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A Christmas message from the West Bank [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-12-26
On Dec. 25, Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan discussed two Christmas messages: one by the Pope and another by a Lutheran pastor on the West Bank. In our article we focus on the words of the pastor, the Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Here is the beginning of a transcript of the pastor’s sermon on December 23:
We are angry. We are broken. This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful. 20,000 killed. Thousands under the rubble still. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways. Day after day after day. 1.9 million displaced! Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed. Gaza as we know it no longer exists.…. We are asking, could this be our fate in Bethlehem? In Ramallah? In Jenin? Is this our destiny too?
Professor Cole notes that Bethlehem this year canceled the Christmas parade and other festivities, in commemoration of the Palestinians “a few miles away” in Gaza suffering from hunger and thirst.
Cole also notes that Bethlehem is a town of some 25,000 in the Palestinian West Bank occupied militarily by Israeli troops.
About 11,000 of its residents are Palestinian Christians, descendants of the Near Eastern pagans and Jews living under Roman rule who embraced the message of Jesus of Nazareth in his lifetime and after.
Cole continues with the concerns of today’s people in Bethlehem:
Bethlehem’s population is not being bombed from the sky the way the Palestinians of Gaza are, but they also suffer from Israeli occupation. According to a 2020 poll, 80% of Palestinian Christians worry about being attacked by militant Israeli squatters, 83% worry that these colonizers will drive them from their homes, and 70% are concerned that the Israeli government will simply annex their land. Fully 62% of Palestinian Christians believe that the ultimate goal of the Israeli government is to expel Christians from their homeland. A good 14% have actually lost land to the Israelis, and 42% have to regularly go through Israeli security checkpoints, which have carved the West Bank up into cantons and make it difficult to get to hospital.
Returning to the war in Gaza, Cole quotes the words of Pastor Munther Isaac:
“This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. ….. As they said, if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single ‘Hamas militant’ then so be it! We are not humans in their eyes.”
Cole says that for those who have “enthusiastically cheered on” the Israeli army’s actions in Gaza, the pastor has these words:
I feel sorry for you. We will be ok. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we will recover. We will rise and stand up again from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, although this is by far the biggest blow we have received in a long time. But again, for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this?
Cole answers the question harshly:
No, I don’t think this campaign’s supporters ever will regain their souls, which they have sold for the thirty silver coins of conformism, militarism, cowardice and Islamophobia. www.juancole.com/...
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https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/12/26/2213854/-A-Christmas-message-from-the-West-Bank
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