What Christmas means to Gaza’s rubble and Lanka’s troubles
Tomorrow is Christmas, but there are no Christmas lights in the little town of Bethlehem this year. There will be no festive décor or towering Christmas tree in Manger Square, where throngs of tourists usually gather tonight on Christmas Eve. No processions will wend their way to the Church of the Nativity to join the Midnight Mass.
Even as the rest of the world celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ in a lowly manger two millennia ago, it will be a sad and sombre Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ. The fireworks in the sky are the drones, the aerial bombs and the artillery shells raining down with ferocious intensity on the people in the nearby Gaza Strip.
Bethlehem, a few kilometres south of Jerusalem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank with a population of around 25,000, is where pilgrims would usually flock for the joyous celebration of Christmas each year—a symbol of hope in a world riven by strife. This year, the crowds are missing, but traditional services will reflect on the message of the holy birth— the coming of the long-awaited Messiah, the Prince of Peace foretold in the Scriptures. No doubt, prayers for peace will be most fervent in the face of the terrible reality of what is happening now in the Holy Land.
The Biblical prophecies and references to the Messiah being descended from King David and coming from Bethlehem, the village where David was born, are numerous. The Holy Land is where Jesus was born, lived, ministered to the people, and suffered a cruel death only to rise again. It is a place of immense spiritual significance to not just Christians, but also to followers of the world’s other monotheistic religions, Islam and Judaism, the latter also seeing it as the Promised Land which God gave the Israelites after their flight from slavery in Egypt.
Since October 7, the intensifying conflict in Gaza has drawn the world’s attention to the Holy Land. A Christmas of pain and mourning looms for the inhabitants of the Holy Land, Pope Francis said in a message on X, calling on people to stand with the people of Gaza in prayer and tangible aid. The suffering of Bethlehem is an open wound for those in West Asia (the Middle East) and for the entire world, the Pontiff added. He said Israel was using "terrorism" tactics in the Palestinian enclave, where even a Catholic Church complex where civilians had sought refuge from the air raids was targeted by the Israeli military.
For Israel’s prime minister, the focus is only on protecting his regime and removing any threat to his country through an eye-for-eye approach to an earlier terrorist attack that has blinded him to the untold suffering of the innocents caught in the crossfire. Determined to ignore the repeated calls of the United Nations for a ceasefire even during Christmas-time, his continuing intransigence has rendered even the world body in charge of world peace ineffectual.
At home, the Cardinal is understandably more focused on events locally. He reiterated his call for an international investigation into the Easter Sunday bombings of his flock in 2019, convinced that it was a pre-planned 'inside job'. His frustration is understandable. Successive governments, since then, have been seen as either inept at arriving at the truth or deliberately scuttling the investigations. His relentless pursuit of justice for the victims, however, throws up the question if he is going against the country's strenuous rejection of allowing international mechanisms to probe domestic matters under the cover of human rights.
Even in the case of the war in the Holy Land, the Government is grappling with its foreign policy direction. With calls for an international mechanism to slap war crimes charges on Israel's leadership and clear violations of International Humanitarian Law taking place (the situation in Gaza being different as it is an occupied territory), any international mechanism is anathema to this country, which is under scrutiny at the UN Human Rights Council.
The duplicity at the UNHRC is getting exposed by the day. Israel, which has repeatedly ignored UNHRC resolutions, cosponsored a resolution against Sri Lanka in 2012. Just last September, a month before it launched its heavy-handed military carnage in Gaza, which is on the verge of famine due to the blocking of food and essential supplies to the hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, its ambassador in Geneva had this to say about the situation in Sri Lanka; "Food insecurity remains a major barrier to the enjoyment of human rights." No doubt it was said at the prodding of his handlers. What hypocrisy is spoken in Geneva?
It is apposite that Sri Lanka, despite its own economic difficulties, shows some solidarity with the suffering people of Palestine. A story on page 1 refers to moves to send some tea across, even though the cost of transport is higher than the tea itself. We are told that there is no electricity in Gaza to boil the water to make a cup of tea. Such is the situation there.
Back home, the Cardinal urged his congregation to give a meal to the poor on Christmas day. 'Every day is not Christmas' is a popular saying turned into a Nigerian song by that name, yet the poor must not be abandoned for the rest of the 364 days of the year. Sri Lanka is still going through trying times, and the dazzling lights in Colombo put up by the Tourism Authority as well as the buoyancy of activity in the star-class hotels and restaurants in the main cities are but a facade, a false reflection of life in the country.
Christmas comes with the end of the year and is synonymous with many things: the festive season, the best time of the year, family reunions, social interactions, travel. For many, however, it is also a time for melancholy. The dichotomy between the festivities and much of the real, cruel world is also starkly evident, whether in the homes of Sri Lankans or in the rubble of Gaza. How very much needed then is the message of Christmas— embodied in the Holy Child of Bethlehem, who himself throughout his life experienced persecution and suffering—of love, peace and goodwill towards all mankind.