- WASHINGTON - "I'm not
spreading propaganda," George Stephanopoulos' orthodox-nun sister
vows, but Israeli soldiers last week "defecated" on the floors
of a West Bank medical clinic they raided.
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- They're also looting Palestinians' homes there, claims
Sister Maria Stephanopoulos, a nun at the Convent of St. Mary Magdalene
in Jerusalem.
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- A Russian Orthodox Christian (she converted from Greek
Orthodox), Stephanopoulos runs a school for Palestinian girls there, and
is pleading with priests here, via e-mail, to "get on the phone and
ask your congressman and senators why the United States government is
backing this invasion of Israeli forces into sovereign (Palestinian)
areas,
(and) why so many innocent civilians are being terrorized."
-
- Not all the front-line reports of "Mother
Maria,"
as she's more recently known, turn out to be true.
-
- An e-mail alert she dispatched 10 days ago about Israeli
soldiers raping Palestinian girls was later deemed apocryphal, the priest
told WorldNetDaily. Stephanopoulos was the victim of a Palestinian boy's
e-mail hoax.
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- Her brother, George, is the rising star and future host,
reportedly, of ABC News' "This Week." The former senior adviser
to President Clinton has done his own "reporting" from Jerusalem
on the Israeli-Palestinian showdown.
-
- In recent broadcasts of ABC's Sunday talk show here,
Stephanopoulos expressed support for the Saudi peace initiative as "a
just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem."
-
- He advised Israel to back off its "hard line"
and withdraw from the West Bank, where Israel has sent tanks in response
to systematic attacks from Palestinian suicide bombers in recent
months.
-
- "There's no end to the terrorism unless there's
an end to the occupation," Stephanopoulos said.
-
- More, he said PLO leader Yasser Arafat should not give
up his Ramallah bunker.
-
- "Arafat cannot make the mistake that President Bush
wants him to make," Stephanopoulos intoned. "It'll look like
he's surrendering."
-
- He did not agree that Arafat, as the leader of the
Palestinian
terrorists, is the source of the problem.
-
- "The problem is beyond Arafat," said
Stephanopoulos,
who urged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to meet with Arafat in
private
to patch things up.
-
- His sister is even more tendentious in her
reporting.
-
- Relaying what a Palestinian Orthodox couple told her
over the phone last week, Stephanopoulos said, "Israeli soldiers have
entered their new home in the middle of the night three times in the last
month, once stealing all the money from the house, and another time
strafing
the house with gunfire, miraculously only slightly wounding one of their
daughters."
-
- At the couple's clinic, moreover, soldiers allegedly
"defecated on the floors" and destroyed a $20,000 ultrasound
machine, Stephanopoulos reported through the eyes of her Palestinian
friends.
-
- "There are reports that some newborns have died
during these past two weeks in Bethlehem because they were unable to
receive
medical attention," she added.
-
- As for the Palestinians who seized the Church of the
Nativity, Stephanopoulos says they are not terrorists ... "for the
most part."
-
- "Only seven of the men could be considered dangerous
or wanted men by Israel," she asserted.
-
- Nearly all of Mother Maria's reporting comes from
Palestinian
sources. She has not herself witnessed the alleged Israeli
atrocities.
-
- "There is no way we can confirm any of that,"
admitted Stephanopoulos family friend Father John Reeves, referring to
the alleged Palestinian home-and-clinic raids cited by Stephanopoulos
in her April 15 e-mail to him. The long message was posted on the http://www.hcef.org/Holy Land Christian
Ecumenical Foundation's website.
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- Reeves, pastor of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in State
College, Pa., says Stephanopoulos' e-mails from the West Bank aren't always
100-percent accurate, but her "motives are pure."
-
- "She's not trying to fan the flames," he said
in a phone interview. "Mother Maria has relayed the difficulties
the Palestinians have encountered under Israeli occupation."
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- Paul Sperry is Washington bureau chief for
WorldNetDaily.
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- http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27387
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