked you (they don't anyway) but they would have been given the means to understand what was happening. Had you warned them, “do not oppose this return, for God is in it and you will not succeed”, the path of the Lord would have been straightened. Many might have repented. But they never heard it explained to them by you.

So rather than attacking God’s grace in rescuing and restoring the Jewish people to the land he promised to them, Palestinian Christian leaders and their western allies need to repent, break the chains of dhimmitude, ask forgiveness from the Jewish people and bear fruits of repentance.

For a very recent repulsive example of dhimmitude, see the statement “Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem Condemn the Magistrate’s Court’s Decision to Allow Silent Prayers for Jews Al-Haram Al-Shareef.”[762] These churches oppose Jews praying on the very spot where Jesus said "My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations". How is that following the teachings of Jesus? These churches and any who share their views need to repent. When you "condemn" Jews for silently praying anywhere (let alone on their most holy site), when you view silent Jewish prayer as "an injustice", then the problem is in your own soul.

Remnant

In 1 Kings 19, after the failure of King Ahab to respond to the miracle on Mt Carmel, God appoints three destroyers (the wind, earthquake and fire, representing Hazael, Jehu and Elisha), condemns the nation and commissions the righteous remnant (the still, small voice, “Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel--all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him.”

Have we seen a similar pattern in the churches? Apostate Christendom judged, the traditional churches decimated, and at the same time, the beauty of the righteous remnant, through whom God’s righteous purposes will now be accomplished?

Hope!

Revelation 3:2-3 Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God. ³ Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.

Christian Zionism would see the Palestinian Christians as having been placed in a place of great blessing and great importance. As the Christian community most intimately affected by the restoration of the Jewish people to their land, they could have been a first fruits of the universal blessing that this return will produce. Likewise, God has chosen that it is through the Gentile believers that the Jewish people should be roused to envy of the riches we have in Jesus, and so saved. Tragically, they did not recognise the day of their visitation, and at a time of existential crisis, they chose to deny their baptism and to retreat into their ethnicity. They chose to act as Arabs rather than as Christians, they chose friendship with this world rather than to follow Jesus beyond the city gates.

At present, confession and repentance are required. Beyond that, the very truths they have resisted hold out the promises they need. The restoration of Israel shows that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable! If they are able to repent, then our God is able to restore and bless them likewise.

Appendix 1 Summary of Intercommunal Relations/Persecutions[763]

Muslim discrimination against Christians

Christians in Palestine were routinely humiliated, beaten and robbed by the Muslim community. For example, in 1823, after an elderly Christian peasant from Beit Jalla was shot and beheaded, his head was stuck on a pike in Jerusalem and the local Muslim boys spat and threw rubbish at it for three days while the local Christians were unable to rescue it or show any grief. In 1828, in Nazareth, a Christian girl who refused the advances of a Muslim man was killed by being dragged through the streets behind a horse. Indeed, prior to 1845, James Finn wrote that Christian women were “dishonoured with impunity.” In 1853 in Nablus, the sight of a Syrian Christian official sitting in a chair (!!) roused a Muslim mob to shout; “kill him, kill him. Did you ever see a Christian like that before?” In 1856, Muslim riots in Nablus left a number of Christians dead, and forced the expulsion of the entire Protestant community. In 1858 the two villages of Zebabdeh and Likfair (where the inhabitants were all Christian) “were utterly sacked, men and women stripped even to their shirts and turned adrift.” “whereas many villages in the district of Nablus have a few Christian families located in each, such families were subjected in every direction to plunder and insults.” Also in 1858, James Finn wrote from Jerusalem; “daily accounts are given me of insults in the streets offered to Christians and Jews, accompanied by acts of violence. ... there is no clear case yet known of a Christian’s evidence being accepted in a court of justice, or in a civil tribunal against a Moslem.”

Christians were forbidden from either building new churches or repairing old ones. “it is against the honour of the Moslem religion to permit Christian Churches to be erected.”

Christians were forbidden from entering or praying at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, or Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

Ottoman reforms in the nineteenth century granting equal civil rights to Christians and Jews “had kindled [among the Muslims] fires of fanatical hatred." This led to massacres of minorities, especially Christians, across the Ottoman Empire.

Muslim discrimination against Jews

The local Jewish community suffered greatly from the Muslim community.

1700, Gedaliah of Siemiatyc; “[Muslims] are very hostile towards Jews and inflict upon them vexations in the streets of the city. ... the common folk persecute the Jews for we are forbidden to defend ourselves.” 1816, “these persecuted people.”

1836, “the persecuted and despised Israelites. … My Jewish friends conducted me around their miserable quarter.”

1839 “the melancholy aspect of the Jews in Jerusalem. The meanness of their dress, their pale faces, and timid expression, all seem to betoken great wretchedness.”

1852 “This Jewish population is poor beyond any adequate word; it is degraded in its social and political condition, to a state of misery, so great, that it possesses no rights. … he is spiritless from oppression, … a creature less than a dog, and below the oppressed Christian beggar.”

1854 “Nothing equals the misery and the suffering of the Jews of Jerusalem.”

1856 “the Jews are humiliated.” The town cesspit was situated in the midst of the Jewish quarter. “It was distressing to behold the timidity which long ages of oppression had engendered.”

1879 “Likewise it is impossible for Jewish women to venture into the streets because of the lewdness of the Muslims. There are many more such sufferings that the pen would weary to describe. These occur particularly when we go to visit the cemetery [on the Mount of Olives] and when we pray at the Wall of lamentations, when stones are thrown at us and we are jeered at.”

There were anti-Jewish pogroms in Jaffa (in 1876), and three times in Jerusalem (in 1847, 1870 and 1895).

Throughout this time, Jews were forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. In Hebron, (as a sign of their degradation) they were permitted to go up to the seventh step of the entrance outside it. As they went up these steps, Muslim boys were encouraged by their elders to hit and throw stones at them, to remind them of their proper place.

Zionism swept away these humiliations, and consequently provoked the rage of the Muslims. “Your restless, impassioned spirit brushed aside twenty centuries with a flip of the mind … you had enough of living under a boot.”

Christian discrimination against Jews

A wide range of sources all state that the local Christians treated the local Jewish community with hatred.

1836; “of all the Christians and other sects in Syria [are] against them.”

1852; “if he [a Jew in Palestine] turns to his neighbour Christian, he encounters prejudice and spite.”

1854; Jews are “insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins.”

1862; “The Oriental Christians are unhappily very bitter in their hatred of the Jews. They generally treat them with great contempt” … Muslim and Christian children rarely played with one another and would "only unite to persecute the poor little Jews."

1887; Jerusalem’s Muslims were more tolerant of its Jews than were its Christians.

Attempts to provoke mass murder

While largely powerless under the Muslim rule, nevertheless, twice at least the Christian community attempted to initiate a massacre of the local Jewish community. This was done using the specifically Christian charge of “blood libel.” These charges were also made by Christian communities in Damascus, Rhodes, and Beirut (twice). In 1847, the Greek Orthodox clergy threw their full ecclesiastical and social weight behind such a claim. In open court before the Ottoman ruler they demanded, on the basis of their ancient books that ‘the Jews were addicted to non-Jewish blood.’ “The Greek ecclesiastical party came down in great force and read out of Church historians and controversial writings of old time direct and frequent accusations levelled against the Jews for using Christian blood in Passover ceremonies.” This then was not simply a mob action, but rather one championed by the highest Christian religious authorities in Jerusalem, all for the purpose of gaining official sanction for mass murder! “In the meanwhile, “Greeks and Armenians [Christians] went about the streets insulting and menacing the Jews, both men and women, sometimes drawing their hands across the throat, sometimes showing the knives they generally carry with them,’”

The second recorded case occurred in 1931. Here, six weeks before Passover, the Greek Orthodox paper Filastin published a “blood libel” against the Jaffa Jewish community! It concerned the alleged kidnapping of two Arab children, was described by Frederick Kisch at the time as “terrifying.” “Intense excitement spread throughout the country and a massacre seemed imminent.” It led to the temporary suspension by the British authorities of the Filastin. Given that Jews had been massacred in Hebron, Jerusalem, Safed and elsewhere just two years earlier, this attempt by the Christian community to try and stir up a new massacre of Jews, using traditional Christian anti-Semitism, is utterly horrific! Large numbers of innocent people could have been murdered.

