by Pa Rock
The United Nations and other agencies released a report this past Thursday stating that at least 570,000 people in Gaza, more than a quarter of the territory's population, are starving. The victims, mostly Palestinians and many of them children, are starving and dying because aid trucks are being denied entry into the war-torn area.
On Friday, the day after the release of that devastating report, the UN Security Council voted and passed a resolution calling for urgent steps to immediately allow "safe, unhindered, and expanded humanitarian access (to Gaza) and to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities." The United States and Russia abstained from that vote.
Things are catastrophic in Gaza, and in the other Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territory, the West Bank, the situation in not much better. Palestinian leaders of the Christian denominations in the West Bank have made a unanimous decision to cancel this year's public Christmas celebrations. The West Bank is home to Bethlehem, the scene of the Nativity. This year instead of being displayed in a manger, a swaddled likeness of the baby Jesus, can be seen lying in a pile of rubble.
Three major world religions - Christianity, Islam, and Judaism - claim significant historical ties to the region of the Middle East commonly referred to as "the Holy Land," yet none of the three seem to possess the moral strength or desire to step up and help avert a humanitarian disaster.
That is both shameful and contemptible, and so are nations that don't have the guts to support even a mundane request for aid to be allowed to reach a devastated people.
Christmas this year does not feel very Christian.
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