The Chairman’s Report for June 21, 2019

In this issue of the newsletter
New: We aid day care center near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem
New:  Christians were 86% of the population in “West Bank” – Now just 2%
Update:  Adult diaper program changing the lives of elderly in Iraq and Jordan
New:  How did the United States ever begin supporting Sunni Muslim radicals?

Air conditioning for Holy Land day care center

            Near the birthplace of Jesus – By the time you read this Chairman’s Report I will have returned from inspecting the new air conditioners we furnished for a Christian day care center in Bethlehem.

Let me remind you: The three formerly Christian towns of Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala are not located in Israel. Most Christians in America believe Bethlehem is controlled by Israel and receives services from Israel such as electricity and water. That is not true.

Just recently a member of my church told me he and his wife were going to Israel and they would visit the birthplace of Jesus there. I had to tell him the reality. To visit Bethlehem, they will have to leave Israel and enter the Palestinian Authority controlled “Area One.” Most Christians have left Bethlehem since it came under Palestinian Authority control, and Christians are now a small persecuted minority there. Christian women can no longer walk down the street unescorted, and if they do not wear a head covering, they could be assaulted.

It is because Christians are under such pressure in the Bethlehem area that I decided to hold a Christmas for Refugees event there in 2018. Even though Christians are not refugees there, they are now a minority in their own land. Our Christmas party for the children was a tremendous success endorsed by all the churches, and something everyone is looking forward to again this coming Christmas.

A few weeks ago, I received distressing news about a day care center in Beit Sahour, a Christian area inside the Bethlehem “governate.” The day care, with 117 children age four and under, had only one of seven rooms with a working air conditioner. Six of the rooms would be exposed to the heat of the summer. The babies under one year old would be in the only air-conditioned room. In order to add new air conditioners to the other six rooms, some rooms of the old building would need to be rewired.

The total cost of the project would be $7,000, if we could help. The project is not in our budget for 2019, but after seeing photos of the children and praying about what to do, I was confident that the Lord would want me to help. In my heart I believe that the additional funds will be provided, as He moves the hearts of His people.

My heart really goes out to the Christians of the “West Bank.” The Christian community established in and around Bethlehem for the last 2,000 years was abandoned to Muslim control forever by the 1993 Oslo Accord orchestrated by President Bill Clinton.

The final version of “Oslo B” was signed by Israel in 1995, and Israel handed control of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat. At the time, Bethlehem was majority Christian.

In 1950 Bethlehem and the surrounding villages were 86% Christian. The estimate is now just 2% Christian, mostly in Beit Sahour which is the actual place of the birth of our Lord. There are only about 11,000 Christian families left in the whole area. The families that left did not move to Israel. Israel does not want any Palestinians, regardless of if they are Christians or Muslims. The United States blocks Christian Palestinians as well. Christians in Bethlehem are not full citizens of any nation.

The reality is that most Christians in the area of Bethlehem are not even Palestinians;  they are a distinct people all their own, much like the Coptic Christians of Egypt who are not Arabs, but the descendants of the original Egyptians.

We have helped with other projects in “Area A.” More than a decade ago we imported Nativity sets that were made by Christians in Bethlehem and sold them to raise funds. For a while we sold olive oil soap made by Christian villagers. The Christians we worked with finally gave up and moved, some to Europe and others to Dubai where they could work unbothered.

Please pray for the Christians who are faithful and stay to defend the faith and to stand with the Church of the Nativity and work to protect the Christian holy sites such as the birthplace of Jesus, Mary’s Well and Shepherds’ Field.

In the next Chairman’s Report, I will report on my visit to the day care center and share photos of the new air conditioners.

Diapers for Refugees

Special needs adult diapers: I received the first request for adult diapers in 2018. Our team had been so centered on the babies and toddlers and their needs that the idea of adult diapers had never been considered.

I did not think there would be a big demand for the adult diapers. I was wrong!

The percentage of older adults with special needs for diapers is far higher than in the United States because of the lack of medical care during war time. Infections that could have been cured caused damage that could never be undone.

Until I talked to some of those receiving the adult diapers, I did not understand how much lives were changed for the better by them. In many cases it is a matter of being able to sleep through the night. There were tears in the eyes of one man who told me how his life was changed by having the diapers. He told me he could sleep on a mattress for the first time in years!