The right to kill

The traditional Christian communities also fought to affirm their right to beat up, and even kill any Jew who walked into or even just past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Instances of this are recorded in 1846, and also in 1927 (by a group of monks). In the first instance again, the Greek Orthodox religious establishment went to the Muslim governor to argue for and demand their right to beat and even kill Jews. “The Greek ecclesiastics … sen[t] me word that they were in possession of an ancient Firman which fixed the ‘Deeyeh,’ or blood-fine, to be paid by them if, in beating a Jew in that vicinity for trespass, they happened to kill him, at the sum of ten paras, about one halfpenny English. … the incident shows the disposition of the high convent authorities towards the Jews. … Greeks, Latins and Armenians, all believed that a Jew might be killed with impunity under such circumstances.”

Actual violence, as opposed to humiliations, of Jews by Christians continued into the British Mandate. British missionary C. Martin reported on the Arab riots in Jaffa in 1921; “A large number of the Jews are terror stricken … Unfortunately for the work, Arabs, who call themselves Christians, united with the Moslems in their endeavours to shed Jewish blood, so we have the unpleasant task of explaining and apologising for the falseness of this un-Christlike Christianity.” Forty-three Jews died that day, women and girls were raped and many others were wounded or died later on from their injuries.

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1929 Palestine Riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots

Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_between_Nazi_Germany_and_the_Arab_world

Syrian Peasant revolt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Peasant_Revolt_(1834%E2%80%9335)

The Damascus Affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair#Influence_of_the_incident_and_reactions_to_it

[1] Palestinian Christians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Christians

[2] http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2013/03/ashrawis-jesus-is-palestinian-claim.html

[3] Elias Chacour, We belong to the Land, 174, Stalder, Palestinian Christians and the Old Testament, 14.

[4] Stalder,14. Note his comment, “Most contemporary [Palestinian] Christians in the land still see themselves as deriving straight from the time of Christ.” Stalder, 15.

[5] Stalder, 60.

[6] Stalder, 67.

[7] Equally, so what? Many American cities have “the First Baptist Church” and so on – is the First Baptist Church always more Godly than the Third Baptist church? Do we trust in and boast in our flesh??

[8] J.B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, 1885, II part I, 88., as quoted in S. Bacchiocchi, God’s Festivals in Scripture and History. 1995: 103.

[9] S. Bacchiocchi, From Sabbath to Sunday 1977: 162.

[10] S. Bacchiocchi, 1977: 162.

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_revolt_against_Heraclius

[12] Chrysostom, Homily 4: IV. See also Homily 5:6 “Come now, and let me give you abundant proof that the temple will not be rebuilt and that the Jews will not return to their former way of life”. Likewise, all of Homily 5 argues that if Christ be true, then the Jewish people can have no national future. Augustine likewise wrote of Jerusalem, “no one of the Jews is permitted to come hither now: where they were able to cry against the Lord, there by the Lord they are not permitted to dwell”. On the Psalms, in Works, volume VIII, 308.

[13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=22&v=hXcmy9vE340 29:52.

[14] Rivka Gonen, Contested Holiness: Jewish, Muslim, and Christian Perspectives on the Temple, KTAV Publishing House 2003 p.138.

[15] A Galilee doctor being a sketch of the career of Dr. D. W. Torrance of Tiberias by W. P. Livingstone

Published 1923, 51.

[16] Robson 230.

[17] Stalder, 46, Julia Fisher, 92.

[18] This question itself is problematic – we might have hoped that their primary identity was in Christ, and their passion was exploring this, not their ethnic origins.

[19] Freas 125-6.

[20] Mary Rogers, Domestic Life in Palestine, 1862, Preface.

[21] Arthur George Harper Hollingsworth. Remarks on the present condition and future prospects of the Jews in Palestine, 1852, 4.

[22] Mark Durie, The Third Way, 179.

[23] Katz and Kark, The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and Its Congregation, 516.

[24] Morris and Ze’evi, The Thirty-Year Genocide, 512.

[25] Morris and Ze’evi, 25.

[26] Note also the efforts of the Russian government to “Arabize” the Greek Orthodox, from the 1840s onwards. Part of their ongoing battle with the Greeks and the West. Edwar Makhoul, The role of Palestinian Christians in the Arab National Movement, 13.

[27] Robson 77, William L. Cleveland, The Making of an Arab Nationalist. 125.

[28] Stadler, 87.

[29] Robson, 75.

[30] Robson, 85.

[31] To quote from later in the paper, “At the extreme, in 1926 Khalil al-Sakakini urged Palestinian Christians to convert to Islam for the sake of unity in the national movement. On October 5 of 1930, the editor of al-Karmil, Najib Nassar likewise wrote a series of articles asserting that the only solution to the 'disputes' between Muslims and Christians was that "the Christians adopt the Islamic faith. In this way the constant conflicts which hinder the development of the national movement [would] be brought to an end.” Arab Orthodox Khalil Iskandar al-Qubrus in 1931 issued a pamphlet entitled “A Call on the Christian Arabs to Embrace Islam.” In it, he denounced European Christianity as a corrupt religion and accused European monks and missionaries of sowing discord between Palestine's Muslims and Christians. By contrast, he described Islam as a benevolent and egalitarian religion, and concluded by calling on all Arab Christians to become Muslim "in order to free them from the trivialities of the foreigners and to rid them of their corruption.” Note that calls, or threats that Palestinian Christians will convert to Islam if Western churches are not more anti-Zionist have continued from then, through the 30s and 40s up to the present. It is the attitude of those who do not know the Gospel (Mark 10:28, Philippians 3:8). They needed to choose the praises of God not men! To their shame, they chose rather to conform to this world. Friendship with this world does not work! In their 1937 “Letter to the bishops of London,” the Anglican PNCC wrote; “After the fate of the Armenians, the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Assyrians, the Abyssinians and the Arabs of Palestine, the faith of our Christians is also being shaken … in the value of Christianity itself …we are greatly afraid that the tide of nationality will carry many off their feet into unbelief or apostacy. … Palestine has become a theatre of politics where people have little thought for anything else. This is making the work of the Church well-nigh impossible.” Stalder, 164.

And “In 1937 Ilyas Marmura (Cannon of St Pauls and chairman of the PNCC) went at his request to London to the 50^th celebration of the Jerusalem Diocese to present the Arab case. He also wrote to Lang that “some ten thousand Arab Christian men are thinking of going over to Islam.”

[32] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Karmil_(newspaper)#cite_note-Khalidip217n31-9

[33] Robson, Church versus Country, 53. Khalidi, Rashid (1997), Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, Columbia University Press, 217.

[34] This dispute continues to the present – see Hatuqa, Dalia. Holy Land for Sale Foreign Policy January 7, 2019. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/07/holy-land-for-sale/

[35] Robson, 80.

[36] Stalder, 67.

[37] Kisch, Palestine Diary, 39.

[38] Robson, 80. No documentation for this statement is provided by Robson. In The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and Its Congregation: Dissent over Real Estate, Itamar Katz and Ruth Kark, 519 reference Tsimhoni, Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, 102. Tsimhoni in turn references Kisch, Palestine Diary, for the favourable view, and al Karmel, Feb 28, 1923 presumably for the statements. The Patriarch was Damian I (or Damianos), 1897-1931. It is of interest that the Protestant bishop of Jerusalem, Joseph Barclay (1879-1881) was a close friend of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, who came in person to welcome him when he arrived at Jaffa, Rafiq Farah, 47. In 1887 the Greek Orthodox Patriarch indeed wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury concerning his “fervent desire” (Rafiq Farah, 63) to see the Protestant bishopric re-established after a brief interregnum. The fourth bishop, George Blyth, (1887-1914) “believed that the Anglican churches should take the initiative in recognising the duty towards the Jews; their returning to Christ, will receive back their ancient prerogatives which they lost, and through their return to Christ, Christians will perhaps find the key to their unity and renewal.” Rafiq Farah, In Troubled Waters, 71. The Patriarch’s favourable view of Zionism may then have been influenced by the early Anglican bishops, or simply an expression of his generous spirit.

[39] Haidoc-Dale, 30.

[40] Robson, 81.

[41] Katz and Kark, 519.

[42] Freas, 222. This congress seems not to have had the official status of the congresses of 1923 and 31.

[43] Robson, 89.

[44] Freas 130.

[45] Robson, 97.

[46] Robson, 99.

[47] Haiduc-Dale 33.

[48] Freas 6.

[49] Freas 120.

[50] Kisch, 390. For a much fuller discussion of this topic, see the section on “blood libels” in Christian Discrimination against Jews later in the book.

[51] Robson, 99.

[52] Stalder, 67.

[53] Gershon Nerel, Anti-Zionism in the “Electronic Church” of Palestinian Christianity, 29.

[54] Aviel Schneider, “Greek Orthodox Priest: ‘Israel is the Great Satan,’” Israel Today, no. 50 (Mar. 2003): 9. For a more general example, see https://forward.com/fast-forward/430889/canada-priest-fired-anti-israel-judaism/ and also https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-palestinian-christmas-tree-for-terrorists/

[55] Freas, 122.

