SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
munther isaac
Another Somber Christmas in Palestine as Gaza Genocide Continues
"I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace," said one little girl whose grandmother was killed by an Israeli sniper.
Dec 25, 2024
From the illegally occupied "little town of Bethlehem" in the West Bank to a pair of churches in Gaza where Israel's bombs and bullets have killed clerics and congregants alike, Palestinian Christians marked another somber Christmas amid a relentless Israeli assault whose victims on Wednesday included refugees sheltering in tents and medical staff and patients at a besieged hospital.
For the second year in a row, public Christmas celebrations were canceled at the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, which is built over the spot where Christians believe Jesus Christ was born.
"This should be a time of joy and celebration. But Bethlehem is a sad town in solidarity with our siblings in Gaza," Lutheran Pastor Munther Isaac said during his Christmas sermon at a church whose nativity display again had baby Jesus lying in a pile of rubble.
"It's hard to believe that another Christmas has come upon us and the genocide has not stopped," Isaac added. "Decision-makers are content to let this continue. To them, Palestinians are dispensable."
In Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian Christians huddled in two churches amid ongoing attacks by Israeli forces.
"This year, we will conduct our religious rites and that's it," Ramez Souri toldThe New York Times at the St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in Gaza City. "We're still in mourning and far too sad to celebrate, or do anything except to pray for peace."
Hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering on the grounds of the 12th century church—Gaza's oldest—when Israeli forces bombed it in October 2023, killing 18 people including Souri's three children and relatives of former Republican U.S. Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan.
In a pre-Christmas homily at Holy Family Church in Gaza City—Gaza's only Catholic church— Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, told congregants, "You have become the light of our church in the entire world."
"At Christmas, we celebrate the light and ask: Where is this light?" Pizzaballa continued. "The light is here, in this church."
"I don't know when or how this war will end, and every time we approach the end, it seems like we start anew," he added. "But sooner or later, the war will end, and we must not lose hope. When the war ends, we will rebuild everything: our schools, our hospitals, and our homes. We must remain resilient and full of strength."
Like St. Porphyrius, Holy Family has suffered a deadly Israeli attack. Last December, an Israeli sniper shot Nahida Khalil Anton, the elderly matriarch of the largest Catholic family in Gaza, as she crossed a courtyard in the church compound on her way to the bathroom. Her daughter Samar was shot in the head when she rushed out to try and help her mother.
Both women died. Seven other people were shot and wounded. Israeli soldiers and veterans have said that they were given permission and even orders to shoot anyone who moves in parts of Gaza.
"I wish the war would end and we could return to our homes in peace." A Christian Palestinian girl in Gaza wishes for peace on Christmas Day amid Israel's war, at the Holy Family Church in Gaza City.
[image or embed]
— aljazeera.com (@aljazeera.com) December 25, 2024 at 5:52 AM
On Sunday, Pope Francis—who in a new book called for a genocide investigation of Israel's war on Gaza—said: "Yesterday, children have been bombed. This is cruelty; this is not war."
The cruelty continued on Christmas as Israeli attacks throughout Gaza killed at least 13 people, according to officials. The dead include people sheltering in a tent northwest of Khan Younis, Palestine Red Crescent Society volunteer Alaa al-Derawi—who was shot in the chest while at work transporting patients—and Walaa al-Faranji, a well-known fashion designer, author, and photographer who was killed along with her husband Ahmed Salama in an airstrike on their home in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Local media also reported continued Israeli shelling and attacks on Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, where staff and scores of patients including premature babies have endured weeks of siege conditions.
All told, Gaza and international agencies say that at least 45,361 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and more than 107,800 others wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. At least 11,000 other Gazans are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. Millions more Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Thousands more people have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Last month, the International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, as well as for Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Back at St. Porphyrius, parishioners pooled what little food they could find to prepare a communal Christmas Eve meal. Although many Gazan Christians have expressed fears that their community—one of the oldest Christian communities in the world—could be wiped out by Israel's genocidal onslaught, the holiday meal represented a faint glimmer of hope.
"We wanted to do something to show that we're still here," Souri explained, "despite it all."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Pope Francis Urges Genocide Probe of Israel's War on Gaza
The pontiff's call comes as the International Court of Justice is reviewing evidence in a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel.
Nov 17, 2024
In a new book set to be released this week, Pope Francis I endorsed a genocide investigation into Israel's war on Gaza—which has killed or maimed more than 150,000 Palestinians and forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened millions more over the past 13 months.
"In the Middle East, where the open doors of nations like Jordan or Lebanon continue to be a salvation for millions of people fleeing conflicts in the region: I am thinking above all of those who leave Gaza in the midst of the famine that has struck their Palestinian brothers and sisters given the difficulty of getting food and aid into their territory," the pontiff wrote in his latest book, which goes on sale in some countries on November 19.
