Xmas Banned in Upper Nazareth
·
The mayor of a Jewish suburb of Nazareth sparked
outrage yesterday after he refused to allow Christmas trees to be placed
in town squares, calling them "provocative".
Predominantly Jewish Nazareth Illit, or Upper
Nazareth, is next to the old town of Nazareth, where Jesus is believed to have
spent much of his life. It has a sizable Arab Christian minority, as does
mostly Muslim Nazareth itself. "The request of the Arabs to put Christmas
trees in the squares in the Arab quarter of Nazareth Illit is
provocative," Mayor Shimon Gapso told AFP.
"Nazareth Illit is a Jewish city and it will
not happen -- not this year and not next year, so long as I am a mayor,"
he said.
His decision has angered the town's Arab and
Christian minority, who accused him of racism.
"The racism of not putting a tree up is
nothing compared to the real racism that we experience here," said Aziz
Dahdal, a 35-year-old Christian resident of Nazareth Illit.
"When we asked the mayor to put up a Christmas
tree in the Arab neighborhoods of Nazareth Illit he said this is a Jewish town,
not a mixed town," said Shukri Awawdeh, a Muslim Arab member of the town
council. Awawdeh said there were 10,000 Arabs, most of them Christian in the
town and there was also a large community of Christian Russian immigrants.
"We told him that decorating a tree is just to share the happiness and
cheer with other people in the town," said Awawdeh.
"People here, Jews, Christians and Muslims
live in harmony, but when the mayor does something like that, it does not make
things better."
A
spokesman from the Mayor of Camden's office in North London said: "I've
never thought Christmas trees were a religious symbol. I'm an atheist but we
have one at home. They brighten up what is the darkest time of the year. In
Camden we have many Muslims, Hindus and people of other faiths as well as
Christians. Many of our streets and of course all our shops are decorated with
lights and trees."
Ali Abunimah 25 December 2012
In his Christmas greeting video, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of Israel’s
supposed religious tolerance.
“Today Christian
communities around the Middle East are shrinking and in danger. This is of
course not true in Israel. Here there’s a strong, growing Christian community
that participates fully in the life of our country,” Netanyahu said.
 |
| A Xmas reminder in Brighton town centre |
Vowing to “continue
to protect freedom of religion and thought,” Netanyahu also promised “to
safeguard Christian places of worship throughout our country” and not to
“tolerate any acts of violence or discrimination against any place of worship.”
Making a pitch
for Christian Zionist tourism he urged
listeners to “Come see our ancient land with your own eyes. Visit Nazareth and
Bethlehem, wade in the Jordan River, stand on the shores of the Sea of Galilee
and next year come visit our eternal capital, Jerusalem.”
His inclusion of
Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, as well as the banks of the Jordan River,
can be taken as another affirmation that Israel, despite its rhetoric, has no
interest in a “two-state solution” and intends to absorb all of historic
Palestine as an exclusively “Jewish state.”
Disappearing Christmas trees
Netanyahu’s
professions of tolerance would have come as news to Palestinian Christian
students at Safad Academic College in the Galilee. There, students who could
not get home for the holidays bought a Christmas tree and set it up outside
their dorm.
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But in the evening
when they got back from class, they found the tree was gone, Israel’s Walla!
News reported.
“This is the saddest
Christmas,” said Gabriel Mansour, 24, a third-year political science student,
identified by Walla! as a representative of Arab students. “All we wanted to do
was provide some good cheer for all the students who remained alone in the
dorms, and who were unable to go home to their families.”
When Mansour
investigated, he was told by college officials that the tree had been hidden
lest it spark riots among the Jewish students.
“I was angry to hear
this,” said Mansour of the claim that the tree might spark riots among Jewish
students and residents of Safad. “Unfortunately they don’t respect our
holidays. We fully respect all Israeli holidays. Why can no one respect our
traditions? Why can’t we put up a Christmas tree?”
“I do not think
Christmas should be marked with such ostentation,” Walla! quoted an unnamed
Jewish student saying. “The college has a distinctly Jewish character. It’s not
healthy for anyone to be able to do whatever he wants.”
Caught with a Christmas tree
 |
| Yair Netanyahu in flagrante with Christmas tree Facebook |
And there was a mini-scandal when the girlfriend of Yair
Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli prime minister, posted a photo of the youth
wearing a Santa hat and posing next to a Christmas tree, on Facebook. Under the
photo was the caption “My Christian boy.”
The prime minister’s
office was forced to issue a statement that the image was a joke and that Yair
had been attending a party hosted by “Christian Zionists who love Israel, and
whose children served in the IDF,” Israel’s Channel 2 reported. Nevertheless
the photo was removed from Facebook.
