Sierra Leone Telegraph: 26 December 2023:
Christians in Bethlehem reflected on the birth of Jesus yesterday with prayers, but there was very little to celebrate, if at all, as Palestinians in Gaza continue to face heavy pounding from Israeli military that has taken the lives of over 20,000 people, 9,000 of whom are children.
We will continue the bombing, says Israel’s Prime Minister – Benjamin Netanyahu today.
In his Christmas sermon, Bethlehem Pastor Rev. Munther Isaac said: “If you fail to call this a genocide that is on you, it is a sin and a darkness you willingly embrace.”
Addressing his congregation at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem on 25th December 2023, Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac expressed deep outrage over the global silence and inaction towards the Gaza crisis.
Isaac highlighted the tragic loss of life, including over 9,000 children, and the displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians.
He strongly criticised the Western world for its lack of moral compass, double standards, hypocrisy and racism, and particularly denounced the church’s complicity in the crisis, stating: “We are outraged by the complicity of the church.”
This is what he said:
When violence becomes the embodiment of and indeed the conduit for competing ethno-religious and national selfhoods, politics and diplomacy in their international dimensions are rendered impotent, castrated on the altar of delusional chauvinistic grandeur and outrageous sense of national invincibility and supremacy.
Small wonder then that the birthplace of the three major Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – is now a vast regional killing field. The victims and their slayers are all caught up in a horrifying drama of indescribable inhumanity. So much so that those whose forebears were the targets not so long ago of Nazi, industrial-scale crematoriums are themselves the Hitlers of our time, impelled as they are by blind, vengeful rage.
Torrents of tears for the countless helpless victims of the raging, apocalyptic inferno that is Gaza.