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December 26, 2004

Runnerup in Liar of the Month Club: New York Times Omits Major Reason Christians are Leaving Bethlehem

Topics: Middle East News and Perspectives

Having earlier this evening co-nominated the AP for (Take A Pen) news media liar of the month, I'd now like to offer a candidate for Ist runnerup, who else but the New York Times. It seems that they, like the AP (see the earlier Powerline and Hyscience posts), have been caught, you guessed it, not exactly being completely honest in their reporting in an effort to further their liberal-leftist agenda. Let's hear about it from the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA):

A New York Times report on the exodus of Christians from Bethlehem and other historically Christian towns in the West Bank (A Sad New Carol: Go Ye From Bethlehem, Dec 23) omitted a major reason for this demographic change - official and unofficial Muslim discrimination against Arab Christians, amid a rising tide of Islamism in the Palestinian territories.

The Times cited instead:

Four years of violence, an economic free fall and the Israeli separation barrier have all contributed to the hardships facing Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem, one of the largest concentrations of Christians in the region.

While there's no doubt that these are contributing factors, they are unlikely to be the major reason for the Christian exodus, which is clear if one stops to think that the Christian population is also dwindling in the rest of the Arab world. Obviously this pan-Arab phenomena has nothing to do with Israel, and everything to do with the fact that Arab Christians are made to feel unwelcome, or worse, in the Muslim countries of the Middle East.

It should also be mentioned that in contrast to the Muslim countries, Israel's Christian population is growing rather than dwindling, and in recent years has been growing at the same rate as Israel's Jewish population. For example, in the period 1995 - 2003 Israel's Arab Christian population grew from 101,400 to 115,700, a growth rate of 14.1 percent. To put this in perspective, the US population in that period grew by just 11.8 percent.  Continue reading CAMERA

Posted by Hyscience at December 26, 2004 1:47 AM

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Comments

Posted by: tyler at January 21, 2005 7:47 PM

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