While everyone acknowledges that the Bashir Regime is abject tyranny, it at least protected Christians, Alawites, Druze, and minorities.
Now that the FSA (Free Sryian Army) is in control of much of the country, Salafis (Wahabbi extremists) are taking over; and Christians are being persecuted and having to flee.
This is typical of so much of Mideastern history where Christianity has been slowly withered down throughout the ages since Islam took over.
What we may be watching is the last ethnic cleansing of Christians from the Mideast. Christians have already had to flee Iraq after Saddam was toppled. Whatever the faults of Ba’athism, it protected the Christians. As Syria’s Ba’athists are falling, Christians are now being driven out of Syria. Christians are losing their power in Lebanon. The end game is over and Christianity has lost.
This has been a long war. When Islam first took control of Egypt, Christians were the majority for centuries afterward, with only an Islamic elite in power. But Islam sets up disciminatory tax laws which unfairly burden those who refuse to convert. Moreover, any interfaith marriages must be set up where the kids will be Muslim. For ex: Muslim men can have Christian wives, but not the reverse; since religion is determined by the father. Even today in Egypt, a Christian can convert to Islam, but not the reverse.
Slowly, this tyranny erodes Christianity until Islam is demographically set.
Predatory laws like that have whittled away at Christians for centuries. It has been asserted that at the time of the Crusaders, the majority of people in the area were still Christian, and the Crusaders were seen as liberators, contrary to historical revisionism. Yes, the Crusaders acted viciously and badly; but some of the population – certainly the Maronites – preferred them to Muslim rule.
It has been a long slow process, but a determined one. Now, Islam is about to ethnically cleanse the Mideast of the remaining Christians.
There are not that many left.
Between Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, there are probably 5 million Christians left.
Maybe the West can set up funds for their flight. Latin America could easily absorb a lot of them. They already have. The USA, France, and Spain could take some more in.
These Christian Arabs would constitute 1% of the population if they all went to Latin America. Not enough to create a demographic shock.
Maybe it is time that the Christian world acted in concert to help their own, just like Jews and Muslims do.
NOTE: I am not including the Christian Copts of Egypt who are also under threat. They are eight to nine million strong and may be too many to bring out. They are also the core remnant of the original pre-Islamic Egyptians, and there is something obnoxious about surrendering to Islam in Egypt, when Egypt used to a major center of Christianity.
Chile has half the world’s Palestinian Christians.
Most Palestinian-Chileans have ancestors who arrived long before 19301, thus making them ineligible for any claim that they were victims of the Nakba. I estimate that only 10,000 or so would even take up the option of the right of return even if it were presented to them.
Yet, even though they are now 3rd and 4th generation Chilean, they have kept up a degree of contact with the homeland. Many, not all, have some relatives – or distant relatives – who are in Judea and Samaria (the contested areas, what the world calls the West Bank). Many are now intermarried with Italian-, German-, Spanish-, and Basque-Chilean stocks, so their ethnic affiliation, while there, is attenuated.
These are among the elites of Chile, and probably among the elites of all of South America, especially concerning the Arab-South American community.
Yet, they are starting to be radicalized. Until the 1980s, except for a few minor political actions, they were not involved in Mideast politics.2 They were busy chiefly with assimilating and amassing wealth, two projects at which they excelled.
But no one can watch daily TV reports of street fighting which may involve distant relatives and not be concerned. Over the years, even as they assimilated even more, they have become more and more anti-Israel.
With their clout, and the cachet of Palestinian identity, Palestinian-Chileans could pull a lot of South American Arabs into their camp. This would not be so good for Israel; if Israel allows recent Iranian and Saudi influences to go uncontested. South America is emerging and too important now to ignore.
Brazil is now the sixth largest economy in the world. Chile is now first world. Argentina has been borderline first world for about 100 years, never managing to cross the line but always approaching it. Uruguay is almost middle class.
The Palestinians of Chile, who are half the world’s Palestinian Christians, and the largest Palestinian colony outside the Mideast have the potential to do great damage or great good for Israel’s case. Israel should not be ignoring this.
The Palestinian-Chileans’ position as elites in South America commands attention.