[56] Stalder, 112.

[57] Stalder, 115.

[58] Stalder, The quote is Stalder’s interpretation of Jamal’s viewpoint.

[59] Stalder, 130.

[60] These struggles centered on control of the “holy sites.” These struggles were decided by the Ottoman government, which under western pressure, issue a firman (a decree) to secure precedence for the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox Churches in the holy Christian sites of Jerusalem. Edwar Makhoul, 16. 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 exposes the shame of such behaviour.

[61] Adriano E. Ciani, The Vatican, American Catholics and the Struggle for Palestine, 1917-1958: A Study of Cold War Roman Catholic Transnationalism https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1501&context=etd, 80.

[62] Freas, 113.

[63] Tsimhoni 95.

[64] Tsimhoni, 95.

[65] Freas, 116.

[66] Tsimhoni 239-40., Freas, 116.

[67] Ciani, 26.

[68] Ciani, 27.

[69] Ciani, 27.

[70] Ciani, 27.

[71] Ciani, 32.

[72] Ciani, 36.

[73] Hubert Wolf, Pope and Devil, 204.

[74] Tsimhoni, 85.

[75] Haiduc-Dale, 31.

[76] Freas, 118.

[77] Tsimhoni, 85.

[78] Tsimhoni, 85.

[79] Tsimhoni, 86.

[80] Freas, 112 plus fn. 106.

[81] Tsimhoni, 79.

[82] Morley, Diplomacy, 92. See also Preliminary Report, question B10.

[83] Morley, Diplomacy, 93.

[84] The Vatican Council and the Jews, 221, 298.

[85] “Patriarch Maximos VI Saigh of Antioch had requested the Pope on behalf of the bishops of his patriarchate to withdraw the Jewish declaration.” The Vatican Council and the Jews, 145. “Speaking for himself and 5 other middle East Patrirchs, Ignace Gabriel Cardinal Tappouni, Patriarch of Antioch offered his ‘solemn opposition to the document’ the Melchite Patriarchal Vicar Joseph Tawil of Damascus also called for the rejection of the document since ‘the benevolence it shows to the Jews might alienate many Arabs expelled from Palestine.’” Rev. Gregory Blum explained such strong Eastern opposition to the Jewish statement was not ‘simply due to Arab pressure’ but ‘We must admit that anti-Jewish sentiment is ancient and deep in the life of the Church. In particular, certain Eastern liturgies perpetuate the deicide myth and pronounce dreadful curses on the Jews. Some of the Eastern bishops have declared that if their faithful were suddenly told that the Jews were not guilty of deicide, and not an accursed people, they might falter in their faith, feeling that the teaching in the liturgy is no longer to be trusted.” 152. after it passed, Maximos asserted that “personal interest” had guided the vote of many Council Fathers. … pity due to the massacre of millions of Jews by Nazism and …the fact that the greater number of Americans have commercial interests with the Jews.” He added their certainly remains on the foreheads of the Jewish people … the stain of shame.” Maximos intended that the Jewish people be characterized as a shamed and reprobate people. He concluded, “Israel can be defeated.” 172-3. The Vatican Council and the Jews,

[86] The Vatican Council and the Jews, 138.

[87] See Haiduc-Dale, (2015) 81-84.

[88] Freas, 21.

[89] Farah, 18. Note, Robson places it at 1826. Church verses Country, 51.

[90] It should be noted that the American ABCFM established a mission from 1821 to 1844 in Palestine, under the missionaries Fisk and Parsons. Stalder, 93.

[91] Farah, 20.

[92] “a superficial and unfortunate scheme for setting up a joint Lutheran and Anglican Bishopric in Jerusalem seemed to Newman the last straw to his waning allegiance. With a breaking heart he left the English Church, and in 1845 he joined the Church of Rome.” http://anglicanhistory.org/england/misc/bell_oxford1933.html

“a dilemma was posed for the friends of the Oxford Movement by the joint determination of England and Prussia to place a Protestant bishop in Jerusalem in 1841. As this was a step motivated both by Prussian-English desire to counter growing Russian influence in the Middle East and by a missionary interest, on what grounds might Newman and his circle take objection? In a word, it was prejudicial to the existing claims to Christian jurisdiction in that region exercised by Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions (which actually had adherents there). Moreover, this arrangement drew the Church of England into formal cooperation with Lutheranism, a movement that they abhorred. The case of the Jerusalem bishopric is important to the story of the Oxford Movement for what it forced into public view: the religious instincts of the movement were other-than-Protestant and contrary to Britain’s growing imperial aspirations.” http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/review/the-oxford-movement-europe-and-the-wider-world-18301930

[93] Farah, 32.

[94] Farah, 23.

[95] Farah, 24. Written under duress.

[96] Farah, 25.

[97] Farah, 31.

[98] Farah, 32.

[99] Makhoul, 17.

[100] Stalder, 91, fn41. See also Farah, 30; it was the establishment of this Protestant bishopric which occasioned the re-establishment of the Latin (Catholic) Patriarchate of Jerusalem in 1848, the first such since 1187.

[101] Stalder, 91.

[102] Stalder, 97.

[103] Stalder, 98.

[104] Farah, 38.

[105] Farah, 38.

[106] Quoted in Stalder, 104.

[107] Stalder, 105.

[108] Farah, 47.

[109] See for example, Ya’ari, The Goodly Heritage, 55, 65+.

[110] Farah, 67.

[111] Stalder, 107.

[112] Farah, 72.

[113] Farah, 72.

[114] Farah, 74.

[115] Farah, 71.

[116] Farah, 71.

[117] Farah, 72.

[118] Farah, 74.

[119] Stalder, 134.

[120] Farah, 65.

[121] http://anglicanhistory.org/orthodoxy/historical_record1921.html

[122] Robson, 131.

[123] Stalder, 155.

[124] Stalder, 153.

[125] Robson, 135.

[126] Tsimhoni, 48+ 138.

[127] Stalder, 159.

[128] Roland Loffler, quoted in Stalder, 159.

[129] Farah, 82.

[130] See Stalder, 160.

[131] Tsimhoni, 1976, 86.

[132] Robson, 137.

[133] Robson, 140.

[134] Robson, 199.

[135] Robson, 241.

[136] Census of Palestine, 1922; Census of Palestine, 1931., quoted in Frantzman, S., Glueckstadt, B. W., and Kark, R., “The Anglican Church in Palestine and Israel: Colonialism, Arabization and Land ownership, 6.

[137] Farah86.

[138] Farah, 87.

[139] Farah, 87.

[140] Farah, 88.

[141] A. Londres, The Wandering Jew has Arrived, 196.

[142] Liora Halperin, The Battle over Jewish Students in the Christian Missionary Schools of Mandate Palestine (Middle Eastern Studies, 2014) 4.

[143] Stalder, 154.

[144] Farah, 91.

[145] Farah, 101. Compare Farah’s own description of these events with that of Hillel Cohen, 1929; Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

[146] Farah, 92.

[147] Tsimhoni, Daphne, ‘The Arab Christians and the Palestinian Arab National Movement During the Formative Stage’, in Ben- Dor (ed.), The Palestinians and the Middle East Conflict, 1978 pp. 73–98, 87.

[148] Tsimhoni, Daphne; 1978, 87.

[149] Farah, 83.

[150] Robson, 128.

[151] Robson, 152, Robson, Church verses Country, 57, Stalder, 163.

[152] Stalder, 164.

[153] See also the section “Biblical issues” for more on this topic.

[154] Farah, 98.

[155] Farah, 111.

[156] Robson, 152., Farah, 111-2.

[157] Farah, 115.

[158] Farah, 112.

[159] Farah, 124.

[160] Frantzman, Glueckstadt, Kark, 7.

[161] Frantzman, Glueckstadt, Kark, 7.

[162] Stalder, 183.

[163] Stalder, 183.

[164] Freas, 132-3.

[165] Freas, 147.

[166] Robson, 142.

[167] Robson, 151.

[168] Quoted by Robson, Church verses Country, 237.

[169] Robson, Church, State, 458.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03086534.2011.598751?scroll=top&needAccess=true

[170] https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1937-07-20/debates/57eece61-93e4-4731-b020-edb140581d9b/Palestine

[171] Robson, 152.

[172] Robson, “Church vs Country,” 58/9.

[173] Robson, 153.

[174] Robson, “Church vs Country,” 64.

[175] Robson, “Church vs Country,” 65.

[176] Robson, 154.

[177] Robson, “Church vs Country,” 60.

[178] Robson, 154.

[179] Robson 155, Robson, “Church vs Country,” 62.

[180] Robson, 155.

