The Holy Land: plus ça change...

Two reports from Jerusalem, a holy city to Jews, Christians and Muslims. The first, datelined today (22/4/22), is from Al-Jazeera. 

A new Israeli raid at Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem this [Friday] morning left 31 Palestinians injured, including three journalists. Israeli police fired rubber bullets and stun grenades as they entered the compound of the Muslim holy site.

Palestinians threw stones at the Israeli police, who were dressed in full riot gear (see photo below). A small fire was also reported at the compound, with Palestinians blaming Israeli police for setting a tree alight, while the police said that the fire was the result of Palestinians throwing fireworks. Israeli police blamed Palestinians for throwing rocks, and said that they waited until early morning prayers ended before entering the compound. 

The Muslim holy site has been the centre of days of violence amid heightened tensions following a series of attacks inside Israel and police raids in the West Bank, which Israel is illegally occupying.In a meeting with a United States State Department delegation on Thursday, the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, said Israel was responsible for the escalation in the occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. 

Tens of thousands of Muslims are expected at Al-Aqsa later in the day [today. Ed.] for Friday prayers. Visits by Jewish groups were suspended from Friday for the last 10 days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This year, the fasting month has coincided with the Jewish Passover and major Christian holidays, with tens of thousands of people from all three faiths flocking to Jerusalem's Old City. 

The second report is from P.J. O'Rourke's excellent book, Holidays in Hell.

The dim interior of the Al-Aqsa Mosque was the size of a large suburban house lot. There were no furnishing at all except luminous antique carpets spread two and three deep across the entire floor. Scores of columns, thick as automobiles, supported a roof so high it was nearly invisislbe. A few of the slippered worshipopers knelt alone on prayer rugs; others gathered in small groups along the walls. For the next four hours,...I hid in these majestic shadows.... 

There was, in fact, a demonstration after prayers, though not a very exciting one.Men came out ofr Al-Aqsa and yelled; women came out of the Dome of the Rock and shrieked. An imam...was hoisted upon shoulders and carried around the Dome. Dozens of pocket-sized Qu'rans were waved in the air.

True to Arab form, the demonstration immediately broke into two quarrelling factions: the group hoisting the imam wanted to keep a strictly religious tone of outrage to the proceedings; the other group wanted to wave a small, homemade Palestinian flag and scream at the Israelis.

The soldiers along the walls looked tense, and one platoon moved into the enclosure and stood along the edge of the Dome's platform with weapons in array. But they didn't interfere. A few young Muslims made feints at collecting stones to throw but didn't follow through. With nothing to oppose it, the demonstration died down in half an hour.

P.J.'s account, dated January 1988, is from the chapter entitled "The Holy Land -- God's monkey house". Nuff said.

Western leaders finally admit Muslims are waging jihad against us

In an unusually clear statement of fact, Canadian Prime Minister Harper said on Friday that the "international jihadist movement" -- yes, those were his words -- has declared war on countries around the world. But, he said, people around the world showed they won't be intimidated by "jihadist terrorists."

In his first public comments about yesterday's attack on the Paris office of the satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 people were murdered, Mr. Harper said "When a trio of hooded men struck at some of our most cherished democratic principles -- freedom of expression, freedom of the press -- they assaulted democracy everywhere. Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of people around the world and in cities across [Canada] openly demonstrated that we will not be intimidated by jihadist terrorists."

Walt trusts he was not including to the cowardly and politically correct English-Canadian media, which -- with the commendable exception of the National Post -- decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and refrained from showing or printing even one of the cartoons which the Islamic terrorists denounced as "insulting to the Prophet Mohammed". See "The religion that must not be satirized... on pain of death!", posted here on Thursday.

But I digress. As I fired up the old Commodore 64, my aim was to place this week's atrocities in context. In "The war against ISIS explained... again... seriously, this time" (WWW 14/11/14), I called the latest US-led invasion of Iraq another phase of the "Oil Wars". But there's more to this than the American imperialism which I condemned just this Monday in "Why the Middle East hates the West - Part III".

Mr. Harper's statement reminds me that I neglected to address, except in passing, the fact that the Paris attacks are merely the latest battle of a religious war. A "jihad" is a "holy war", and the three jihadists are (by their own choice) casualties of the war of Islam against all infidels, including Christians and (particularly) Jews.

