For Christians in the West Bank, Christmas is not a merry day, and celebrations normally attended by thousands at the birthplace of Jesus are canceled as bombs rain down on Bethlehem.
There is mourning, not just for their own losses — those killed by an Israeli Defense Force bombing of a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza recently — but for their Palestinian Muslim brethren, hundreds of whom lost their lives and property for the depredations and atrocities of the aforementioned on their most holy day of celebration.
Three days prior, a watered-down United Nations security council resolution passed, but it came up short of calling for a complete cessation of hostilities in Gaza (the U.S. abstained in voting). However, the wannabe Zionist dictator Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud coalition government ignores the U.N. and instead ramps up hostilities as incomprehensible suffering and genocide at its hands ensues in that besieged enclave.
Meanwhile, “No Christmas for war criminals” protesters gather at the Virginia home of Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, chanting “Free, free Palestine” and “No more money for Israel’s crimes.” IDF kills a senior Iranian official in an illegal airstrike in Syria, threatening to draw Iran into the conflict, as do simultaneous airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Drones strike U.S. forces in Iraq, which promises military response. And thus merrily goes the whole Middle East into conflagration.
Jon St. Laurent, North Windham, formerly of Lovell
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