Tuesday, December 26, 2006

The Independent's Christmas Cheer

It's nauseating. Here's the gist of it:
In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.
Mary was not a Palestinian refugee, nor was the fruit of her womb, Jesus, though in today's world, third generation Palestinians living in Arab states are, thanks to UNRWA, perversely still considered refugees. Such an "honour" as UN slavery forever is conferred on no other unlucky people, thank God. As for Jesus, "He was born of the flesh and the seed of David," wrote Paul, born at Bethlehem, in the Roman province of Judea, which would be renamed Palestina 160 years later after the Philistines, not the Arab Palestinians who live there today. The Philistines, judging from their pottery and ironworking skills came from Mycenae. There is no racial relationship between the Philistines and the Palestinian Arabs who, like the Palestinian Jews, share the same ancestor, Abraham, who the Arabs call Ibrahim.

Anyway, read the whole nauseating thing here
.