Christ still under the rubble in Gaza, Palestinian pastor says in Christmas message

Christ is still under the rubble in Gaza as the besieged Palestinian territory is being annihilated, Munther Isaac, a noted Palestinian Christian pastor and theologian, said in his annual Christmas Day message on Tuesday.

Isaac, who pastors the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and the Lutheran Church in Beit Sahour, said Christians are marking the birth anniversary of Jesus Christ in Palestine “under the harshest and most difficult conditions.”

“Bethlehem is besieged. Jerusalem is wounded. And Gaza is being annihilated. This year we say, Christ is still under the rubble in Gaza,” he said in his message posted on X, formerly Twitter.

The death toll from the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on Palestinians has risen to 45,317 with 107,713 others injured since October 7, 2023, according to a statement issued by the Palestinian health ministry on Wednesday. Most of the victims are children and women.

Christmas celebrations in the occupied Palestinian territories as well as the war-ravaged coastal territory Gaza have been cancelled again this year amid the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

Isaac, the director of the highly acclaimed and influential Christ at the Checkpoint conferences who has been vocal about the Israeli genocidal crimes in Gaza and occupied West Bank, said Jesus was born “as a human to stand in solidarity with us in our suffering.”

“He was born among those under occupation, to stand in solidarity with the oppressed and the repressed,” he wrote on X. “In his childhood, he became a refugee, to stand in solidarity with the displaced and the exiled.”

The Palestinian Pastor added that Jesus “was a victim of the occupier and the extremist.”

“He came to save us from our selfishness, greed, desires, and our pursuit of power and arrogance,” Isaac wrote. “He is Jesus, born in Bethlehem... to him, we give love and worship.”

Meanwhile, the Christmas parade in Bethlehem has once again been affected by the ongoing Israeli genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza and the continued violence in the occupied West Bank.

For the second year, the Patriarch of occupied Jerusalem al-Quds and local Palestinians shared their disappointment over events unfolding in the Gaza Strip.

An estimated 1,100 Christians used to live among 2.3 million people in Gaza before October 2023, and an additional 50,000 in the occupied West Bank, notably in Bethlehem and East Jerusalem.

The Israeli regime has destroyed at least three churches in the past 445 days of genocide.

One of them is the Church of Saint Porphyrius, the oldest church in Gaza and the third oldest in the world, which was attacked first time in October 2023, days after the launch of the genocidal war.

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