The new Odd Couple:: "Jesus and the Mahdi"

You've heard of Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Bert and Ernie. But you haven't seen anything until you've seen the hilarious new TV series, "Jesus and the Mahdi!"

From AFP:

TEHRAN (AFP) — A director who shares the ideas of Iran's hardline president has produced what he says is the first film giving an Islamic view of Jesus Christ, in a bid to show the "common ground" between Muslims and Christians.

Nader Talebzadeh sees his movie, "Jesus, the Spirit of God," as an Islamic answer to Western productions like Mel Gibson's 2004 blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ," which he praised as admirable but quite simply "wrong".

Even in Iran, "Jesus, The Spirit of God" had a low-key reception, playing to moderate audiences in five Tehran cinemas during the holy month of Ramadan, in October.

The film, funded by state broadcasting, faded off the billboards but is far from dead, about to be recycled in a major 20 episode spin-off to be broadcast over state-run national television this year.

Talebzadeh insists it aims to bridge differences between Christianity and Islam, despite the stark divergence from Christian doctrine about Christ's final hours on earth.

"It is fascinating for Christians to know that Islam gives such devotion to and has so much knowledge about Jesus," Talebzadeh told AFP.

"By making this film I wanted to make a bridge between Christianity and Islam, to open the door for dialogue since there is much common ground between Islam and Christianity," he said.

The director is also keen to emphasise the links between Jesus and one of the most important figures in Shiite Islam, the Imam Mahdi, said to have disappeared 12 centuries ago but whose "return" to earth has been a key tenet of the Ahmadinejad presidency.

...In Talebzadeh's movie, God saves Jesus, depicted as a fair-complexioned man with long hair and a beard, from crucifixion and takes him straight to heaven.

"It is frankly said in the Koran that the person who was crucified was not Jesus" but Judas, one of the 12 Apostles and the one the Bible holds betrayed Jesus to the Romans, he said. In his film, it is Judas who is crucified.
...
Shiite Muslims, the majority in Iran, believe Jesus will accompany the Imam Mahdi when he reappears in a future apocalypse to save the world.

And Talebzadeh said the TV version of his film will further explore the links between Jesus and the Mahdi -- whose return Ahmadinejad has said his government, which came to power in 2005, is working to hasten.

Shiites believe the Mahdi's reappearance will usher in a new era of peace and harmony.

"We Muslims pray for the 'Return' (of Imam Mahdi) and Jesus is part of the return and the end of time," Talebzadeh said.

"Should we, as artists, stand idle until that time? Don't we have to make an effort?"

The laughs come fast and furious as Jesus and the Mahdi team up to save the world from evil Zionists and Crusaders. Every week, a new decadent Western country gets some major whoop-ass from the Dynamic Duo (PBUT). You'll be amazed and amused at how the sons of apes and pigs get what's coming to them!

Coming this spring to Iranian TV!

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When scholarship can get you killed

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article about the revelation that a decades-old photo archive of ancient handwritten Korans, thought to be lost, still exists and is in the hands of a scholar (who is keeping it to herself.)

On the night of April 24, 1944, British air force bombers hammered a former Jesuit college here housing the Bavarian Academy of Science. The 16th-century building crumpled in the inferno. Among the treasures lost, later lamented Anton Spitaler, an Arabic scholar at the academy, was a unique photo archive of ancient manuscripts of the Quran.

The 450 rolls of film had been assembled before the war for a bold venture: a study of the evolution of the Quran, the text Muslims view as the verbatim transcript of God's word. The wartime destruction made the project "outright impossible," Mr. Spitaler wrote in the 1970s.
[Photo]

Mr. Spitaler was lying. The cache of photos survived, and he was sitting on it all along. The truth is only now dribbling out to scholars -- and a Quran research project buried for more than 60 years has risen from the grave.

"He pretended it disappeared. He wanted to be rid of it," says Angelika Neuwirth, a former pupil and protégée of the late Mr. Spitaler. Academics who worked with Mr. Spitaler, a powerful figure in postwar German scholarship who died in 2003, have been left guessing why he squirreled away the unusual trove for so long.

