wfn.org | Bethlehem Christians and Muslims March Together

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For immediate release

Contact: Dr. Mitri Raheb
Christmas Lutheran Church, and
International Center of Bethlehem
Bethlehem, Palestine
Tel: (972-2) 277-0047
Fax: (972-2) 277-0048
Email: annadwa@planet.edu
Website: www.annadwa.org

BETHLEHEM, Palestine,  December 10, 2000--More than 2,500 Christians and 
Muslims participated in a candlelight procession through the streets of 
Bethlehem's Old City last night, in the largest gathering since the visit of 
Pope John Paul II last March.  

The procession, sponsored by the International Center of Bethlehem, a 
ministry of the Christian Lutheran Church here, included men, women, youth 
and children.  They were accompanied by international friends including the 
Ecumenical Delegation from the United States. 

The silent candle-march on the second Sunday in Advent, was the first major 
family event since the beginning of the Intifada.  The marchers, who were 
greeted by church bells as they passed each of the town's many churches, 
carried banners proclaiming "The Light of Right, Not the Fire of Might" and 
"Justice for the Land of Peace."

According to the Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Christian Church and 
general director of the International Center, the marchers "gave testimony to 
the fact that people want to be proactive and take control over their own 
lives."  

The Ecumenical Delegation, made of 26 U.S. church leaders who are on a 
solidarity visit to Palestine, participated in the march along with Heads of 
Churches in Jerusalem.

The march ended with the reading of a press release in several languages (see 
below). Raheb said that "the success of the march gives us, as the 
International Center of Bethlehem, the determination to continue with our 
efforts to mobilize the Christian community and churches to take a proactive 
role in determining its future in this land. 

The text of the Press Release follows:

We are marching tonight Palestinian Christians and Muslims, children and 
adults, men and women, locals as well as internationals, to break the silence 
by the world towards an injustice that is committed against our civilians 
held hostage to Israeli might and aggression. 

We are marching tonight to take back our streets, which have been haunted 
with fear and death in the past few months. 

We are marching tonight to tell the world of our continuing 50-year struggle 
to realize our self-determination and freedom.
 
We are marching tonight for the families who have lost their homes to 
missiles and are now refugees, sleeping in a different place each night. They 
have joined the millions of Palestinian refugees waiting to return home. 

We are marching tonight for our children, who are traumatized by the Israeli 
helicopters invading our skies and armed Jewish settlers, roaming our streets.

We are marching tonight to protest the military closure imposed on us, 
causing poverty, misery and hunger.
 
We are marching tonight to give a message of hope and light to people around 
the world seeking justice and freedom. 

We are marching tonight to overcome fear and to light a candle for hope.

We are marching in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, to call upon all of 
you to break your silence and play an active role for the cause of peace and 
justice, so that the light of the resurrection would shine again upon 
Jerusalem.
 
Since Advent is the season to prepare for Christmas, many of you wrote us 
asking us to share some thoughts and materials that express our situation and 
can be used in the Christmas season in your churches and among your 
congregations. Therefore, we would like to share with you some of our 
thoughts as well as those of our friends, which express Christmas this year 
in Bethlehem. From the many materials that we have we decided to share with 
you a hymn, a reflection and some thoughts. 

On Christmas night Christians from all over the world turn their eyes and 
hearts to Bethlehem as they sing "O, little town of Bethlehem".  Our friend 
Rev. Don Hinchey rewrote the words of this hymn after receiving our last 
newsletter. His words call upon Christians around the world to see the real 
Bethlehem today and invite them to work on bringing peace to the town from 
which peace was proclaimed to the world 2000 years ago--a peace that is real 
and that gives hope to the people. 

"Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie; 
Above thy deep and restless sleep, a missile glideth by. 
And over dark streets soundeth the mortar's deadly roar 
while children weep in shallow sleep 
For friends who are no more. 

"How silently, how silently their hope has gone away. 
No longer rings; no choir sings in shepherds' fields this day. 
The angels in the heavens are hushed in sad lament. 
Messiah's home has been burned down 
By those to whom He was sent.
 
"Oh sing for wholly innocents who hurled a hopeless stone. 
Who ran from tank, who, wounded, sank in gutters all alone. 
Their eyes by bullet blinded, their lungs by gasses burned. 
In sad exile, the Holy Child knows 
Herod has returned. 