The budget for the adult diapers just keeps growing and we are not even dealing with a large population. We are only supplying the needs of the Christian community on the Nineveh Plain. Our entire operation in Iraq is within 200 square miles.  Our ministry partners in Jordan have been asking for assistance with the adult diapers as well. Again, the problems were mostly caused by lack of medical care. In Jordan the medical care was not available because of money. All the Iraqi and Syrian Christians are there illegally as refugees, and are not allowed to work. Most of those have no homes to go back to.

            I do not want this ministry in the situation where we are able to do something one time and then never again. Promises should not be made if they that cannot be kept. We have been able to begin a small Diapers for Refugees program in Jordan targeting mostly elderly with special needs. The budget for 2019 is set, but we will try to do more in 2020.

Babies still need diapers: It is just not right to ask a young married couple to not have children because they are refugees through no fault of their own, but that is exactly what the United Nations and USAID expects. The United Nations, USAID and the EU hand out condoms and birth control pills.

If the young families are expected to hold off having children until the society in Iraq and Syria is back to “normal” economically, then they will never have children. It will take Iraq at least 50 years to recover from the 2003 invasion; the uprising against the US occupation and then the war with the Islamic State.

Although it is no longer in the news, there is still fighting going on in Iraq. There are still pockets of the Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda.

How it all started

            Supporting jihadists: The United States began support of Sunni jihadists during the Jimmy Carter Administration. YES … you read that right … under President Jimmy Carter.

Zbigniew Brzezinski was the security advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Brzezinski convinced President Carter to “turn Afghanistan into Russia’s Vietnam.” His plan had only one flaw: To accomplish his goal would require arming Sunni Muslim jihadists who had been fighting the secular government of Afghanistan even before the Soviet invasion. (Sound familiar?)

Note: The Soviets had “invaded” at the invitation of the secular Afghan government in 1979. The government was communist and hated by the Muslim clerics. By no means do I excuse the Soviet Union or the horrid communist government which destroyed not only Russian society but that of other surrounding nations as well. But clearly the invasion was by invitation.

One of the principle motivations for Brzezinski’s desire for Russia to “bleed in Afghanistan” was his birthplace. He was born in Poland, one of the nations devastated by communism in the 20^th Century.  Even as late as 1998, well after the first Trade Center bombing and numerous other Sunni Muslim terror attacks on the West, Brzezinski stood by his disastrous plan of “stirring up the Muslims” to defeat the Soviet Union. (His words in quotes.)

Below is a small excerpt from a French magazine interview with him defending his support of extremist Muslims just three years before the 9-11 jihad attack on the Untied States.

Question: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Question : “Some agitated Moslems”? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today…

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West has a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid: There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner, without demagoguery or emotionalism. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among fundamentalist Saudi Arabia , moderate Morocco, militarist Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt, or secularist Central Asia? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries…

            Those “agitated Moslems” he referred to are the Taliban who helped al-Qaeda with the jihad attack on the United States in 2001.      

Sadly, President Ronald Reagan doubled down on the Brzezinski policy. I was there … I was part of it. I met Mujahedeen leaders with Vice President George Bush, as the Reagan White House attempted to unite conservative and Christian groups to support Sunni jihadists in the fight to destroy “anti-Christian communism.”

            One thing was missed even by Reagan: The Sunni Muslims the United States supported were even more anti-Christian than the communists were. The United States supported Christian killers in an attempt to defeat the Communist Christian haters.

            In my book, Utopian Road to Hell, I described how the Soviet Union eventually collapsed because of the failed principles of collectivism, just as we see Venezuela disintegrating today. Even though Russia had vast oil and natural gas reserves, it could not finance the failed economic model of selling products for less than the cost to produce them.

            Today in America a new group of collectivists, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, believe they can supply food, housing, medical care and higher education for less than they cost to produce, just as the Soviet Union tried to do, and as Venezuela tries to do today. The same group condemns Christian values, as was the case in Soviet Russia. Oddly … Today the single strongest institution in Russia is the church. Want proof? There are numerous photos on the Internet of President Vladimir Putin kissing the Holy Bible after being sworn into office.

Please pray for our Nigeria mission: The land for the farm as been cleared and planted by the orphanage we support. It is being tended to each day. Funds are arriving from a fund-raising letter to help provide more protein in the diet of gruel the children now have. Soon I will be able to arrange purchases of additional protein for the orphanage.

William J. Murray, Chairman