Tears And Joy As Egyptian Christians Killed In Libya Laid To Rest
Tears mixed with joy on Tuesday as the remains of 20 Christians were laid to rest in Egypt’s Minya province more than three years after they were kidnapped and beheaded in Libya in an attack that provoked rare Egyptian air strikes.
The return of the bodies of 20 Egyptian Copts has brought families in rural Egypt a chance for some closure after years in mourning with little hope of having the bodies of their loved ones being recovered for burial.
“Everyone stood beside the martyr that belongs to him and cried a little, but they were tears of longing, nothing more,” said Bishri Ibrahim, father of Kerolos, one of the victims, at the funeral service at a church in the village of al-Our in Minya province, where they were all laid to rest.
“But we are happy and joyful that they have returned to the village. This is a blessing for the country and to all Copts all over the world,” he added.
Thirteen of the 21 Libya victims came from al-Our, a rural town of around 10,000 people south of Cairo.
President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi ordered the Church, named The Church of the Martyrs of Faith and Homeland, to be built soon after the incident and dedicated in their memory.
Sisi also ordered a wave of air strikes on the Islamic State’s militant bases in Libya.
The remains of the victims, who were flown from Libya about a private jet to Cairo on Monday night, were placed inside cylinder-shaped containers covered in velvet cloth with the names of each victim and interred under the church altar.
Families said the burial place would be opened as a shrine for visitors.
The victims had been among the many poor Egyptians who risked their lives to find work in the lawless chaos of Libya following the downfall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and civil war.
A video posted by Islamic State in January 2015 showed 21 people — 20 Egyptian Copts and one Ghanaian Christian — lined up on a Libyan beach in orange jumpsuits before they were executed.
“I wanted to see Milad come back from Libya on his feet after his struggle and hard work to earn a living in a harsh life abroad,” 55-year-old Zaki Hanna, the father of one of the victims.
“But thanks be to God, he died a hero, did not beg anyone to spare his life and he and his brothers, the martyrs, did not abandon their faith or homeland.”
Bashir Estephanos, whose two younger brothers were killed by Islamic State in Libya, said all Christians in al-Our village had been praying for the past three years for the bodies of the “martyrs” to be found.
Libyan authorities recovered the bodies in October after the area where they were buried was recaptured from the militant Islamist group.
“Our prayers were answered, so thanks be to God from the bottom of our hearts,” he said, speaking before the bodies arrived in the village.
The head of the Coptic Church in Egypt, Pope Tawadros II, was at the airport to receive the remains when they arrived in Cairo on Monday night.
On 14th May 1948, 70 years ago today, David Ben Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel. In celebration of this momentous anniversary, God raised up Netta Barzilai, and lo, she won the Eurovision Song Contest 2018, though quite what Israel was doing competing in a European competition is unknown (a bit like Australia, and Armenia…). In further celebration of this momentous anniversary, President Donald Trump has decreed that the US Embassy shall be inaugurated today in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, as a seal of the unbreakable bond of friendship between their countries and their peoples.
“Thank you! I love my country!” cried Netta at her point of victory. “Next year in Jerusalem,” she added poignantly, with a hope that has echoed in every Jewish heart for centuries, and a prayer which has endured through millennia of weeping by the Rivers of Babylon.
Zionism is the Jewish dream of restoration, return and renewal. Israel’s rebirth 70 years ago was a joyous event. To some it represented a safe haven to be Jewish in a Jewish land without fear of persecution. To others, the sovereign hand of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob fulfilling promises from the Torah and the Prophets was clear to see. Much of the world rejoiced with them. However, not everyone was pleased. Many Arabs, including those whose own nations were formed in the same period, call Israel’s national rebirth ‘The Naqba‘ or ‘catastrophe’. The formation of a Jewish state in the region, they claimed, robbed Palestinians of their land; the Jews were portrayed as interlopers. The region’s problems were – and are – routinely blamed on Israel, and criticism goes far beyond Israel’s actions, often questioning the very legitimacy of Israel’s existence.
Israel is central to Jewish religious and national identity; it is where Jews are closest to God. It is the one piece of land historically promised to the Jewish people as recorded in Genesis, and the only land where the Jewish nation has ever experienced sovereignty and self-rule, producing a dynasty of kings and visionary prophets from whose quills flowed some of the most treasured writings in the history of the world.
Despite attempts by successive occupying powers to expel them, communities of Jews have lived in the Holy Land continuously since the time of Abraham. Since the Babylonian exile, the Jewish diaspora has spread as far as South America, China and Australia. But Jewish ethnic identity, recognised by the countries in which they lived as minority communities, was based on Jewish affinity with the land of Israel and the Jews living there.
On 29th November 1947, the United Nations voted to create an Arab and a Jewish State alongside each other in what is now Israel and the West Bank. It was accepted that Israel would have a sizeable Arab minority. The Jewish State was allotted 56% of Mandate Palestine, since the UN correctly predicted heavy Jewish immigration from Europe after the creation of the Jewish State. Perhaps they also guessed that large numbers of Jewish refugees from Arab nations would also need a home.
The Jewish Agency, led by David Ben Gurion, accepted the plan. Arab leaders rejected it, and Arab attacks on Jewish communities began at once. Britain announced that her troops would be withdrawn from Palestine on 15th May 1948. Aware that Arab countries had vowed to destroy any Jewish state, David Ben Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel on 14th May 1948, with borders as stipulated in the UN Partition Plan.
Significantly, the Declaration of Independence stated: “We appeal… to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions…” Within days of the British withdrawal, 35,000 Iraqi, Lebanese, Syrian and Egyptian troops (led by British officers) invaded Israel. Despite overwhelming odds, and the loss of 1% of the population of Israel, Israeli forces decisively defeated the Arab armies. Israel took territory beyond the UN allocated borders because their territory could not be defended against further Arab attacks.
