MAD IN BETHLEHEM
(c ) Carrie Devorah
editor@carrieon.com

Three days into the New Year, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said he favored postponing the January 25th parliamentary elections. The sub-headline of Mohammed Daraghmeh’s news bit in the Express’s World read “Palestinian leader cites absentee ballot issues as infighting continues.” Those words may spell a modern day Chanukah miracle in the making.

For the first time in 40 years, Christmas and Chanukah fell on the same night. Christian pilgrims packed Manger Square. Several hundred meters south of the Jerusalem municipality border in Bethlehem, at the Tomb of Rachel, candles were lit on the nine branched chanukiah each night of the Festival of Lights remindful of the the Hasmonaims’ victory over the Syrians, a battle between light and darkness, liberty against tyranny, the triumph of family over an army, a miracle. At the edge of the West Bank town, a 25 foot Maccabee, the name given the warriors of the Hasmonaim tribe, stands guard, a wall built by Israel to shield worshippers come in peace. Maccabee derives from the Hebrew word for “Hammer.” The wall defends the grottos marking Jesus birthplace and the Tomb of Mother Rachel. Media reported tens of thousands of worshippers waiting to enter churches sparse before. Contrasting years earlier, the houses of worship were packed.

Christians had abandoned Bethlehem. Few faith filled Christians stayed behind as guardians to it’s most cherished holy sites. Thousands had moved abroad. Bethlehem became Moslem. Persecution was brought on when the Constitution of the Palestinian authority adopted Sharia, Muslim religious law. Yasser Arafat took over the Christian city in 1995 from Israel in accordance with the Oslo Accords. Arafat extended Bethlehem’s Moslem community by redrawing city’s borders to include thousands of Muslims surrounding in refugee camps. Abraham Miller, professor Emeritus at University of Cincinnati, described in a piece written for frontpagemagazine.com, a Muslim father beating his teenage daughter to death for wanting to marry a Christian man. Her fiancée reportedly was beaten while in jail. Miller described the mob torching a statue of the Virgin Mary, screaming “Burn the Crusaders.” Miller also wrote about two teenage Christian girls raped, murdered and left, their throats slit their genitals mutilated. It is understood why crimes on Christians often go unreported. Christians fear of reprisal for believing differently in a fundamental Islamic world.

World media focuses attention on terrorists spurred by tribal power rather than law. Professor Miller wrote “while Muslims oppress Christians over there… here Muslims hold vigils blaming the Jews for the oppression inflicted on Bethlehem’s Christians.” Routinely, Palestinians shoot at Israelis from atop holy sites. Guns are fired into neighboring Giloh from Jalah. Only fire returned by Israeli soldiers is condemned in the world theater. The terrorists disregard when Muslim religion, evolved from the 7th Century, it specified a statute for “people of the book,” Jews and Christians. In one man’s words, “the world is quick to demonize the people who are building the shield but amazingly quiet with the people who are throwing the spears.”

All that is only part of the story. Now for the rest of it. November 17, 2005, in the weeks preceding the upcoming January elections in Israel, the PLO held a press conference at the National Press Club in DC. openbethlehem.org’s campaign had, in fact, launched November 11th at the Foreign Press Association in London. Its stated goal was to launch “an international campaign” to save Bethlehem, claiming the “city’s civil institutions spearheaded this initiative to keep this international religious and cultural treasure as the illegal wall surrounding the town is completed.” Event details on the NPC Day book said the Open Bethlehem Project sought to “encourage investment and tourism in Bethlehem” through rebuilding its economy by drawing attention to the imprisonment of the birthplace of Christ.” openbethlehem.org said their press conference was timed for “the run up to Christmas, to get Christians to remember the origins of their religion.” 9:00 am in the Murrow Room at the National Press Club, it was conveyed the birthplace of Christ was dying, Israel was killing Christianity.

I was ½ hour late. I had hesitated about attending, something about needing downtime that wasn’t meant to be, again. The press conference was just starting. Something about Semites, a common penchant for delayed punctuality of 30 minutes or more. I walked in through the doorway to the press conference shoulder to shoulder with a man introducing himself as the PLO Ambassador to Washington. The business card he extended to me read differently- Afif Safieh, representative of the Palestinian Authority to the United States. I looked around the small room hosting a press conference fighting for Christianity’s heritage. There were no priests. No clerics. No reverends. No pastors, monsignors, rabbis or Imams nor any of the usual suspects who show up to Christian and Moslem press calls. The press packet did attribute a “special message” to Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu, “It is unconscionable that Bethlehem should be allowed to die slowly from strangulation. I pray for the success of this peaceful initiative.”

