A Catholic nun, head of a Christian charity in Bethlehem, has blamed the State of Israel for the plight of Christian Palestinians, citing the “occupation.” Sister Bridget Tighe, the general director of Caritas Jerusalem…
told Crux that Christians suffer from the same problems as Palestinian Muslims stemming from the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, including checkpoints, lack of freedom of movement, violence, and restrictions on the ability to travel abroad.
Never mind the genocidal rhetoric and ongoing jihadi efforts to obliterate Israel. Never mind also that “Christians worry ‘Silent Night’ may soon refer to their community in Bethlehem” because Christians have been so severely persecuted and driven out of their ancestral lands not by Israelis, but by Muslims, reducing their population there from 86% to 12% in the past 60 years.
When Palestinian Muslims decide to live peaceably with Christians and Jews, Christmas can be truly celebrated in peace.
“Charity head urges remembering Palestinian Christians at Christmas,” by Charles Collins, Crux News, December 24, 2018:
LEICESTER, United Kingdom – As Christians turn the focus on the town of Bethlehem ahead of Christmas, an Irish nun who has worked in the region for more than 20 years says to remember the local Christians are Palestinians suffering the same as their Muslim brothers and sisters.
“This may seem a very simplistic thing for me to say, but there are some elements of Christian churches, in the United States especially, who do not know or do not want to know that the local Christians are local Arabic-speaking Arab Christians: Local to the Palestinian territory and to Jerusalem and to the Church,” said Sister Bridget Tighe, the general director of Caritas Jerusalem, which serves as the humanitarian arm of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land.
She told Crux that Christians suffer from the same problems as Palestinian Muslims stemming from the occupation of the Palestinian territories by Israel, including checkpoints, lack of freedom of movement, violence, and restrictions on the ability to travel abroad.
Tighe said Gaza is even worse: “It is not like a prison; it is a prison.”
The nun, a member of the Franciscan Missionaries of Divine Motherhood, served in Gaza for three years.
Worsening situation for Christians in Gaza
She said Christians in Gaza, who only number about 1,200 opposed to the nearly 50,000 in the West Bank, “suffer disproportionately” in the territory, but that relations between Christians and Muslims are generally good.“One of the main problems is unemployment, extremely high unemployment. In many ways it is more difficult for Christians to find employment than Muslims, because they are such a minority and there are some areas of work that the Christians would not go into, like the police and army,” she said….