France's president, François Hollande, rightly described the killing of Jewish hostages at a kosher grocery store as "an anti-Semitic act", which should remind us that the fundamentalist Muslims are sworn enemies of the earlier Abrahamic religions, Christianity and Judaism, against whom they have fought for control of the Holy Land... and the world... right from the beginning. Walt recommends [for the second time this week! Ed.] a column by the National Post's Christie Blatchford: When push comes to shove, isn’t it curious how it’s always about the Jews?

History -- if anyone is left to write it -- may struggle to pinpoint the date on which the Great Islamic Jihad began. Perhaps the Americans started it, with Operation Desert Storm, or the invasion of Iraq, or the invasion of Afghanistan. Or perhaps it goes all the way back to the Crusades, or earlier.

When the holy war against the West started doesn't matter. We are now in the middle of it, and the Islamic fanatics are bringing the battle from the sandpit of the Middle East to our very doorsteps. This is the burden of a message received today from the Fatima Center, which Walt thinks worth posting here. [Minor edits and emphasis are mine.]

A spray of bullets, the cry of “Allahu Akbar!”, and a scene of horror, with dead bodies giving their mute and gruesome testimony to the barbarism that is engulfing what were once the nations of Christendom – this was the scene in Paris on January 7 at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical publication that dared to mock Islam.

The usual and quite useless responses were forthcoming. The French Bishops Conference spoke of maintaining the “fragile fellowship” of a diverse society. Pope Francis observed that man can be cruel (no mention of Islam) and asked for prayers for the victims. And there were those who lamented the failure to respect the rights of free speech. There were even some who tentatively suggested that the dead were to be faulted for disrespecting a particular religious sentiment, while formally condemning the violence as nevertheless inappropriate or unjustified (but understandable). And, of course, there were cheers among the jihadists for another slaughter of the infidels.

The Fatima Center tells the plain truth that the world is unwilling to hear: We are engaged in a war, a final battle, between good and evil, with Our Lady opposed by Satan. If we wish to fight on the side of the good, we must do so under the banner of Our Lady of Fatima. We cannot defeat an implacable enemy by an appeal to tolerance or free speech or the desirability of diversity.

There is in liberalism, which has come to dominate the West, a refusal to recognize that certain things are irreconcilable. There are situations in which one has no choice but to fight or be vanquished. This desire to negotiate, to dialogue endlessly in the hope of reaching a mutually acceptable compromise is rooted in the illusion that there are no absolute truths. It is difficult for liberals to understand those who refuse to dialogue and would sooner kill you than negotiate a middle position.

Our Lady of Fatima came to tell us that we must choose: obey Heaven or reap the consequences. We have so far refused to obey, as the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has yet to be performed. When it is performed by the Pope and the bishops, as Our Lady specified, we will have world peace. Scenes of carnage such as we just witnessed in Paris will be no more. Until then, we can only expect more horrors and suffering. The only practical course to follow at this point in time is to pray for the Consecration and to work for it in every way we can. Our Lady of Fatima is our only hope.

PHOTO GALLERY: The Holy Land in the 19th century

Next week is Holy Week, the prelude to the most important date in the Christian calendar -- Easter Sunday.

When we think of the Holy Land now, we get images in our mind of a crowded, dangerous, strife-torn place, not the kind of place you'd go to contemplate the events and mysteries of the Faith. So it is today, and it has been so in the past, but not always. Thanks to Agent 6 for sending us the link to "Gorgeous Pictures Of The Holy Land From 120 Years Ago"

Presented by the Business Insider website, this is a gallery of hand-coloured picture postcards from Palestine, Lebanon, Samaria and that region, which looked much the same in the late 19th century as they did in the time when Our Lord Jesus Christ walked among us. As you look at the pictures, let your mind dwell on thoughts of peace.

Fanatical Muslim imams preach jihad against non-believers

To begin with, a mild apology for not updating the death tolls in the Islamic extremist attacks on non-Muslims in Kenya and Pakistan. Last I heard the official count was 72 in Kenya, not counting the 5 or 11 Somali terrorists nor the 137 hostages al-Shabaab (the terrorists) say are buried in the rubble. As for Pakistan, the count in Peshawar has been suspended because all counters are now occupied with yesterday's earthquake elsewhere in the sandpit.

The killing by radical Muslims of somewhere between 100 and 200 "infidels" is still drawing a few (but only a few) comments in the lamestream Western media, which doesn't follow such stories for more than a day unless the victims are (mostly) American. There's been more pissing and moaning about the dozen killed at the Navy Yard by a demented black man who was (Allah be praised) not Muslim.

