Monday, March 06, 2006

The Basilica of the Annunciation in my hometown Nazareth attacked

On Friday at around 5pm, the Church of the Basilica in my hometown Nazareth was attacked by 3 Jewish people - Haim Eliahu Habibi, 44, his wife Violet and their daughter Odelia, 20.

I was at the Basilica soon after the bombing happened, and stayed around till approximately 10:30pm when the police finally left Nazareth.

I took some good pictures of the event and the protest march held on Saturday and will upload them soon.

In the meantime, Ehud Olmert's (Israel's acting PM) use of the incident to instigate divide between the Christian and Muslim populations in Nazareth is plain despicable. Nevertheless, this policy of 'divide and conquer' appears to be official governmental policy towards the Arab population here.

To treat Druze as non-Arab, to inflame tensions over the Sha'ab il-Diin square in Nazareth so as to pit Christian against Muslim, to portray Muslims as barbarians and Christians as being more peace-loving; this has always been official policy of the State so as to weaken a popular movement against the State's discriminatory strategies and to lower the voice of a united Arab people. However, no one is fooled.

When we marched on Saturday in protest of the bombing - we marched through the Sha'ab il-Diin square which was previously covered up since it was a source of tension between Christians and Muslims in Nazareth. But marching through the now uncovered area is very symbolic and very indicative of chants that roared through Nazareth the last few days,

Wahideh wahideh wataniya, islamu u masihiyyeh

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't you think to exaggerate the gravity of the incident using words as "attacked" and above all "bombing"? They were just three lunatics, and it seems that the wife is not Jewish but Christian.
Anyway, good blog and I really appreciate your job.
Filippo

Nasrawi said...

I am not one to exaggerate the situation but to tell it in its context.

This bombing was not an isolated display of fireworks in the Church by a lunatic non-religious Jew. People may say it is so, but I disagree. Not so as to fan the flames, but to make the international community realise that this is an incident under many underlying incidents of racial discrimination that the Arab minority faces within Israel.

And unfortunately with acting PMs internationally misinforming, non-residents of Israel are even less likely to learn of the realities on the ground.

So what if he was a lunatic and she was a Christian? Does that make the discrimination within the state against Arabs go away? Do you think people acted like that just because they thought it was 3 religious Jews and there was nothing prior to stir them? No - they acted like that because of past discriminatory treatment and an existance in a state where they are continually branded a 'demographic threat' and a 'security issue'.

Those are the facts.

Anonymous said...

Ping Back:

"nasrawi talks about the attack on the Basilica of the Annunciation in Al-Naserah (Nazareth):

To treat Druze as non-Arab, to inflame tensions over the Sha’ab il-Diin square in Nazareth so as to pit Christian against Muslim, to portray Muslims as barbarians and Christians as being more peace-loving; this has always been official policy of the State so as to weaken a popular movement against the State’s discriminatory strategies and to lower the voice of a united Arab people. However, no one is fooled."


http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2006/03/14/this-week-in-palestinian-blogs-children-are-not-immune/

Anonymous said...

fool hahah i love reading this hahah anyways how you, are taking care of yourself and will shout you out as soon as my phone clears up
Happy easter dude

julian

Anonymous said...

who is this nasrawi khaneeeeth! 8 park road will get attacked! hahaha

J. said...

I really take issue with your interpretation of the Church attack. It was certainly NOT an "incident of racial discrimination". It was a 100 % act of personal lunacy/desperation by an angry man with nothing against Arabs and a grievance against the state of Israel. All he wanted was attention and what better way to get it than to stir up chaos in Nazareth. How can you argue with the fact that the people who went down to the church and tried to get in were nothing but hooligans? Don't try to tell me that they wanted to "defend" the Church! They wanted to get in there and do harm to this lunatic, scuffle with the cops and set fire to cars. All this dumb nationalist posturing is ridiculous.