I'm not really sure what you mean. Of the two Israeli arab Melkites I have spoken with, they both loved being Israeli citizens, said they were treated with great respect and were on friendly terms with the Israelis, who they have never known to treat them with suspiscion. Ok, scratch that, three Israeli arabs, the third being Bishop Elias Chacour, but he was a child at the time of Israel's declaration of independence. The other two are my age or younger and grew up in Israel. In the Middle East, the Melkite Eparchy of Akka, Nazareth and all Galilee is the only Melkite Eparchy that is growing. All the others are shrinking. In fact, for the past two years, that eparchy has been the fastest growin eparchy in the entire Melkite Church. I don't know the reasons behind it, but if anything, the case can be made that Israel has been beneficial to the life of the Melkite Church and not the opposite. On the other hand, the West Bank Melkites have all but left. There is hardly a Melkite presence in the occupied territories.
That may be the case, but we all know that Jews do not allow Christianity in Israel, and that Christian communities are faced with difficulties and obstacles throughout Israel.
Of course Israel under pressure of liberal religious freedom policies of the United States, cannot enforce its "ethnic purity" and "Jewish character" totalitarianly, as the Americans are watching. I know that Hamas is blackmailing Christians, but I also know that other Melkites, like Archbishop Hilarion Capucci, were in fact activists for the PLO and Fatah - and fully Palestinian. The Melkites may have also left for their exiled communities in the West, but did it occur to you, that this may probably be caused by the dire economic poverty, roadblocks, isolation, and Israeli repression, influencing even independent Palestinian controlled areas of the West Bank?
And it goes too far to state there is barely any Melkite presence on the West Bank. There are lots of Melkite Greek Catholics left. Many emigrated, but only due to a conflict stirred up and by blockade and isolation and poverty caused by Israeli occupation.
Much like the majority Anglicized of Ireland. The fact that the people of Greater Syria were arabized doesn't mean that there were Arabs in the land for the past 2000 years. Most of the people in Greater Syria today are still predominantly of Greek and Phoenician stock with only a little bit of Arab mixed in. Most of the Lebanese families at my church have more Greco-Turkish features than true Arabic ones.
Not only. Yet they became Arabized. Most Turks of today may be Turkish nationalists and "secularized" nominal Muslims of extreme nationalist convictions, but they are only to 20 % descendants of the Central Asian Turkish tribes, and most are Islamized Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and Celtic remnant tribes from Anatolia - that is why they look not as Asian as the Turkmens and the Uzbeks, to whom their language is related.
And if they hadn't left, they might be living in peace as Israeli citizens like the over one million Israeli Arabs living there now.
With Jews burning bibles in Israel, going around chasing priests and missionaries who preach Christ to the Jewish Israelis?
I think it's a perfect world situation, but it will never happen. The Arabs aren't willing to share anything. British Palestine was originally all of modern Israel, the occupied territories and Jordan. It was all originally going to be the Jewish state. The Arabs pitched a fit, so it was divided along the Jordan. The Israelis accepted it, the Arabs pitched a fit again, so in addition to all of Transjordan, the Arabs were going to get, in addition to a much larger Gaza strip and West Bank, nearly all of Galillee and all of Jerusalem, with the Jewish state being relegated to a thin coastal strip, a strip along the northern Jordan river, and about half the Negev. The Israelis accepted it, but the Arabs still pitched a fit. They couldn't even let the Jews have the areas that were predominantly Jewish populated, they wanted it ALL for themselves. So much so that when the Jews had the audacity to proclaim independence on the meager bit of land alotted to them by the UN, the Palestinian state attacked them, accompanied by Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
The British Lord Balfour and Rothschild diplomacy which created the Zionist entity and promises cannot be invoked to falsify the ethnic history of Palestine, Jordan and other regions.
The problem is that directly Jews of Irgun and Lehi started destroying Arab villages in Zionist-controlled areas of Palestine attributed to the independent state of Israel. Of course after that Arab nationalists and Arab socialists (a form of Arab national-socialism in secular version), joined by Islamic jihadists, started attacking the state of Israel. But it was not (only) Arab provocation. That is the ADL version of history.
Yep, they've done genetic studies. They are the same people. They're not sure if the Finns are just Swedes who adopted a Finno-Ugric language, or the Swedes are Finns that adopted a Scandinavian language (probably the former, because most Finno-Ugric peoples look like a cross between Whites and Orientals - fair skin with slanty eyes - and the Finns definitely don't look like this). But this isn't surprising. The Persian Empire spoke Aramaic, which is not native Persian. The Babylonian Empire also spoke Aramaic, which is not native Sumerian. Languages get "dubbed over" so to speak, all the time.
Hungarians are not dark-skinned either, nor are Karelians. The Finugric languages are not southern, but nordic. There may be similar DNA, but that is the same for English and Irish - English are mostly Germanized Gallo-Romans, mostly originally Celtic, like the Irish. English do not mostly look as Germanic as northern Germans, Danes, Swedes and Frisians.
Of course. The Copts of Egypt are ethnic Egyptians. The Muslims of Egypt are ethnic Arabs; they're not the same people. The Melkites of Israel are predominantly ethnic Samaritans. Completely different people than the Copts. They are only linked by their language, just like the people of Quebec and the people of Haiti are not at all the same people, but they natively speak the same language.
A simplistic version of history. Many Islamized Egyptian natives married with (equally semitic-looking and -speaking) Arab invaders' families, and formed the Egyptian Arab part of the population.
I just meant that Copts also speak Arab now in secular life since 1700, and yet one cannot expell Arab-speaking Melkites from Israel to Egypt because they speak Arab. The same goes for Muslem Palestinians, who consider themselves Arabs, but are descendants of original peoples of Palestine, including Jews and Islamized ex-Christian Aramaic population parts.
Palestinians belong in Palestine, not in Jordan, and the original Holy Land or the Israeli territories were NOT empty, but populated by Melkites, Greek Orthodox, Latin Rite Catholic Arab-speaking Palestinians, and many Muslim Palestinians, especially south of Jerusalem and in the West Bank. In fact, the current Israeli territories had large Christian populations, like Nazareth once had.
I took a semester course specifically on the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is why I know that largely, the Israelis are on the ethical, if not moral, highground.
At the ADL SUmmer Academy? Or from Abe Foxman or Rahm Emanuel? You think simplistic and spread a propagandistic version of history similar to what Nazis would once claim about 'Germanic' Warsaw and Kraków, and how still today (since 1945 Communist-Polish) Poles claim that Stettin and Breslau and Allenstein and Johannisburg in East Prussia and Silesia etc. are 'ancient eternally Slavic and Polish' lands, and how some even claim Berlin as 'ancient Polish', just because for 400 years a Slavic tribe caught fish there.
It is the same logic of Israeli claims.
Most Jews in Israel today are actually either Sephardim or Mizrahim. The Ashkenazim have been the minority in Israel for about 20 years now.
I know. I was just joking. I always make jokes about noses with my Jewish friend.