...The Quran is viewed by most Muslims as the unchanging word of God as transmitted to the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. The text, they believe, didn't evolve or get edited. The Quran says it is "flawless" and fixed by an "imperishable tablet" in heaven. It starts with a warning: "This book is not to be doubted."

Quranic scholarship often focuses on arcane questions of philology and textual analysis. Experts nonetheless tend to tread warily, mindful of fury directed in recent years at people deemed to have blasphemed Islam's founding document and the Prophet Muhammad.

A scholar in northern Germany writes under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg because, he says, his controversial views on the Quran risk provoking Muslims. He claims that chunks of it were written not in Arabic but in another ancient language, Syriac. The "virgins" promised by the Quran to Islamic martyrs, he asserts, are in fact only "grapes."

Ms. Neuwirth, the Berlin professor now in charge of the Munich archive, rejects the theories of her more radical colleagues, who ride roughshod, she says, over Islamic scholarship. Her aim, she says, isn't to challenge Islam but to "give the Quran the same attention as the Bible." All the same, she adds: "This is a taboo zone."

So she is keeping the research secret - for possibly the next couple of decades - even as she demonstrates that she is not open to unorthodox interpretations of the Koran.

The photos of the old manuscripts will form the foundation of a computer data base that Ms. Neuwirth's team believes will help tease out the history of Islam's founding text. The result, says Michael Marx, the project's research director, could be the first "critical edition" of the Quran -- an attempt to divine what the original text looked like and to explore overlaps with the Bible and other Christian and Jewish literature.

A group of Tunisians has embarked on a parallel mission, but they want to keep it quiet to avoid angering fellow Muslims, says Moncef Ben Abdeljelil, a scholar involved in the venture. "Silence is sometimes best," he says. Afghan authorities last year arrested an official involved in a vernacular translation of the Quran that was condemned as blasphemous. Its editor went into hiding.

Many Christians, too, dislike secular scholars boring into sacred texts, and dismiss challenges to certain Biblical passages. But most accept that the Bible was written by different people at different times, and that it took centuries of winnowing before the Christian canon was fixed in its current form.

Muslims, by contrast, view the Quran as the literal word of God. Questioning the Quran "is like telling a Christian that Jesus was gay," says Abdou Filali-Ansary, a Moroccan scholar.

With the slight difference that writing an article claiming that Jesus was gay will not get you a host of Christians vying to behead you.

More fun examples of Islamic tolerance for secular Koranic scholars:

In the early 1980s, when the archive was still thought to be lost, two German scholars traveled to Yemen to examine and help restore a cache of ancient Quran manuscripts. They, too, took pictures. When they tried to get them out of Yemen, authorities seized them, says Gerd-Rüdiger Puin, one of the scholars. German diplomats finally persuaded Yemen to release most of the photos, he says.

Mr. Puin says the manuscripts suggested to him that the Quran "didn't just fall from heaven" but "has a history." When he said so publicly a decade ago, it stirred rage. "Please ensure that these scholars are not given further access to the documents," read one letter to the Yemen Times. "Allah, help us against our enemies."

Berlin Quran expert Ms. Neuwirth, though widely regarded as respectful of Islamic tradition, got sideswiped by Arab suspicion of Western scholars. She was fired from a teaching post in Jordan, she says, for mentioning a radical revisionist scholar during a lecture in Germany.

Even the Wall Street Journal remains elliptic when discussing the very real dangers of scholars looking critically at the Koran as they have looked at every other holy work. Rather than mention the very real risk of being murdered, the WSJ only says that they can "provoke" and "anger" Muslims - even making a comparison to how Christians feel when confronted with unorthodox interpretations of the New Testament.

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Peaceful PalArab weekend

From Ma'an:

Palestinian medical sources on Saturday announced that the body of a Palestinian resident of Ash-Shati' refugee camp west of Gaza City, has been found.

Mu'awiya Hassanein, the director of ambulance and emergency services in the Palestinian health ministry said thirty-three-year-old Sami Ar-Rawwagh was shot dead and his body was found in a Bedouin village in the northern Gaza Strip.

