by Aaron Klein
"The conspiracy was to make a siege and put all the fighters inside the church so Israel would make the siege. People from the Palestinian Authority collaborated with this conspiracy," said Eita.
I interviewed Eita in Bethlehem. He's also one of the main Fatah representatives in Beit Sahour. Eita is a Christian member of the Al Aqsa Brigades terror group. There are scores of Christians in Palestinian terror groups, but they are mostly Christians by consequence of birth only. These Christian terrorists are not religious. They do not accept Jesus as their "Lord and Savior." Many even grew up attending Muslim schools.
Eita said unlike most of the other "fighters" in and near Bethlehem, he didn't run into the church because he "understood the conspiracy."
"During the siege, I communicated with those inside and told them not to give the Israelis a list of the fighters inside because then Israel would start looking for the fighters who were outside and I was one of them," Eita said.
He claimed the PA collaborated with Israel to have senior Bethlehem "fighters" run into one place-the church-so Israel can attack the terrorists all at once, which is a ridiculous assertion. Nonetheless, Eita told me there were orders from the PA for the terrorists to seek sanctuary in the Nativity Church. This is a phenomenal admission. Israel was widely condemned for encircling the church after the terrorists ran inside. (The IDF could not just let the Palestinians escape; inside the church were thirteen of some of the most important terrorists in West Bank, plus dozens of other terror operatives and about fifty Palestinian "security officers" who also serve in terror groups.) But during our interview Eita dropped the bombshell that the church siege was orchestrated by the Palestinians.
Upon entering Bethlehem and finding the terrorists holed up in the church, Israel immediately surrounded the holy site and attempted to starve the gunmen out while refusing to storm the structure for over one month. Trapped inside with the gunmen and Palestinian operatives were reportedly about forty-five unarmed Palestinians who ran in with the terror crowd and forty-nine church clergy.
On the second day of the siege episode, the Palestinians in the church refused to lay down their weapons, come out, and face arrest. Instead, according to insider accounts, terror leaders, including Jaara, began eating up food supplies and drinking beer and wine in spite of an Islamic ban on alcohol. Clergy trapped inside later told reporters top Palestinian gunmen slept on comfortable beds in an elegant apartment inside the church, using high-quality woolen blankets, while the civilians slept on cold tile floors in the main church downstairs.
Israel cut electricity to the area two days into the siege, the same day the church's unarmed bell ringer ran outside toward Israeli forces and did not obey orders to halt. Thinking the man was a suicide bomber, the IDF opened fire and killed the bell ringer.
Several days later, the holed-up Palestinian terrorists attacked the IDF from their positions inside the church. Israel secured the release of four clergymen and offered the gunmen inside the opportunity to either face trial in the Jewish state or be permanently expelled from Israel, but the gunmen refused.
"I would never accept Israeli jails; this means I would spend the rest of my life behind Jewish bars. I'd rather die," said Jaara. "About exile, we thought if we stayed in longer we could get better terms."
On April 23, three Armenian monks managed to flee the Nativity compound in coordination with the IDF. They immediately thanked the Israeli soldiers. One of the monks, Narkiss Korasian, told reporters the terrorists inside "stole everything, they opened the doors one by one and stole everything... they stole our gold, prayer books and four crosses ...they didn't leave anything. Thank you [Israel] for your help, we will never forget it."
Later in the week, twenty-four Palestinians surrendered as part of a "food for people" deal forged between Israel and Arafat, but Israel decided against sending in the food, worried the provisions would draw out the siege.
On May 2, a mysterious fire broke out in the church early in the morning in the Greek Orthodox and Franciscan living quarter. Surveillance footage from an IDF blimp showed the church windows were blown outward by the heat of the fire, indicating the flames could not have been set by IDF forces, who would have broken the glass inward with firebombs, bullets, or flares. Many international news media outlets reported Israel started the fire in the important Christian church. Jaara also claimed to me the Israeli troops firebombed the church.
