Nobody – or hardly anybody - ever talks about how Palestinian Christians are treated in Israel. The reason is very probably what I found out for myself when I published an article on my blog about how Israel is not such a haven for Christians and received abusive comments from a couple of (anonymous) usual suspects.
As these positions deserve to be exposed, I decided to reply to them in a new article: this.
The first comment is in answer to the point I made that what happens to Christians in Israel is usually favourably compared with what happens to them in Islamic countries. But is that the right comparison? Isn't Israel supposed to be democratic and Western?
Therefore, Israel should be judged by that standard and the way Christians and Christianity are treated in Israel compared with the way minorities and their religions (including Jews and Judaism) are treated in Western countries.
The first anonymous commenter says:
It's the opposite the aggression in Israel is done by arrogant antisemites, the cameras only roll when a Jew gets angry enough to respond, Christians set Jews up in Israel just like they do everywhere else. Where do you think Muslims learned these tricks?
The second anonymous commenter maintains (I’m reproducing the comment with all its mistakes):
No western standards , you are soi wrong about this it's scary. 300,000 antisemites marched through France last year, what about the treatment of Jews in your beloved Italy, proof Jews have been there for 2300 years such as caves, where are the Jews of Ita;y, how many vilent antisemitic incidents in Italy/ I think it is nearly 2 billion at this point in histopry. They have accused orthodox Jews of spitting everyone and they never actually do it. If you are so evil and blind that you can't see the media and many individuals lie about Israel, you shouldn't be alive. Then you falsely claim that Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post are standard papers, something you would not do for any other subject except to selectively prove your antisemitic thievery and lying point. haaratz has a daily article about how evil any religious Jews are and the the Jerusalem Post does too. You are wrong on this, the Western countries has and does treat Jews especially in Europe, worse than all other peoples combined. You are just bullying thye Jews with oibvious antisemitic bias and the same types of tricks Muslims use, in the media. Christians are treated better in Israel by infinity than Jews were in any Western country. Definitely Italy.
My dear anonymous friends (both of you), I wanted to answer you but I realise that you've done it very well by yourself.
By skipping arguments and launching into vituperative attacks without substantiating the wildest claims ("almost 2 billion anti-Semitic incidents" in Italy alone! I suppose it could be right if you consider anti-Semitic anyone who disagrees with you), you have demonstrated that my point was correct.
There is indeed a real question that dares not speak its name.
And it doesn't dare because you try to silence all criticisms of Israel or Jewish culture or behaviour with tired, old accusations of anti-Semitism (when not out-and-out neo-Nazism).
This reminds me of something. Oh, yes, your favourite people. Muslims try to silence all criticisms of Islam in the same way. Just replace "anti-Semitic" with "Islamophobic" and "neo-Nazi" with "racist".
I've read a very apt epigrammatic definition of anti-Semitism: "Once anti-Semitism was hate of the Jews, now it has become saying anything that Jews hate."
This is the ultimate taboo, an extremely fierce one. Anyone can be criticised except Jews. I know that I can write unfavourably about Muslims (that is actually easy these days), black people, homosexualists, Third World immigrants, non-whites in general. But on the rare – albeit very recently increasing – occasions I have criticised anything to do with Jewry, I have been insulted.
It's highly disingenuous of you to talk about anti-Semitism on the rise in Europe when you know very well that this is not due to the native Western people but to the immigrant Muslims. And immigrant Jews in the West have always been at the forefront of support for unlimited immigration and multiculturalism. Now they don't want to lie in the bed they've made for themselves. They move to Israel. Too bad indigenous, Gentile Europeans haven't stolen Arab lands to go to and establish an ultra-nationalist state where the "other" is treated as a second-class citizen.
It doesn't matter how long you've lived in a country (even 2,300 years as you say), if all this time you've cultivated your separateness, as Professor Kevin MacDonald documents, and considered yourself part of a group of superior humanity, the chosen people.
I've heard before all these stories of all sorts of people who set up the Jews, and I must say that sometimes I've fallen for them. But you can't fool all people all the time.
Interesting how neither of you could answer the documented fact that Israeli legislators have ripped up the New Testament and called for its burning, or the attacks on churches and writings of "Death to Christians". Are they all set-ups?
For letting people know about these truths you think I deserve to die: "You shouldn't be alive", as you nicely put it. So much for considering yourself victims. Now I know even better what must be like to be a Christian in Israel.
NOTE
The author of the YouTube video above introduces it thus:
"It is becoming a common occurrence in Israel to hear about Jews burning churches, spitting on Christian clerics, burning Christian Bibles and intimidating and harassing other Jews who believe in Jesus. Unfortunately this is almost unheard of from the Western media. If it was not for the internet this would be unknown to millions of people around the world.
Here I am presenting one example of the rampant discrimination and xenophobia against Christians that exists in the "Jewish state". Please feel free to copy and post this video in other sites."
Why shouldn't this man be (or have been) allowed to marry his dolphin sweetheart?
After all, it's only "love" that matters in holy matrimony, not building a family and a safe environment in which to raise kids.
It's all to do with "feelings" these days, little else is important, and obviously we are here talking about the feelings of adults. (The feelings of children of anomalous families carry little weight.) Love in particular, however defined. For some people, like paedophile Oscar Wilde who was paying to have sex with working-class rent boys, the definition of love is lust.
