CHRISTMAS HYPOCRISY

The Christmas season of “good will to all men” should be renamed the season of “hypocrisy to all Palestinians”. It is the time of year when the disconnect in the western Christian world between legend and reality is at its starkest. The famous carol depicting the birthplace of Jesus is a perfect illustration.

“O little town of Bethlehem/How still we see thee lie/Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/The silent stars go by”. Nothing could be further from the truth than this image of a sweet, untroubled Bethlehem as originally created by the pious imagination of a Victorian Western Christian. Generations of Christian children have been brought up on it, and its mythical power is such that few of them realise what or even where Bethlehem is. In the minds of many Western people, Bethlehem is more a legend than an actual place, and connected to Jews, if to anyone.

The same idea applies to all the other Palestinian sites linked to the life of Jesus Christ - Nazareth, Jerusalem, Bethany – mythical places existing in a quasi-magical land. This type of thinking, still widespread, has been instrumental in keeping western Christians disengaged from the real Palestine, as if there were two parallel places, one, the ‘Holy Land’ where Jesus lived and died, maintained by faith and imagination, and another, Palestine whose inhabitants are real people, struggling for survival.

The Bethlehem of today is a travesty of the place the Christmas carol depicts, and an indictment of Western Christianity’s abject failure to sustain one of its holiest shrines. “Dreamless sleep” in Bethlehem now is more like a nightmare, and the town can only “lie still” when Israel’s occupation ends.

Bethlehem and its outlying villages of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour have been traditionally the most Christian of Palestine’s places, even though Bethlehem has a Muslim majority now. Until Israel’s occupation in 1967 the city had been an important social, cultural and economic hub, and one of Palestine’s most ancient localities. Its name, “Beit Lahem”, goes back to Canaanite times, when it was a shrine to the Canaanite god, Lahm or Lahem.

Its architecture is testament to its rich history: Roman and Byzantine, when the Empress Helena had the Church of the Nativity built over the supposed cave of Jesus’ birthplace in 327AD; followed by the Muslim conquests of 637, and then the crusader occupation from 1099 until ended by Saladin in 1187; the succeeding Ottomans built the city walls in the early 16th century, their rule terminated by the British Mandate between 1922 and 1948. In 1995 Bethlehem was transferred to Palestinian Authority control, although it remains under Israel’s overall rule.

Despite their variation, none of these preceding historical periods was ever associated with the brutal vandalism and destructiveness of Israel’s current occupation. Today there are 22 Israeli settlements encircling Bethlehem, cutting off its exits and confiscating its agricultural land. They glower down from the surrounding hills and house more settlers than all of Bethlehem’s population and its neighbourhoods. To the north is Har Homa, a settlement that until 2000 was an ancient, densely wooded hill called Jabal Abu Ghneim. Israel uprooted the trees and replaced them with a colony of dreary, box-like houses, which it threatened to turn into a Bethlehem look-alike for tourists.

Israel’s relentless penetration to the heart of Bethlehem is unmistakable. The town is deliberately isolated behind the formidable separation barrier, surrounded by checkpoints, and its economy strangulated. Its main source of prosperity had been tourism with two million annual visitors and a thriving souvenir market of classic olive wood and mother-of-pearl carving.

It was also a rich agricultural area with a successful wine industry. But most of its land has been confiscated, and draconian restrictions on movement to and from Bethlehem have reduced tourism and pilgrim numbers drastically. Today its small population has the highest unemployment rate in the occupied territories, second only to that of Gaza.

To date, and despite church delegations, papal visits, and public expressions of concern, nothing Christians have done has halted or reversed Israel’s destruction of a city so uniquely holy to Christendom. Nor have they averted Israeli attacks on the other Christian places in Palestine. Not all the western hand-wringing in the world can now stop the decline of the Christian presence in Palestine.

The Palestinian Christian population has shrunk from 20% at the start of the 20^th century to 1% today - all thanks to Israeli attacks, Israeli settler persecution, and destruction of churches – in Gaza the ancient church of St Porphyrius, built in 1150, and the one catholic Holy Family Church were both bombed repeatedly since 2023; but above all, it has been thanks to Western Christian inaction in the face of Israeli vandalism.

What a disgrace that the Christian world is unable or unwilling to save these Christians from extinction. Do they not understand that these people are the original Christians, unique and irreplaceable, and the failure to support them is a massive betrayal of Christ’s legacy? Against this reality, singing sugary Christmas carols without taking action is rank hypocrisy.