The siege finally ended March 10 when after thirty-nine days mediators agreed the thirteen senior terrorists inside, including Jaara, would be deported to European countries, twenty-six would be transported to the Gaza Strip, and the remaining gunmen would be allowed to go free.
After the fiasco, the church was found by reporters and Israeli forces to be in shambles. Four Greek monks told the Washington Times the Palestinian gunmen holed up with them seized church stockpiles of food and "ate like greedy monsters" until the food ran out, while the trapped civilians went hungry. The terrorists also were accused of guzzling beer, wine, and Johnny Walker scotch that they found in the priests' quarters. The monks said the indulgences lasted for about two weeks into the thirty-nineday siege, until food ran out and those inside the church were forced to eat weeds and other improvised nourishments.
Perhaps one of the grimmest charges was made by Roman Catholic priests who told the Times some Bibles were torn up and used as toilet paper, and many valuable sacramental objects were removed.
"Palestinians took candelabra, icons, and anything that looked like gold," said Rev. Nicholas Marquez.
Immediately following the end to the siege, angry Orthodox priests showed reporters about twenty empty bottles of whiskey, champagne, vodka, cognac, and French wine.
"They should be ashamed of themselves. They acted like animals, like greedy monsters. Come, I will show you more," said one priest, who declined to give reporters his name. He reportedly gestured toward empty bottles of Israeli-brewed Maccabi beer and hundreds of cigarette butts strewn on the floor of the Christian holy site; he took the reporters to see computers taken apart and a television set dismantled for use as a hiding place for weapons.
"You can see what repayment we got for 'hosting' these socalled guests," said Archbishop Ironius, another cleric, as he showed reporters the main reception hall of the Greek Orthodox Monastery.
Ironius gave onlookers a tour of where the terrorists had broken in to the monks' quarters by smashing locked doors while, he said, the monks were praying downstairs.
Israel later claimed it found documents in the church implying the terrorists attempted to extort church officials for money in exchange for their assured safety.
There was enormous outcry in the Muslim world in May 2005 when an American magazine reported (but later retracted the story) that U.S. interrogators in Cuba flushed a Quran down the toilet. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims protested throughout the Middle East. And we all witnessed the deadly riots after a Danish cartoonist had the gall to depict the Prophet Muhammad. But according to the monks' accounts, Palestinian terrorists had no problem taking other religions' holy scriptures and using them for the vilest purposes imaginable. I confronted Jaara directly about the report he and his terrorist comrades used the Bible as toilet paper.
"I am not ready to hear your dirty accusations," he responded. "It is completely untrue that we used the Bible as toilet paper. We believe in the Bible and cannot do such a thing. On the contrary, the priests and monks had allowed us to pray our Muslim prayers, which meant Muslims praying in this very holy site to the Christians. This proves that the relations inside the church between us and those responsible in the church were excellent."
I laughed at Jaara's suggestion that priests and monks allowing dangerous, well-armed terrorists who were essentially holding them hostage to pray inside the Nativity somehow proved there were "excellent relations" with the church clergy. And I pressed again about the Bibles being used as toilet paper.
Jaara claimed the toilet paper account, told to reporter
s by priests, was really generated by Israeli intelligence agencies in an attempt to destroy the relationships between Christians and Muslims.
He went on to blame Israel for the siege and claimed it was the Jewish state that held civilians inside the church hostage for over a month.
This is a claim often repeated in many accounts of the church siege and it is patently absurd. Israel publicly tried during the entire ordeal to secure the safe passage of the clergy inside. It was the terrorists who refused to let out the civilians for fear once their human shield was lost Israel would storm the structure.
I asked Jaara whether the gunmen defiled the church in any way:
No, not at all. We could not deface a place that is very holy to our Christian brothers toward whom we feel that we owe very much. How could we deface a holy place to the only community who helped us and who gave us a shelter while the Arab and Muslim countries neglected us and left us to our destiny in front of the Israeli army? During the thirty-nine days of the siege it was only the priests and the monks who helped and supported us.