Unsurprisingly, given repeated Arab threats to annihilate Israel, Israeli leaders feared an Arab ‘fifth column’. However, most Arabs who had remained in Israel became Israeli citizens. Jews were also expelled from their homes by Arab forces, for example from Gush Etzion and K’far Darom in Gaza, all built on land purchased legally. And of course Jews were expelled from the Old City of Jerusalem. In addition, 800,000 Jews were forced to abandon homes and businesses in Arab countries. They arrived in Israel with nothing.
These are the forgotten refugees of 1948. Both sides committed atrocities. Women and children were murdered by Jewish fighters of the Stern gang and Irgun in the peaceful Arab village of Deir Yassin. Arab fighters took revenge by murdering Jewish women and children in K’far Etzion and members of a convoy taking medical supplies to Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital.
With 3,000 years of continuous presence in the Holy Land, how can Jews be characterised as interlopers in the region? After World War II, Palestine was the only place that many European Jews, robbed of their homes and families, could go. A further 800,000 Jews from Arab countries fled or were expelled in pogroms and were absorbed into the Jewish state in the years following Israel’s Independence. Later, Jews from all over the world – Africa, India, China, the old USSR, as well as the USA and Europe, made aliyah to Israel.
Modern Israel combines the best ideals of the west – democracy, liberty, openness to debate and criticism as well as new ideas in technology and the arts. Such ideals are much needed in the region. Given the ferocity of comment in the Israeli press and the intensity of debate and moral self-criticism which so characterises discussion in Israel – so rare in public life today – the ongoing global attacks on Israel are profoundly depressing and disturbing.
God promised Abraham that his descendants would have a land, and would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. The Anglican Friends of Israel believe that modern Israel is a fulfilment of that promise: we rejoice unashamedly at this, Israel’s 70th birthday, thanking the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for the restoration of the Jewish people to their land.
And we pray for a just peace for all the people of the region, Jew and Arab – a peace which we believe that ultimately, only God himself can bring.
And we thank God that Netta Barzilai, an Orthodox Jew from Israel, can win Eurovision, for she is London in Jerusalem; she is Europe in the Middle East; she is our values and culture; she is the eccentric and eclectic incarnation of our liberty, fraternity and democracy. Happy 70th Birthday, dear Israel. L’Shana Haba’ah B’Yerushalayim.
Paying Tribute to Ethiopian Immigrants, PM Vows to Bring Home Man Held by Hamas
At memorial for Ethiopian Jews who died on perilous journey to Israel, President Rivlin says he asked his counterpart in Ethiopia to help Gaza captive Avera Mengistu
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday paid tribute to the thousands of Ethiopian Jews who died making the long, dangerous journey to Israel, and vowed that he would not rest until an Israeli man of Ethiopian descent held captive by the Hamas terror group is set free.
Speaking at an annual memorial ceremony held at the Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem, Netanyahu opened his address by mentioning Avera Mengistu, who has been held by Hamas for over three and a half years.
Herzl in Jerusalem, May 13, 2018. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday paid tribute to the thousands of Ethiopian Jews who died making the long, dangerous journey to Israel, and vowed that he would not rest until an Israeli man of Ethiopian descent held captive by the Hamas terror group is set free.
Speaking at an annual memorial ceremony held at the Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem, Netanyahu opened his address by mentioning Avera Mengistu, who has been held by Hamas for over three and a half years.
“Distinguished guests, and mostly of all, our dear and beloved bothers and sisters, Ethiopian immigrants. The family of Avera Mengistu, we will not rest until we bring Avera home,” Netanyahu said.
President Reuven Rivlin was also at the event, which remembered the Ethiopian Jews who perished as they walked overland from Ethiopia to Sudan, from where they were airlifted to Israel.
Israel clandestinely airlifted thousands of Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s and 90s, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the community to the Jewish state and help them integrate. About 24,000 people attempted the journey via Sudan — some on donkeys and horses, some on foot — but 4,500 died on the way. Many were later flown in 1991 directly from refugee camps outside the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to Israel.
Rivlin, who earlier this month became the first Israeli head of state to make an official visit to Ethiopia, said that during the trip he asked President Mulatu Teshome for assistance in bringing Mengistu home.
“I want to recall our commitment to Avera Mengistu,” Rivlin said. “During my visit I asked the Ethiopian president to do everything he can to help in the efforts to bring Avera, who is held captive by Hamas, back to his family. May the day of his return come soon.”
Avraham Avera Mengistu, undated. (Courtesy of the Mengistu family via AP)
Hamas believed to be holding two Israeli civilians who entered Gaza of their own volition, Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. In addition, the terror group is also believed to be holding the remains of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, two IDF soldier who were killed during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, which has since refused to provide any details about them.
Speaking of the ardeous journey that the Ethiopian Jews made to reach Israel, Netanyahu said “You were marching in fear. The thousands of those who died on the way were buried in deep sorrow.”
“Perhaps the whole story can be told in one small note that was left on one of the graves: ‘My body is here, but my heart in is Jerusalem.’”
“The Jewish people can learn so much from you. Of love for Jerusalem, on determination and willpower, on mutual responsibility.”
About 140,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel today, a small minority in a country of over 8 million. But their assimilation hasn’t been smooth, with many arriving without a modern education and then falling into unemployment and poverty.
Netanyahu said a special government unit that focuses on combating racism has had some success. “This is also a long journey, by we will not compromise on the goal. Equal and respectful treatment for every citizen. Equal and respectful treatment for you, Ethiopian Jews.”
