The Palestinian Authority has managed to secure
World Heritage Site status for the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which
the Israelis had wanted to demolish in favour of a Wal-Mart or something.
The Israelis are incandescent that the PA has
secured World Heritage Site status for what, whether or not you believe (as I
do, because I can see no reason not to) that it stands on the site of the Birth
of Jesus, is undeniably the world’s oldest Christian church in continuous use.
How was it not already a World Heritage Site? Who has been stopping that
designation? And why would they not want it to be so designated? What else do
they want to do with the site? One really does shudder to think. But it is
academic now, so they may as well tell us.
The howling over the impending prospect of a
Palestinian State also includes, as if it were self-evidently a bad thing, the
possibility of World Heritage Site status for the Tomb of Rachel and for the
Tombs of the Patriarchs. But then, the present Israeli Government wants to
denaturalise the ultra-Orthodox Jews as well as the ancient indigenous
Christians.
The war that Israel ordered up in Iraq has already turned the Shrine
of Ezra the Scribe, who invented both synagogues and the square Hebrew script,
into a mosque. The Shrine of Ezekiel, featuring some of the oldest Hebrew
inscriptions in the world, is next on the hit list.
Across the border in Iran, whatever regime the
Crazies sought to install would be just as conservative of the Shrine of
Habakkuk, of the Shrine of Daniel, and of the Tomb of Esther and Mordechai. It
says in the Bible that those figures were Persian. Where did you think that
they were buried? Or did you just not believe it...?
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