In Christ’s birthplace existential war rages

What a sad Christmas season this is for the peace-loving peoples of the world. Devastating wars are being waged, most notably, today, in Palestine and Ukraine. Soldiers are dying, civilians are suffering and dying too, and there seems to be no power on earth that will stop the gunfire.                   

This is happening in an area that has special significance for many Filipinos, being majority Christians. Bethlehem, which they know as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, is today part of the West Bank in Palestine. Nazareth, where he grew up, is today the largest Arab city within Israel.  

The carnage is happening on the Gaza Strip, within Palestine, which is governed by the Hamas militant movement. Since Oct. 7, Israel’s military has systematically carried out almost daily airstrikes on Gaza Strip, while its ground troops have conducted a running battle with Hamas fighters.   

The Israeli government is retaliating against Hamas’ surprise armed incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 Israeli civilians and some soldiers and taking hundreds of hostages into Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to carry on the war until it smashes the Hamas forces – which similarly has vowed to smash Israel.  The United States government backs Israel; it recently vetoed a majority UN Security Council resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. 

Thus far, the war has caused 20,000 civilian deaths, levelled a wide swath of Gaza and displaced nearly two million Palestinians with nowhere to go. Netanyahu’s conduct of the war has been condemned by United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres as a probable war against humanity. 

Beyond the physical destruction and the loss of human lives, something else is happening. The culture and history embedded in the land is being erased – “something existential, rarely acknowledged and potentially irreversible,” in the words of Nesrine Malik, a columnist in the Guardian. 

It’s not just the Christian religion that has deep roots in Gaza. Earlier this month, she wrote, Israeli airstrikes destroyed Gaza’s oldest mosque. “The Omari mosque was originally a 5th century Byzantine church, an iconic landmark of Gaza: