CHRISTIANS IN ISRAEL/PALESTINE

In her book The Israelis, Donna Rosenthal presents anecdotes, stories and interviews in an attempt to describe the everyday life of different demographic groups in Israel. In chapter fifteen, Rosenthal presents the Christians. The picture that emerges is that Christians often have to face the hostility and intolerance of the Muslim Arabs. We read for example that Muslims often threaten directly their Christian neighbors by saying that after Jews it is going to be the Christians’ turn and sometimes they even physically attack them or destroy their churches (Rosenthal, 320, 325). On the other hand, the author gives an idealistic view of the Jewish-Christian relationships. Wearing a big cross may be helpful for someone looking to rent an apartment from a Jewish landlord. Although Rosenthal concedes that innocent Palestinian Christians often face discrimination, she argues that this discrimination takes place because of their Palestinian identity and not the Christian one (Rosenthal, 321).

I believe that the reality is more complicated. One can easily find documentation and anecdotes that contradict Rosenthal’s view of the Christian-Jewish relationships. For example, an article in the  Jerusalem Post  reports the desecration of a Christian monastery by extremist right-wing Jews who reacted to the dismantlement of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Jerusalem Post, of course, does not fail to add that other Jewish right-wing activists restored the damages and apologized to the monks. However, an article in the International Business Times reported that according to the Vatican senior official in Jerusalem, Friar Perbatistta  Pizzaballa, similar cases of desecrations of Christian churches with phrases in Hebrew like “Jesus was a monkey” are fairly common in Israel. In addition, Pizzaballa complained that the Israeli government is slow to prosecute the perpetrators. I think that Pizzaballa may actually have good reasons for his complaints considering the delicate political balance inside the Israeli coalition governments which often include parties from the extreme right. On the other hand, Pizzaballa's assertion about the Israeli government's  reaction to extremism is not a fact.

Other sources provide farther evidence of the tensions between Christians and extremist Jews. The Vatican Insider from the Italian mainstream newspaper La Stampa mentions an incident of a “violent attack” by young settlers against Christian apartments in Belfage. The article, however, does not clarify the nature of this attack and if it included physical violence. One may argue that the Vatican official and the newspaper act for the interests of the Pope and have a  heavily biased perspective. But still, it seems that both Jewish and Christian sources reveal a less idealistic picture of the Christian-Jewish relationships in Palestine. I believe that in the vast majority of cases, moderate believers respect the religion of their neighbors. Unfortunately, it is the few cases of extremists who with their actions dominate the news and sometimes even shape the general mode of behavior.

Rosenthal prefers to remain silent about the right-wing Jewish extremists. It seems that the presence of even more radical extremists in Arab countries somehow makes the Jewish extremists disappear. I believe she is wrong. Frankly, I am not even sure if Jewish right-wing extremists are really so different from the Palestinian ones. If the dismantlement of their settlements by their own government (who subsidized them to relocate) triggered these types of attacks, what would have been their reaction in a more adverse scenario?  What would have happened if their settlement had been dismantled by a Palestinian or Christian government forcing them to relocate without compensation and after losing all their wealth? How many then of those right-wing Jews would be tempted to copy the terrorist practices of the Palestinian extremists?

 If we really want to solve the problem of extremism, we must first have the intellectual courage to admit its existence in every place we find it. Today, religious minorities are not safe, even inside the most progressive societies in the world. This post was about the violence by Jewish extremists against the Christians in Israel because Rosenthal failed to mention it in her book. It goes without saying that even today Jews and their synagogues and cemeteries in Europe often become targets of extremists there. And as long as we continue to ignore “our extremists,” the situation will not change much.