The first thing Israel should do is realize that whatever happens to the Christians in Judea and Samaria (the contested areas, what the world calls the West Bank) will get back to Chile. Not every Palestinian-Chilean has close relatives in the Mideast anymore, but enough do that any bad news from the Mideast will rifle throughout their community in Chile.
In order for Israel to win support from Palestinian-Chileans, it is necessary for Israel to go easy on the Christians in Judea and Samaria. Israel should differentiate the Christians from the Muslims. This does not have to be proudly broadcast to the world, but it can be communicated quietly to the Christians in both Judea and Samaria; also to their distant brethren in Chile.
Israel ought to remind the Palestinians in Chile that many of the Arabs of South America are descended from those who fled Muslim tyranny; whether the tyranny of Turkish rule, or the slaughters of Christians, which has occurred more than once, both requiring outside intervention to save the Christians3.
Israel must bring up this history when dealing with South American Arabs. They need to be reminded that Islam not Zionism is their traditional enemy.
While Israel is doing nothing, Saudi and Iranian propaganda are coming in and having a devastating effect. The Christian Palestinian community, which should not be supporting Islamist causes, is now supporting Abbas. Groups with Islamic connections are now speaking at Syrian Orthodox Churches in Chile.
Israel should contact the increasingly important Paletinian-Chilean community and cut a deal with them. They will enfranchise their Christian cousins in Judea and Samaria, and give them building permits, in return for a united front against Islam. There are only about 167,000 Arab Christians in Judea and Samaria according to the Wikipedia; which admits this is a high estimate, and the real number is lower. Israel could afford to admit them to Israeli nationality. It would produce a world of good will in Latin America.
This would be a quid pro quo of sorts. Palestinians in Chile would support Israel in exchange for the enfranchisement of their cousins left in the contested areas of the Holy Land.
The Palestinian-Christians might accept it. They have to be aware that no matter who is in charge in the contested areas, the Chritians will be a minority. Better to be a minority under a Jewish state than minority under an increasingly Islamic Palestinian state.
These Westernized Christian Arabs of South America could present an alternative face of the Arabs to the world. The Muslim Arab world would then be faced with alternative definition of what it means to be Arab. Islam might lose its cachet.
Are Arabs backwards, women destroying lunatics; or are they progressive, rich elites? The difference is Christianity. Though unstated, the Arabs might reconsider the wisdom of Islam, which is what Israel would want.
Israel should consider reaching out to the Palestinian-Christian in South America, and view them as a potential ally rather than an opponent.
1See Wikipedia:Arab Chileans “61% of the Arabs arrived in our country did between 1900 and 1930. Over 60% of Arabs who came were between 10 and 30 years old”
Note: I have seen that number go as high as 81% of Palestinians arrived before 1930. (Click Here) What this means to Israel is that only a small portion of the community can lay claim to being Nakba refugees. Probably only one-fifth of the Palestinians in Chile can lay claim to being refugees, or near descendents of the refugees, of the Nakba. Of these, 90% are probably doing so well in Chile, that they would not choose the option of returning even were it presented to them.
Yesterday, we examined, albeit incompletely, the radicalizaion of Palestinian-Chileans. We found that two reasons were
1) ethic pride,
2) a myopic historical which forgets that their ancestors were persecuted by Muslims.
The next reason we will examine is the creeping trend of Iranian and Saudi Islamic influence which is shooting throughout all of Latin America.
Posted on YouTube: 2011
Note: TeleSUR is a media project centered in Hugo Chavez’s
Venezuela which owns a 51% share.Translated by someone
better at Spanish than me
TeleSUR (TV South) is a media conglomerate financed by several left wing Latin American countries, with Venezuela financing a majority 51% share. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is a noted anti-Zionist and supporter of Iran. Naturally, this attitude saturates the Network.
In Buenos Aires, the Saudi funded King Fahd Mosque is now broadcasting Islamic propaganda on a program on Argentine Public TV.
El cálamo y su mensaje/The Quill and its Message1 Saudi Financed!
There has been a strong penetration of Oil Money in South America. Inspite of the still lingering Argentine anger of the Iranian bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994, Argentina, along with almost every other country in South America, recognized the Palestinian State.
LEARN TO WRITE & SPEAK ARABIC
If Chilean Arabs are Christian,
why the picture of a Mosque?
