5 Stars A Bishop Bears Witness in Palestine
Riah Abu El-Assal
From God's lips to my ears. His Grace is both an Arab and a Christian whose life over several generations has been defined, on the one hand, by the love of God and on the other by the perfidy of the Zionists looting and destroying Palestine, and now including Jerusalem, a corpus separatum by any rational understanding.
His Grace and I have served together, on the Judicial Commission of Inquiry into Human Trafficking and Child Sex Abuse, and I know from him directly the contradiction between how the Iranians treat both Christians and Jews, and (my own view) how the Zionists treat not just non-Jews, but “lesser” Jews. For those who are not fully consciousness of the bigoty of Zionism, please know that Progressive and Reform Jews — and Netanyahu himself is on record to this effect — do not count. Only Chabad Supremacist Cult Jews, and their Orthodox Jew helpers, “count.”
I recommend this book be read together with Professor Gary Field's new book, ENCLOSURE: Palestinian Landscapes in a Historical Mirror, which takes great care to show that the Palestinians, like English freemen and Native Americans, are the victims of a Western combination of guns and unjust law that conquers and disposseses with impunity. This latest book introduces the Zionist term “cultural engineering” as the a synonym for genocide; the irony could not be more painful to witness.
The thirteenth Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, His Grace Riah Abu El-Assal is, as the Foreword by the Secretary General of the Anglican Commission states, “the Nazarene.” He is the embodiment of God's grace on earth, a living testament to the good will of men regardless of ideological persuasion.
This book is a vice on the mind — it sandwiches the reader between open love on the one hand, and a closed “occupation” society on the other, in which everyone is forced to bow to Zionist predation and many are ultimately forced to “inform” (bear false witness) on their neighbors. In the face of the massive on-going Zionist propaganda to the effect that Palestinians are lazy and terrorists (a contradiction few point out), the reader is left to wonder if this voice in the wilderness is to be believed. That is why I recommend that the reader start with my summary review of the book ENCLOSURE.
I cannot over-state the wealth of knowledge in this book, providing insights in one thin volume that might take a lifetime of reading elsewhere to access. I am fascinating to learn that in the author's experience, priests are also landlords and judges — there is no “structure” in occupied Palestine other than that provided by religions.
Clear to me from reading this book is that the Zionists have done everything in their power to force Palestinians to emigrate, to include the deliberate destruction of the middle class. Palestinian society has been gutted by the occupation, and it is a testament to their faith and their fortitude and their love of their own land, that so many (roughly 15%) remain.
This book is a living history lesson with the deepest possible insights into cultural, economic, legal, military, and political reality in Zionist-occupied Palestine. Read this book to feel the pain and at the same time, feel the love and the devotion to God and truth that I believe will ultimately triumph.
“Palestine is to the Palestinians as France is to the French.”
Gandhi
