On Gaza

Constantine has a very insightful post on the plight of Palestinian Christians:

The conflict in the Middle East is commonly presented as a simple, two-sided conflict between Israeli Jews and Arab Muslims — and that is, in fact, how most Muslims in the Middle East regard it. Everyone, however, tends to forget the presence of Palestinian Christians.

Today it is believed that the number of Christians in Israel and occupied Palestine number some 175,000, just over 2 percent of the entire population.

Christianity - which has its origin in the Middle East - was once the dominant religion of the region from as far back as the 4th century (when the Edict of Milan was proclaimed) and for some time after the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, but that number is dwindling fast today.

The Christians of Lebanon, for example, once made up around 55% - a majority - of its population, but after repeated incursions and domestic instability, this majority has been lost.

It is one thing to be simply forgotten by Christians in West, who are usually quick to take up the cause of persecuted Christians abroad, but in Palestine, in a bizarre twist, they aid and abet those who would persecute these Christians. The Christians leave in their hundreds, and those who choose to remain have only Islamic militants as allies.

"We have received far more support and comfort from the Hezbollah in Lebanon than from our fellow Christians in the West," remarked one Christian Palestinian refugee in Damascus. "I want to know, why don’t the Christians in the West do anything to help us? Are the teachings of Jesus nothing but empty slogans to them?"

- The American Conservative, May 24 2004

Why is this?

...

If anyone ever needed a reason to regard the actions and the beliefs of conservative Evangelicals as both hypocritical and unworthy of serious consideration, this would have to be it. Their support — sometimes tacit and sometimes overt — of actions which harm Palestinian Christians just goes to show that they care far less about humanity and fellow Christians than they do about the ego boost they experience at the idea of coming out on top after Armageddon when everyone else suffers a horrible death.

And from Peter Hitchens:

A message for the defenders of Israel's attack on Gaza

I was told repeatedly by apologists for this stupid misconceived attack that the principal reason for it was to stop the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel. It now seems quite clear that the attack has failed to stop these attacks, as I said it would. A few weeks from now, and the rockets will be back as a regular event, while Hamas remains in control of the Strip. But the dead, especially the innocents, will remain dead, and Israel's image in the western world will remain tarnished. What do these people say now?