"According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide," the Pope added. "It should be carefully investigated to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies."
The Pope's words echo last week's finding by a United Nations expert panel that Israel's annihilation of Gaza is "consistent with the characteristics of genocide."
The International Court of Justice—a U.N. organ—is currently weighing a South Africa-led genocide case against Israel backed by more than 30 nations and regional blocs as well as hundreds of groups and experts around the world.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three former Hamas leaders assassinated by Israel, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination.
Many jurists, scholars, and other experts—including some of Israel's leading Holocaust historians—have called Israel's policies and actions in Gaza genocide. Early in the war, Raz Segal—an Israeli historian and professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey—called Israel's Gaza onslaught "a textbook case of genocide."
Numerous world leaders and other international officials, artists, entertainers, and others—including half of Democratic voters in the United States surveyed in May—also agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Many Palestinian Christians have been killed, injured, or otherwise harmed by Israeli forces during the bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza. With just 800 to 1,000 people believed remaining in Gaza, members of the world's oldest Christian community warned early in the war that they were "under threat of extinction."
In their most infamous attack on Gaza Christians, Israeli forces bombed the 12th century Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church, Gaza's oldest, in October 2023, killing 18 Palestinians including numerous children. Among the victims were two women and an infant related to former Republican U.S. Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan.
After an Israeli sniper fatally shot an elderly woman and her daughter on the grounds of a Catholic church in Gaza City last December, Pope Francis condemned what he called an act of "terrorism."
Amid the death and destruction wrought by Israel's assault on Gaza, last December's Christmas celebrations were canceled in Bethlehem, the purported birthplace of Jesus Christ.
"How can we celebrate when we feel this war—this genocide—that is taking place could resume at any moment?" asked Palestinian Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac at the time.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'The Land Theft Continues': Israel Announces Biggest West Bank Seizure in Over 30 Years
The Israel-based activist group Peace Now says "2024 is by far the peak year for Israeli land seizure in the occupied West Bank."
Jul 03, 2024
Human rights defenders on Wednesday condemned the far-right Israeli government's announcement of the largest seizure of Palestinian land—many critics bluntly called it "land theft"—in the illegally occupied West Bank in over 30 years.
On June 25, Israeli occupation authorities unilaterally declared 12,700 dunams, or 4.9 square miles, of land in the Jordan Valley "state lands." Israel's Custodian of the State's Property in the Civil Administration published the declaration on Wednesday. The move supplements previous Israeli land grabs totaling nearly 11,000 dunams (4.2 square miles) in February and March.
Combined, these are the biggest seizures of Palestinian land since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
"Land theft is a component part of colonial genocide as a social process," noted Heidi Matthews, an assistant professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto.
Muther Isaac, academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College in Jerusalem, lamented that "the land theft continues in the West Bank!"
Israel's goal, according to Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is to "establish facts on the ground" in service of annexing the Palestinian lands and establishing or expanding overwhelmingly Jewish colonies there. The push comes as more and more countries—nearly 150, according to Palestinian officials—officially recognize the state of Palestine and as Israeli forces continue an assault on Gaza that has been widely condemned as genocidal.
"We will establish sovereignty... first on the ground and then through legislation. I intend to legalize the young settlements," Smotrich said last month, referring to illegal outposts that are newer and smaller than established Jewish settler colonies.
"My life's mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state," he added.
Under international law, all of the settlements are illegal. Most were built on land seized from Palestinians through terrorism and ethnic cleansing during the Nakba, or catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Arabs were expelled during the establishment and consolidation of modern Israel in the late 1940s, and during the conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.
Smotrich and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "are determined to fight against the entire world and against the interests of the people of Israel for the benefit of a handful of settlers who receive thousands of dunams as if there were no political conflict to resolve or war to end," the Tel Aviv-based activist group Peace Now said in a statement Wednesday.
"Today, it is clear to everyone that this conflict cannot be resolved without a political settlement that establishes a Palestinian state alongside Israel," the group added. "Still, the Israeli government chooses to actually make it difficult and distance us from the possibility of peace and stopping the bloodshed."
That bloodshed includes a surge in settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last October. More than 500 Palestinians—around a quarter of them children—have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers there over the past nine months, according to Palestinian and international agencies.
Protected and sometimes aided by Israeli troops, Israeli settlers have launched multiple deadly pogroms targeting Palestinian people and property in the occupied territories since last year.
These and other previous attacks prompted the Biden administration to impose sanctions on a handful of the most extremist Israeli settlers. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also reverted to classifying Israeli settlements as inconsistent with international law, which was the State Department's position from 1978 until the Trump administration reversed it in 2019.
However, the U.S. remains Israel's staunchest international supporter, providing billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover for Israeli policies and actions that, in addition to occupation and colonization, critics say amount to apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular