OPINION:
Your coverage of the recent canonization of two 19th-century Arab Christian nuns featured some glaring historical distortions that need to be corrected (“Pope Francis canonizes first modern Palestinian saints in heavily symbolic move,” Web, May 17).
Egregiously, the article identifies these nuns as “Palestinians.” Yet in the 19th century the Holy Land was part of the Ottoman Empire, and the local Arabs considered themselves to be living in southern Syria, a part of that empire. In fact, during the majority of these nuns’ lives local Arabs abjured a Palestinian identity, as they did not wish to be seen as supporting the partition of the Holy Land to facilitate the creation of a Jewish state.
Prior to the creation of modern Israel the only people in the Holy Land to refer to themselves as Palestinians were the Jewish residents of this area; hence the original name of the Jerusalem Post was the Palestine Post, and other Jewish organizations ultimately adopted the sobriquet “Palestine” in their titles to reflect their support of partition, consistent with the later British Mandate.
This distortion in the Times coverage follows the ex post facto propaganda tactic of current Arab Palestinian leadership to mislabel events and distort history in a way they hope will support their cause. So they identify the nuns as Palestinian strugglers even though during most of these nuns’ lifetimes there was no conception of an Arab Palestine as a distinct entity. The Vatican’s reference to these nuns as Palestinians was equally flawed, and undoubtedly political in motivation.
The article also misleadingly refers to a hope that these nuns’ canonization will reverse a decline in the numbers of Christians in the Holy Land, as though Christians in Israel face an adversity which is shrinking their numbers. Yet the Christian population of Israel has been growing rapidly, and it is only in the surrounding territories and countries that Christian communities are dying out — and that’s been due to Muslim persecution.
Competent journalism would have required some fact checking of assertions that these nuns (or any other Arabs) contemporaneously identified themselves as “Palestinians.” Competent journalism would have required some actual fact checking of the status of Christians in Israel. Your publication of misleading, pro-Palestinian propaganda as unquestioned fact was not competent journalism.
DANIEL H. TRIGOBOFF
Williamsville, N.Y.
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