| | | Israel: For the second time in a week, Muslims set Christmas tree ablaze in Sakhnin
DEC 30, 2020 3:00 PM BY SAMIR A. ZEDAN
It seems that Christmas trees have become a cause of provocation to some Muslims, leading them to set them on fire. They just set ablaze the Christmas tree that was reerected in front of the Greek Catholic Church after the first one was burned several days ago. What was the reason?
Yousif Elias, a young member of the Greek Catholic church, expressed his anger at the burning of the two Christmas trees earlier this week. When Muslims came to fix the two Christmas trees, he sent out a voice message in which he used obscene language against the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. Later, he assured them that this was a silly joke, rather than a deliberate attempt to insult any religion.
However, it appears that the reaction to the comment against Muhammad this time was conveyed by masked perpetrators who burnt the tree and wrote a sentence in red on the wall of the church: “Except for the Messenger of God,” after they held a guard at gunpoint.
In this video posted on Facebook, Yousif Elias appears with his face pixelated while sitting between a Muslim sheikh and the parish priest of the Greek Catholic church, Father Aref Yammine. He apologizes frantically for offending Muhammad; then the imam adds that the apology was accepted, but it was decided to banish him from the city of Sakhnin for a month. Then his final fate will be discussed in a meeting to be held in the municipality of Sakhnin.
The priest was clearly in favor of this solution; he also acknowledges Elias’s guilt against his “Muslim brethren.” It is somewhat peculiar that this has transpired in a country such as Israel that prides itself on its law, freedom of speech, and democracy. Evidently, the Israeli police were not informed of this arrangement.
It became clear that his apology wasn’t enough, which prompted some Muslims to burn a second time the Christmas tree of the Greek Catholic church to which this young man belongs.
Father Aref Yammine must know by now that the agreement concerning Yousif Elias’s expulsion from the city was inadequate to guarantee the protection of his church again. Was that approach, circumventing the legal path set by Israel’s common laws, the right one?
Obviously, the comments by Muslims on the incident of burning the tree again were against such a reaction, but a few Muslims expressed astonishment that Elias went unpunished (apart from being banned from his city). “Insulting the Prophet, apologizing, and that’s it?” Sima Darweesh remarked after watching the video of the apology. It is known that according to Islamic teachings, the punishment for insulting the Prophet is to be killed, but in light of the sovereignty of the Jewish state, it is clear that the application of such a punishment is not within reach.
Saeed Abu Jazi, a Muslim from the nearby city of Arraba, Israel, commented that “marks of beating should adorn his body to show retribution for the apology” for insulting Muhammad.
Shady Khaloul, the director of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association, pondered on his Facebook page, “Who wants to live in a Palestinian state? As Christians, we are proud of our Syriac-Aramaic roots and culture, because it is the culture of Christ and our Savior.” He continued, “We should cling to it and strengthen our presence in the state [ of Israel] by joining all of its institutions, especially its military institutions.”
This writer was one of the recipients of a voice message sent out by Yousif Elias. He emphasized that he apologized for insulting Muhammad, making it clear that he had been receiving death threats. He also asked that his message be disseminated all over the world.
The Islamic actions that part of the world witnessed against Christmas at the beginning of December coincided with the Hamas campaign in Gaza, whose influence also reached Bethlehem, the place where Jesus was born according to Christian tradition, and Sakhnin in northern Israel.
It is evident that the party controlling the bellicose religious discourse in that region is Hamas.
Can this not bring into question the steps that Israel must take in order to ensure the security of its citizens, in addition to the safety of defenseless Christians living under the control of the Palestinian Authority?
Samir A. Zedan is a former Senior Counter-Terrorism Analyst at the US Department of State, and a former Development Outreach and Communication Specialist at USAID/Iraq. He has contributed to hundreds of articles published in major media outlets with assignments in the Palestinian areas, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, and Europe. |
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