Message from Robert Thomson to all european citizens

Christmas in Bethlehem - 2004
a Christmas day message from Robert Thompson

Last night we went as a family to the Christmas Night Mass in a packed Church to celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and it was impossible not to think of what is happening in today’s Bethlehem. As then, this ancient royal city is under enemy occupation, with much stricter controls and constraints on the inhabitants than in the time of the Roman Empire. The number of indigenous Christians is gradually diminishing as they fully understand how their oppressors are getting overwhelmingly massive support from outside, and they look for a brighter future elsewhere.

For European Christians, such as ourselves, it is a source of continuing scandal that politicians who make noisy claims to support Christian values take no interest in the fate of these ancient Christian communities in the lands of which they should have read in their Bibles. The wake-up call of the danger faced every day by the Christians of Bethlehem and elsewhere in the Near and Middle East seems not to be heard in the White House. There we suspect that the occupants are much more interested in such “wonders” as decorated pine-trees than in the reality of what we are trying to celebrate with joy arising from hope, but tinged with great sadness.

For us, Christmas is not just a commercial bonanza, it is the day when we celebrate the coming of our Messiah, but for the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land it is a time of terrifying oppression coming from two sources. Apart from the direct invaders who are trying to impose “ethnic cleansing” on a whole people, whether Christian or Muslim, which same invaders receive massive support by way of finance and arms from the sole remaining “super-power” to enable them to impose their cruel will. The current leaders of this same “super-power” claim “Christian” inspiration for their actions to ensure the persecution of indigenous Christians, who in their turn are assimilated by some of the most ignorant or ill-intentioned of their Muslim fellow-citizens to these foreign backers of the invaders because these backers loudly claim to be “Christians”.

To return to Bethlehem, we now learn that the traditional Midnight Mass celebrated by the Latin Patriarch, Mgr Michel Sabah, was attended by the interim President of the Palestinian Authority, accompanied by his Prime Minister and by the President of the Parliament, to show their solidarity with their suffering Christian brothers and sisters. Outside the Church of the Nativity, the “wall of shame” is cutting off more and more of the inhabitants of the city from their fields, schools, hospitals and lands. To the dismay of the people, this wall, and the resulting theft of land and further damage, is financed and backed by a régime in the USA which claims to respect Christianity.

If only all those who are probably genuine well-meaning Christians who voted to support this régime woke up to the fact that their government is directly responsible for the mounting persecution of Christians in the Holy Land, paid for out of their taxes, they might (better late than never) come to a sense of shame at what they have done.