While in much of the world lights are lit, peace speeches are repeated and Christmas is celebrated as a symbol of love and hope, in Palestine and particularly in Bethlehem, there is nothing to celebrate. The city where, according to Christian tradition, Jesus was born, today is militarily occupied by the State of Israel.
There are no carols, there is no truce, there is no peaceful night. There are tanks, drones, bombings, death and hunger. And, above all, there are boys and girls who will not sleep tonight.
Two years have passed since an imperialist offensive on Palestine, which has acquired the character of a genocide, especially in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Tens of thousands of people murdered, a brutal proportion of them boys and girls; hospitals bombed; schools, churches and mosques destroyed; millions of displaced people. All of this is happening before the eyes of the world, in real time, without the great powers doing anything to stop it.
The United States and its European allies talk about “peace,” about the “right to defend oneself,” about “diplomatic processes,” but that peace is a false peace, built on occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Washington is not a neutral mediator nor does it care about the lives of the Palestinians, on the contrary it is the main financier and supplier of weapons to the Israeli State. Every Christmas speech about peace contrasts with the brutality of the genocide and with the shipments of missiles that continue to arrive in Israel.
Anyone who has a minimum of conscience and humanity cannot accept this double discourse. One cannot talk about human rights while justifying a genocide, which denies the Palestinian people their right to exist, to self-determine, to live without the interference of Israel and the United States. Violence cannot be condemned “in the abstract” without pointing out the material and political perpetrator of a sustained massacre.
Christmas is often presented as a time of moral reflection. If that story makes any sense, then it should force us to look toward Palestine. What does it mean to talk about family while entire families are killed by a bomb? What does it mean to talk about childhood while thousands of children grow up mutilated, orphaned or directly murdered? In Palestine there is no night of peace because the occupation does not rest, and neither does the genocide.
But in the face of horror there is also solidarity. Around the world, millions of people have taken to the streets, they have broken the media siege, they have said clearly: not in our name. This internationalist solidarity is a central task for those of us who want to stop genocide, unraveling the hypocrisy of imperialism and defending the right of the Palestinian people against occupation and for their self-determination.
This Christmas, while Bethlehem is occupied and Gaza devastated, the greatest gesture of humanity is not silence or neutrality, but solidarity and stopping covering our eyes when talking about Palestine. Because there is no peace possible if there are wars, genocide, and there is no justice possible as long as an entire people continues to be massacred with the complicity of the great powers.
For a Christmas for Palestinian girls and boys free of all oppression and violence, for an end to genocide.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
