Ann Arbor (Informed Commentary) – My mother was Lutheran and the Coles were Catholic, although my grandfather died when he married a woman from the Peace Brethren Church. So it struck me that this Christmas, a Lutheran pastor from Bethlehem, Munther Isaac, and Pope Francis, both made headlines with their sermons. The Reformation schism has never been healed, but people of both spiritual traditions can agree on one thing, and that is that the hunger, thirst, cold, homelessness, injury, and death that await the 2.2 million Palestinians in Gaza in the hands of the extremes The right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, aided by President Joe Biden, is making this Christmas different.
Pope Francis said during his evening mass on Christmas Eve, “Tonight our hearts are in Bethlehem, where the Prince of Peace is once again rejected by the vain logic of war, by the clash of arms which, today still prevents him from finding his place in the world. »
In Bethlehem itself, where Pastor Isaac preaches, city elders canceled the Christmas parade and other festivities to commemorate the shivering Palestinians a few miles away, whose bellies are gnawed by hunger and whose throats are hoarse with thirst. Bethlehem is a town of some 25,000 inhabitants in the Palestinian West Bank militarily occupied by Israeli troops. About 11,000 of its residents are Palestinian Christians, descendants of Middle Eastern pagans and Jews living under Roman rule who embraced the message of Jesus of Nazareth during his lifetime and after.
The population of Bethlehem is not bombarded from the sky like the Palestinians in Gaza, but they too suffer of the Israeli occupation. According to a 2020 survey 80% of Palestinian Christians fear being attacked by Israeli squatter activists, 83% fear that these colonizers will drive them from their homes, and 70% fear that the Israeli government will simply annex their land. At least 62% of Palestinian Christians believe that the ultimate goal of the Israeli government is to expel Christians from their country. At least 14% of them have lost their land to the Israelis, and 42% must regularly pass through Israeli security checks, which have divided the West Bank into cantons and make hospital access difficult.
Aljazeera French: “‘No Joy in Our Hearts’: Bethlehem Christians Face Grief at Christmas”
Although there are only about 800 Palestinian Christians in Gaza, they have suffered from Israeli bombardments, sniping and destruction of civilian infrastructure. THE Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem revealed in a letter Last week, an Israeli army sniper “murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza.” It says the besieged mother and daughter, Nahida and Samar, “were shot and killed while walking toward the sisters’ convent. One was killed while trying to carry the other to safety.”
They were among hundreds of Christians who had taken refuge in the parish. The church had given GPS coordinates of church properties in Gaza to the Israeli government in the hope that they would be spared, but local Palestinians claim that the church building was shelled by Israeli armor.
Pope Francis replied at the time, lamenting the Israeli campaign against Gaza that “unarmed civilians are being targeted for bombing and shooting.” He condemned the attack perpetrated in the grounds of the Catholic parish, “where there are no terrorists, but families, children, sick and disabled people and nuns. . . A mother, Ms. Nahida Khalil Anton, and her daughter, Samar Kamal Anton, were killed, and others were injured by gunfire while going to the toilet,” he said.
The Pope continued: “Some say: ‘It’s terrorism.’ It’s the war.’ Yes, it’s war. It’s terrorism. . . This is why Scripture says that “God stops wars…breaks the bow, breaks the spear” (Psalm 46:10). Let us pray to the Lord for peace.
The Israeli military denied the accusations and criticized the “deadly defamation.” But when you are the 17th most powerful army in the world and you genocide 20,000 civilians in 11 weeks, there is no smear involved. It’s just blood.
Israelis with a conscience, like an activist Orly-Noythe president of the human rights organization B’Tselem, on the other hand, desperately called for a ceasefire. This question is not about Judaism, Islam or Christianity, since there are people from each of these traditions who are on opposing camps.
As for Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac, he preached Friday a sermon“Christ in the Rubble”.
He cited the enormity of the death toll, including thousands of children, and said that, as with South African apartheid, the theology of the state was used against the powerless. Even the fact that some Palestinians are Christians has not aroused sympathy among European and American Christians. “This war has confirmed to us that the world does not consider us equal. Maybe it’s the color of our skin. Maybe it’s because we’re on the wrong side of the political equation. Even our kinship in Christ has not protected us. As they said, if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single “Hamas militant”, so be it! We are not humans in their eyes. (But in God’s eyes…no one can tell us we’re not!).”
He implicitly referred to American evangelicals, many of whom enthusiastically applauded the genocidal actions of the Israeli military (I say so).
“I’m sorry for you. Everything will be okay. Despite the immense blow we have endured, we will rise again. We will rise again and rise from the midst of destruction, as we have always done as Palestinians, even if this is by far the hardest blow we have received in a long time.
But again, for those who are complicit, I feel sorry for you. Will you ever get over it?
No, I don’t think the supporters of this campaign will ever find their souls, which they sold for the thirty silver coins of conformism, militarism, cowardice and Islamophobia.
Pastor Isaac continued:
“In our pain, our anguish and our lamentations, we sought God and found him under the rubble of Gaza. Jesus was a victim of the same violence of the Empire. He was tortured. Crucified. He bled to death in front of the others. He was killed and cried out in pain: “My God, where are you?
In Gaza today, God is under the rubble.
And this Christmas season, as we search for Jesus, he is not on Rome’s side, but on our side of the wall. In a cave, with a simple family. Vulnerable. Barely and miraculously surviving a massacre. Within a refugee family. This is where Jesus is.
It therefore inspired me to create a digital painting. I’ll leave you with it.
“Gaza Guernica 19: Nativity”, by Juan Cole, Digital, Dream/Dreamland v.3, PS Express, IbisPaint, 2023.