[181] Robson, “Church vs Country,” 64.

[182] See Farah 25, fn3.

[183] Stalder, 158.

[184] Stalder, 167.

[185] Stalder, 168.

[186] Contemporary to this, shortly after Kristallnacht, Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia (who had joined the Nazi Party in 1930) published a compendium of Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic statements. In the forward, he applauded the burning of the synagogues: “On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.” Within the book itself, he called Luther “the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.” The bishop further declared that the burning of the synagogues was the crowning moment in the Führer’s divinely blessed fight for the complete emancipation of the German people.

In 1543, Luther declared: What shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews? Since they live among us and we know about their lying and blasphemy and cursing, we cannot tolerate them if we do not wish to share in their lies, curses, and blasphemy. ... Let me give you my honest advice: First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honour of our LORD and of Christendom.

Bergen states that “Luther’s tract Against the Jews and their Lies, with its vicious characterizations of Jews as parasites and its calls to ‘set their synagogues and schools on fire,’ was widely quoted and circulated in Hitler’s Germany.” When a theological student named Krugel resigned from the S.A. in protest at the violence, an S.A. official replied: “It should be realized that the wicked Nazis have simply carried out the instruction of Luther. The synagogues have been burnt, just as the father of Protestantism required.” C. Barnes, They Conspire Against Your People, 271.

[187] Stalder, 168.

[188] Stalder, 172.

[189] Stalder, 184.

[190] Khoury, Geries. The Intifada of Heaven and Earth. Jerusalem: 1989.

[191] Morley, Janet. Companions of God: Praying for Peace in the Holy Land (Christian Aid 1994).

[192] Naim Stifan Ateek (1989). Justice, and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll: Orbis Books. pp. 77–78.

[193] Franklin Littell, The Crucifixion of the Jews Mercer University Press, Georgia, 1996. 53.

[194] https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/06/22/presbyterian-church-usa-considered-banning-the-word-israel-from-prayers/

[195] Nerel, 32.

[196] Nerel, 32.

[197] Kimmerling, Processes. Quoted in Frantzman, 23.

[198] A Galilee doctor being a sketch of the career of Dr. D. W. Torrance of Tiberias by W. P. Livingstone

Published 1923, 51.

[199] Avraham Yaari, The Goodly Heritage, 11.

[200] Yaari, 40.

[201] Freas, 26.

[202] Morris and Ze’evi, 45.

[203] Bat Ye’or 1996, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam, 377-80.

[204] Bat Ye’or, 1996; 378.

[205] Bat Ye’or, 1985; The Dhimmi, 214-17.

[206] Frantzman, Identity and Inclination: The Arab Christians Between Zionism and Islam, 102. file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/The_Strength_and_the_Weakness_Palestinia%20(1).pdf Quoting page 83 of Narrow Gate Church’s.

[207] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 234.

[208] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 235-6.

[209] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 222.

[210] The situation had changed for the better under Muhammad Ali, so that the authors write that now (1830s) they “not only enjoy religious toleration but are under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish empire.” That the conditions then described are viewed as less oppressive than those in the rest of the Ottoman empire is also damning.

[211] “An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians,” by Edward William Lane and Edward Stanley Poole, based on their numerous visits to Egypt over the period 1825-1835. Quoted by Tzvi Fleischer, https://aijac.org.au/update/antisemitism-in-the-middle-east-in-1835/

[212] M. Durie, 152.

[213] Eric Silverman, A Cultural History of Jewish Dress, 50. Bat Ye’or, 1985, 343.

[214] M. Durie, 152.

[215] David Collier @mishtal

[216] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 353-4.

[217] https://www.faimission.org/wire/special-report-sultan-and-the-mount?fbclid=IwAR0gbM5NTuBGZP3PBchbENQn3tL-klFMrCMPuumsumlNMLnpTzC3fK7XmYE "The Turks' conquest of the city [of Hebron] in 1517, was marked by a violent pogrom of murder, rape, and plunder of Jewish homes. The surviving Jews fled to Beirut, not to return until 1533." The Solomon Goldman Lectures. Spertus College of Judaica Press. 1999. p. 56.

[218] https://www.faimission.org/wire/special-report-sultan-and-the-mount?fbclid=IwAR0gbM5NTuBGZP3PBchbENQn3tL-klFMrCMPuumsumlNMLnpTzC3fK7XmYE

[219] Bat Ye’or, 1985, 354. Samuel b. Ishaq Uceda. The Bread of Tears, 1606.

[220] George Sandys, A relation of a journey begun An: Dom: 1610 published by Barren, 1615. 146.

[221] Bat Ye’or 1996, 377-80.

[222] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 220., quoting J.S. Buckingham, Travels in Palestine, 1821.

[223] Yaari, 28.

[224] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 229.

[225] E.g., Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinians 5.

[226] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Peasant_Revolt_(1834%E2%80%9335)

[227] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed See also M. Durie, The Third Choice, 150.

[228] Ya’ari, 37.

[229] M. Durie, 150.

[230] Martin Sicker (1999). Reshaping Palestine: from Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922. 13.

[231] Yaari, 45.

[232] Farah, 19.

[233] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 225. A.A. Bonar and R.M. M’Cheyne, Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839, 1842.

[234] Hollingsworth, 10.

[235] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 371. Rav Moshe Reisher, Shaarei Yerushalayim, chapter 4. (printed in 1879).

[236] Yaari, 46.

[237] Hollingsworth, 5-8.

[238] http://en.hebron.org.il/history/677

[239] http://en.hebron.org.il/history/784

[240] Karl Marx, The Eastern Question. 322. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1854/03/28.htm

[241] Bat Ye’or, 1985, 232. Quoting J. Finn, 1:115.

[242] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 233. Quoting J. Finn, 1:127.

[243] The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Nile, Red Sea, and Gennesareth, &c: By John MacGregor. 243. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=-G0BAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=rob+roy+jordan&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=rob%20roy%20jordan&f=false

[244] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 372. Rav Moshe Reisher, Shaarei Yerushalayim, chapter 4.

[245] Sicker, 14.

[246] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_affair#Influence_of_the_incident_and_reactions_to_it

[247] Hillel Cohen, 1929; Year Zero of the Arab Israeli Conflict, 151 etc. For the status of Jews in Ottoman Iraq, see Edwin Black, The Farhud. 23.

[248] http://en.hebron.org.il/history/677

[249] Cohen 1929, 64.

[250] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 222.J. L. Stephens, Incidents of Travel, 1836. Note also his comments; “The descendants of Israel were fit persons to welcome a stranger to the ancient city of their fathers; and if they had been then sitting under the shadow of the throne of David, they could not have given me a warmer reception. It may be that, standing in the same relation to the Turks, alike the victims of persecution and contempt, they forgot the great cause which had torn us apart and made us a separate people, and felt only a sympathy for the object of mutual oppression. But whatever was the cause, I shall never forget the kindness with which, as a stranger and Christian, I was received by the Jews in the capital of their ancient kingdom; … Judge, then, of my satisfaction at being welcomed from the desert by the friendly and hospitable Israelites.” http://en.hebron.org.il/history/665

[251] http://en.hebron.org.il/history/665

[252] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 225. A.A. Bonar and R.M. M’Cheyne, Narrative of a Mission of Inquiry to the Jews from the Church of Scotland in 1839, 180-181.

[253] Gish, 22.

[254] Neville Mandel, Arabs and Zionism before World War One, 33.

[255] Beska, Responses, 38.

[256] Mandel, 43.

[257] Londres, 196.

[258] @MattiFriedman about his book "Spies of No Country": https://tikvahfund.org/library/podcast-matti-friedman-on-israels-first-spies/

[259] Emanuel Beska, Responses of Prominent Arabs towards Zionist Aspirations and Colonization Prior to 1908. 23-5.

[260] American Jewish Yearbook, 1909, 132. http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1909_1910_4_YearReview.pdf

[261] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 224.

[262] http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-jews-and-arabs-of-palestine-1852.html, quoting from From Remarks on the present condition and future prospects of the Jews in Palestine, by Arthur George Harper Hollingsworth.

[263] Mary Rogers, Domestic Life in Palestine, 1862., 359.

[264] Freas, 88., Rogers, 189.

[265] Mandel, 54.

[266] Cohen, 64.

[267] Beska, Responses, 43, quoting Mandel, Neville J. The Arabs and Zionism, 52-54.

[268] Mandel, 53.

[269] Mandel, 53.

[270] Mandel, 32.

[271] The same accusation was raised on at least nine other times in Syria. Mandel, 33. And that for the Vilayet of Syria, not including Beirut or Jerusalem.

[272] Bat Ye’or, 1985. 280.

[273] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 279.

