Nat. Geo. lays Christian woes to Israel

By Dexter Van Zile

article created on: 2009-00-29T00:00:00

National Geographic has long enjoyed unique influence and credibility on the American scene. The publication, which boasts a worldwide circulation of 6.7 million readers, sends journalists to the far parts of the globe and publishes their stories alongside vivid photographs.

Regrettably, the publication abused the trust of its readers in a June 2009 article that veered into political terrain and scapegoated Israel for Christianity’s decline in the Middle East.

In addition to targeting Israel, the article, “The Forgotten Faithful, “ written by Don Belt, the magazine’s senior editor for foreign affairs, offers no honest description of the mistreatment of Christians at the hands of Muslim majority populations in the Middle East.

Belt reveals his bias when he reports that Christianity “began a long, steady retreat “into minority status during the Crusades which began in 1095. This is preposterous.

As Bat Ye’or—a leading scholar on Christianity under Islam—has documented, Muslim conquerors began a systematic campaign to eradicate Christianity from the Arabian Peninsula soon after Mohammed’s death in 632. By the eighth century, Muslim rulers had instituted a system of taxation and slavery throughout the Middle East that clearly contributed to the decline of Christianity in the Middle East—hundreds of years before the first crusader ever set foot in Jerusalem.

The article also fails to provide any detail of the current mistreatment of Christians in the Middle East, particularly in Palestinian society. Numerous reports detail the intimidation of Christians at the hands of Muslim gangs in Palestinian society. For example, Khaled Abu Toameh, Arab affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, recently reported that Christians in the West Bank “have repeatedly complained that Muslims have been seizing their lands either by force or through forged documents. “ Belt ignores this.

In an obvious effort to portray Israel as the culprit behind Christianity’s decline in the Middle East, Belt obscures the growth of the Christian population in the Jewish state by reporting that the overall percentage of Christians in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has declined from 13 percent of the population in 1894 to 2 percent of the population today. What Belt fails to report, however, is that in absolute terms, the Christian population in Israel has increased from 34,000 in 1949 to 120,600 in 1995 and 151,600 in 2007, yielding a 345 percent increased over the past six decades.

By way of comparison, Palestinian Christians, are leaving the West Bank and the Gaza Strip at twice the rate of their Muslim compatriots. Clearly the behavior of Muslim leaders in Palestinian society has caused this exodus—even if the leaders of Christian denominations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip report good relations between the two communities. In the words of one lay Christian who spoke to Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi in the 1990s, “Our leaders are liars: They tell the newspapers everything is OK. But when Christians go to the market, they’re afraid to wear their crosses.”

Belt does report the accusations of a married Christian couple—whose real names are not used—who cannot legally live together in Jerusalem because under Israeli law, the husband, a Bethlehem native cannot get an Israeli ID card. Yes, it’s sad that the couple cannot live together in Jerusalem, but it’s also unreasonable to expect that he would be given citizenship based solely on his marriage to an Arab Christian who has an Israeli ID. Belt neglects to point out that America offers no automatic citizenship for non American spouses either.

Why doesn’t the couple move to Bethlehem? Probably because as a Palestinian Christian the wife enjoys far more rights in Israel than she would in the Fatah-controlled West Bank. Still, according to Belt, the woman admits to hating Israelis.

The same hypocrisy is apparent when Belt describes the scene of the husband being unable to wash his car on Easter, ostensibly because water is being shipped to nearby Jewish settlements. This is a familiar canard used by propagandists. Israel is not diverting water from Palestinians to Jewish communities. On the contrary, Israel annually pipes more than 40 million cubic meters of its own water over the Green Line to Palestinian cities and towns. Ramallah, for example, receives over 5 MCM annually from Israel.

So, contrary to Belt, Palestinians are using Israeli water, not the other way around. Belt’s cavalier parroting of false anti-Israel innuendo without, evidently, bothering to check the facts, is indicative of the story as a whole.

Dexter Van Zile is Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, www.camera.org.