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Editorial
IT is hardly surprising that Jerusalem's Anglican Bishop Samir Katify has decided to co-sponsor, with a world Islamic organization, a conference on the situation of Christians in this country. The move is consistent with the local churches' growing involvement in the political drive for a Palestinian state.
Indeed, to expect church leaders in Israel and the administered territories to tend to their flocks and stay out of politics may be unrealistic. They are, after all, as vulnerable as lesser mortals to terrorist pressures. But it is a pity that just as the Vatican seems to be abandoning - albeit timidly and slowly - its fierce refusal to recognize Israel, these church leaders are joining in Yasser Arafat's campaign to form a Moslem-Christian front against Israel.
The campaign began a decade or so ago, when the PLO embarked on an attempt to "de-Judaize" Jesus and "Palestinize" him. Palestinian Arab Christians like Hanan Ashrawi have made the absurd claim that they can trace their ancestry to the first Christians, even though there were no Arabs in the area until the Moslem conquest in the seventh century. Yasser Arafat has described the apostle Peter as "a Palestinian who defied Rome." And a Jordanian TV production earlier this year blamed the Jews for murdering Jesus, "the Palestinian prophet."
Instead of protesting this ludicrous rewriting of history, some in the Christian Arab...