Bethlehem Weeps While We Shop

from The Paintsville Herald, Kentucky; http://www.paintsvilleherald.com/
Dec 13, 2006, 16:37
by Elaine Washburn Shiber of Van Lear, free-lance writer who has lived in the Middle East.

Bethlehem is Weeping

Bethlehem is weeping, only we don’t hear its sobs. It dominates Christian minds and hearts during this season of love, yet most of us don’t realize its profound suffering. It cries in pain and desperation over a brutal occupation—as we shop.

Bethlehem has been occupied by Israel for nearly 40 years. It is entirely cut off from the rest of the West Bank by Israel’s illegal, 25-foot “security/apartheid� wall. Businesses are dying, unemployment looms at 60 percent, and the city is broke. The Christian mayor calls it a prison. Sadly, it’s the same everywhere in Palestine.

Before the Israeli occupation, Bethlehem’s citizens and Jerusalemites would visit each other’s holy sites frequently. Now it’s nearly impossible. In fact, Israel is annexing Palestinian East Jerusalem (Old City) into greater Israel, uprooting Palestinian orchards and fields, demolishing homes and villages, and devastating families.

One troubling casualty of the occupation is Palestine’s indigenous Christians. We are led to believe the Muslim population causes them to leave the Holy Land. This is false. Muslim and Christian Palestinians greatly respect each other and, up until 2000, there was an equal number of each in Bethlehem. They had lived harmoniously together for centuries, with a minority of non-Zionist religious Jews. Now, less than 15 percent are Christian, and most would admit it is the violent Israeli occupation that has driven them to seek temporary safe haven elsewhere. When they leave, Israel creates impossible obstacles to their return.

“We are a dying species,� writes Harvard professor Munir Fasheh, a Jerusalem-born Christian Palestinian, in a letter to Pope Benedict. “I belong to the only indigenous Christian community in the world— [We carry] the spirit of Jesus as it was carried in people’s hearts and ways of living and was transmitted from one generation to another ever since Jesus walked on this Earth.

“I am one of the last people experiencing this spirit. We are special and precious because once we disappear—as a community—it is not possible to re-create it.�

During Israel’s 39-day siege of the Church of the Holy Nativity, Christian theologian Theodosios Hanna organized a peaceful demonstration in Bethlehem to express outrage at Israel’s violation of the holy site. Christians from Haifa, Nazareth and all surrounding villages joined him. The Israelis arrested and interrogated Hanna, then denied him any freedom of movement for his nonviolent opposition.

“The Christian voice is being diminished,� says Christian writer-educator Maria Khoury from Taybeh, Palestine, “because it speaks for a just peace in the Holy Land, calling upon the International Community to give Palestinians their human rights.�

On Dec. 7 the U.N. embarked upon the third largest appeal for emergency humanitarian assistance in its history—for Palestine. “Two-thirds of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are now living in poverty,� laments U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator Kevin Kennedy.

Certainly this is the season to be “jolly,� but we Christians are also obliged to constantly reflect upon why Jesus Christ lived and died and what our place is in the equation. It is unconscionable for us to allow an entire population to suffer at the hands of an unjust, illegal, four-decade occupation and tolerate our government’s support of it. Even Israelis are beginning to speak out. Increasing numbers of Israeli soldiers are refusing to serve in Palestine. “Peace Now� — “Jews Against Zionism� — “Jewish Friends of Palestine� — all are championing Palestinian human rights. But where are American voices?

Our country can stop this occupation, but its misguided bias for Israel prevails. We veto all U.N. resolutions that criticize her. We label all dissent about her policies as “anti-Semitic.� We arm her. We give her $5 billion a year. We fund (and populate!) illegal settlements. This will not bring peace.

It is therefore incumbent upon Christian and other Americans of conscience to demand our government abandon all favoritism and wield its full power to justly solve this conflict. It is in the best interests of all and just might save our devoted Christian Palestinians—the caretakers of Christianity in the Holy Land—from total extinction.