This cannot be chalked up to mere Arab nationalism. About half of the Arabs in South America are descended from Lebanese Maronite Christians whose ancestors fled Muslim slaughters in both the 19th and 20th centuries. Maronites tend to have a more Western viewpoint; and tend to moderate against strong anti-Israel sentiment. Christians of Syrian Orthodox descent would also harbor no illusions about the creeping militancy of Islamic advocacy.2 These may have no love for Israel, but they are not going to be given to anti-Israel extremism either.
Only Chile, and Honduras, have noticeably powerful Palestian communities which stand out from other Arabs.
Most of Latin America’s Arabs are Christians who were dhimmis before they emigrated.
What is going on is not merely ethnic pride, nor a myopic historical memory at work, nor even the echo of a Catholic culture’s latent anti-semitism, but a large infusion of cash and a massive effort by Islamic regimes to purchase Latin American influence.
Arab language classes are often held in mosques rather than in non-sectarian settings. Clearly the agenda is more than linguistics. Now, this would not be bad in an of itself, coming under the general heading of Freedom of Religion; but along with it comes a fierce anti-Israel world view.
Adding to the mix is a new Iranian Spanish language network called HispanTV which was meant to counter the Western Media. The program is similar to the English language PressTV3, which is a media shill for Iran.
Complaining about Israeli settlers in Silwan – Iran’s HispanTV
This is clearing Iran pushing an agenda. In America, PressTV is largely unknown. In South America, HispanTV may take off.
Already known is Iran’s use of South American drug running to generate money for Hezbollah.4
Both Arab and Iranian money are filtering into South America to push an Agenda.
In the next part of this discussion we will discuss Israeli mistakes: past, and present; and we’ll what Israel can do to correct this issue.
1More worrying was that a popular Arab-Argentine Show, Desde El Aljibe/From the Well, which was secular and primarly run by Christian Arabs, was cancelled to make way for an Islamic show that almost no one wanted. 90% of Argentine Arabs are Christian. Suspicions run that money and Saudi influence were involved. Likely so, it indicates that Arab Oil Money is wreaking havoc in South America.
2Many Christian Syrians, both internally and externally, support the secular Bashir Assad against the Islamic insurgency.
3PressTV is a viciously anti-Israel network with a large satellite presence – though the UK has recently revoked its broadcast license – and an even larger internet presence . It regularly hosts holocaust deniers, “Jewish conspiracy” theorists, and a host of crackpots who are fobbed off as experts.
It is notable for only having female announcers that wear hijabs; most famously Lauren Booth, a half-sister of Tony Blair’s wife, and convert to Islam.
But its most famous star is the Stentorian British Parliamentarian George Galloway who has two programs on the network; and not just on Press TV: Galloway is on WBAI radio in New York, and has a show in Lebanon. He brags of his mixed Irish and Scottish background and his love for Palestine. Abstemious from alcohol – always a suspicious trait in a Celt – Galloway appeals to Britain’s radical left and Muslim vote. He is very hostile to Israel. After divorcing his first wife, a Christian; Galloway has gone through a succession of Muslim wives. Though Galloway refuses to admit it, the general opinion is that he converted to Islam; though no one is sure whether Sunni or Shi’a.
He would be relegated to the realm of lunatics, except that Galloway is arguably the best orator in the English language since Kennedy or Churchill. He commands a booming voice, and a rhetorical style that is positively breathtaking. He has bested newspaper critics, the Canadian government which sought to ban him, the British Labour party, and even the US Congress, whom he personally castigated before a Senate Committee. He has hosted a popular radio show in Britain and is now back in their Parliament, after winning an election by appealing to the Muslim vote, which is a scary thought in itself.
He is Press TV’s star, and his politics are scary.
4See Hezbollah builds a Western base (in Spanish)(Click Here). While some of the claims are exaggerated, there have been Hezbollah agents captured in the area. (Click Here). The Triple Frontier, where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet, has been a poorly policed smugglers paradise for decades, even before the rise of Islam. It should not surpise anyone that Hezbollah acts in the area. It is believed the crew which did the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires set out from the Triple Frontier.
December 31, 2023 – Change text under a video. Made more mobile friendly.
We will start off this category with a rather interesting video made by Palestinian-Chilean students in 2007. They seem to take an almost militant Palestinian line.