A British man stood in front of the microphone. He introduced himself, Peter Bourne. The press packet listed his email address is at igc.org, an online list serve of alerts for left leaning activism. As happens too often here in the Capitol, Presidents move on but hacks reconstitute themselves with the cachet of who they once worked for. Bourne did not share what his CV did about him. He is an ex-pat living in Washington for several decades, surviving on a relationship tied in to the Carter administration. The press kit contained a quote attributed to former President Jimmy Carter describing “openbethlehem.org” as a “worthy and admirable project.” annonline.com claims it was Bourne who “worked to convince Jimmy Carter to run for the Presidency.” It also says Bourne worked ten years on the International Drinking and Sanitation Decade initiative “providing clean drinking water for people worldwide.” Bourne worked for the UN.

Bourne spoke briefly. openbethlehem.org is a not-for-profit headquartered at Bethlehem University. It is funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation along with other international organizations. It is supported by the Bethlehem governate and municipality.

He introduced a young lady, Leila Sansour. She said she is a Christian, a Palestinian, a British citizen who “grew up in Beit Jala, “one of the three towns that make up the Bethlehem triangle.” And Sansour said, she is president of openbethlehem.org. Two cameras were filming during the press conference. One crew was from an Arab media outlet, unfamiliar to DC press calls. It wasn’t Al Jazeera. The man’s business card read “Al Mar TV.” The second camera person said she was filming a documentary for openbethlehem.org and for BBC2. Sansour’s CV lists “Jeremy Hardy versus the Israeli Army” to her credit, describing Jeremy Hardy as critically acclaimed, making Sansour high profile in anti-Israel circles and attractive both as a female and president to front openbethlehem.org. The ISM, International Solidarity Movement posted a review of the film on Rachel Corrie’s website. Corrie was an American activist who died trying to stop a Caterpillar tractor with her body. ISM calls people like her, “human shields.” Jeremy Hardy, a British comedian, wanted to portray one. One reviewer called Hardy’s and Sansour’s effort a “slogan-spouting, holiday-from-hell souvenir.” `

After Sansour, Safieh spoke. Then they spoke together. They said, “Open Bethlehem is working closely with the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and Bethlehem’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry.” Deferring to their press packet and website which say Bethlehem, “for all its unique history,” may not have a future “unless swift action is taken,” claiming Bethlehem is threatened from “the expansion of illegal settlements in a ring’like formation around the city, on land confiscated by force or acquired by coercion from Bethlehemites,” “uprooted to recent mass cheap housing for immigrants on land that has been stolen from the local people.”

Sansour’s next words made openbethlehem.org’s agenda apparent. Sansour said openbethlehem.org was issuing Bethlehemite passports. I then understood it was b’shert, divined, the upcoming Palestinian elections in Israel were delayed, yet again. And why I was meant to be ½ hour but on time.

Sansour spoke to the cameras as she said Bethlehemite passports are to be given “to those who join in the initiative, focused on the sentence illegal wall and militarized fences and with only two gates to the outside wall,” that with the creation of the Bethlehem Passport, Bethlehem has its own high honor comparative “to being conferred with the Paris’ Legion of Honor, a British Knighthood or the US Congressional Medal of Honor” for an individual who “underwrites a specific initiative” or “bringing wealth-creating opportunities to the city.” The “honorary” Bethlehem passport,” she said, “won” one of two ways” “a people-to-people and city-to-city approach on behalf of Bethlehem” is “open to the world who help keep the city open against all odds and for as long as Bethlehem’s prison wall is standing,” it is open to someone who makes an important contribution to the city such as making “an extended stay in the city” “sharing our journey as we work to overcome the wall,” it is “open to people of imagination and experience who can bring major events to a city that lives through its visitors.” “Imagine,” she said, “even an international conference, a festival of sacred music, even a marathon across the mountains of Bethlehem’s wilderness.”

The Bethlehem passport in Leila Sonsour’s hands looked as authentic as a American or British or Israeli passport in their nationals’ hands, deliberately crafted with leather covers and deep watermarked pages, on its cover a design that features both the star of Bethlehem and the figure of St George – Al Khadir – the patron saint of Bethlehem sacred to Bethlehem’s Muslims and Christians alike.” An Israeli resident said, “The lore is the Right To Return. The battle is for land… if the Palestinian Authority signs a peace deal, it forfeits all future rights to bring people back, something the US does not understand… but it seems the PLO do hence the creation of the figment Bethlehem passport. Who would question the authenticity of a document or know to vet the details of its being distributed for a country that does not exist.”