[274] Freas, 87. Jews as scapegoats, and Jew-hatred as a means of creating a common cause with opponents was used by European Catholics in both the 1870s and 1930s. It would also be used by some Christians in Palestine, both Catholic and Orthodox – in is indeed (assuming it was only introduced in 1840 – see above) amazing how quickly the Orthodox Christians adopted and incorporated the ‘blood libel’ into their own religious outlook – clearly, even if new, it fell on welcoming soil.

[275] Mandel, 33.

[276] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/beirut

[277] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 230., Frantzman, 18/9.

[278] http://strangeside.com/finn-english-consul-james-finn-in-palestine/ also Bat Ye’or, 1985; 230.

[279] American Jewish Yearbook, 1909, 94 http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/1909_1910_4_YearReview.pdf

[280] American Jewish year book. 1908/1909. 219. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015032397351&view=1up&seq=229

[281] American Jewish Yearbook, 1909, 133. Note that the previous year’s Yearbook put the date at March 14. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015032397351&view=1up&seq=154

[282] Yaari, 335.

[283] Emanuel Beška “The Disgrace of the Twentieth Century”: The Beilis Affair in Filastin Newspaper. Jerusalem Quarterly 66. 101. 2016.

[284] Beska, 2016, 101.

[285] Beska, 2016, 105.

[286] Beska, 2016, 102.

[287] Kisch, 390.

[288]Kisch, 390.

[289] http://www.jpress.nli.org.il/Olive/APA/NLI/?action=tab&tab=browse&pub=plb&_ga=2.196121580.1535021786.1597965842-984380275.1597965842#panel=search&search=0

[290] http://www.jpress.nli.org.il/Olive/APA/NLI/?action=tab&tab=browse&pub=plb&_ga=2.196121580.1535021786.1597965842-984380275.1597965842#panel=search&search=0 See also http://www.jpress.nli.org.il/Olive/APA/NLI/?action=tab&tab=browse&pub=plb&_ga=2.196121580.1535021786.1597965842-984380275.1597965842#panel=search&search=0

[291] Palestine Bulletin, Monday April 13, 1931. http://www.jpress.nli.org.il/Olive/APA/NLI/?action=tab&tab=browse&pub=plb&_ga=2.196121580.1535021786.1597965842-984380275.1597965842#panel=search&search=0

[292] See Sharyn Mittelman, https://aijac.org.au/update/blood-libel-surfaces-at-hanan-ashrawi-s-miftah-o/.

[293] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 232.

[294] http://strangeside.com/finn-english-consul-james-finn-in-palestine/ Rogers, Domestic Life in Palestine, 189. Also, Bat Ye’or, 1985; 231.

[295] Cohen, 64.

[296] Ali Qleibo. Blood Bonds: Palestinian Christian-Muslim Common Heritage This Week in Palestine, December 2019, 20. http://thisweekinpalestine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Dec-2019-260.pdf

[297] Morris, 54/55.

[298] https://bethbc.edu/blog/2019/10/24/bethlehem-bible-college-launches-the-palestinian-academic-forum-for-interfaith-dialogue-in-cooperation-with-an-najah-university/?fbclid=IwAR24Yq3ijruNf_Z5IQUnASgOxhmoyxWL4monwKMBNrAnJ4dCWSI3uOvyqjI

[299] Haiduc-Dale, 25.

[300] Frantzman, 19.

[301] Yaari, 66-67.

[302] Mandel, 223. See also 32, 44.

[303] Mandel, 44.

[304] Yaacov Ro'i, "The Zionist Attitude to the Arabs" in Middle Eastern Studies, Volume IV, No. 3 (London, 1968), pp. 198,206,212-213.

[305] Freas, 86.

[306]Beska, Emanuel, Responses of Prominent Arabs towards Zionist Aspirations and Colonization Prior to 1908. 28.

[307] Mandel, 49.

[308] Mandel, 48.

[309] Mandel, 33.

[310] Mandel, 39.

[311] Mandel, 56.

[312] Freas, 83. Azoury felt that the continuation of the Ottoman Empire robbed the Arabs of their ability to resist Zionism, and was his main reason for supporting the nationalism. Mandel, 52.

[313] Mandel, 43.

[314] Beska, Responses, 43, Mandel, 51.

[315] Mitri Raheb, The Politics of Persecution, 2021, 66.

[316] Mandel, 51.

[317] Yaari, quoting David Smilansky, 327.

[318] Freas, 85.

[319] Freas, 86.

[320] Beska, Anti-Zionist, 171.

[321] Beska, Anti-Zionist, 175.

[322] Haiduc-Dale, 36.

[323] Haiduc-Dale, 25.

[324] Beska, Political Opposition to Zionism in Palestine, 63.

[325] Beska, Political Opposition, 63.

[326] Xavier Abu Eid, “Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness” Palestinian Christians in the National Struggle for Freedom. This Week in Palestine, December 2019. http://thisweekinpalestine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Dec-2019-260.pdf

[327] Mandel, 138.

[328] Mandel, 139.

[329] Cohen, Army, 45.

[330] Mandel, the Arabs and Zionism before ww1, 193.

[331] Mandel, xvii.

[332] Mandel, 185.

[333] Yaari, 485.

[334] Cohen, Army, 35.

[335] Mandel, 56.

[336] Mandel, 52.

[337] See Yaari, 112, 345 – another tragic example of Christian groups starting well, then falling short?

[338] Mandel, 54.

[339] Yaari, 111, (Finn,) 55. 180-81. 192.

[340] Radai, The Rise and Fall of the Palestinian-Arab Middle Class, 501.

[341] Frantzman, 20/1.

[342] Frantzman, 22.

[343] Chrysostom, Homily 4: IV. Likewise, all of Homily 5 argues that if Christ be true, then the Jewish people can have no national future.

[344] See for examples, David Baron, The Ancient Scriptures and the Modern Jew, 1900, Adolph Saphir, Christ and Israel, 1911 (a collection of lectures written prior to 1891)

[345] https://israeled.org/resources/documents/1922-white-paper-palestine/

[346] James Parkes, Whose Land? 258.

[347] Lowe, Malcolm. The Myth of Palestinian Christianity.

[348] Bernard Lewis, The Middle East, 210. See also Stalder, 84, fn 16 for further reading, as well as Mark Gabriel, Islam and the Jews, 122-23 for the rules of Umar concerning people of the book. “Dhimmi status and payment of the Jizya tax could place great financial strain on Christian communities. The application of Shari’a law on non-Muslims further restricted the personal freedoms of Christians. They wore distinguishing clothes, they were forbidden to practise certain trades and from taking positions of responsibility in politics or the army. They were permitted to worship freely, but processions, public Christian symbols and proselytisation were forbidden. Marriage between Christians and Muslims was only allowed if the Christian party converted to Islam. Conversion the other way around was forbidden.” Ashdown 46.

[349] Hashemi and Postel, 2017, p. 27.

[350] Ashdown, 48.

[351] Freas, 52. Note that the new constitution was brought in on December 23, 1876 and was itself based on the incremental legal reforms which had started in 1836. Two years later, in 1878, the constitution was suspended, parliament dispersed, and the new freedoms curtailed.

[352] Freas, 61.

[353] Non-Muslim happiness has always offended Islam – hence the bombings on Sabbaths, Holy days, weddings, celebrations of any sort etc.

[354] The emancipation of supressed communities generally has this effect on members of the once dominant community. For a shameful parallel, occurring at the same time, in 1843, The Pope noted “the scandal of seeing Jews pretending to be living the same as others.” D. Kertzer, The Popes against the Jews, 84. In 1901, a letter to the Minister of Justice in Germany stated that “one need not be an anti-Semite in order to confirm the fact that a Jew in the role of a magistrate, barrister, notary public, etc. awakens in a German a feeling of loathing ... the very sight of a Jew is at times unbearable.” Tal, Christians and Jews, 142.

[355] “some Muslims, particularly amongst the Ulama, opposed the principle of freedom of worship and feared that the equal status given to Christians would damage the Islamic character of the Ottoman state, and damage their political influence in the government institutions.” Ashdown, 49.

[356] Morris and Ze’evi, 49/50. This led to the massacre of these Armenians.

[357] Morris and Ze’evi, 78.

[358] Ashdown, 16. Quoting from Ma’oz, 2014, pp. 242–243). Ma’oz, M. (2014). Communal conflict in Ottoman Syria during the reform Era: The role of political and economic factors. In B. Braude (Ed.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire (pp. 241–256). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

[359] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 224.

[360] The Tanzimat reforms were in part at least “meant for international consumption at a time when the Ottomans desperately needed Britain’s help” (Reilly, 2019, p. 56). Ashdown 47.

[361] Freas, 89.