Palestine Press Agency mentions that this was the second body found in a few hours:

It is noteworthy that the citizen is the second Alrwag found dead a few hours in the Gaza Strip, where the citizen found Shaaban Dughmosh dead and lying in the hole Deek central sector this morning. "

Dughmosh was a police officer.

There was also a clan clash in the West Bank, injuring 5.

The American School in Gaza was attacked again, rooms ransacked, windows smashed and its computers stolen.

A group called Army of Believers-al-Qaida in Palestine claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack and accused the school of corrupting Palestinian teenagers.

A leaflet issued by the hitherto unknown group said: "Polytheists and enemies of Islam are pursuing each day their work to destroy our youths, who are falling by the dozens into the swamps of vice and moral decadence. That is why we must re-establish the truth and warn everyone who might try to corrupt our youths or try to open such places of corruption."

The previous attack was claimed by another al-Qaida-inspired group called Warriors of Jerusalem. It said the attack, which took place hours before Bush's meeting in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, was aimed at wiping out the "last symbol of US presence in the Gaza Strip."

The "Al Qaeda" group leader was interviewed by Palestine Press Agency (autotranslated):

And talked about the emergence of organization in the Gaza Strip and said: If we look at the situation in Palestine, and read the history of movements and organizations that have, we note the existence of factions patriotic and nationalistic Then came the National Islamic factions such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and these Islamic and national factions and not purely Islamic, and this is the difference between us and them.

He said: "We come purely Islamic perspective, and we consider ourselves part of the Muslims throughout the world, whether in America or India or China, and if Palestine is liberated Our jihad is continuing and that the will of God proceeded on the ground.

He added: "We are working without any names or ranks.

The Army describes the same trend Islamic nation struggling, which aims to establish the rule of Allah on earth and liberate the land of Isra and Mi'raaj, and take the approach of jihad for the advancement of the nation Zlha and underdevelopment.

The literature emphasizes that the current army aims to transfer the community of democratic and secular infidel to Islam, through the revival of the spirit of Islamic law and its application to the doctrine of Islam, worship and the life.

The literature indicates that the nation is an army of Muslims embrace Islamic project to meet the project western crusade in the world, based on the revival of Jihad, and to return the nation to the belief Ancestors based on the book year.

Of course, the fact that Gaza nutcases are running around blasting Hamas and Islamic Jihad for not being dedicated enough to worldwide Jihad must be blamed on Israel somehow.

The 2008 Palestinian Arab self-death count rises to 6.

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Palestinian Police Phunnies XXX

The bloated Palestinian Arab security forces find a stolen car in their newfound love of law and order. So what do they do with it?

1. Return it to its original owner, if he is in the territories, or return it to Israel if it is from there?
2. Sell it at auction to help add money to the coffers of the PA?
3. Steal it to use it themselves?
4. Burn it?

Palestinian security officers stand next to a burning car they set on fire in the northern West Bank village of Anin, Thursday, Jan 10, 2008. The car, which was reportedly stolen, was set on fire as part of a police law-and-order campaign.
(AP Photo/Mohammed Ballas)

It is a testament to Palestinian Arab poverty that they can afford to burn vehicles.

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Two Arabs write that it is up to the Arabs to make peace

MEMRI offers a tiny spark of hope, as it translates essays by two liberal Arabs who have the extraordinarily rare ability to think in terms of peace. Excerpts:

Mamoun Fandy: 99% of the Cards are In the Arabs' Hand

"And perhaps the time has come for the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, to seriously consider Israel's strategic apprehensions. The Israeli question on the nature of the Palestinian state is a logical and legitimate question. Will this state add stability to the region, or add instability? The Gaza model says that it [will be] a state that in no way participates in regional stability, whereas the West Bank model indicates that the newborn state will move the region towards stability...

"As I said earlier, visits by heads of state do not produce immediate results. But George Bush is a practical man, and he managed to impose the Annapolis document on the Palestinians and the Israelis - even though the two sides announced, before the conference, that they had not reached agreement.

"The Arabs can make Bush's visit into an historic visit by focusing on working with the pragmatic side of the president's personality, in place of the old Arab way, which wastes the time allotted for the meetings by entering into the labyrinthine history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and by grumbling about a 'double standard.'

