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Christmas marks the birth of Jesus of Nazareth over 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, Palestine, in what is now the Israeli Occupied West Bank. The occasion is both solemn and celebratory. The Church of the Nativity now stands on the site considered to be Jesus' birthplace, in an animal stable, where the newborn is believed to have been placed in a feeding trough, or manger, as depicted in creches the world over. "Christ in the Rubble" is the name of one such creche, located a short walk along an ancient stone-paved street from Jesus' recognized birthplace, inside Bethlehem's Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church. There, the baby Jesus, swaddled in a Palestinian keffiyeh, rests atop a pile of rubble, depicting Israel's relentless attack on the people of Gaza. Last year, the pastor of that church, Reverend Isaac Munther, gave a sermon that went viral, called "Christ in the Rubble." As the bombardment of Gaza nears its 450th day, and with well over 45,000 Palestinians killed there since October 2023, Munther's latest Christmas sermon was titled, "Christ is Still in the Rubble."

"'Never again' should mean never again to all peoples," Munther said in his sermon. "'Never again' has become 'yet again' -- yet again to supremacy, yet again to racism and yet again to genocide. And sadly, 'never again' has become yet again for the weaponization of the Bible and the silence and complicity of the Western church, yet again for the church siding with power, the church siding with the empire."

The reports from Gaza are grim. Israel continues to attack the besieged enclave's ailing health care system, detonating remote-controlled explosives just outside the Kamal Adwan Hospital and forcing the removal of sick and wounded patients from the Indonesian Hospital. Israel also shelled the Al-Awda Hospital, one of the Gaza Strip's main obstetric facilities. Jesus' mother, Mary, was lucky to find a quiet stable in which to give birth. Now in Gaza, babies are delivered with a complete lack of sanitation, clean water or proper medical care. Most agricultural infrastructure, including stables and mangers, have been systematically leveled in Gaza, in what Oxfam has labeled "the late stages of ethnic cleansing."

"So, today, after all this, of total destruction, annihilation," Munther continued, "Gaza is erased -- millions have become refugees and homeless, tens of thousands killed. And why is anyone still debating whether this is a genocide or not?"

Expanding on his sermon, Rev. Issac Munther spoke on the Democracy Now! news hour. He said: "We're still seeing images of children pulled from under the rubble. It's unthinkable to me that it's been more than 14 months now into this genocide, and we're still seeing the same images. It seems like we're powerless, and it seems that the world is content with letting this go on. And here in the West Bank, as we watch from Bethlehem what's happening in Ramallah or Hebron, we wonder, 'Are we next?' Israel has made it clear they plan to annex the West Bank next year. What would this mean on the ground?"

He added, "Our fear here in Bethlehem is that there is no one who's going to hold Israel accountable."

Israel notoriously ignores international law, with full support, militarily and diplomatically, from the United States. South Africa, joined now by 14 other nations, has a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice, while the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for crimes against humanity, against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant. Gallant recently made a trip to Washington DC, where he met with high-ranking Biden administration officials, all of whom ignored the arrest warrant.

Netanyahu, however, reportedly won't attend the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, given that Poland says it will honor its obligations to enforce ICC arrest warrants. Israeli columnist Gideon Levy, wrote this week in the newspaper Haaretz":

"Eighty years ago, Jews were given a choice between two legacies: Never again, the Jews will never face a similar danger, or Never again, no one in the world will ever face a similar danger. Israel clearly chose the former option, with a fatal addition: After Auschwitz, Jews are permitted to do anything.

"Israel has implemented this doctrine in the past year as it never has before."

In one of only a handful of times in the past century, Christmas this year coincides with the first day of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. In that spirit, let there be light. Let there be life. There must be a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, now.

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Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 1,400 stations. She is the co-author, with Denis Moynihan and David Goodman, of the New York Times best-seller "Democracy Now!: 20 Years Covering the Movements Changing America."

(c) 2024 Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

Distributed by King Features Syndicate