Recently, Channel 4 aired a chilling programme called Death in Gaza about a British cameraman who was killed by an Israeli soldier while filming in Rafah, a refugee camp in Gaza that has been the scene of further carnage recently.
Although James Miller was wearing a clearly marked "TV" sign on his bullet-proof vest and waving a white flag, he was killed by a single Israeli bullet to the neck as he walked across a freshly-bulldozed wasteland.
The shooting was filmed by a Palestinian camera crew that happened to be on the spot. Although two years have passed, Tel Aviv has not fixed responsibility for this murder on any of its soldiers, despite talk of a "fact-finding enquiry".
After watching this deeply moving documentary in which Miller's camera follows three Palestinian children in their daily lives, I began wondering how Israelis could behave so ruthlessly towards the national of a country that has generally been so supportive of them, and could be said to have played midwife to the birth of the Zionist state.
And if they could so casually gun down a Christian and a European, why should they be overly concerned for the lives of Muslims and Palestinians? But we in Pakistan and in other Muslim countries have become accustomed to seeing the conflict in terms of Muslims versus non-Muslims (Jews in Israel and Christians in America).
Thus, we often forget that a significant proportion of the Palestinian population is Christian, and that they suffer the same hardships and brutality their Muslim compatriots do. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the support the Zionist project gets from the coalition of Evangelical Christians in the United States where they are more than 20 per cent of registered voters.
Surely, I thought, this group would wish to safeguard the rights of their co-religionists in Palestine and would use their considerable clout with the American government as well as in Tel Aviv to lessen the suffering of Palestinian Christians?
It turns out that I could not be more wrong. In an article called Forgotten Christians in the May 24 issue of The American Conservative, Anders Strindberg informs us that at the creation of Israel in 1948, there were an estimated 350,000 Christians in Palestine, almost 20 per cent of the population. An ancient and thriving community, their roots went deep into Palestinian soil.
Out of the 750,000 Palestinians forced from their homes by Israeli militias and settlers in 1948, 50,000 were Christians; they thus formed seven per cent of refugees, and 35 per cent of those who remained in Palestine.
Over the years, their numbers have dwindled as thousands of them emigrated, many to Lebanon. Today, there are around 175,000 Christians still living in the Holy Land. According to Anders Strindberg, "The Palestinian Christians see themselves, and are seen by their Muslim compatriots, as an integral part of the Palestinian people, and they have long been a vital part of the Palestinian struggle."
He goes on to quote the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, the Reverend Riah Abu al-Assal: "The Arab Palestinian Christians are part and parcel of the Arab Palestinian nation. We have the same history, the same culture, the same habits and the same hopes."
But it is not only the Islamic world that thinks of the conflict as one between Muslims and non-Muslims. Many in the West, especially those in the United States, see the struggle between the forces of modernism and democracy on the one hand and those of extremism and intolerance on the other. For supporters of Israel, they are facing Islamic fundamentalist terrorists sworn to destroy the homeland of the Jews.
And yet Christians have played a prominent role in the freedom struggle: George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was a Greek Orthodox Christian, as was Naif Hawatmeh, who is still head of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Hannan Ashrawi, the highly articulate spokeswoman for the Palestinian Authority, is a Christian.
For all these people as well as for the PLO's many Christian foot-soldiers, the struggle is not between Islam and Judaism, but between occupation and liberation. There is no tension between Christian groups and Islamic organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Strindberg quotes one Christian refugee in Damascus: "We have received far more support and comfort from the Hezbollah in Lebanon than from our fellow Christians in the West. I want to know, why don't the Christians in the West do anything to help us? Are the teachings of Jesus nothing but empty slogans to them?"
In fact, the Catholic Church has been loud and clear in its denunciation of the Israeli occupation, as have Eastern Orthodox churches. However, the various Evangelical movements, principally those in the United States, have adopted Zionism as a central part of their belief. This extremist dogma holds that until the return of the Jews to the Promised Land, there can be no second coming of Christ, no Armageddon, and hence no redemption.
Thus, without the expansion of Israel to its Biblical frontiers, the entire sequence of events foretold in the Old Testament thousands of years ago will not unfold, thereby denying the true believers the opportunity of salvation. Those following this tenet are therefore willing "to sacrifice their fellow Christians on the altar of Zionism."
The alliance between Christian Zionists and the Israeli establishment has been a godsend to the latter as both Bush and his most avid supporters are "born-again" Christians who fervently believe that supporting Israeli expansion is doing God's work.
This axis has given Sharon and other right-wing Israelis access to the highest level of the American leadership, while completely marginalizing the Palestinian position in Washington. As an example of the clout of Zionist Christians, Tom DeLay, the leader of the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives, raised a hefty campaign fund of $12 million two years ago on the strength of his unquestioning support of Israel.
When he travelled to Israel and addressed the Knesset last year, he announced that he was "an Israeli at heart." He went on to pronounce that the "the Palestinians have been oppressed and abused" but never by Israel, only by their own leaders. Understandably, he received a standing ovation from his audience.
In the cockpit of competing faiths and national agendas in the Middle East, tolerance for other beliefs was an early casualty. Now, Christian America has decided that its fellow Christians in Palestine are acceptable collateral damage.