"The Arabs hold the playing cards today. The question is: Will they play them well?"

Kamal Gabriel: The Cultural Elites Have an Allergy to 'Normalization with the Zionist Enemy'

"Many are the allergic diseases from which our audacious cultural elites suffer... but the greatest and harshest allergic symptom among the heroes of the microphone, the satellite channel, the car bomb, and the explosives belt is the allergy to 'normalization with the Zionist enemy'...

"The [purported] traitors to the 'unchanging national principles,' and the [so-called] agents of colonialism, think that 'normalization' is a goal for which all peoples should strive, and that wars and conflicts among all the nations of the earth must necessarily come to an end - and this end is always a return to peace and the reign of normal conditions - i.e. the reign of 'normalization.'

"As for the heroes and mujahideen of pan-Arabism and political Islamism, they don't reject peace and normalization in essence or in principle; they just make it conditional upon the preservation of 'our nation's unchanging principles.'

"While [the expression] 'our nation's unchanging principles' is fine and elegant, these principles are nothing more than the demand for 'destroying the rapacious Zionist entity' and turning Israel, through the return of all of the refugees, into one great democratic Islamic Palestinian mass republic...

"[According to these pan-Arabists and Islamists,] if the Zionist enemy and its supporters want peace, there is no need for negotiations and conferences... They need to accept 'our nation's unchanging principles' in a state of subjection, and let them return to us the land occupied since 1967, and allow the entry of 5 million Palestinian refugees into the land occupied in 1948. Only then can we consider the issue of normalization with them, and especially with the noble promises conferred by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, [i.e.] that it would allow Jews who immigrated [to Israel] to return whence they came without slaughtering them like sheep - despite the fact that they are basically the descendants of apes and pigs. And the Jews who were originally from Palestine will enjoy the excellent humane treatment that minorities enjoy in the other Arab regions!"

"How can he prove that the Arab regimes are capable of implementing peace and popular normalization when, with the president of the Palestinian Authority hardly controlling his own living quarters, the Palestinian street is contested by radical organizations of every kind... And this is the case also with the fighting masses in many Arab capitals...

"How can our negotiators give guarantees that normalization will continue, given that this is contingent on a culture of peace that doesn't exist. It is not absent just between the Arabs and the perfidious Zionist enemy; it is fundamentally absent among the internal components of the Arab countries. These countries have proven, throughout the years, their abject failure to normalize relations with their own minorities...So who will take seriously their promises of peace and normalization with the Jews, the enemies of Allah?

"The promise of normalization is like a promise of operations by armed forces whose arms have not yet been purchased, and who have not been mobilized or trained for combat...

"But in fact it is worse than that. The mission of preparing the capability and the readiness for peace does not just depend on a campaign of spreading the culture of peace; it demands first uprooting the culture of hostility and hatred that we have had an unparalleled success in planting in the region, and which has produced for us the blessed yield of internecine fighting in more than one Arab country.

"The problem with the normalization card is that it is like a check that doesn't have the funds to cover it. In order for it to be accepted, funds need to be put behind it, and it needs to be stamped with an 'acceptable for payment' stamp.

"[This stamp is] the spreading of the culture of peace, first of all among our peoples. We need to start practically putting it into practice long before we reap the fruits, as that is the nature of cultural transformations. [We need to do this] in order to convince the Israeli people that we have truly decided to accept it among us, and that the only thing standing between it and final peace is just the politicians sitting down together and signing peace agreements. The Israeli people could then force its government to submit to the requisites for peace. I say 'could,' since it is also possible that we will offer peace without receiving the minimum of our legitimate demands, in which case our governments would refrain from signing a final peace, and we would retreat from the path of normalization..."

This link came from Marty Peretz at TNR, whose article is worth reading:

Yet no one will promise -- let alone assure -- that when (and if) Israel withdraws from 90% or 96% of the West Bank the land it has left will not be turned into platforms from which rockets and missiles are launched against the population centers of the Jewish state...and against strategic positions like Ben Gurion International Airport. What then will the next American president or the one after counsel the Israelis to give up?