State rabbis order bans on Christmas
The ban on Christmas
at Safad college is no isolated incident. For several years, Shimon Gapso,
the notoriously racist mayor of the Israeli
settlement of “Upper Nazareth” in the Galilee, has banned
Christmas trees, calling them a provocation. “Nazareth Illit [Upper Nazareth]
is a Jewish city and it will not happen – not this year and not next year, so
long as I am a mayor,” Gapso said.
According to
journalist Jonathan Cook in Nazareth, such bans continue and are widespread this year with
Israel’s state-financed rabbis warning hotels and restaurants that they will
lose their kosher certifications if they put up trees or other Christmas
decorations or hold Christmas events.
“In other words,”
Cook says, “the rabbinate has been quietly terrorising Israeli hotel owners
into ignoring Christmas by threatening to use its powers to put them out of
business. Denying a hotel its kashrut (kosher) certificate would lose it most
of its Israeli and foreign Jewish clientele.”
Publicly visible Christmas tree could
“injure the souls of Jews”
When the Israeli
occupation municipality in Jerusalem this year put up a small Christmas tree
near the Jaffa Gate, there were strong protests from rabbis. Occupation
municipality city council member Rabbi Shmuel Yitzhaki told
settler news website Arutz 7 that the display was a
“desecration” and a “grave offense against the Jewish people” and that it was
“inconceivable” that a Christmas tree should be allowed in a “public place”
where it might be seen by Jews on their way to pray at the Western Wall in
eastern occupied Jerusalem.
Mina Fenton, a former
city council member, said, “There’s a Christian Quarter. They can put it [the
tree] up there,” where it couldn’t “injure the souls of Jews.”
Christmas trees as propaganda for
ethnic cleansing group JNF
While Israel’s
official rabbis, colleges and municipalities discourage or ban displays of
Christmas trees, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the racist state-backed
agency actively engaged in ethnically cleansing Palestinians and
stealing their land for exclusive use by Jews, has found a way to
use Christmas trees to paint a false image of itself as a promoter of
multicultural harmony.
The JNF, which
misrepresents itself as an environmental charity, now gives away some trees and felled branches particularly
to foreign embassies, for use as Christmas trees in private homes, and markets
the initiative as outreach to maintain “good relations between religions.”
Against the background of the JNF’s true activities, such cynical propaganda
should convince no one. But it might be useful in raising donations from
Christian Zionists.
Discrimination against Christianity
inherent in Israel’s “Law of Return”
The efforts by
Netanyahu and the JNF to present Israel as tolerant and friendly to Christians
are important to maintain external, especially Christian Zionist support, and
to hide a much uglier reality.
Israel claims to be a
“Jewish state.” Its blatantly discriminatory “Law
of Return” grants the automatic right to those it recognizes as Jews
from anywhere in the world to immigrate and receive citizenship even if they
have no connection to the country. At the same time, Israel prevents indigenous
Palestinian refugees, including those born there, from returning home just
because they are not Jews.
But according to the
US State Department in its 2011 report on religious freedom around the world,
Israel specifically applies a blatantly anti-Christian test in
applying this bigoted law:
The question of
whether one believes Jesus is the Jewish Messiah has been used to determine
whether a Jew was qualified to immigrate. The [Israeli] Supreme Court
repeatedly has upheld the right, however, of Israeli Jews who believe Jesus is
the Messiah to retain their citizenship. The immigration exclusion was
routinely applied only against Messianic Jews, whereas Jews
who were atheists were accepted, and Jews who chose to believe in other
religions, including Hindus and Buddhists, were not screened out.
In other words a
“Jew” can be an atheist, Hindu, or Buddhist – anything at all – and be granted
citizenship by Israeli authorities. It is only a belief in Jesus that
disqualifies them.
Attacks on Christian holy sites
As for Netanyahu’s
promise that Christian holy sites would be protected, he failed to mention that
in recent months, Israeli settlers, acting with the collusion of Israeli authorities,
have stepped up so-called “price
tag” attacks on Christian holy sites.
Meanwhile, Christmas
celebrations proceeded this year in Gaza and in
Iran, where municipal authorities in Tehran have in recent
years put up banners celebrating the birth of Jesus on
many main streets. Both Iran and Gaza are Muslim-majority places that Israeli
propaganda loves to paint as particularly intolerant of religious minorities.
Few countries live up
to their own claims about religious freedom and tolerance and many must do
better. But selling Israel in particular, whose whole raison d’être is
to privilege Jews qua Jews over the indigenous Palestinian
population of any religion, as a paragon of tolerance and pluralism is patently
absurd.
Merry Christmas!
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