(no subject)

[la_vie_noire]

Invisible Bethlehem.

On Christmas Eve, Christian pilgrims from all over the world flock to the birthplace of Jesus Christ, while millions more remember it in prayers and carols. But the Palestinian inhabitants of Bethlehem remain virtually invisible to most Christians, who treat the tiny city as an almost mythical place that somehow exists beyond the realm of the real world.

[...]

Even in 2002 when Israel besieged Bethlehem, there was little movement in the West. While Israel pounded the city and terrorised its inhabitants, Western anger was directed at the Palestinian fighters who took refuge from the Israeli army in the Church of the Nativity.

The fact that the fighters were sons of Bethlehem families, that some of them were Christian and that to the residents of the city they were defenders confronting an invading army, was lost on a West marred by its hostility towards Muslims.

In 1994, The New York Times Magazine published an article by Jeffrey Goldberg about the arrival of "Allah" in Bethlehem. Although Allah simply means God in Arabic, in the explicitly racist article about the (limited) transition of power from Israel to the predominantly Muslim Palestinian Authority (PA), the word was used to convey a warning.

Goldberg spoke of the residents of the city, Muslim and Christian alike, with disdain, and while the article was an extreme example of support for Israel and disregard for Palestinians, it merely reflects the preconceived and media-reinforced biases that continue to prevent the Western public from associating Bethlehem with the wider concept of occupation.