Stand for Israel

First-hand photos from Feast of the Tabernacles Jerusalem Parade

SFI friend Matthew Morgenstern, a British-born Israeli who lives in Jerusalem, sent in photos from today's Feast of the Tabernacles Jerusalem Parade.

 
  

Israeli kids watch the parade from their window a few stories above the parade (the bars are protective).

(Thanks, Matthew!)
 

Thousands of Christians in Israel for largest solidarity mission

Thousands of Christians from around the world are heading to Jerusalem to participate what may be the largest solidarity mission to Israel, the annual "Feast of Tabernacles" that shows Christian Zionists unequivocally standing  for a united Jerusalem.

Organized by the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, participants took part in a weekend at the Dead Sea and will be meeting in Jerusalem this week, culminating in a huge parade through the city's center to show Israelis that Christians from around the world stand with them. 

Christian family murdered in Pakistan

Another shocking example of the plight of Christians living under radical Islam:

Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets of a town in eastern Pakistan yesterday after Muslim radicals burned to death eight members of a Christian family, raising fears of violence spreading to other areas.

Hundreds of armed supporters of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Islamic militant group, burned dozens of Christian homes in Gojra over the weekend after allegations that a copy of the Koran had been defiled.

UPDATE: More on the dangers of being a Christian in Pakistan in today's New York Times.

Proposed law in Iran enacts harsh new penalties for leaving Islam

A chilling story about the plight of Christians living under radical Islamic rule:

A month ago, the Iranian parliament voted in favour of a draft bill, entitled "Islamic Penal Code", which would codify the death penalty for any male Iranian who leaves his Islamic faith. Women would get life imprisonment. The majority in favour of the new law was overwhelming: 196 votes for, with just seven against.

War on Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Rabbi Eckstein's latest op-ed, published in the New York Daily News:

Even in the Holy Land, where Jesus walked, there is an increasing Christian exodus from both the West Bank and Gaza. Part of it surely stems from the continuing Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But much of it results from a growing Islamic campaign to force Christians to sell their property and leave.

The only place in the Mideast where Christian communities continue to grow is in the Jewish State of Israel. Israel's tolerance is logical. What people of faith know the dangers of religious persecution better than the people of Israel - especially those whose families originated in the Islamic world? Between 1948 and 1956 more than 850,000 Jews were forced to flee the Arab lands where their families had lived for centuries.

"The edifice of tolerance is crashing down over our heads"

So says one Greek Orthodox Christian priest who heads a church in Gaza, in yet another report on the increasingly desparate situation of Christians there.

Attack on Gaza YMCA

More violence against Christians in Hamas-held Gaza -- fourteen men destroyed the library in a YMCA:

Thousands of books were reportedly burnt in the ensuing fire. The YMCA in Gaza also operates a gym and a wedding hall.

The gunmen laid a second explosive device near a computer in the library but it failed to detonate. Two security guards on the scene were not able to block the intruders; they were taken by them from the YMCA and later released in the northern Gaza Strip.

Christians targeted in Gaza

A sad story about the 3,000 "increasingly frightened" Christians who remain in Hamas-controlled Gaza:

The small evangelical Baptist community has been a principal target of the extremists because of its missionary work, which has been halted.

"Christians get killed here, let alone a Muslim who converted," said Ashraf, 36, who did not give his last name. "I stopped going to church even before the coup."

The Bethlehem formula, 2007 edition

A press release found in our inbox yesterday from an organization called "the Ad Hoc Committee for Bethlehem" states:

Every Christmas, Palestinian Christians from all over the Holy Land come together at the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square built over the manger where Jesus Christ was born.  Today, the joy of Christmas in Bethlehem is overshadowed by great suffering, forced displacement and growing poverty caused by a 30-foot-high concrete wall that is being constructed around the city.  Palestinian Christians who desire to travel to Bethlehem for Christmas are stopped at the entrance to the ancient city by the wall.  They cannot freely enter nor can their brothers, sisters and neighbors on the other side of the wall freely exit.  The Israeli military occupation stifles every aspect of life for the residents of Bethlehem today.

The release continues on in this vein, with not a mention of the dire threat of radical Islam that so many Palestinian Christians face, a threat illustrated well by this article:

Bethlehem-area Christian leaders and residents, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, ... said they face an atmosphere of regular hostility and intimidation by Muslims. They said Palestinian armed groups stir tension by holding militant demonstrations and marches in the streets. They spokes of instances in which Christian shopkeepers' stores were recently ransacked and Christian homes attacked. The Christian leaders said one of the most significant problems facing Christians in Bethlehem is the rampant confiscation of land by Muslim gangs.

The Ad Hoc Committee for Bethlehem is less concerned with the well-being of Palestinian Christians than it is with using those Christians to bash Israel. As Dexter Van Zile of CAMERA has noted, it has become a Christmas tradition for some mainline church leaders -- to their everlasting shame.

Christians in the Muslim world

Front Page magazine has an in-depth article by Jihad Watch's Robert Spencer dealing with the treatment of Christians in Muslim countries:

An Afghani named Abdul Rahman was arrested in February 2006 – for the crime of leaving Islam and becoming a Christian. The constitution of the new, post-Taliban Afghani regime stipulates that “no law can be contrary to the beliefs and provisions of the sacred religion of Islam.” Abdul Rahman’s case showed that the traditional Islamic classification of apostasy as a capital crime would be included in this. After an international firestorm, and pressure from the United States, Abdul Rahman was released and asked for asylum in Italy, which was swiftly granted; however, the conditions under which he was originally arrested still remain: the Islamic law provision in the Afghani constitution remains today.

Mohammed Hegazy and Abdul Rahman aren’t alone. Christian converts face persecution all over the Islamic world – and it usually goes unreported.

Read the whole thing.