I interjected: "But Jihad, the church siege took place in front of the world media. There is plenty of video footage of the condition the church was in when the ordeal finally ended. It was a big mess. The priests afterwards told reporters your group seized church stockpiles of food and 'ate like greedy monsters.' They say you gulped down alcohol. Israel says it found over forty explosive devices inside the church."
The terror leader conceded, "It is not a secret that inside the church there was a very serious lack of food. I don't remember that there were such problems as you describe. Still, we were 250 persons inside the church who suffered from the fact that the Israeli army prevented any food supply and we were obliged to eat the weeds of the gardens in the church. We did not blackmail the religious to give us their food. They kindly and with much generosity offered to share their food with us.
"As for the conditions in which we left the church, it is true there was a lot of dirt but it is normal to the conditions in which we were living. Thirty-nine days without any water and any possibility to move because of the snipers who were placed all around the church."
I asked Jaara what the church meant to him as a Muslim. He said it was an important site since Jesus "was a prophet for Islam. Therefore we would not try to harm the church in any way." Many Muslims believe Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, Moses, even Jesus, were prophets for Islam.
"We don't believe in all your versions of the Torah. Your Torah was falsified. The text as given to the Muslim prophet Moses [was different]. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Jesus were prophets for the Israelites sent by Allah as to usher in Islam," Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, chief Palestinian justice and one of the most prominent Muslim clerics in Israel, explained to me.
Some terrorists holed inside the Church of the Nativity were Christian. I caught up in the Gaza Strip with Raed Shatara, a Christian member of Arafat's Fatah Tzanim militia who ran inside the Nativity church. He was exiled to Gaza as part of the deal that ended the church siege. Shatara is still active in the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group. His brother was recently sentenced to sixteen years in Israeli jail for carrying out anti-Israel attacks.
Shatara claimed to me even though he drew Israel into battle at the church, he was a good Christian: "I am a Christian and I am proud to be Christian. Now saying this I want to add that Christians and Muslims, we are the same people, we are one big family."
I asked Shatara how as a Christian he can possibly justify bringing violence to the believed birthplace of Jesus.
"When the Israelis launched their operation and encircled Bethlehem we found ourselves having no choice, no other place to run away to but the church. We did not desecrate the church. You should understand that the Israelis were the ones who obliged us to find a shelter in the church."
Synagogues Now Rocket Firing Pads
The events in Bethlehem are just one of many high-profile occasions terrorists the past few years desecrated other religions' holy sites. One sickening desecration struck quite close to home for me.
A rabbi took my hand and gently nudged me to join the dancing. Men of all ages were swaying throughout the structure, singing "Am Yisroel Chai"-the Nation of Israel lives on-as they encircled a central platform from which the Torah is read to the congregation every Shabbat and on several weekday mornings.
The synagogue was filled to capacity. Males were dancing and singing on the main floor; women singing on upper level balconies. Some congregates were clapping and laughing, others broke down into tears, sobbing violently in each others arms. I joined in the chorus and the dance, quickly finding myself flooded with emotion like just about everybody else.
It was nearing midnight on August 16, 2005. The sound of rocket and mortar explosions could be heard sporadically throughout the night. I was in Neve Dekalim, the largest community of Gush Katif, the slate of Jewish towns located inside the Gaza Strip. In another nine hours, the residents of Neve Dekalim would be removed from their homes, some forcibly, and placed on buses that would take them into central Israel, never to return again to the Gaza Strip.
The Dekalim residents gathered in one of the city's two main synagogues to pray and sing together and to dedicate a new Torah scroll in honor of the town. Rabbis and local leaders delivered tearridden speeches promising the spirit of Gush Katif would live on forever and that the area would eventually be rebuilt. The dancing, the speeches, and the crying went on for several more hours that night. For many Dekalim residents I think it was the first collective outburst of mourning, the first communal realization that Gush Katif would indeed fall. For me it was the painful culmination of many eventful months spent with the residents of Jewish Gaza.