NOTE:I do NOT agree with its anti-Zionist views, but I wanted to translate the video accurately.
A Palestinian-Chilean version of the Jewish Birthright tours
Original Chilean Source: (Click Here) Keep in mind, Chilean Palestinians are Christian
NOTE:I have been told the background music is by a Sunni Lebanese which calls on Arabs to fight Israel.
To see the Arabic music with English subtitles: (Click Here)
I want you to look at that video above.
That first video above was made by some Chilean Students from Santiago, Chile in 2007. These were the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Christian-Palestinian immigrants to Chile. They are Christians. They are totally assimilated Chileans. Most Palestinian-Chileans have ancestors that arrived before 1930; before the present imbroglios. Some of these kids might be 4th or 5th generation Chilean. Yet, they put Sunni war music as the background for the pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
WHY ARE CHRISTIAN KIDS USING MUSLIM WAR SONGS?
Chile has about half of the Palestinian-Christians on the planet, even more than in the contested areas of the Mideast. It was as if Muslims were strained out, and only Christians made it to Chile. They are 99% or more Christian. They now form a middle to elite class in Chile. A good portion of them are intermarried now, and part-Spanish, part-Italian, part-Basque, part-German, etc. In other words, well-integrated and upscale Chileans; fortunate to be in a Latin American democracy that is now considered first world. They are thoroughly Westernized one would think.
Yet, like Jews in America, who are discovering their Jewish roots, these children are re-discovering their Palestinian roots.
SO, WHAT IS GOING ON?!
A part of this is ethnic pride, though in most Western Countries ethnic pride tapers off after 2 generations. This is running against the usual trend of assimilation, and seems to mirror Jewish identity politics. Both groups hang on to their roots. Competing Semitic identities.
Clearly, there is some outside meddling to reinforce this. Saudi and Iranian money are all over South America; but other factors are at work. Factors which cannot be explained by outside meddling.
The history of Palestinian identity politics go back long in Chilean history, back to the first major wave of immigrants in 18901, when the Chilean government, which was subsidizing European immigration, was met with waves of Arabs who were definitely not expected nor appreciated.
At first, they were savagely looked down on2; but within one generation, and with continuing immigration, they had started the social climb, and were on their way to real power.
By 1920, they had established a Chilean soccer team called the Palestinos.3, which would later become a major league soccer franchise in Chile. This sort of puts to death the claim that Palestinian identity was invented in 1964, by the PLO. The Palestinians in Chile were obviously calling themselves Palestinians by 1920 and probably before then.
By 1938, they set up Club Palestino, a prestigious social club in Santiago which is now a seat of power in Chile4.
In 1947 – long before the era of Muslim Oil Wealth, Chile’s Palestinians – by that time – had enough clout to have Chile’s pro-Zionist president change his ambassador’s vote to Abstain in the UN Partition Vote for Palestine. That is real power.
The Arabs were a joke elsewhere on the planet. By the 1940s, they were becoming an elite in Chile.
By the 1960s, some of the richest men in Chile were Palestinians and no one was laughing at them any more. They commanded respect, awe, and power.5
In many ways, they had mirrored the Jewish rise to power in America, and in much the same way and time frame.
By the 1970s, these formerly scorned were now looked up to as magnates of wealth and power.
The Pinochet dictatorship put a halt to much of this, but the Palestinian-Chilean power base re-emerged after the democracy was re-established; just in time for the First Intifada which was making world headlines. Chilean Palestinians were now jolted back to their beginnings.
However, their historical memory was being filtered rather selectively. The original Christian immigrants from Palestine had fled Turkish Muslim rule. They were terrified of their sons being drafted into a Turkish Army where it was not safe to be a dhimmi. One would have thought that alone would have diminished their enthusiasm for a cause which was getting more and more Islamic in nature. However, 100 years of safety in Chile seems to have fogged over that memory.
Immigrants who trickled in after 1948 and 1967 added to this (mis)focus6. These might only remember as far back as the Mandate era when the Muslims were held in check by the British. The refugees of ’67 could remember Zionist, and maybe British outrages, but usually had no experience of the greater Muslim outrages before the Mandate.
As the ancient memories of old Islamic terrors wafted away, the more pressing recent outrages of Zionists became the focus of attention.
