CADFA Virtual Visit to Palestine summer 2020

Bethlehem Day 
 

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Why is Jerusalem important?

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The question was asked, "why is Jerusalem so important?" These two maps help explain my answer. One map is from Anglo-Saxon England, in 1040 AD, before William the Conqueror arrived, and the Mappa Mundi from Hereford is a map from 1300. Both maps show the point of view of the first 1300 years AD, with Jerusalem as the centre of the known world. Jerusalem is central to three religions, and as such holds a deeply spiritual and almost mythical quality for people of faith and non faith alike. Sadly the three Abrahamic faiths have shed rivers of each others'  blood over the white stones of Jerusalem, just when a sense of brotherhood should have been paramount. Using faith as an excuse for extreme violence to others is not celebrated in any faith. The Qu'ran advises not to harm the Jews or the Christian as they are brothers; Jesus gives a clear message when he gives the Samaritan (non Jew) as the example of the good neighbour; as did the example of Ruth in Jewish scripture,...
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Big welcome today to our virtual visitors

Covid hasn't stopped us thinking of Palestine or wanting to travel, so CADFA have laid on two virtual visits so far this summer. We've just finished a very interesting visit of young Palestinians to the UK, and built up a group of people from the UK keen to visit Palestine.... and today they are (virtually) in the air. They land later today for their tour in Abu Dis ... and we are all looking forward! We hope you'll be able to look here and find out how it's going! More info on CADFA's work promoting human rights in Palestine on CADFA.org or from contact@cadfa.org
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Israeli attitudes to the Occupation

In one of the earlier sessions we touched briefly on Israeli attitudes to the range of human rights abuses and war crimes perpetrated in the West Bank and why they didn’t voice objections. One argument advanced was that because Haaretz regularly publishes articles accurately describing the situation in the West Bank that Israelis know about this. However, the circulation of Haaretz is 75, 000 per day whereas the two largest right-wing papers have combined weekday sales of 550,000 and 850,000 at the weekend. Little or nothing of the Israeli human right abuses will be published there. As one commentator said, “A settler dog being killed will get more attention than the murder of 20 Palestinians.” Further, there is no TV equivalent of Haaretz, so the Israeli public is generally ill-informed of what happens in The West Bank and too many simply dismiss Palestinians as terrorists as a result of the right-wing propaganda. One tour guide with a group of US youth was filmed saying that it ...
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