A Christmas Massacre of the Innocents
I wrote this on Christmas Eve. The Edinburgh Evening News published it on December 27th, but edited out the 2nd, 3rd and 4th paragraphs. I would like to think that an independent Scotland would have the moral courage to speak out against the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. Peace in the Middle East is not possible until the Palestinian people are liberated.
This Christmas has a surreal quality. I can’t unsee the photos of broken and bloodied bodies, many of them children, and endless piles of rubble under which lie thousands more. Ten times more children have been killed in Gaza as in two years of war in Ukraine.[1] 20,000 Palestinians are confirmed dead and 50,000 wounded in less than 3 months of an unremitting industrial slaughter that Israel has unleashed on a caged and defenceless population. Mass famine and disease are spreading rampantly.
At a Bethlehem church, baby Jesus is wrapped in a keffiyeh lying in rubble, surrounded by razor wire. The Catholic Holy Family church in Gaza City where people shelter from US bombs supplied to Israel, has been bombarded by IDF warplanes.
Israeli soldiers have fired off one tank shell for each night of Hanukkah into Palestinian homes[2], put up giant menorahs in destroyed neighbourhoods east of Gaza City[3] and chant before they enter Gaza “may your village burn.”[4]
Yesterday, the US, Israel’s accomplice, watered down and delayed a UN ceasefire resolution until it became meaningless.
Israel is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. It has become what it claims to hate – a despotic regime that coddles religious fanatics, bigots and extremists. It has weaponised the Holocaust and branded Palestinians as Nazis, while executing a real time mass slaughter against 2.3 million trapped in a concentration camp. Its bloodlust is antithetical to the core values of Judaism.
The Israeli scholar Yeshayahu Leibowitz warned that if Israel didn’t separate church and state and end its occupation of Palestine, it would spawn a corrupt Rabbinate that would warp Judaism into a fascistic cult.[5] In those circumstances, “Israel would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it.”[6]
Leah Gunn Barrett
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-death-toll.html
[2] https://en.abna24.com/story/1419905
[3] https://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-troops-erect-jewish-menorah-candles-amid-gaza-ruins
[4]
[5]
[6] Ibid