Still, some commentators are actually daring to be politically incorrect enough to suggest that maybe, just maybe, the most recent terror attacks are all part of a worldwide jihad -- "holy war" -- against Christians. Writing in the Toronto Sun, Tarek Fatah [What part of Eire is he from? Ed.] asks "Have Islamist jihadis declared world war?"

It's not really a good question, but Walt will provide the answer anyway. The answer is YES.

But don't take Walt's word for it. Listen to Most Rev. Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. In an interview with Oasis, a journal of the Patriarchate of Venice, the prelate lamented the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. "The major urgency now," he said "is to set straight the religious discourse of so many imams who, from within their mosques, preach violence against non-Muslims."

"We are dramatically concerned about the US threats to attack Syria," he added. "The Syrian bishops emphasize that the persecution of Christians by rebels is an objective reality."

But, Abp. Twal cautioned, it's not just the Muslims who are against the Christians. "To this pain," he continued, "is added another. The focus of attention is displaced. Nobody talks anymore about the Israeli military occupation, about the Wall, about the lack of freedom to reach the Holy Places. Meanwhile, our situation is not getting any better. From being exceptional it has become commonplace."

In the Middle Ages, the Church and the rulers of Christendom -- a more appropriate name for Europe then than now -- embarked on Crusades to protect the faithful in the Holy Land and take back the Holy Places from the Jews and the followers of the Prophet.

The fashion nowadays is to call those holy wars misguided or worse. Nowadays we are urged by our religious and secular leaders to pray for those who curse us, and to reach out to embrace those who do not share our Faith. It's all about Drawing All Faiths Together... DAFT, isn't it.

Book review: The vanishing Christians of the Near East

William Dalrymple has written three travel books: In Xanadu: A Quest; City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi; and From the Holy Mountain . Having discovered Dalrymple only recently, I have read them all over the course of the last two months. They are that good.

Mr. Dalrymple has a deep interest in art, architecture and archaeology. He has a tendency to rabbit on about the arcania of arches and architraves. [That's enough alliteration. ed.] But there's a generous admixture of historical trivia, social commentary and humour, which renders his writing the opposite of dull.

From the Holy Mountain records Dalrymple's meandering journey through the Holy Land, as it used to be called, from Mount Athos in Greece to Al Kharga in upper (southern) Egypt. Along the way, the author, a not-quite-lapsed Catholic, finds himself touched and perplexed by the plight of the Christians of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and Egypt.

He paints a grim picture of the dwindling and downtrodden Christian communities, and gives vivid and provoking details of their persecution by Muslims and Jews alike. He makes the point that for the six centuries until the rise of Islam in the 7th century, the Near East was predominantly Christian. It boasted thousands of fine churches, monasteries, shrines and other holy sites. The 21st-century Christian pilgrim will see almost none of these, because they are being vandalized and wilfully obliterated by Muslims and (especially) Jews.

Whereas Christians are nowadays generally tolerant of the religious minorities in their midst, the same is not true of the Jews and Muslims of the Holy Land. Dalrymple hears and records the voices of survivors of deportation, persecution, humiliation and even massacre. Their graphic accounts give life and meaning to the sterile term "ethnic cleansing". And they are unanimous in their belief that within a decade or two, there will be no indigenous Christians left in the Holy Land.

Dalrymple writes "Christianity is an Eastern religion which grew firmly rooted in the intellectual ferment of the Middle East. John Moschos [Syrian monk and ascetical writer, c. 550-619] saw that plant begin to wither in the hot winds of change that scoured the Levant of his day. On my journey in his footsteps I have seen the very last stalks in the process of being uprooted."

From the Holy Mountain was written in 1997. In one section the author describes the confiscation of thousands of acres of Christian-owned land on the West Bank, where the Israeli government is busy building settlements on top of the rubble of Christian churches and Muslim mosques. Thirteen years later, the occupation and settlement of the West Bank continues.

William Dalrymple is no raving anti-Semite. But his travels in Israel lead his inexorably to the conclusion that the Israels intend to continue in their "settlement" until there are no Muslims and no Christians left in their "promised land".

In this hate crime -- for that's what it is -- the Israelis apparently have the full support of America and Canada. Such is the power of the Jewish lobby in New York and Toronto. Dear reader, if you want to make your pilgrimage to the Holy City, do it now, before it's razed to the ground.