Christmas message is that innocent Palestinian lives matter

Serving our Lord in Jerusalem has been the privilege and pride of my priestly order. I cherish working with our Palestinian Christian community in what the late Pope John Paul II called  “the mother of Churches” in Jerusalem and the center of the Christian world. This Holy Land has always been proud of its role of re-living Christ and Christianity.

But this year is different, hugely different. The home of the nativity is not lit this year. Bethlehem is not singing its carols, and thousands of pilgrims are not filling its streets and churches. Instead, we are reliving the cries as immortalized in the Bible:  “Rachel cries for her children. And she cannot be comforted because her children are dead!”

It is unbelievably strange how today’s Christmas story is like that of 2,000 years ago. Mary and Joseph were forced to run away and seek refuge in Egypt to avoid the wrath of Herod.

Instead of the Christmas tree and the grotto, one church in Bethlehem has placed the baby child among rubble as a way of reflecting the situation facing those in Gaza. Mothers running in fear with their children to an unknown future is the image of Mary running with the baby Jesus. We see in those eyes the eyes of the Virgin Mary, and in their faces we see the baby Jesus.

Nothing is more revolting about this horrific war than the killing of the innocent. There is no way to re-live the birth of Christ and to unite around it with a dispassionate approach.

Oct. 7 was an unabashed hell. Our thoughts and prayers cannot but mourn the innocent lives on both sides, brutalized and murdered. We need to remember, at midnight prayers, that innocent blood is shed in sorrow and misery, and our prayer will be that of the prophet Isaiah: “Oh radiance of eternal light, Oh sun of justice: come, illuminate those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.”

Any moral approach to understanding the hell that has broken loose must be seen only through the perspective of 75 years of exile and military occupation.

Since Oct. 7, the real victims of this sheer brutality on both Israeli and Palestinian sides are innocent civilians. Each of them is a dear and beloved soul to someone.

Tens of thousands have been killed and injured, hundreds of thousands displaced and made refugees for the third or fourth time in their lives; hunger and thirst, loss and sorrow — no one needs to wait for the day after the war to do something.

At the same time, we witness the utterly dishonest, biased media coverage that fails to shed any light on the reality of those innocent deaths, while sometimes, at best, making a casual remark about those calamities.

Any moral approach to understanding the hell that has broken loose must be seen only through the perspective of 75 years of exile and military occupation.

Father Majdi Seryani

This brutal eruption of fatal violence is the result of decades of injustice and neglect. Peace for both sides cannot be brought about except through the justice outlined and articulated time and time again by dozens of UN resolutions.

Antisemitism apartheid, racism and many other moral issues are defying an international value system. Today we hope Palestine, through Gaza, will have its place among these issues. Today what is taking place in Gaza must put all of us to a moral and faith test, whether as individuals, communities or states.

The proclamation of the Glory of God in Heaven and Peace on Earth has been brutally silenced and all we hear is the sound of the weeping of Gaza’s mothers bidding farewell to their assassinated children. They have become the target of this unprecedented diabolic aggression.

In Gaza, there are three churches, three schools and multiple humanitarian projects in the Gaza Strip. But our organizations and our people are currently fighting for their very existence amid the unlawful Israeli assault that has spared no one.

As for Palestinian Christians, the war has devasted the tiny community, which will inevitably lead to mass emigration. We need to know that it is this dire situation created by an illegal and brutal occupation that deprives locals, Muslims and Christians alike, of any political stability and is causing this exodus.

Instability and the lack of every facet needed — jobs, education, sanitary services, you name it — is the real cause of this emigration. Our role in Gaza as the Lord has ordered us is to be the salt of the earth among our people.

Before taking my current job, as chief justice of the Latin Ecclesiastical Appeal Courts, I was a few times asked to accompany the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat to various local and international meetings.

At one time in Gaza I accompanied Latin Patriarch Michel Sabah and Anglican Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal on a peace-making mission with the founder of the Hamas movement, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin.

Directing his words to us, the paraplegic leader repeated what we already knew about the depth of relations between Palestinian Christians and Muslims. He praised the public service of Christians and insisted on the importance of strengthening the Palestinian Christian presence in Palestine. But the one line that has since resonated with me was: “You need to be a bridge between Palestinians and the Western world.”

As we enter the holy Christmas season, we mourn those who have lost their lives and properties on both sides. We pray for the healing of the physically injured but we believe that what is most needed is to heal hearts and those emotionally ruined by an aggressive war machine.