As Christmas approaches this year, the thoughts of Christians all over the  world will once again turn to Bethlehem, the holy town where Jesus was born  over two millennia ago. Voices will be raised in joyful celebration and  children everywhere will re-create the Christmas story to help us remember  the circumstances in which the Christ child was born.

 

Such a momentous occasion in such humble surroundings heralded a new way of  thinking about people’s relationship with God and with each other. It shook  the foundations of an unforgiving society presided over by an unforgiving  God and proclaimed peace and goodwill on earth amongst all people.   There  was indeed much to hope for.

 

However, the tranquil pastoral scene so familiar to us is not at all evident  in Bethlehem today. Bethlehem does not lie still, and peace on earth and  goodwill towards all is as elusive as ever. The tyranny of Israel‘s  occupation and its colonial expansionism is crippling the lives of both  Palestinian Christians and Muslims alike.  Yet, many Christians will again  ignore the misery suffered by the Palestinians in the Holy Land and will  celebrate Christmas without remembering that it was amongst this people and  in their land that Jesus was born. Priests will chant, masses will be said,  carols will be sung and nativity scenes will be created, but it is unlikely  that many sermons will urge Christian congregations to speak out against the  crimes being committed in Palestine.

 

Only recently, a delegation of eminent Australian Church leaders returned  from visiting the Holy Land and reported their distress at “the suffering  and fear experienced daily by large numbers of people.” [1] The report  criticizes Israel‘s military occupation for the “systematic harassment,  physical and psychological oppression, widespread unemployment, poverty, and  economic deprivation” [2] of both Palestinian Christians and Muslims. No  doubt these church leaders will encourage their ministries to spread the  word before the momentum is lost, but there are many forces working against  justice for the Palestinians. Their statement has already been criticized by  the Israeli ambassador and they are likely to face objections not only from  Jews who support a Zionist state in Israel, but also from Christian  quarters.

 

A dangerous Christian ideology which endorses the rhetoric of Zionism and  the conquest of all Palestine for Israel is making its presence felt in  Australia.  This Christian fervour for Israel has found expression in a  revitalised Christian Zionism that began back in the sixteenth century [3]  and is directed today against Islam and Muslims.  In America particularly,  it has misconstrued the messianic and apocalyptic legacy of the Christian  faith and has replaced the Jewish and communist Anti-Christ of Christian  Zionism’s earlier imaginings with an Islamic Anti-Christ.  This Anti-Christ,  it believes, will be defeated in Israel where all mankind will gather for  the coming of the Messiah. That it should take place in Israel, given the  numbers of the world’s populations, is an absurd notion even amongst the  most devout. That the dispossession, degradation and humiliation of the  Palestinians who have lived in this land for millennia, can be condoned on  such a pretext is even more abhorrent and preposterous.

 

Unfortunately, the influence of this Christian Zionism is growing rapidly  and threatens the thinking of a whole generation of mainstream Christians  regardless of their denominations, including Christians in the Holy Land.  Father Rafiq Khoury of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, gives a very  disturbing account of Christian Zionism’s effect on religion and politics.  [4] Where once Christians and Muslims shared common values and aspirations  in Palestinian society, Christian Zionism has succeeded in fragmenting this  already battered community as it struggles to withstand Israel‘s punishing  occupation.  Amongst certain sections of this society, Christians and  Muslims are now viewing each other with suspicion, and Christians in  Palestine, like those abroad, are beginning to see Islam as the enemy.   Needless to say, this has been enormously detrimental to the Palestine  liberation movement.

 

It would surprise many Christians in the West that Palestinian Christians  and Muslims have prayed in Bethlehem‘s Church of the Nativity for centuries.   In fact, the Qur’an – the holy book of Islam – refers often, and with great  reverence, to Jesus and Mary.  Muhammad himself preserved an icon of Mary  and the child Jesus after the conquest of Mecca and ordered that it remain  within the Ka’ba to which Muslims make their obligatory pilgrimage from all  over the world. [5]

 

Since 638 CE, Muslims have had the right to pray in the south aisle of the  church when the Patriarch of Jerusalem handed over Palestine to Caliph Omar  as he swept into Bethlehem with his Arab armies. [6] Muslims recognise Jesus  as the Christ, the mightiest Messenger of God who was born miraculously of  the Virgin Mary and who, through God, was able to perform miracles. However,  Christians and Muslims part ways on Christ’s divinity. Muslims believe that  there has always been and continues to be one God only and that joining  Christ and the Holy Spirit with God the Father in what is known as the  Trinity – a major tenet of Christianity – compromises that singular divinity  of God.

 

It has not though affected their recognition of, and reverence for, Jesus  and Mary. The highly regarded theologian of the early Christian Church, St  John of Damascus actually thought that Islam was merely another form of  Christianity[7],  and indeed today, St John would probably be more  comfortable with the practices and beliefs of Muslims than he would with the  form of Christianity that has developed in the West, particularly Christian  Zionism.

 

So much of the fear and antagonism we see today against Muslims come from  ignorance.  In Palestine, Christian and Muslims have lived together in  harmony for centuries, and particularly in Bethlehem, they have not only  shared Christmas celebrations, but even the Muslim feasts Eid al-Fitr at the  end of the Ramadan fast and Eid al-Adha.  As one young Bethlehem tour guide  commented in 2002:

 

“We know how to celebrate together, because we know how to weep together.   We have suffered as one people under 35 years of occupation.  The same week  that Mary, a Muslim mother of seven was killed in Beit Jala, Johnny, a  17-year-old, died in Manger Square as he was coming out of the Church of the  Nativity, both shot by Israeli snipers.  We’re all inmates together, Muslims  and Christians, in the same miserable prison called Palestine.  We have no  freedom, no peace, no jobs, no money for winter heating, no travelling to  Jerusalem or between towns and villages, no future.”

 

And that is the sum of what is so often forgotten in the search for peace  and justice:  the escalating inhuman situation suffered by the Palestinians  – Christians and Muslims.

 

Sing as we might this Christmas, the hopes and dreams of all the years is  unlikely to be met in Bethlehem for those who live there.  Nor are they  likely to be met for the Palestinians barely hanging on to their miserable  existence in Gaza, or the Palestinians in the other cities, towns and  villages in the Holy Land and even less for the stateless Palestinians long  deprived of hope in the refugee camps. Every chorister’s hallelujah will  just be a death knell for another generation of Palestinians and every  Christmas reflection will become meaningless words of Christian faith,  unless we are prepared to look beyond the tinsel and the feasting and really  do something to stop Israel‘s crimes against both Christians and Muslims in  Palestine.

 

Footnotes:

 

[1] Statement by Australian Church Leaders, Bethlehem, 18 December 2007  

[2] Ibid.  

[3]  Fr Rafiq Khoury, “Effects of Christian Zionism on religion, Christian  local churches and peace research”, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum,  Jerusalem, 2004 (a presentation given at the Al-Sabeel International  Conference on 15 April 2004)

[4] Ibid.  

[5] Uri Rubin, “The Ka’ba: Aspects of its Ritual Function and Position in  Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam  8 (1986) pp 97-131   [6]  Dr G S P Freeman-Grenville, The Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem,  Palestine Exploration Fund, January 1994  

[7] William Dalrymple, “What Muslims and Christians share: A Christmas  meditation”, The New Statesman, 19 December 2005