Palestinian Lutheran Bishop Munib Younan is shocked to see Palestinian children begging.

Eyes turned heavenwards and lost in prayer for the whole of his life, it seems the saintly bishop has only just noticed this very common sight.

For years, anyone who has visited that area will have seen them. They will also be aware that begging Palestinian children are not a recent phenomenon, and that there is also a problem of their exploitation by profiteers.

According to Adel Agbariya, director of the welfare department in the Umm al-Fahm Municipality, there are profiteers behind the activity of the child beggars - "people who transport the children in the morning and take money from them in the evening."

Bishop Younan has suddenly noticed the begging children because they give him an excuse to blame Israelis. But read about poor Rada:

Things went well until the Al-Aqsa Intifada. She and her husband, Moufid, worked in Israel and supported their family honorably.

Here is a view of life before the massive terrorist attacks on Israelis by Palestinians.

"Everything was fine," she says. "We had two salaries, and neither we nor the children lacked for anything. There was money to build the house, and in my whole family I was always the first to buy clothes for the children on holidays and also to slaughter a sheep. I wasn't ashamed to accept all kinds of things from Jewish employers, either. One time I got a washing machine and another time a refrigerator. But now the refrigerator is empty, and I sold the washing machine to buy an inhaler for the youngest boy, who is ill with asthma."

Then there is the gentle Amal, who worked as a cleaner in an Israeli kindergarten:

"When the closure and the curfew and the big mess and the checkpoint started, I couldn't get to work. I have seven younger brothers and sisters. Father has diabetes and Mother is sick like this," she says, and demonstrates her mother's illness by breathing heavily. "There is no food; there is nothing. The Jews are good people," she feels the urge to add, as though in apology, "but there is nothing."

Given that more aid per head has gone to the Palestinians over the years than any other people, the continuing poverty in that area is a mystery. Could the money be going on other things?

There is also a great deal of Christian fund-raising for Palestinians, but not for poor Israelis: CRS packages help Gaza Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr.

Why has Bishop Younan never protested before about child beggars, and especially about those who exploit them? Or about terrorist attacks on Israeli children?

He is rather choosy when it comes to complaints. From Dexter Van Zile’s Dhimmi, Get Behind Me, we have another example.

Munib Younan, the Lutheran Bishop in Jerusalem, sure picked an interesting time to condemn inflammatory cartoons that mock people's religious beliefs. Younan, who has offered, little, if any, condemnation of newspapers in the disputed territories that have published images portraying Israel as a baby-killing and Christ-killing nation, finally found his prophetic voice on this issue when it was Muslim, not Jewish or Christian sensibilities that were offended by the recent publication of cartoons mocking Mohamed in newspapers throughout Europe.