The fact is that the great impediment to peace with Israel is the fanatic obstinacy of the Palestinians. Does anyone have a strategy for negotiating with that?

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Only 20% trayf!

(hat tip and photo credit to Junior Elder)

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CNN outdoes Hamas in blood libel

CNN today once again went from the usual anti-Israel propaganda into absolute lies. From Ben Wedeman:

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Air Force One touched down in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. President Bush has come to the Holy Land for the first time as president of the United States.

But he's trapped inside his security bubble, his every step mapped out in great and precise detail by teams of security experts and handlers. In the end he'll see a side of this unhappy land that bears as much resemblance to reality as Hollywood does to real life.

I spend a lot of my time covering the West Bank and Gaza: here's what I see, and he won't....

President Bush won't see the hospital wards where babies, just weeks old, are dying because their doctors can't get permission from Israeli authorities to go to Israel for treatment as they did in the past.

This is a very interesting - and outlandish - slander.

Palestinian Arab newspapers have been keeping a "death count" of people who have died, supposedly because Israel is not allowing them to travel from Gaza. For reasons that were never clear, this count started about two months ago - even though the "siege" started in June - and there has been a steady stream of articles, pretty much once a day, of another "martyr" who died because of Israeli intransigence. That number is now at around 66.

I touched on this topic in November as Gazans were blaming Israel for some interesting deaths. I have not kept a close eye on the circumstances of each death since then, but the majority have been cancer patients or other extremely ill patients. It is pure propaganda - given the mortality rate among Gazans is 3.74 per thousand annually, one would expect with 1.3 million Gazans that some 13 of them die per day of natural causes; to say that these 66 deaths - less than 3% - are Israel's fault is simply to make things up. The fact that these deaths only started after four months of the Gaza closure and have been consistently reported as about once a day since then indicates that some Gaza administrator is choosing who the "death of the day" will be out of the dozen dying in hospitals anyway.

But assuming that each of those cases were true, and 66 people have died because Israel didn't give them permission to go to Israel for treatment (and neither did Egypt, but we'll ignore that for now,) then how many of these were "babies, just weeks old"? I don't recall any babies in the list, but I wasn't watching that closely. The rabidly hateful IMEMC reported on #62 and #63 last Saturday:

Medical sources in Gaza reported...that Aisha Al Jamal, 73, had lung cancer but the army refused to allow her to leave the Coastal Region to get treatment in Israel or the West Bank.

Another Palestinian cancer patient, Mohamed Abu Taha, 45, died late on Friday night; he also was not allowed by the Israeli army to leave the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army has imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip since June 2007, leaving the 1.5 million Palestinians living under severe conditions.

Al Jamal is the 63rd person who has died of a chronic illness since Israel placed the Gaza Strip under total siege. Among those 63 were children, the youngest was Doua Habib, who was five months old.

So according to the Gazans, the youngest one they blame Israel for was 5 months old. But CNN's Ben Wedeman, who proudly boasts of his intimate knowledge of the area, claims that there are a constant stream of weeks-old babies dying.

CNN is outdoing Hamas in its blood libel against Israel, and Ben Wedeman continues to shill for Hamas.

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Pakistan Airlines ad, 1979

From the Gothamist:

This ad for Pakistan Airlines is real. And in the history of advertising, it really takes the creepy cake. Even worse than babies endorsing cigarettes! Seriously, if Nostradamus ran an ad firm to warn the world about blowback, this would have been in his portfolio.

It appeared in the March 19th, 1979 issue of Le Point (and surely countless other publications). Yes, the shadow is in pretty much in the same place as where the planes hit on September 11th, and there's no way the shadow should be that big unless it's seconds away from hitting the towers...but we don't think this should evoke any conspiracy theories. Right? [via 2Spare.com]

Other creepy ads here.

(h/t ndigenous via Mrs. Elder)

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American International School in Gaza attacked with RPG

From JPost:

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Thursday launched a rocket attack on the local American International School in protest against US President George W. Bush's visit to the Palestinian territories.

No one was hurt in the pre-dawn attack, but eyewitnesses said large parts of the school were damaged by an RPG mortar, as well as other explosive devices.

