Taking Stock After Christmas
Bethlehem’s Christmas ends January 7th as Orthodox churches mark a birth 2000 years ago that brought hope to a hurting world. At the time, Roman supremacy caused the deaths of thousands of children and the wretched subservience of Jewish citizens. The message of the Christ Child born in a stable was one of humility and identification with the poor and oppressed. His family, like many today, fled persecution and traveled to another country seeking refuge.
Today we are confronted with similar realities in which only the characters are different. Families fleeing persecution around the world have often sought new opportunities in the United States, which symbolized freedom. Here, most of them build successful lives and contribute to our economy and culture. Yet too often parents are being torn from their children and sent to destinations where they are deprived of basic human rights. Every life uprooted in this way is an insult to the family of Christ and a stain on our nation’s conscience.
In the Holy Land it is Jewish supremacy, backed by Christian Zionism, that is killing thousands of children and driving Christians and their Muslim neighbors from the region. Many of the most vocal opponents of this ethnic cleansing are Jewish. I’ve been honored to work with a number of them, and some - including a Holocaust survivor and a former Israeli soldier - have stayed in our home. Like people of every faith who know what is happening, they cannot be silent.
The horrors of Israel’s ethnic cleansing are present every day with people I know. Their stories are real, and I can confirm their accounts of Israel’s assaults and deprivations that seek to drive them from their land. I have stood on the hilltops threatened with takeover by illegal settlers, ridden a tractor to farms and olive groves that are now off limits to their owners, and worshiped in churches whose congregations are dwindling as Christians are forced out of the land where their faith began.
This is not a Jewish/Muslim conflict, much as Israel aims to make it so by encouraging Christians to leave. This is about removing anyone who is not Jewish… through land confiscation, home demolitions, starvation and mass murder. The Christian presence in the Holy Land is facing extinction, and leaders of indigenous Christian communities are crying out for the world to act.
In early December, these Christian leaders gathered in Bethlehem as they did ten years ago to craft a second plea to global Christians. It was heartbreaking to see their earnest conviction that if they could just choose the right words, appoint the right emissaries, and convey the right urgency, Christians around the world would hear their cries and respond.
However, most Christians in the West are too comfortable, too ready to declare this “someone else’s problem,” too afraid of rocking the boat or being considered (Heaven forbid!) radical. They don’t remember that Jesus was radical, that his message and his approach went against the prevailing powers and platitudes of his time. Church leaders are too afraid of losing congregants and income to speak out. In their silence, they betray the Jesus they claim to worship.
There is no ceasefire. The bombings and drone attacks continue. Israeli snipers continue to shoot at children…. an eight-year-old and an eleven-year-old wandered too close to an invisible line and were killed by Israeli soldiers. The genocide has not ended. Mass starvation has not stopped. Families are freezing in flimsy tents flooded with rainwater and sewage. Now Israel has banned the aid agencies that keep them alive.
Attacks on Christian as well as Muslim villages in the West Bank continue, with homes and cars burned, sheep slaughtered and thrown into wells that whole villages depend on, olive trees that sustained many generations uprooted. My friend’s nephew was beaten to death on his family’s land by illegal settlers while soldiers watched.
Throughout the West Bank, the random killing and imprisonment of children continues. Children as young as twelve are pulled from their beds by Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night. More than 350 children and thousands of adults are imprisoned indefinitely, many without charges or trials. One child arrested at 15 and held for nine months is from Florida, and I know his family. His cellmate, who was 17, died from malnutrition.
As we move on from Christmas, we cannot ignore the cries of those who are suffering - both from America’s policies and from Israel’s. The Child in the manger and the child in the rubble call to us. They need our courage and action, our creative energy and dedication. Like the magi, we each have gifts to bring.
(To learn what you can do, you can do, contact Partners for Palestine, Christians for a Free Palestine, the Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace, or one of the many denominational groups formed to work for justice in the Holy Land. You can also join and support Jewish Voice for Peace, which welcomes people of all faiths.)
