Have
you heard…?
Two weeks before
Christmas, and one week prior to Chanukah, the Church of England Newspaper
published an article entitled “Archbishop’s
Christian pilgrimage to Bethlehem”, describing his proposed pilgrimage
as “purely pastoral” with “no political overtones”.
The article, written by George Conger, claimed that:
" While Israel's Christian population has risen over the last two
decades due primarily to immigration from the former Soviet Union the
Arab Christian population has fallen off sharply due to emigration".
Scottish Friends
of Israel (SFI) wrote to George Conger, questioning the validity of
this unsupported claim, providing him with current statistics contradicting
his assertion, and highlighting that there has been a haemorrhaging
of Christians, but from the West Bank & Gaza,
due to Muslim ethnic cleansing and terrorism against the Palestinian
Christians in the Palestinian administered areas (particularly Bethlehem).
To his credit, Conger accepted that the exodus from Christian Arabs
has been due to Muslim persecution, about which he had not made clear
in his article.
SFI wrote to the Church of England Newspaper advising them that official
figures, freely available from the Israel Bureau of Statistics, and covering
the last two decades to which the article referred, clearly showed that
the Christian population of Israel, as a whole, had risen from approx.
99,400 to 146,400. Included in those figures is the statistics for Arab/Christians,
which has doubled from approx. 57,700 to 118,700.
Unfortunately, although acknowledging receipt of SFI correspondence,
the Church of England Newspaper has not seen fit to publish the correct
information.
We have to ask: How
can the Archbishop of Canterbury be expected to “raise
the profile and strengthen the (Christian) community” of the Holy
Land, if he doesn’t know what the profile and strength of that
community is in the first place?
SG
Sources:
Church of England
Newspaper – www.churchnewspaper.com
Pop. Stats. - http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/?MIval=cw_usr_view_Folder&ID=141
|
Radio Kol Yisrael 
