Bethlehem is the historic birthplace of Jesus Christ. Millions of Christians each year visit Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas at Jesus’ birthplace. But this year Christmas has been cancelled.
Many of the Palestinian Christians have generationally lived in Bethlehem for over 2000 years, since the birth of Jesus Christ. It cannot be a Merry Christmas for hundreds of them who have lost their children and family members in the Hamas Israeli war.
The Hamas Israel Gaza war has so far meant the death of 20,000 Palestinians, may be more. Yesterday, many Christians, no doubt, were praying in their churches for the safety of Jews during this period. But what about the Palestinian Arab Christians? There were several thousand living in Gaza before the bombing started and about 2% of the West Bank are Palestinian Christians.
Well, this year, Christmas has been cancelled.
This is a portion of an article from USA Today written by a Palestinian Christian:
I’m a Christian Palestinian in Bethlehem. This Christmas, we feel alone and broken.
As a Palestinian Christian, canceling Christmas celebrations this year feels right.
Every year at Christmas time in Bethlehem, bright lights and colorful decorations adorn the streets and homes in the Christian areas of the city where Jesus was born. Christian communities light trees and people crowd Christmas markets, where their neighbors sell handmade gifts.
As Palestinians, we welcome tourists this time of year, and celebrate with them the re-birth of Jesus and the rebirth of hope. During Ramadan, we do the same. We fast together and then celebrate Eid holidays.
This year, Christmas is canceled. The lights are dark and there are no bustling Christmas markets. Bethlehem feels empty, and we feel broken.
Christian leaders here canceled the celebrations in solidarity with Gaza. We can’t celebrate until our friends and colleagues in Gaza, both Muslim and Christian, are safe and can celebrate Christmas with us.
This Christmas is different. Across the West Bank, we, as Palestinians feel alone as the world watches our brothers and sisters in Gaza face unimaginable suffering. Usually a time when Palestinians, Christian and Muslim, celebrate the birth of Jesus with tourists from all over the world, today we feel like the world is no longer with us. We feel alone in our suffering.
We worry our children in Bethlehem are next
As a humanitarian aid worker, my work has always given me hope during times of conflict and injustice, and a reason to work for the greater good and to serve the people in greatest need. Since the beginning of this recent violence in Gaza, and while responding to the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe there, that hope has felt very distant.
Instead, I feel a tightness in my chest. Trapped, insecure and without hope. I love my country and I love being a Palestinian. But it seems the longer we hold on to our country, the more we suffer.
We are angry, sad and afraid over what’s happening in Gaza.
For years I told my children that they are safe living in Bethlehem. Now they know I’ve been lying to them. They see the Israeli soldiers on their way to school and they watch the news. They see Palestinian children being killed and as much as I want to tell them this couldn’t happen to them, we worry that the West Bank is next, that our children are next.
Since the start of the relentless bombing of Gaza and the violence across the West Bank, my children cry at the sounds of nearby explosions. I hold them tight and tell them where to hide when we hear these sounds.
I think about how families in Gaza have lived with these sounds for more than two months.
As a Palestinian Christian, canceling Christmas celebrations this year feels right. We can’t celebrate while Palestinians in Gaza face so much suffering. (Full article.)
How many of those 20,000 killed Gazans, and some in the West Bank, were children? I have heard various estimates, but some say as many as 40% were children. Assuming that to be true, that means about 8,000 children have been killed so far. They were not combatants. They are some of the Innocents. (I do not minimise the death of Israeli innocents, some of which were children. They are also victims in this atrocity.)
Let’s remember that the Christmas story is a story of hope and salvation at the birth of Jesus Christ. But it is also a story of mass murder of innocent children, very similar to what we are seeing today.
That part of the Christmas story most Christian churches never remember. It is recorded in the Gospel according to Matthew:
1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men [Magi from Persia] from the east to Jerusalem, 2 Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.
3 When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. 5 And they said to him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, 6 And you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the princes of Judah: for out of you shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel.
7 Then Herod, when he had privately called the wise men [Magi], inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when you have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also.
9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, see, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. 11 And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented to him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh. 12 And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.
Matthew 2:1-18
13 And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be you there until I bring you word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. 14 When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: 15 And was there until the death of Herod: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt have I called my son.