[362] Stalder, 86.

[363] See Lewis, 293., see also the Kurds in Syria 2019.

[364] Freas, 33.

[365] Freas, 32.

[366] Freas, 89.

[367] Farah, 18.

[368] Frantzman, 22.

[369] Kimmerling, 5.

[370] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1834_looting_of_Safed

[371] Freas, 39.

[372] 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_Mount_Lebanon_civil_war

[373] Freas, 33.

[374] Hollingsworth, 4.

[375] Farah, 19.

[376] Rafiq Farah, 11.

[377] Farah, 11.

[378] Raphael Israeli, Green Crescent over Nazareth, 11. (See also Bat Ye’or, 1985; 252.) Taken from the official dispatches of James Finn.

[379] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 254, Israeli, 11. Again, taken from the dispatches of James Finn.

[380] Robson, 19.

[381] Freas, 32. Robson, Colonialism and Christianity in Mandate Palestine. 8.

[382] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_Mount_Lebanon_civil_war#Massacre_of_Christians_in_Damascus

[383] Freas, 54.

[384] Ruth Kark, American Consuls in the Holy Land. page 245.

[385] Freas, 33.

[386] Farah, 19.

[387] Freas, 55.

[388] Robson, 19.

[389] Frantzman, 22.

[390] Farah,74.

[391] Arthur Gish, Hebron Journal, 28.

[392] Chad Emmett, Beyond the Basilica: Christians and Muslims in Nazareth, 21.

[393] Emmett, 22.

[394] Emmett, 22.

[395] Emmett, 23.

[396] Farah, 11.

[397] Emmett, 24.

[398] Farah, 12.

[399] Emmett, 24.

[400] Emmett, 25.

[401] Emmett, 29.

[402] Emmett, 29.

[403] Israeli, 11., quoting James Finn.

[404] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 244-5.

[405] Robson, 19.

[406] Farah, 52.

[407] Makhoul, 23.

[408] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 254.

[409] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 246-8.

[410] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 250.

[411] Freas, 54.

[412] For examples, see Robson, 19.

[413] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 235.

[414] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 235.

[415] Morris and Ze’evi, 41/42.

[416] Freas, 95.

[417] Ashdown, 16.

[418] Bat Ye’or, 1985; 235.

[419] Ashdown, 50.

[420] Radai, 499.

[421] Ashdown, 12. Awad, N.G. (2012). And freedom became a public-square: Political, sociological and religious overviews on the Arab Christians and the Arabic Spring. Zurich: Lit Verlag. p. 89.

[422] Freas, 89.

[423] Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete, 15.

[424] Freas, 90.

[425] Freas, 93.

[426] Farah, 83.

[427] Farah, 82.

[428] Elie Kedourie, The Chatham House Version: And Other Middle Eastern Studies. 339.

[429] Freas, 154.

[430] Daphne Tsimhoni The Arab Christians and the Palestinian Arab National Movement during the Formative Stage, 73.

[431] Tsimhoni, 78.

[432] Brandon Moist, Palestinian Christians and their Identity and Resistance in the Twentieth Century. https://www.armstrong.edu/history-journal-palestinian-christians-and-their-identity-and -resistance-in

[433] Stalder, 87.

[434] Stalder, 88.

[435] Freas, 152.

[436] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falastin_(newspaper)

[437] Robson, Colonialism and Christianity, 47.

[438] Freas, 99.

[439] Ashdown, 51 quoting Reilly, 2019, p. 97.

[440] Freas, 99.

[441] Freas, 101.

[442] Tsimhoni writes that Arab Christians expected an improvement in their situation, and even some preferential treatment as co-religionists of holders of the Mandate.” Tsimhoni, The Status, 166. Saul Colbi notes that the Protestant churches did “exceptionally well in the thirty years of the Mandate, both in numbers and in establishments.” Stalder, 151.

[443] Noah Haiduc-Dale in Arab Christians, 70.

[444] Tsimhoni, 142.

[445] Haiduc-Dale, 69.

[446] Haiduc-Dale, 73.

[447] Haiduc-Dale, 88.

[448] Bretts, Robert Brenton. Christians of the Arab East. 159.

[449] Ori Stendal The Arabs in Israel page 249.

[450] Haiduc-Dale, 41.

[451] Freas, 147.

[452] Haiduc-Dale, 37.

[453] Emmett, 39.

[454] Nerel, 30.

[455] Cohen, Army, 19.

[456] Robson, 42/3?

[457] Haidoc-Dale, 46.

[458] Makhoul, 42.

[459] Freas, 142.

[460] Haidoc-Dale, 47.

[461] Robson 71.

[462] Tsimhoni, 74.

[463] Interestingly, in the 1880s James Finn saw this Muslim festival, held one week before the Orthodox Easter, as a flashpoint between Muslims and Christians. “the influx of devout Moslems was doubtless intended to counterbalance the effect of so many thousands of sturdy Christians being present in Jerusalem.” Finn, 222-223.

[464] In justifying this, the Christian editor of al-Karmil noted that it was Muhammad who had made the Arabs great, and that it was because they had "stopped following his teachings [that] they had become divided and weak and of no account" Al-Karmil, 9 September 1927. Freas, 279.

[465] Tsimhoni, 75.

[466] Frantzman, 49.

[467] Tsimhoni, 75.

[468] Freas, 279.

[469] A. Bostom, The Mufti’s Islamic Jew-Hatred, 24.

[470] "the most important Muslim pilgrimage in Palestine" Gonen, Rivka., Contested Holiness, Ktav Pub & Distributors Inc (2003) 138.

[471] Makhoul, 54.

[472] Freas, 137.

[473] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_Nebi_Musa_riots

[474] Noah Haiduc-Dale, 43.

[475] Freas, 305.

[476] Noah Haiduc-Dale, 43.

[477] Tour guides from the Bethlehem Bible College say that it is a Muslim tradition that Moses is buried there, but then proceed to justify this by giving the following as possible explanations; “Moses so much wanted to be in the holy land that his body rolled underground until it reached here. Another explanation is that the holy land is Jerusalem. So he did make it until here but he did not reach Jerusalem.” Given that the Bible specifies that he was buried in Moab, a site in northern Israel is impossible. They are simply trying to accommodate a Muslim falsehood. https://storiesfrompalestine.info/2020/11/16/on-the-road-to-jericho/

[478] Freas, 189.

[479] Freas, 316.

[480] Frantzman, 55.

[481] Frantzman, 55.

[482] https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/history-ideas/2016/05/remembering-jaffas-forgotten-pogrom/ For a more personal account, see https://www.haaretz.com/1.5114529

[483] It needs to be acknowledged that Islam celebrates violence in a way foreign to Judaism and Christianity. It is not about “winning hearts and minds,” a foreign concept, it is about imposing control. When I was in Pakistan, the leading cleric in a major mosque in Islamabad stated from the pulpit that they would throw acid in the faces of any women who drove a car. One simply cannot imagine any mainstream Pastor or Rabbi making a similar statement from the pulpit.

[484] “The commitment to nonviolence distinguishes the Christian leadership and a large number of Christians from the Palestinian majority.” Christians, Christmas and the Intifada. Drew Christiansen, https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/341/article/christians-christmas-and-intifada “During the second intifada, Palestinian Christians deviated from the mainstream resistance and away from violence and militarization.” Palestinian Christians and the Defence of Equal Human Rights, Yusef Daher. SUR, International Journal for Human Rights, https://sur.conectas.org/en/palestinian-christians-and-the-defence-of-equal-human-rights/

[485] Nerel, 30-31.

[486] Makhoul, 55.

[487] Haidoc-Dale, 27.

[488] Haiduc-Dale, 4.

[489] Tamir Sorek. “Calendars, Martyrs, and Palestinian Particularism under British Rule” Journal of Palestine Studies Vol. 43, No. 1 (Autumn 2013), pp. 6-23. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jps.2013.43.1.6?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[490] Haidoc-Dale, 27.

[491] Frantzman, 56.

[492] Freas, 109.

[493] Cohen, Army, 46.

[494] Cohen, Army, 48-50.

[495] Radai, 490.

[496] Freas, 164.

[497] Frantzman, 57.

[498] Frantzman, 61.

[499] Freas, 199.

[500] C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, chapter 7; "Begin by treating his Patriotism as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of his partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely part of the “cause”, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the cause … Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, (partisan political pundits and partisan media, "my addition") matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours-and the more “religious” the more securely ours."

[501] Cohen, Army, 57, 15.

[502] Freas, 200.

[503] Freas, 272.

[504] Freas, 273.

[505] Freas, 274, quoting Filastin, 8 December 1932.

[506] Freas, 274.

[507] Freas, 278.