This is the second time that the school has come under attack in the past few months. The previous attack occurred in April, when arsonists set fire to the school building in the northern Gaza Strip.

Ma'an Arabic says:

A group calling itself "Mujahideen Movement of Jerusalem" claimed responsibility for the bombing of the School, which expresses, according to a statement from the group, "The last symbols of the American administration and its allies in Gaza."

The ">principal condemned the assault saying, "The school's staff and students are all Palestinians, and it is licensed by the Ministry of Education. Its mission is purely educational with nothing to do with politics."

He said that the same school had been targeted in the past and that an American visitor to the school had been kidnapped about a year ago.

The school website says:

The year 2004 witnessed the graduation of the first 5 students from the American International School in Gaza, the first batch of AISG graduates. Those students proceeded to fulfill their dreams in life, their dreams of a better tomorrow. Those are the first AISG graduates to go and study at American universities.

The AISG dream began several years back. In 1999, a group of visionary investors identified the gap and lack of know-how and the need for quality elementary, middle, and high school education in Palestine, particularly in Gaza.

The American International School in Gaza (AISG) was established with the guiding principles of academic excellence and outstanding behavior for national and international students. This will be delivered by caring and highly qualified personnel, utilizing the best educational practices in English and Arabic, which will enable graduates to become productive and responsible participants of society as the "leaders of tomorrow.

Situated 800 meters from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea in the north of Gaza, our spacious and beautiful school is situated in an interesting mixture of a traditional Arabic village and the landscaped green of our modern campus. The present facility is built to accommodate 600 students in large classrooms, state-of-the art computer labs, media center with a library of 10,000 volumes, and fully-equipped science labs. Outdoor facilities for soccer, basketball, volleyball, and primary play areas contribute to the physical well being of our students.

Proving again how progressive thought and action in the territories are always going to be held hostage by the Islamists.

Ironically, in some ways the entire Arab world has been shaped in no small part from the establishment of American schools and universities starting in the 19th century. Much of Arab nationalism has been attributed to the American Christian missionaries who started these schools and their offering an American-style curriculum and ideology.

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UNIFIL springs into action

The UN came out with a mighty press release:

9 January 2008 – A United Nations investigation team, including forensics and explosives experts, have inspected a site in northern Israel where two Katyusha rockets fired from southern Lebanon are reported to have landed and UN peacekeepers have combed locations for potential launching sites.

The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), enhanced as part of the arrangements that ended Israel’s war with Hizbollah in 2006, neither observed nor detected the firing of the rockets yesterday and the investigation is continuing, UN spokesperson Michele Montas told a news briefing in New York.

The Israeli authorities informed UNIFIL yesterday that the rockets hit the town of Shlomi early in the morning of 8 January, causing minor damage to a house but no injuries.

“If it is determined that there was firing from within Lebanon, the incident would be a serious violation of resolution 1701,” Ms. Montas added, referring to the UN Security Council resolution regarding the ceasefire that ended Israel’s war with Hizbollah.

Those crack investigators at the UN sure have a tough job in front of them to figure out what happened.

One the one hand, they've seen actual rocket fragments in Shlomi. But on the other hand, they didn't notice them as they were fired. So it really could be any sort of metal tubing. This will require deep, deep investigation.

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Another article on Christian life under Palestinian Muslim rule

This one doesn't pull punches:

For centuries, millions of Christian pilgrims visited the Holy Land to pray in the holy houses of worship. Palestinian Christians from all denominations who built these churches for centuries had the freedom to worship, without any problems from the nearby Muslims.

Things began to change a decade ago, after the Palestinian Authority took control of major sections of the Holy Land. And, as Islamic fundamentalism has risen in those territories during that time, relations between the two religions began to deteriorate. As Islam has grown, lawlessness has spread throughout the territories, where Islamic militants have been emboldened to act - sometimes illegally - to advance their cause.

Christians now say they have experienced anti-Christian sentiment from Muslims that have ranged from verbal accusations to vicious beatings and murder. And basic holidays that Christians always celebrated have now been forbidden. In December, the Hamas government in Gaza banned any celebrations of New Year's eve and New Year's day, a traditional Christian holiday period. Also, in the West Bank, an Islamic group, "Keepers of Sharia (Islamic Law) warned residents not to celebrate the holidays.

Besides being shaken down by the Palestinian Authority for blackmail money, and having their land stolen in elaborate schemes from Palestinian Authority officials, some Christians say they have looked on helplessly as they suffered what they call the ultimate injustice: the burning and desecration of their holy churches.

Christians are still reeling from September, 2006, when seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza were attacked in a three day period after Muslims were infuriated by comments made by Pope Benedict VVI about Islam and the prophet Mohammed. The pope's comments followed the publication of cartoons depicting Mohammed in a Dutch newspaper. After the churches were attacked by Islamic fundamentalists, a Hamas leader, Imad Hamto, called for the Pope to repent and to convert to Islam.

The attacks were not the first on churches in the Holy Land in recent years. In 2001, Palestinian gunmen took over Christian-Palestinian churches in Beit Jallah - a city near Bethlehem - so they could fire into Israeli neighborhoods. At the time, Palestinian snipers said they took control of the holy churches because they were confident the Israelis would not attack them.

And, some say the worst case took place in 2002, when more than 100 Palestinian fighters loyal to former PA President Yasser Arafat took over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and held dozens of hostages - including priests and nuns. Inside, the gunmen used bibles for toilet paper, emptied the church's charity boxes, and sold gold and silver crosses that had been in the church for centuries. They even lit a fire in a section of a church during the siege.

Christians say that the 2006 church burnings and attacks were a turning point in Christian-Muslim relations in the Holy Land.

"The Islamic people want to kill us. That's their principle and belief. They don't want Christians in this country. They don't want to hear our names; they don't want to see us. That's the reality," said Reverend Tomey Dahoud, who heads the Greek Orthodox Church in Taubas, a city near Jenin.

Dahoud's church, which was built more than 100 years ago, suffered extensive damage after its entrance hall was firebombed in Sept. of 2006. That attack sent shivers through the remaining 14 Christians in Taubas, causing some to consider leaving.

"We've had problems before with Muslims but they never touched the house of God," explained Dahoud. "What does it mean to set a church on fire? It's terrorism, it's a crime."

In Tulkaram, the last Christian family that takes care of the 200-year-old Greek Orthodox Church say they've had enough and want to practice their religion freely.

"We are preparing to move abroad to a place where we can live a better life as Christians," said Reverand Dahoud Dimitry, who heads the Tulkaram's Saint George Greek Orthodox church that burned to the ground in an arson attack on Sept. 16, 2006.

More than 30 years ago, the Christian community numbered close to 2000, but now Dimitry's family of 12 is the last remaining Christian family in this Islamic stronghold.

To date no one has been arrested or charged with the arson, which occurred after extremists poured gasoline throughout the church and on its alter.

The church was rebuilt but there are no funds for a security guard or for security cameras. During the fire, all of the church's contents except one bible were incinerated.

"We had two icons from the 15th century and they were destroyed. We had a small library and the most important thing that we had was a registry of all the names of Christians who had ever lived in Tulkaram. All of that burned and now we don't have any records of our ancestors."

In Nablus, there are now just 700 Christians left - down from 3,000 just 40 years ago. And, last year, the small Christian community was hard hit after four of its churches were burned by Islamic fundamentalists following the Pope's comments.

"We were afraid," explained Jamal Mahmud, who works at the Jacob Well Greek Orthodox Church in Nablus. Mahmud said during the days when Muslim rioted, 25 Molotov cocktails were thrown at the church, which suffered minimal damage. "When somebody throws a Molotov cocktail at you it's frightening," added Mahmud.

"The future will be even more dangerous for Christian people, added Reverand Yousef Jibran Saade, the spiritual leader of the Greek Catholic Church in Nablus. Saade's church was firebombed and riddled with bullets by unknown attackers on Sept. 16, 2006. No one has been arrested for the attacks, and, like other West Bank Christian clerics, he said the attack caused parishioners to consider moving abroad.

In Gaza, following the Pope's remarks, Islamic extremists bombed a 1,400-year-old Greek Orthodox Church. In addition, a group of Catholic nuns were threatened, and a bomb was placed outside of another church.

The attack and threats instilled fear into many of the church's parishioners. But even before the September, 2006 rioting, the small Christian community of 2,000 - mostly Greek Orthodox - felt unsafe. Since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in January of 2006, Sharia - or Islamic law - has been the informal law of the land. These days, Christian women cover their hair like Muslim women so as to not attract attention.

"It is dangerous for Christians in Gaza," explained Pastor Hanna Massad, a Palestinian-American who runs the 200-member Gaza Baptist Church.

Massad's church has been repeatedly threatened by fundamentalists in the last several years, and the bible store that his wife runs in Gaza City was firebombed twice in the last year. And in October, a bible store worker and one of his parishioners, Rami Ayyad, were kidnapped and murdered by Islamic fundamentalists. He was found near the Christian book store.

In Bethlehem, the threats, shakedowns, and anti-Christian sentiment have taken their toll on former Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser. Nasser said the community is still in shock over the 2002 takeover of the 1,400-year-old Church of the Nativity by Palestinian gunmen.

"For Christians it was a brutal feeling," said Nasser, who was born in Bethlehem, and also baptized and married inside the Church of the Nativity. "We were astonished and very angry. The church was not destroyed but we as Christians in Bethlehem, remain wounded."

At 70, Nasser plans to stay in the city. But, like other Christian families that trace their roots to this city for centuries, he has watched family members, like his son and daughter leave the city.

"There is no future for Christians," said Nasser.

Reverend Tomey Dahoud also says the pressure is mounting for all Christians to leave Palestinian-controlled lands. Still, he is prepared to stay, even if it means enduring violence. "Even if they are going to set fire to all of our churches we will stay and die here," said Dahoud.

Imagine how well Jews would be treated in a Palestinian Muslim-majority state!

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Hamas thieves working in broad daylight

Palestine Press Agency, which is very anti-Hamas but most of their stories end up being confirmed by others, reports on widespread crime and corruption in Gaza: (autotranslated, cleaned up)

Gaza Strip is threatened by Hamas militia in recent significant occurrences of theft and robbery in the various cities and camps. The strange thing is that some cases of theft and robbery are in broad daylight, which suggests that the thieves are themselves in positions of power and not afraid of any prosecution or arrest.

Last Monday afternoon, a group of armed men entered Basha's Supermarket in Gaza City and stole computers and televisions...

Another incident occurred last week in Gaza City, where a man and his wife were driving in his car on Ali bin Abi Talib Street. A group of masked men attacked them, robbed him of his money, and stole his car. The man complained to Said Siam, interior minister of the Hamas militia who told him that the law would take its course. But the man was surprised a few days after "the law took its course" and saw that his car actually was being used by Qassam Brigades in operations to arrest Fatah activists in Gaza.

Many incidents occur in various cities and refugee camps in the Gaza Strip from burglary and robbery in broad daylight to swindling and fraud to steal drafted women, in addition to the incidents of theft and the seizure of dozens of private cars. Worse still, the theft of tens of houses were during entry Qassam and operational elements of those homes to inspect in search of Fatah activists arrested during the recent campaign, they steal the money sanctioned their hands or formulated in those houses.

Although dozens or even hundreds of previous incidents but he did not arrested any of the perpetrators despite the fact that many of them are known, but they belonged to Hamas and the various militias that gave them immunity to be above the law, even though they use the weapon of Hamas (Disarmament resistant??! !) executive militia uniforms and even some of those engaged in theft during their work and ambushes mandated by the Government of the faithful in Gaza (ie that they be Ode) of this phenomenon are in the rise in the Gaza Strip and the streets of cities in the sector has become devoid of pedestrians after sunset and turn into ghost towns once darkness falls on Gaza shelter until everyone to their homes or go out of the insecurity and fear of being subjected to theft or burglary, and the people there afraid to make complaints against the perpetrators despite knowledge of their personalities and their names and that of their conviction that it is supposed to be protected has become Hramiha.

The comments to that article include a number of Gazans who tell their own stories.

So much for the "law and order" government of Hamas!

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