Who does GROVE think he is fooling???????????????????????

G. Wille, San Francisco,

Whitewashing Islamist horrors against Israel, and covering up crimes against humanity by the Islamists is another part of their expertise of those who would have the Jews eradicated.
Sound familiar?
Soho and Hughes can say what they like from their bigoted enclave in sunny California; and not be held accountable. Neither side in this conflict is without blemish; however, israel is attempting to survive a conflict subsidised by Arab oil and Arab malice that cant forget several humiliating defeats at the hands of the Israelis.

André, Bloemfontein, South Africa

Michael Gove must have been smoking pot when he wrote his article ' Bethlehem and bigotry ".

Printing this pro Israeli propaganda by the Times is really shameful.

Christians in Bethlehem are suffering from Israeli repression.

Trying to blame the Muslims in Bethlehem, is definity Zionist inspired idiology.

Look what happened to President George W Bush's presidency, when he infested his administration with a bunch of Neocon Zionist players making policy for the USA in the Middle East.

They are a dangerous bunch, and creating anti-Islamic hate in the West, is part of their experise.

Whitewashing Israeli horrors against Palestinians, and covering up crimes against humanity by the Israelis is another part of their expertise.

It's about time the press in the West stop this silly game of " Let's make Israel look good " by funneling billions of dollars into their coffers, and politicians, especially in the USA turning Israel into some sort of holy cow.

Prima Soho

Prima Soho, Los Angeles, USA

Finally, a journalist who isn't scared of going against the fashionable but uninformed view.

james smith, london,

Palestinian Christians who live in the occupied West Bank have never feared Palestinian Muslims. They both, however, fear the Israeli occupation. What Israel has done to Bethlehem is worse than what Russia did to Berlin, and Germany did to Warsaw. For those of us who have witnessed the brutality of the Israelis, we are appalled at Michael Gove's comments.

When was the last time he visited Bethlehem? Has he seen that 27-foot wall surrounding this town? Palestinians can't get out to Jerusalem. They can't get to jobs or hospitals. Israel isn't interested in whether Palestinians are Christian or Muslim. They are only interested in stealing as much Palestinian land as possible with as few Palestinians on it. And we Americans pay for this tragedy

Anne Hughes, Los Angeles, CA

Ironically, after a thousand and more years of muslim rule and quasi-muslim rule, it was the Christian population in Palestine that could afford to escape the Israeli policies of "redeeming the land" after 1948, fleeing to America or Europe (rather than to refugee camps). This left muslim majorities in Bethlehem and many other places, an easy target for shifting the blame for the near-elimination of Christianity from the lands that Jesus walked ~ particularly since it has been so easy to suppress the truth of what is going on in Palestine in the American media.

See http://www.wrmea.com/archives/Jan_Feb_2006/0601016.html for a first-hand report on Bethlehem, and http://domino.un.org/pdfs/Beth_Rep_Dec04.pdf (1295K) for "Costs of Conflict: The Changing Face of Bethlehem," published in December 2004 by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Office of the Special Coordinator for the Peace Process in the Middle East (UNSCO).

Fewer and fewer are deceived.

Dawud Ahmad, Springdale, Washington USA

One suspects Palestinian Christians have far less to fear from the Israelies than they do from the Iranian backed extremists now running Gaza and planning to take over the West Bank when the time is right. The evidence for this has already been seen in violence directed by Hamas against Christians in Gaza after their take over.

Andrew Brown, derby, Uk

Let the evidence speak for itself:
In the Sabeel survey of 2006, Palestinian Christians overwhelmingly indicated that the two main reasons for their emigration from the Holy Land were "political" (read: the Israeli occupation) and "economic" (read: result of Israeli restrictions). Before 1948, Bethlehem was largely a Christian town. By 2000, they had shrunk to only 20%; and since 2000, 10% of those have left. The majority population of Bethlehem are largely Muslim refugees from '48 and '67. At least 75% of Bethlehem's Christians live on tourism. In 2000, 91,276 tourists came. In 2004, there were only 7,249. Israeli tour agencies do not allow tourists to stay in Bethlehem overnight or even to spend time shopping there. The drop in tourism has led to a 55% unemployment rate. The Israeli separation wall prohibits Bethlehem's residents from traveling to Jerusalem, which is only a couple of miles away. With such conditions, to call the Christians of Bethlehem liars is the height of bigotry.

Richard Van De Water, San Francisco,

Even the seasonal focus on the effects of Israel's military occupation of Bethlehem is seemingly one time a year too many for Michael Gove. Gove, who goes on to accuse others of lies, writes that the "security barrier" lies "near" Bethlehem when in fact, Israel's illegal Wall cuts right into the city.

Furthermore, the concern for Christian Palestinians rings hollow when there is no mention of either the thousands of acres of land stolen from Bethlehem families by the Israeli state just this year, or the 20 illegal Jewish settlements and 40 physical obstructions to Palestinian freedom of movement in the Bethlehem region alone.

Ben White, Sao Paulo,

Quite; unfashionable to say, perhaps, but nevertheless true.

Stephen Morris, Shrewsbury,