[508] Tsimhoni, "The Arab Christians and the National Movement, " P. 75. https://christiansandisrael.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/tsimhoni-arab-christians.pdf

[509] Stalder, 164.

[510] Freas, 283.

[511] Cohen, Army, 30.

[512] Freas, 189.

[513] Freas, 191.

[514] Freas, 193.

[515] For a parallel case, from Germany; Julius von Jan, a Confessing pastor who did speak out, also admitted after the war: “We were all of scared of crossing the Nazi regime at its most sensitive point.” R. Gutteridge rightly commented: “it may not unfairly be added that it [love for one’s neighbour] was undeniably one of the most sensitive points where the church itself was concerned.” Barnes, 395.

[516] Freas, 215.

[517] Freas, 218-19.

[518] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Palestine_riots

[519] Frantzman, 19.

[520] Freas, 232-3.

[521] See https://www.facebook.com/eappiukireland/photos/a.787540614697339/3870859693032067/ for a statement in 2021 by the heads of the churches in Jerusalem supporting the “status quo” whereby Christians and Jews are banned from praying on the Temple Mount. For a similar Palestinian Lutheran statement, see https://www.facebook.com/colin.a.barnes.1/posts/4214031271964050:10.

[522] Haiduc-Dale, 101.

[523] Haiduc-Dale, 101.

[524] Haiduc-Dale, 101.

[525] Freas, 235.

[526] Freas, 234.

[527] Freas, 220.

[528] Haiduc-Dale, 110.

[529] "Christians in the Holy Land" with Jonthan Kuttab and Naim Ateek

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O655qVkqNc8 at 31:20.

[530] Cohen, 1929, 224-5.

[531] Freas, 269.

[532] Haiduc-Dale, 114.

[533] Haiduc-Dale, 114.

[534] Yehoshua Porath, The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 1918-1929, 303.

[535] Freas, 283.

[536] Haiduc-Dale, (2015) Rejecting Sectarianism: Palestinian Christians' Role in Muslim–Christian Relations, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, 26:1, 75-88, 80.

[537] Haiduc-Dale, 2015, 80.

[538] Haiduc-Dale, (2015) 80.

[539] Haiduc-Dale, 2015, 82.

[540]Frantzman, 75.

[541] Haiduc-Dale, 116.

[542] See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacDonald_Letter

[543] Freas, 242.

[544] Tsimhoni, 81.

[545] Freas, 116.

[546] Freas, 251.

[547] Freas, 263.

[548] Freas, 263.

[549] Freas, 239.

[550] Freas, 239.

[551] Freas, 281.

[552] Freas, 283.

[553] Freas, 229.

[554] Freas, 289.

[555] Freas, 289.

[556] Freas, 301.

[557] Aidan, Belief and Policy Making in the Middle East. 34.

[558] Freas, 303.

[559] Freas, 312.

[560] Freas, 312.

[561] Freas, 313.

[562] Freas, 315., Frantzman, 70 “The religious aspects of the rebellion further alienated Christians.”

[563] Haiduc-Dale, 148.

[564] Martin Gilbert, The Arab Israeli Conflict, 26.

[565] Frantzman, 68.

[566] Frantzman, 68.

[567] Haiduc-Dale, 146.

[568] Haiduc-Dale 149.

[569] Haiduc-Dale, 159.

[570] Moist

[571] Frantzman, 71.

[572] Haiduc-Dale, 147, 160.

[573] Haiduc-Dale, 147.

[574] Haiduc-Dale, 161.

[575] Freas, 305.

[576] Freas, 306-7, The article appearing 16 September 1936. See also Filastin, 16 July 1936, concerning attacks on Christian homes in Acre.

[577] Stalder, 164.

[578] Segev, Tom (1999). One Palestine Complete, 365, 368.

[579] Freas, 311.

[580] Haiduc-Dale, 141. He disputes this description as overly simplistic.

[581] Radai middle class 503. During the revolt, similar assaults on the Druze drove the community to seek an alliance with the Zionists. Frantzman, 72.

[582] Frantzman, 68.

[583] Morris, 1948, 13.

[584] Freas, 317.

[585] Stalder, 165.

[586] Freas, 304.

[587] Tsimhoni, 90.

[588] Frantzman, 73.

[589] Freas, 163. “An interesting observation of the situation at the time is that of Ben-Zvi, who argued that through their positions in the administration, Christians were effectively ruling over Muslims.” Freas, 164.

[590] Haiduc-Dale, 131.

[591] Freas, 318.

[592] Freas, 318.

[593] Frantzman, 71.

[594] Haiduc-Dale, 179.

[595] Freas, 316.

[596] Frantzman, 72.

[597] Freas, 318.

[598] Freas, 318.

[599] Mustafa Kabha, Arabic Palestinian Press between the Wars, 103. https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TmiDDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA126&dq=%22Studies+in+Zionism%22+falastin&ots=4KQJoU5rkE&sig=CJxdVoSw_isizDDAApIFjgPW1fs#v=onepage&q=%22Studies%20in%20Zionism%22%20falastin&f=false

[600] Kabha, 106.

[601] Cohen, Army, 291 n84.

[602] Haiduc-Dale, 155.

[603] Haiduc-Dale, 151.

[604] Haiduc-Dale, 151.

[605] Morris, The Birth, 24.

[606] Haiduc-Dale, 154.

[607] Haiduc-Dale, 167.

[608] Morris, 1948, 83.

[609] Rubin and Schwanitz, Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East, 97.

[610] Freas, 316.

[611] Haiduc-Dale, 166.

[612] Haiduc-Dale, 166.

[613] Haiduc-Dale, 166.

[614] Haiduc-Dale, 143

[615] Haiduc-Dale, 154.

[616] Freas, 324.

[617] Haiduc-Dale, 171.

[618] Frantzman, 74.

[619] Barnes, They Conspire Against Your People, 26.

[620] Barnes, 27.

[621] While generally viewed as a secular, Marxist group, its founder George Habash, was a Greek orthodox (the founder of the DFLP, Nayef Hawatmeh, was Catholic). A disproportionate number of their membership is also drawn from the Christan community, to the point where Presbyterian missionary Marthame Sanders once related how an Israeli crackdown of the PFLP was viewed by the Christian population of Zababdeh as an attack on Palestinian Christians http://www.saltfilms.net/update.html. As seen, Christians generally preferred secular organisations, and local perceptions often differ from Western analysis. Note also that Anglican priest Elias Khoury was convicted in Israel of carrying explosives for the PLO. These were later used to bomb a supermarket in a Jewish area, and the British Consulate, killing two people, and wounding eleven. When the Israelis allowed him to go to Jordan, he was made Anglican Bishop of Amman, and appointed to the executive council of the PLO.

[622] Israel Gershoni. Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism: Attraction and Repulsion. 134.

[623] Gershoni, 134.

[624] Gershoni, 135.

[625] Modras, 165. Jewish volunteers did form about 10% of the International Brigades, again begging the question, why single them out? See also G. Besier, “Anti-Bolshevism and Anti-Semitism: The Catholic Church in Germany and National Socialist Ideology 1936-1937” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 43 (1972) 451.

[626] Haiduc-Dale, 178.

[627] Haiduc-Dale, 178. Segev, One Palestine, 411.

[628] Morris, 1948, 21.

[629] Freas, 228.

[630] Gershoni, 115.

[631] Gershoni, 115.

[632] Alfassa, Reference Guide to the Nazis and Arabs During the Holocaust. 22.

[633] Basheer M. Nafi, The Arabs and the Axis:1933-1940 Arab Studies Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 2 (Spring 1997), pp. 1-24, 1.

[634] Black, 229.

[635] Stalder, 172.

[636] Nafi, 4.

[637] Rubin and Schwanitz, 96.

[638] Benny Morris, “Response of the Jewish Daily Press in Palestine to the Accession of Hitler, 1933” https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203221.pdf 10.

[639] Morris, Response 12.

[640] Morris, Response, 17.

[641] Segev, One Palestine Complete, 462.

[642] Segev, 461.

[643] Segev, 462.

[644] Segev, 463.

[645] Segev, 465.

[646] Fred Lawson, Falastin, an experiment in promoting Palestinian nationalism through the English language press. 126, 135. https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=TmiDDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA126&dq=%22Studies+in+Zionism%22+falastin&ots=4KQJoU5rkE&sig=CJxdVoSw_isizDDAApIFjgPW1fs#v=onepage&q=%22Studies%20in%20Zionism%22%20falastin&f=false

[647] Haiduc-Dale, 146.

[648] Haiduc-Dale, 147, 160.

[649] Stalder, 165.

[650] Mandel, 44. Note the rejoinder to this article by Rashid Rida, who described the editors as; “complacent nonentities.”