There was a one-sheet of “Facts” in openbethlehem.org’s press packet. It said from 2000 to 2004 “business has collapsed as a result of the restriction around Rachel’s Tomb.” http://www.bethlehem-city.org, “Bethlehem was a city of tourism before the word even existed” admitting since the year 2000, however, the travel market collapsed by more than ninety per cent and too many visitors pass by on whistle-stop tours, organized by Israeli tour operators, allowing the visitor nothing but a ten-minute tour of the Church of the Nativity.” The Fact Sheet did not adress the current Intifadah, reign of terror, targeting all civilians from all cultures living or touring within Israel, amplified with bus bombing murders that began in 2000. The cited source of the Open Bethlehem one-sheet is the United Nations OCHA/UNSCO “The Changing Face of Bethlehem,” Dec. 2004.

openbethlehem.org wants Palestinians in the diaspora, “driven out by terror or war,” who “left out of hardship,” who “chose to realize their ambitions in the wider world,” to reconnect “into the heart of Bethlehem society” sharing “the comfort of knowing they can find a home in Bethlehem.” Sansour talked about establishing a World Bethlehem Day recognized globally. She talked about increasing media output, promoting Bethlehem initiatives, promoting their international profile, energizing internal tourism from other Palestinian cities of the West Bank and Gaza. Investment, said Safieh, get in on the ground floor of opportunity while there is risk, to make the real money before others jump in on a good thing.

Openbethlehem.org says “Rachel’s Tomb is already a horrific vision of the future” greeting “visitors at the entrance to Bethlehem not as the idyllic biblical scene but as an army fortress with guarded concrete blocks barred to Christian and Muslim Bethlehemites,” saying the Hague is turning “Bethlehem into a modern-day ghetto.” Openbethlehem.org alleged Bethlehem’s emigration is “particularly marked among its Christian communities” with more than 400 entire Christian families” leaving the area for good.”

Israeli blogger Batya Medad * describes Bethlehem differently. There is a wall. Until the National Holy Site committee decides to include Kever Rachel within the embrace of the wall being erected, worshippers and tourists mostly go in vehicles that are protected and under guard. Rachel’s Tomb is situated near an area under Palestinian authority. Arabs and non-Jews walking freely while Jewish guests travel with military escort in a bullet-proof buses. Medad says the distance between Jerusalem and Rachel’s Tomb, in New York miles, is “like walking between Great Neck and Little Neck,” from the last bus stop on Northern Boulevard to home but a little closer.

Another Israeli resident wrote “no killings, no Wall,” stating where the Wall is, terrorism has dropped almost 90%.” “People are afraid to go to Bethlehem,” reminding readers“ “without terror, there would be no army action and Bethlehem would be thriving.” “Biblical Israel is inaccessible, locked outside the fence that works.” “Over 60,000 visitors travel to Bethlehem for the yartzeit, memorial, of Rachel Imenu, our matriarch,” Judaism’s third holiest site, the grave of the wife of the third Patriarch Jacob. She was buried where she died in childbirth on the way to Jacob’s home in Hebron. For more than three thousand years, the stop for over three thousand years of pilgrimage and prayer on the road to Efrat, now called Bethlehem.

Rachel's Tomb stands in the center of town surrounded on three sides by Muslim cemeteries created since 1948. Her gravesite is a living symbol of HaShem, God’s promise her children will return to the Land Of Israel. God said, “'Your children shall return to their own country.' Jeremiah 3:15-17. Genesis, Parshat Vayishlach, 35:16-21, the Patriarch Jacob set up a pillars to mark Rachel’s grave. Jacob chose this spot, foreseeing Rachel would pray for his descendants safe and ultimate return as they were passing on their forced exile to Babylon 423 BCE. Jacob wanted that exiled Jews would recognize it, pray for God to intercede on their behalf, the health of a loved one and be comforted. People travel to Rachel’s Tomb to recite Psalms, Tehillim, pray and learn Torah. Life celebrations such as ritual circumcision and bat mitzvahs, a girl’s coming of age, are some of the celebrations held within its walls. Muslims claim the burial plot as their own alleging one of their notables lies within.