Starting April 2005, I rented an apartment in Ganei Tal, a beautiful, tree-lined neighborhood near Neve Dekalim in Gush Katif, months before the vast majority of the media arrived to report on Israel's historic Gaza evacuation. Most reporters showed up a few days before the withdrawal was carried out. For a good deal of them it very obviously the first time they had visited Gaza's Jewish communities, even for some journalists who had been reporting about those same communities for years.
I set up shop in Gush Katif and reported from there early on because for me the story of Israel's Gaza withdrawal was crucial. It was the litmus test for the concept of unilateral withdrawal, for the policy of retreat under fire. And trust me, the Gaza withdrawal was carried out under fire. The residents of Gush Katif and I endured months of heavy rocket and mortar barrages, with some of the deadly projectiles landing dangerously close to my apartment on many occasions.
I usually slept in Gush Katif two to three nights per week for the first few months I was stationed there. I lived in Gaza the entire month of August. During my stay there, I prayed in Neve Dekalim's main Ashkenazi synagogue many times. Ashkenazi congregations follow European Jewish customs as opposed to Sephardi, which maintains Middle Eastern Jewish tradition. I attended two bar mitzvahs in the Ashkenazi synagogue, which also served for me on six occasions as a refuge from incoming mortar and rocket attacks. A large Sephardi synagogue was located nearby.
On August 17, 2005, Israeli security forces cleared out Neve Dekalim's residents. About three and a half weeks after that, on September 12, the last Israeli troop departed Gaza, officially marking Israel's complete evacuation of the territory. And then the Palestinians rushed in with pick axes and torches.
Immediately after the Israeli evacuation, Palestinians mobs destroyed most of the Gaza synagogues, including the Ashkenazi and Sephardi synagogues in Neve Dekalim. In front of international camera crews, young Palestinian men ripped off aluminum window frames and metal ceiling fixtures from the Neve Dekalim synagogues. Militants flew the Palestinian and Hamas flags from the structures before mobs burned the synagogues down completely.
It was one of the most brazen displays of savagery in recent memory.
Most homes in Gush Katif had been destroyed by Israel prior to the evacuatio
n. I bore witness as some Katif residents, with tears streaming down their faces, set their own houses ablaze so the Palestinians wouldn't be able to utilize the structures for terror. But the Israeli government decided to leave all of Gush Katif's twenty synagogues in tact.
Israel's Supreme Court had earlier ruled the Gaza synagogues should be bulldozed by the Israeli army, citing what is said was previous rampant Palestinian desecrations of other re ligions' holy sites as justification for the synagogue demolitions. But then-Prime Minister Sharon, who said he opposed the demolitions, put the decision to an Israeli cabinet vote. The cabinet decided against destroying the structures.
Israel's chief rabbinate had petitioned the Supreme Court to halt the synagogue destructions, arguing the demolitions contravene Jewish law.
Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen, a member of the chief rabbinate, explained to me at the time: "According to Jewish law, synagogues cannot be destroyed unless new ones are already built, and even then, the issues are complicated. Here, the former Gaza residents don't have homes yet to live in, new synagogues have not been built, so there isn't even a question."
The Rabbinate also expressed fear Jews in other parts of the world may use the bulldozing of the Gaza synagogues as precedent to destroy other abandoned synagogues.
Two years later, in a complete turning of the tables, the area where the two main synagogues in Neve Dekalim once stood is used regularly by Palestinian terror groups as a military training zone and a site from which to launch rockets into Jewish cities bordering Gaza, according to terror leaders and Palestinian Authority sources.
A PA military post under the banner of "Guards of the Released Settlements" was erected at the entrance to Neve Dekalim, but none of the city's ruins have been rebuilt by the Palestinians as of this writing. There are plans for a Hamas-led university in Dekalim, but as of 2007 the area is being used simply to attack Israel. PA sources and terror leaders in Gaza tell me Neve Dekalim was used in 2006 and 2007 periodically as training grounds for their groups.