[651] Segev, 47.

[652] Rubin and Schwanitz, 138.

[653] Nafi, 9.

[654] Nafi, 14.

[655] Nafi, 15.

[656] Alfassa, 38.

[657] Alfassa, 35. Or, "Kill Jews wherever you find them for the love of God, history, and religion." Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East 311, 364.

[658] A wanted war criminal, he was released by the French (to annoy the British) in an act of political cynicism that would have made Machiavelli blush!

[659] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relations_between_Nazi_Germany_and_the_Arab_world

[660] Rubin and Schwanitz, 5.

[661] Rubin and Schwanitz, 138, 163 see also 123, 125, 127, 133.

[662] Rubin and Schwanitz, 94.

[663] Rubin and Schwanitz, 138.

[664] Black, 148, Rubin and Schwanitz, 172.

[665] Rubin and Schwanitz, 140.

[666] Black, 345.

[667] Black, 349.

[668] Black, 350. For insight into the profoundly Islamic religious basis for this anti-Semitism, see Black, 338, 347, 309-10. See also Rubin and Schwanitz, 95 and 165 especially.

[669] Gershoni, 116.

[670] The White Paper was nevertheless rejected by al-Husseini. Churchill called it a cowardly “surrender to Arab violence.” Morris, 1948, 20.

[671] Haiduc-Dale, 178.

[672] Gershoni, 219. Quoting Beinin and Lockman.

[673] Alfassa, 39.

[674] Black, 313.

[675] https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Relations_between_Nazi_Germany_and_the_Arab_world

[676] Nafi, 2.

[677] Segev, 465.

[678] Rubin and Schwanitz, 172.

[679] Karsh, 90.

[680] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/30433/is-hitlers-book-mein-kampf-a-bestseller-in-muslim-countries see also https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1388161/Mein-Kampf-for-sale-in-Arabic.html

[681] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/23/bbc-investigating-palestinian-journalist-tweeted-hitler-right/

[682] https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/name-of-shop-is-hitler-and-i-like-him-because-he-was-the-most-anti-jewish-person-432190

[683] https://www.jwire.com.au/pa-official-daily-lauds-family-who-named-son-eichmann-to-anger-zionism/

[684] Haiduc-Dale, 163.

[685] Haiduc-Dale, 163.

[686] Haiduc-Dale, 166.

[687] Haiduc-Dale, 167.

[688] Haiduc-Dale, 170.

[689] Haiduc-Dale, 184.

[690] Freas, 326/7.

[691] Freas, 326/7.

[692] Farah, 124.

[693] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amin_al-Husseini#Post-war_Palestinian_political_leadership

[694] Robson, 99. At the 2016 CATC conference, Kakish, president of the Council of Evangelical Churches in the Holy Land, showed his submission to the Palestinian Authority (whose uniformed representatives were sitting in the front row) by declaring that Evangelical churches in the Holy Land “are working on the intellectual and ideological rejection of modern Zionism and racism against our people.” This is the type of propaganda that one would expect from Mahmoud Abbas himself.

In 2018, Kakish put Palestinian Evangelicalism at the service of the Palestinian national cause by declaring that “We as Evangelicals believe in the righteousness of the Palestinian cause” and that “We have full confidence in our beloved president Mahmoud Abbas.” Van Zile, Dexter. Three Things You Need To Know About Christ At The Checkpoint https://www.camera.org/article/three-things-you-need-to-know-about-christ-at-the-checkpoint/

[695] Haiduc-Dale, 185.

[696] Frantzman, Glueckstadt, Kark, 7.

[697] Haiduc-Dale, 183.

[698] Hillel Cohen, Army of Shadows, 3.

[699] Morris, The Birth, 24.

[700] Morris, The Birth, 25.

[701] Looting was not limited to the irregulars – Ramat Rahel was twice captured by the Egyptian army, and each time the counter-attacking Jewish forces found the Egyptians busy looting (as opposed to setting up a defensive perimeter etc.).

[702] Cohen, Army, 238.

[703] A Zionist objective since 1920. Cohen, Army 17.

[704] Morris, The Birth, 25-26.

[705] Cohen, Army, 310, n25.

[706] Cohen, Army, 238.

[707] Morris, The Birth, 25.

[708] Morris, 1948, 94.

[709] Cohen, Army, 254.

[710] Cohen, Army, 238.

[711] Cohen, Army, 254.

[712] Haiduc-Dale, 185.

[713] Haiduc-Dale, 186.

[714] Haiduc-Dale, 186.

[715] Haiduc-Dale, 186.

[716] Morris, 1948, 93.

[717] Morris, 1948, 93., Morris, The Birth, 25.

[718] Morris, 1948, 280.

[719] Morris, 1948, 281.

[720] Morris, 1948, 281.

[721] Haiduc-Dale, 186.

[722] Morris, The Birth, 479.

[723] Haiduc-Dale, 186.

[724] Morris, 1948, 345.

[725] Haiduc-Dale, 101.

[726] Cohen, Army, 223.

[727] Morris, The Birth, 24.

[728] Haiduc-Dale, 186.

[729] Karsh, Palestine Betrayed. 124.

[730] Morris, The Birth, 25.

[731] Karsh, 125.

[732] Karsh, 129.

[733] Karsh, 130.

[734] Karsh, 132.

[735] Karsh, 138.

[736] Morris, 1948, 145.

[737] See Karsh, 138-140 for details.

[738] Karsh, 140.

[739] Morris, 1948, 146.

[740] Again, see Karsh, 141-42 for details.

[741] Collins, Lapierre, 204. “During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the Palestinian-Arab middle class in the three larger cities – Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Haifa – was among the first groups to leave the country, in the initial stage of the war. https://www.academia.edu/5572552/The_collapse_of_the_Palestinian_Arab_Middle_Class_in_1948_The_case_of_Qatamon_Middle_Eastern_Studies_2007?auto=download&email_work_card=download-paper

[742] Collins, Lapierre, 322.

[743] Cohen, Army of Shadows, 3. The whole book is devoted to this topic.

[744] Cohen, Army, 241, 245.

[745] Morris, 1948, 13.

[746] Morris, The Birth, 24.

[747] Haiduc-Dale, 186.

[748] For a discussion on the present continuation of replacement theology within the Orthodox church, see Stalder, 67-74.

[749] Robson, 162.

[750] As well as the depredations of ISIS, see https://greekcitytimes.com/2019/09/07/september6-7-1955-turkeys-kristallnacht/?amp&fbclid=IwAR1oK5AWR3vdxG5GtzeHpx8uky7gZ9BIVUfPt3Jg8dO_pThEKm99w_EEK5c

[751] https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/07/14/palestinian-christians-defends-hamas/

[752] M. Durie, 181.

[753] M. Durie, 201.

[754] See M. Durie, 201-2.

[755] M. Durie, 160.

[756] M. Durie, 203.

[757] M.Durie, 214.

[758] C. Barnes, They Conspire Against Your People, 346.

[759] M.Durie, 209.

[760] M. Durie, 202.

[761] https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/06/the-body-and-the-blood-the-holy-lands-christians-at-the-turn-of-a-new-millennium-a-reporters-journey

[762] https://hcc.plo.ps/?p=6546&fbclid=IwAR0Je5F_rRYhVAOaXmSGhUglm9COBOK-8i3EeuB2_iQKHlgp2LNKgvHnmkI&lang=en

[763] For footnotes, see main section.

[U1]

Colin's blog

Monday 23 May 2022

A history and theological reflection of the Palestinian Christian Communities

Dreaming of Mount Gerizim, dying on Mount Ebal

Section 1, Biblical Foundations

Dreaming of Mount Gerizim; the blessings and the important responsibilities Christian Zionism would see for the Palestinian Christians

Dying on Mount Ebal; The past and present reality of the Churches of Palestine – matters for confession and repentance

Tearing away fig leaves.

Jerusalem – ground zero for replacement theology!

Modern Palestinian Christian history

The Druze

Biblical Issues

B. Intercommunal (Muslim/Christian/Jewish) relations in pre-1948 Palestine.

Palestinian Christians - First in their opposition to Zionism

What other choices/options could the Palestinian Christian community have made in the formative years, 1920s+?

C. Recent Palestinian Christian history

Choosing teams

1929 Western Wall Riots; Islam supreme, Christians submissive

The Round Table Conference

Nazism and Hitler.

What was known

During the War

After the war

Intercommunal relations after the Revolt, after WW2, before the War of 1948

Conclusion

The wider impact of dhimmitude – the moral and spiritual nakba of Palestinian Christianity as revealed by ‘the Jewish question’

Remnant

Hope!

Appendix 1 Summary of Intercommunal Relations/Persecutions[763]

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