O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. 
Your love bring down on David's town; drive fear and hate away. 
Awake the ire of nations, let justice be restored. 
Rebuild the peace in silent streets 
Where once your love was born." 

Also we would like to share with you and your congregations the following 
thoughts by our colleague Dr. Dorothy Jean Weaver, a Mennonite from 
Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the United States, who has spent the last three 
months with us here in Bethlehem teaching at our course for tour guides.. 

"It was not an especially pretty world, the world into which Jesus was born.  
The Palestine of Jesus' day was a world of grinding poverty for the masses, 
hard labor for a daily pittance, wealthy tax collectors, who made their 
fortunes by extorting money from the impoverished, and brutal military 
occupiers, whose preferred method of crowd control was crucifixion for all 
those who dared to rise up and resist the occupation.  

"Nor was the town of Jesus' birth an especially peaceful place, and hardly 
the idyllic Bethlehem of our beloved Christmas carol, lying 'still' under the 
'silent stars' in 'deep and dreamless sleep.'  The Bethlehem into which Jesus 
was born was one which was soon to know the terrifying clank of military 
steel, the blood-curdling shrieks of terrified children ruthlessly slashed to 
death by Roman soldiers 'just doing their job,' and the heart-rending cries 
of anguished mothers inconsolable over the brutal massacre of their innocent 
infants.
 
"Two thousand years later the picture looks strangely similar.  The Palestine 
of Christmas 2000 is a world of massive unemployment and growing poverty.  
And the Bethlehem of Christmas 2000, with its sister cities Beit Jala and 
Beit Sahour, knows only too well the terrifying sounds and scenes of war: the 
menacing drone of helicopter gun ships, operated by soldiers 'just doing 
their duty' and raining down death and destruction from the skies; the 
rapid-fire report of machine guns aiming live ammunition at live human beings 
in deadly confrontations on the ground; the heavy and horrifying boom of 
tanks which send shells smashing through the stone walls of ordinary houses, 
fill children's beds with glass shards, and turn defenseless civilians into 
refugees without a home; the screaming of Palestinian children, too 
frightened to go to bed; and the voiced and unvoiced anguish of Palestinian 
parents, incapable of protecting their little ones from the ongoing terror 
and the ever-growing destruction all around them. 

"This is the world and this is the hometown of Jesus Emmanuel, 'God with us.' 
 When God comes to be with God's people, it is not to an idyllic, fairy-tale 
world of beauty and peace and 'dreamless sleep.'  There would in fact be no 
need for 'God with us' in that 'never, never' world.  The world that Jesus 
Emmanuel comes to is rather the real world that all of us know somewhere, 
somehow, at some time: the world of poverty, extortion, callous cruelty, 
unrelenting terror, and inconsolable grief.  

"It is this world, and none other, into which God comes to be with us in the 
person of Jesus, the defenseless child and the crucified Messiah.  The God 
who comes to be 'with us' in Jesus, born in Bethlehem, is a God who walks our 
streets, experiences our daily struggles, shares our pain, weeps our tears, 
suffers our humiliations, and dies the most agonizing of human deaths at the 
hands of his enemies.  

"This is our God, the one who 'comforts those who mourn,' claims 
'peacemakers' as 'children of God,' and grants inheritance in the kingdom of 
heaven to those who 'hunger and thirst for justice.' 

"This is Jesus Emmanuel, God with us. And this is the 'good news of the 
kingdom.'  Thanks be to God."
 
Two thousand years ago the angels proclaimed to the shepherds of this region 
"Do not be afraid….".  Today we are all called upon to echo this message to 
the frightened people of Bethlehem and to remind them that these words are 
not empty words or "cheap grace" but rather a concrete action towards a just 
tomorrow.  

In this spirit our Center is reaching out to all those who are suffering, 
reminding them of their membership in God's family and giving them the 
necessary support to keep their joy alive. 

We invite you to join us and support our work in incarnating God's peace in 
Bethlehem today.  We invite you to help us, especially during these hard time 
when the Center is challenged with so many needs and where our minsitry is 
needed as never before.
 
^From Bethlehem we wish you a blessed Christmas and New Year. 

The General Director and Staff of the International Center of Bethlehem. 
  
-End-