All this while, we have read about how the Jewish state of Israel has had been occupying the Palestinian state that was meant for Arab Muslims and how it has been settling the Jews in order to change the demographics of the land in the favour of Jews and to gain an unethical advantage.
Well, under all this hullabaloo, another occupation in the same territory goes unnoticed which is of the Palestinian Christians who are at the mercy of the Greeks. As we all might be knowing that the Pope of Jerusalem is one of the five original popes and as it goes the incumbent has never ever been an Arab Christian. It is always a Greek just like the current incumbent Theophilos III who is the Pope of Jerusalem.
The lower clergy of Palestine is unhappy with the way the churches are managed currently as the Patriarch of the Church sells church lands at dirt cheap prices.
Apart from the issue of corruption, the Palestinian Church never lets the ordained natives to rise up the ranks and get involved in decision making. The only ordained Archbishop Palestinian native, Atalah Hannah has been kept out of the Synod, the governing Church body and hasn’t been allotted a Church of his own, nor is he getting any salary. It is all because he is not a Greek.
The Palestinian monks are supposed to learn theology in Greece. The Greeks don’t allow such monks to come back to Palestine without getting married as married monks cannot lay claim to the mantle of Bishop in Palestine. This makes every Bishop in Palestine an ethnic Greek and this way they perpetuate their grip over Greek Churches forever. The Palestinian churches being the oldest and those belonging to the original apostles of Jesus attract millions of tourists from Greece and Russia and hence turn out to be a milch cow for the Greeks who are at the top church management in Palestine.
The roots of this occupation date back to the 1534 AD when the Ottomans installed a Greek monk as the Patriarch of Jerusalem after the Ottomans occupied the holy lands. Since then, the Greeks have hung onto the post by colluding with the controlling power be it the Turks,the British and now the Jews.
Greeks seized full control over the churches within the Turkish Empire and never let any Arab,Turk or Copt become a Bishop. The Greek racism undermined the native Christianity.
Eventually, the Copts rebelled and established their own Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria leaving their association(Communion) with the Greek controlled Churches. Something similar happened in Syria where the Arab Orthodox Christians broke their communion too and started appointing Arabs as bishops.
Only, the Churches of Palestine remain with the Greeks till date.
But now, the native Christians are fighting tooth and nail against the Greek occupation of their lands and opposing the random sell off of the prime properties of the Church at the price of peanuts to Orthodox Jewish organisations.
The sadder aspect is that the Christians of Palestine don’t get the support which they should against this racist occupation at the international platforms which lets the Greek clergy to get away easily after doing so many misdeeds.