Adding to the mess, TV brought images of Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the West Bank and suddenly Palestinian-Chilean interest was piqued.
Like an earlier generation of Jews, they did not remember that the tolerance of Muslim neighbors that grandfathr had spoken of was the consequence of either European rule which protected Christians, or European threats to intervene if Christians were attacked. They obviously forget the reason why the first wave of their ancestors had fled in 1890. It was to escape Islamic Turkish tyranny.
Humans being myopic, today’s Jewish misdemeanors angered the Palestinian-Chileans more than earlier Islamic felonies.
So Chile’s Palestinians have joined and seem to lead, the South American branch of the political Intifada.
INITIAL CONCLUSIONS!
The first two parts of the matter can be traced to two facts.
1) The Palestinian-Chileans have a strong ethnic pride
2) Palestinian-Chileans have a short-range historic memory
Neither is unusual. Palestinian-Chileans are not to be condemned for doing what everyone else does. Japanese-Americans will often send their children to Japanese school, so that the language will live on. Catholic children in New York City, of an earlier generation, went to Wednesday afternoon Catholic Catechisms. Jews, of course, still go to Hebrew School. So we can’t condemn the Palestinian-Chileans for wanting to maintain their heritage; but the only way we can explain their political involvement is if a Palestinian analog of Zionist organizations has arisen among them. This in itself would not be troubling; but it has started to exhibit Islamic overtones, which indicates that outside agendas, foreign to a Christian people, are being pressed into play.
FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS!
There are two other factors at play.
3) Increasing Saudi and Iranian influence in South America
4) A myopic Israeli establishment which refuses to work out a deal of equality and enfranchisement with Arab Christians – in a divide and conquer strategy – and doesn’t try to use Chile’s Palestinians as a bridge betweem the Ummah and the West.
1There is evidence of individual immgrants going back to the 1850s, but 1890 was the start of large scale Palestinian immigration.
2The paper El Mercurio would write in 1911, “Whether they are Mahometans or Buddhists, what one can see and smell from far, is that they are more dirty than the dogs of Constantinople…” Source Wikipedia: Palestinian Community in Chile.
4Apparently, from their own website (Click Here) (in Spanish), they entered in an arrangement with the British Mandate, via the British Embassy in Chile. The list of founders indicates that even at this early date, they had become Chileanized, and were sporting Latin first names. The club has become quite prestigious over the years as this Wikipedia article claims (Click Here).
5At one point, the Yarur family controlled 60% of Chile’s textile industry. Now, they are heavily involved in banking.
6A similar thing happened to Jewish ethnic memory, which after the horrors of the European Holocast, tended to glamorize the tolerance of Islam over Europe. They brought up memories of Arab tolerance of Jews, forgetting that this Arab tolerance was the consequence of European colonial rule. Before colonial rule over the Arabs, which extended European rights and liberty to Sepharic Jews in Araby, the life of a Jew was horrific. But in 1945, very few living Jews could remember back that far, and the myth of Islamic tolerance was born. Recent scholarship has rooted out that error and re-discovered the brutality of Muslim and Berber regimes. It has been settled that it was not Islamic tolerance, but the standard colonial practice of extending protection to Sephardic Jews in the colonies which was the source of the tolerance, enforced by colonial rifles. Oddly enough, Muslim tolerance was really European tolerance; but after 1945, for obvious reasons, Jews were not thrilled with European tolerance.
This was particularly true in French-held Algeria where Sephardic Jews were awarded French citizenship in 1870; but the Arab had to renounce Islamic mores and adopt Western practices. This was considered apostasy and few Arabs went through the process.
To get a sense of what Jews had to endure in pre-colonial North Africa, the execution of Sol Huachel is instructive (Click Here). But after World War 2, such tyranny was overshadowed by the recent Holocaust, and the myth arose of tolerance.
Jewish Academics are starting to re-examine the whole era in a more unbiased light, and the myth of Islamic tolerance is crumbling. The Europeans did not so much as export anti-semitism to Araby; rather they exported a racialized variety of anti-Semitism to reinforce an already existing Islamic prejudice. No doubt the continued struggle with Islam has forced this re-assessment of Muslim tolerance among Jewish academics. It would be nice if more Christian academics followed suit.