A man says he fell in love with a female dolphin, Dolly, in the 1970s and had a sexual relationship with her for a year.
In addition to this, there is the terrible reality of the captivity of Dolly at Floridaland amusement park (now fortunately defunct), where she was a "performing dolphin".
He claimed the encounter took place because Dolly seduced him.
Malcolm Brenner, 63, claims that he fell for Dolly, a bottlenose dolphin who lived at the now-defunct Floridaland theme park in Sarasota, after her amorous advances.
Brenner told the story of their year-long affair relationship again in Dolphin Love, a new film which premiered last week at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
Slamdance, which takes place at the same time as the more famous Sundance film festival, is seen as its edgier alternative and hosts more niche films.
In the fifteen-minute video, Brenner describes in detail the sexual relationship, which he claims was consensual.
Brenner's acts would be illegal today. But Florida only enacted a law banning bestiality in 2011, so the encounter he described in 1971 would not be covered.
I suppose such a law was not necessary then, but nowadays we are much more "progressive" and zoophiles have become a common occurrence.
Reverend Wena Parry, 75, was told that stickers saying "Christ Must Be Saviour" and "Christ For Me" could be regarded as "modifications" and could invalidate her insurance policy.
She told BBC Wales that she believes she has been treated unfairly because of her religious beliefs by Age UK insurance.
Reverend Parry said she spent £120 on the red-and-black-lettered messages. "Every opportunity I have I want to tell people about Jesus. I reckon there must at least a million people who have read the texts on my car," she added.
Age UK has denied the existence of a religious motive behind the move, but hasn't provided any other explanation.
The company first became aware of the messages when the reverend submitted a claim on her insurance after thieves damaged her exhaust and stole a piece of the engine, and thus company officials saw the car's photographs.
Age UK told Reverend Parry in a letter: "These modifications do not fit our acceptance criteria for motor insurance and cover would have been declined if we had been made aware of these at the time of purchasing your policy."
Why on earth? It's difficult to think of what the word "Christ" on someone's car has to do with insuring the car in case of an accident.
Reverend Parry has wisely changed insurance company.
"There might be somebody within that company that hates Christianity." she said.
Indeed. And, considering that Britain is not only historically but still now constitutionally a Christian country - the Queen before being crowned had to swear allegiance to the Christian faith and the Church of England -, these anti-Christian attitudes are nothing short of subversive and anti-British.
I don't know how the media could get away with constantly describing Obama as a little genius. Maybe they think that because he'a Marxist and a black, and for those reasons the misrepresentation has been accepted more uncritically than it should have been.
He's not even very intelligent.
In this video, Obama shows that he doesn't know the basics of American history, and - what is particularly serious - of American presidential history.
Interviewed on NBC by Savannah Guthrie, Barack Hussein says: “We make beer. First president since George Washington to make some booze in the White House”.
He's never even taken a tourist tour of the White House, otherwise he would know that this august building hadn't yet been constructed at the time of Washington's presidency, and the first president to live in it was John Adams, the second President of the US.
The White House was built between 1792 and 1800, when, although incomplete, it became livable. In 1800 John and Abigail Adams moved in when the rooms were still unfinished.
When the third president, Thomas Jefferson, went to live in it in 1801, most of the outside structures were finished.
Perhaps Barack Hussein doesn't feel enough loyalty for America to experience the need to learn this great nation's history at primary school level. Perhaps it's not even his nation.
My friend, Italian journalist Alessandra Nucci, has written and sent me this article.
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Italy has a new president, Sergio Mattarella, the first President to come from Sicily, and the brother of a lawmaker who was murdered by the mafia. The picture above shows the scene of the crime, where Mattarella, then a young university professor, is holding in his arms the body of his dying brother, Piersanti, Governor of Sicily.
In our system, it’s the Prime Minister who heads the government and gets to make the decisions, but it’s the President who is head of State and gets to decide who can be Prime Minister. Sort of like the monarch in a constitutional monarchy, but with a lot more leeway for making independent decisions.
This important figure today, because of the tragedy in his family, which he has never capitalized on, never playing the victim, can stand for the 99% of Italians who are NOT linked to the mafia and for the vast majority of the country who are even, directly or indirectly, VICTIMS of the mafia, down to even losing their lives.
So please, world, do away with your unfair stereotypes. Please realize that prejudice becomes rooted and indestructible when it is confirmed by an endless line of tv series where the noblest Italian trait is the gravity of Godfather Marlon Brando.
Not only is our real-life new President a symbol of the honesty and resilience of the average Italian, but he also disproves the loud and uncouth behavior depicted as being typical of Italians. Whatever else he may turn out to do, President Mattarella is honestly soft-spoken and dignified, a man of few words whose aplomb marks him out as more similar to an archetypical Englishman than a Sicilian.
I am sending this out because the international press very rarely says anything about Italy and if it does speak it is usually to register something that draws ridicule and scorn.
How do you know that a door was objectively there (unless you are a solipsist)? When you moved into another room and didn't bang your head against a wall.
How do you objectively know that the calculations on which a bridge was built are correct? When the bridge doesn't collapse.