By Sara Fadlalla
While all across the world trees twinkle with lights and ornaments, we often forget just what Christmas truly represents. The birthplace of Jesus, may peace be showered upon him, is in Bethlehem – a city whose own Christmas trees laid barren the last two years to honor the martyrs in Gaza during this continuing genocide. Western media portrayals often try to frame the genocide as an endless religious disagreement between Muslims and Jews and “irreconcilable differences” have brought us to this point. This overgeneralization is inherently misleading, convoluted, and erases the vast history of Christianity in Palestine.
The population of Christians in Palestine has decreased significantly over the years of apartheid and mistreatment. Currently, there are about 52,000 Palestinian Christians in the West Bank and Gaza combined, only 2% of the total population. Settler colonial powers continue to make life unlivable, and many Palestinians (Christian and Muslim alike) are expelled from their land. We see just how Jesus would have been treated in his birthplace if he were there today.
“Being a Palestinian Christian is significant because our families have always worshiped in the land of Jesus, where the stories of the Bible have unfolded, without any interference,” said Cleveland’s own proud Palestinian Christian Dr. Shereen Naser. People of all faith traditions lived in harmony with the ability to have neighbors of different faiths still respect wholly the people they are surrounded by. Dr. Naser continued by saying the moment her family noticed a difference in the way they could freely practice was when colonization was introduced. “It’s where the colonizer suffocates movement to places like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and allows extremists to attack historic Christian villages like Taybeh,” Dr. Naser said.
Simply put, settler colonial projects will always demand subservience, control, and separation into groups; dividing to conquer. Before the introduction of Zionism into Palestine, the unity could be felt around the land far and wide. And with the demonization of the Palestinian, no differentiation is being made between Christian and Muslim – however, the battle of narratives continues to erase the Palestinian Christian from the fabric of history as ethnic cleansing and erasure demand. This further severs the Palestinian struggle from the purview of so many; it otherizes the genocide and allows for the insidiousness and cruelty of genocide to fester.
If we can successfully remind ourselves collectively during this holy time for so many, that Bethlehem is indeed in Palestine and Jesus is indeed a Palestinian, perhaps we can bring the truth to light and bring it into all of our hearts. If Jesus were alive today, would you be advocating to protect him? Or silently letting Zionism erase his existence completely?
May this food for thought be a comfort to those donating their time, efforts, and means to the cause of liberation and a motivation for those solely focused on the material joys of Christmas time.