The Persecution of Christians in Bethlehem

Over recent years the coverage of the persecution of Christians by Muslims in Bethlehem has been one of the stories given short-shift or glossed over. Execrable coverage of Islamofascism in the Holy Land that makes my blood boil.

Now that the ethnic cleansing is almost complete, the truth is dribbling out even in one of the worst practitioners of the Pravada-like coverage. I heard a BBC report recently--unfortunately I've been having a lot of problems linking to interesting stories I hear to the same stories on the website--but here is an example of coverage by Heather Sharp that's semi-decent, breaking out of its execrable shell, finally revealing undeniable, outright religious persecution. But now of course it's too late. In 1995 when the Oslo accords gave the PLO control of Bethlehem,  forty percent of Bethlehemites were Christian. Now it's down to less than three percent.

In one of the most important journalistic pieces of the year, Daniel Schwammenthal in the WSJ writes:

In 2007, one year after the Hamas takeover, the owner of Gaza's only Christian bookstore was abducted and murdered. Christian shops and schools have been firebombed. Little wonder that most of Mr. Khoury's Christian friends have also left Gaza.

On the rare occasion that Western media cover the plight of Christians in the Palestinian territories, it is often to denounce Israel and its security barrier.

The same story is underway with the ancient Jewish community in Yemen. But does the world care? It's not their land, anyway. They've only been there since the sixth century.

It seems as if it's 1939 in 2010.