16 Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men [Magi], was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children [boys] that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, saying, 18 In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.
While traditional recounts of the “Christmas” story include the visit of the Magi from Persia, very few will continue on to read what happened after the Magi left Bethlehem and returned to their country.
The Jewish King Herod conspired with assassins, possibly members of the military, or possibly professional criminals for hire, to commit infanticide in the city of Bethlehem, by murdering all the male children under the age of 2.
For these families who lost their children, “Christmas” was anything but “merry.” It was a time of tremendous pain and loss.
This forced Jesus’ earthly parents to take him out of Israel to hide for several years, until the Jewish king died.
So the birth of Jesus, while bringing hope of deliverance from the tyranny of the Satanic ruling Jews, also began a period of the Satanic ruling Jews conspiring to prevent Jesus from fulfilling his role of the Jewish Messiah, and true king of the Jewish people, and in fact all of humanity.
Brian Shilhavy, Health Impact News
… it can be easily seen that from the time of the birth of Jesus, there have been two kinds of Jews: the Satanic Jews as seen in the Christmas story with King Herod and his assassins, and the Godly Jews as represented by Jesus’ Jewish parents, Joseph and Mary, portrayed in the Bible as common peasants and certainly not among the ruling class.
After the recording of a visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old, we never hear from Joseph again. He is presumed to have died prior to when Jesus began his public ministry at the age of 30.
But what little we know of him from the Christmas story, shows a remarkable man of faith, who undoubtedly had to endure public ridicule for not divorcing his betrothed wife after it was discovered she was pregnant, and not from him. He obeyed everything God told him to do by protecting the child of his wife who was not his, understanding just how precious this child was.
I find it rather remarkable, that this distinction between the ruling Satanic Jews, and these simple common Godly Jews, in how they treat children, really has not changed over the centuries.
The Satanic Jews hate children, while the Godly Jews see children as precious gifts from God.
Brian Shilhavy, Health Impact News
There has always been this war between ‘good’ and ‘evil’, between the Satanic Jews who have tried to extinguish the truth, the message of Jesus Christ and the Godly Jews, including Jesus’ earthly family and His disciples, who preached the truth and deliverance from evil.
The Godly Jews are all those who believe in Jesus Christ, regardless of race. They are the children of Abraham, not the Satanic Jews who hate Jesus Christ. To this day there are those Jews who curse the name of Jesus Christ with horrific descriptions of Him, as recorded in their Talmudic traditions.
There are those in the Christian churches who align themselves with the Satanic Jews in some misguided belief that they are God’s chosen people. They are not. They are of their father the Devil. Read John 8:44.
The chosen are the born-again believers, whether they be Jew or Gentile, it does not matter. They are the true Israel of God.
The ever present war we now face is not a military war, like in Gaza, but one in the spiritual realm. This war started in the Garden of Eden and has continued through the ages. It always has been a war where Satan has tried to stop the spread of the Good News of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Here we are at the end of 2023. In the last 4 years we have seen a rapid uptick in Satanic activity where the synagogue of Satan, the assembly of followers of Lucifer, the party of the Pharisees on earth, have declared all out war against God. These are still the same Satanic Jews. They call themselves Jews but they are not actually, Jesus said so (Revelation 2:9 and 3:9). They are Satanist who are bringing in their New World Order, or attempting to do so.
The Godly Jews are all those believers in Jesus Christ who stand against this Satanic program. We are the ones they label ‘conspiracy theorists’ but just look back and you will see that everything that was predicted has come to pass.
We expose their lies and they don’t like that. They censor and try to shut down any dissemination of the truth, no matter where it comes form. They use the term ‘antisemitism’ to silence the truth but those Satanic Jews are the antisemites. They are the ones carrying out mass depopulation of the world, which includes many Jews in Israel and elsewhere. The Gaza war is just another pretext for depopulation.
The conflict between Godly followers of Christ and the evil followers of Satan has been ramped up now. Satan knows he has only a short time.
This conflict is the heart of the true Christmas story. It is a story where God is the victor no matter what the Devil may throw at us. It is a story of great hope and salvation, but also a story of constant conflict against the conspiracy of the Satanic Jews who seek to murder and enslave us.
You can’t have one without the other.
Recommended Reading
Book: Apocalypse Now: On the Revelation of Jesus Christ
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