A wise man once wrote me, “the ultimate victim of the Arab war against the West is truth. When lies are accepted, unchallenged, truth is slain.” I remembered his words that morning. I challenged the lies. Peter Bourne said members of Congress refused to meet with openbethlehem.org bending to pressure from the “others.” I demanded written names, documentation, communications, emails something with which Bourne could prove his statements to be true. Despite knowing the cameraman raced to focus on me speaking, knowing the risk to self, I identified myself as a sister of a man murdered in Jerusalem by a terrorist. Bourne admitted onto the record, conversations he stated as defacto were, in fact, third hand, none of which he was party to. Except, Bourne stammered, Congressman Moran’s staff told him, off the record, their Congressman supports their initiative but cant do anything alleging while Moran supported another similar cause, he was threatened by the “others” for his pro-Arab position. I told Bourne I would vet his statement with Moran’s office. I did. Moran’s staffer assigned to Mid East issues, in a telephone interview said he never heard of the group, never spoke to the group and that the Congressman had never been threatened for support either for or against Israel. Openbethlehem.org’s website tells visitors the municipality of Bethlehem does not stand alone. Bethlehem, the website says, is twinned with: Aby Dabi, Assisi, Athens, Burlington, Chartre, Civitavecchia, Cologne, Cordoba, El Qosgo, Florence, Glasgow, Greccio, Lisbon, Madaba, Milan, Monterrey, Natal, Orvieto, Pretoria, Pratovecchio and Montevarchi, Rabat, Region of Umbria, Saint Herblain, Sarpsbord, Steyr, Strasbourg, The Hague, Valinhos, Verona, Yalvac, Orlando, Region of Lazio, Saint Petersburg, Sant’Anastasia, Paray-Le-Monial and Czestochowa. Orlando Florida Mayor Glenda Hood twinned her city in agreement with Bethlehem May 7 2001. The Hague, the Netherland’s city housing the International Court of Justice which decided 2004, Israel’s security fence to be illegal, twinned its agreement with Bethlehem April 17 2000, under the tutelage of Mayor WJ Deetman. Monterrey Mexico twinned September 27 1997. The Lord Provost of Glasgow Scotland, Alex Mosson, twinned Glasgow, October 20 1992. The Region of Umbria in Italy financed The Star of Bethlehem Web Site, creating it “to promote tourism.” More than anything else the site says, the Italian Co-ordination of Local Authorities for Peace in Italy want to show Italian solidarity with the Palestinian people “suffered from severe deprivation as a result of occupation,” to celebrate the new Millennium and mark the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ in Palestine, the Bethlehem Municipality and let the Star of Bethlehem “communicate the hope of the Palestinian people in peace and freedom based on justice, reconciliation, and dialogue, so that the eternal message of Christ, with which they identify, can be translated into reality.” Openbethlehem.org delivered its message with the internationally recognized National Press Club signature logo on the Club medallion velcroed to the wall behind them, giving a backdrop of political credence to their cause. To the unsuspecting world outside, the room lessee seems legitimate, when in fact the transaction is no different from renting a hall for a bar mitzvah or a wedding. Statements room-renters make are not vetted. A person observed to me in later conversation, “If Christian Arabs are taking their case to Washington before they go to their own representatives in the Israeli political system, they are asking a foreign government to interfere with the policy of a democratic state.” Once before Christianity was manipulated by the PLO for a media moment. Yasser Arafat was refused entry to the Church of the Nativity. He was a Muslim. Sansour had said the Bethlehem passport initiative enhances Bethlehem’s centuries old tradition of “welcoming travelers, refugees and pilgrims from across the world.” Later, in quiet, I reread the NPC Daily Notes. The notes did say, “to connect with the Palestinian Diaspora” and to save the churches from the occupiers, Israel. On my way down the Press Building elevator, I looked at the Open Bethlehem signature star pin I was given along with the press packet before entering the Murrow Room. The center of the two-toned star was die cut to resemble a key lock, a visual conveying the initiative’s word association of “under lock,” “ key hole,” “Bethlehem Star.” Weeks later, I looked again at the mother of pearl pins I was given that day, too. They were lying next to my Chabad menorah, I was cleaning to put away. One pin was a Bethlehem star. The second was a dove with an olive branch in its beak. The bottom of one pin card read, “Mad In Bethlehem.” Sansour had told me the craftsperson was illiterate. I chuckled. Somewhere I read when you turn on the light, you conquer the darkeness. I looked again at the menorah. I guess I would be mad too learning my centuries old religion was being abused in an attempt to deceive….

BIO: Carrie Devorah is an editorial photojournalist. “Sometimes my press calls take me where it seems I am meant to be. In this case I found out weeks later when my niece called from Israel to wish me happy birthday.” She asked me what I was doing in. I told her. She quieted then said, “Abba, daddy’s, Hebrew birthday is the same as Rachel’s yartzeit, annual remembrance of the day of her passing.” There are some truth’s even Hollywood can’t write. www.goldbergmemorial.org January 29, 2004, Egged Bus 19.

Recommended Reading:
* http://shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2006/01/you-know-what-they-say.html Website of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
“Human Rights of Christians in Palestinian Society” by Justus Reid Weiner
US State Departments annual Report on Religious Freedom