Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem, the Palestinian town where Christians believe Jesus was born, were subdued. This year's Christmas celebrations across Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories were indeed cancelled in solidarity with the people of Gaza. In Bethlehem, in particular, shops and restaurants were closed, tourists and pilgrims were absent, and locals prayed for Gaza.
At the beginning of October, Hamas militants initiated an unprecedented attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing around 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages. In response, the Israeli military conducted air strikes on Gaza and launched a ground offensive.
So far, according to the United Nations reports, close to two million people were forced to leave their homes in Gaza. More than 20,400 Palestinians have been killed since Israel declared war in response to the October attack by Hamas and, according to the UN, a quarter of the population is now starving.
Fighting has also intensified: more than 100 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes late on Sunday, Christmas Eve, and bombings struck a residential block in the Maghazi refugee camp near Deir al-Balah, that was also hit despite previously being identified by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as an "evacuation zone" for Palestinians fleeing the fighting. In brief, Christmas was one of the single deadliest days of the 12-week-old conflict.
In Manger Square in Bethlehem, outside the Church of the Nativity, built on the spot where Jesus is believed to have been born, worshippers lit candles and prayed at the nativity scene that featured figures standing amid rubble and razor wire.
In the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, the nativity scene featured instead a baby Jesus again among rubble, but also wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh, to remind people of all the children - around 8,000 - who died in Gaza since October.
During the Christmas Eve midnight mass service at the Church of St. Catherine in Bethlehem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, remembered how when Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, Mary gave birth to the Lord in a manger because there was no room for them. "My thoughts go to Gaza and its two million inhabitants," he then added. "Truly the words 'there was no room for them' describe their situation, which is now known to all. Their suffering ceaselessly cries out to the whole world. No place or home is safe for anyone."
You may be a believer or not, but this lack of "room" continues to be the cause of many tragedies and divisions in our time as well. The world is a vast place, but there is no room for Palestinians and no safe place in Gaza (even the Catholic Holy Family church, in Gaza City, that was turned into a makeshift shelter, was repeatedly hit by Israeli airstrikes); there seems to be no room for migrants arriving in Europe by boat after a long journey and for people suffering and in need.
We should take a break today and ponder on this constant displacement suffered by people who are told that there is no room for them, and also think about other deadly raids and bombings that occurred around Christmas and that marked history.
The large-scale aerial and ground operations in the Gaza Strip that should be targeting Hamas leaders, but just seem to be killing innocent civilians, evoke indeed other attacks carried out around Christmas during the Second World War.
In October 1940, the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) switched its methods to night attacks. As an important inland port and manufacturing centre, the city of Manchester, in the UK, together with the nearby industrial estate in Trafford Park, were both targeted.
The most devastating attack took place in the days immediately preceding Christmas. The attacks were particularly violent between 22 and 24 December: the Luftwaffe executed an aerial assault over the course of two consecutive evenings. Nearly 450 bombers dropped 467 tons of explosives and 1925 incendiary bombs. Along with destroying countless buildings and blocking major access points to the city, the attack took an estimated 684 lives and left more than 2,000 injured. The event passed to history as the "Manchester Blitz" or "Christmas Blitz".
Among the buildings wholly or partially destroyed there were the Free Trade Hall, the Royal Exchange, the cathedral, the Victoria Buildings, Salford Royal Infirmary, Manchester United's ground at Old Trafford, Cross Street chapel, and Victoria Station.
Manchester was a textile manufacturing centre and, hit by the bombs, the inflammable textiles in the clothing and cotton goods warehouse district of Portland Street, George Street and Piccadilly, contributed to spreading the flames. Eventually, the military had to be called in to dynamite some buildings so as to create fire breaks. Parts of the area were still smouldering over a week later.
Witnesses also reported of seeing a sort of snow falling over Manchester at a certain point after a loud bang. Yet it wasn't snow, but sweet wrappers scattered to the wind by a bomb that had hit Long's Toffee Works.
Art can help us remembering these events: the Manchester Art Gallery archive, for example, preserves several pencil sketches by Arthur Sherwood Edwards, an architect and sculptor who worked for Manchester City Council's Architects Department, showing the destruction left by the blitz.
Made using thick bold pencil strokes, the sketches show the relics and rubble in Manchester: in a sketch it is possible to see the ruins of St Augustine's Church in York Street, off Oxford Road; in another there is the Royal Exchange with rubble in the foreground.
Then there's Back Water Street with a solitary telephone box left standing; Gartside Street with a building in ruins surrounded by rubble and more destroyed buildings in Back Irwell Street and Albert Street.
The bombing took a matter of hours to destroy the city; the rebuilding took years to complete. The Free Trade Hall, for example, was restored in time for the 1951 festival of Britain, and the cathedral was completed seven years later.
At times the altar in Manchester cathedral is covered with a cloth embroidered with the design of a phoenix: the bird symbolizes the city rising again from the ashes of the Christmas blitz.
A city can still rise from the ashes, houses can be rebuilt, but it is not possible to bring back the dead, while for the living the trauma persists. In his homily during the Christmas mass, Pizzaballa stated regarding the situation in Gaza, "It is not enough to talk about a cease-fire; we don't want a cease-fire, we want the hostilities to end. We have to stop this nonsense."
Any war is nonsense, and no raid or bombing can be justified at Christmas or at any other time of the year. It is therefore imperative for us all in the international community to unite and take a decisive stance against this ongoing turmoil and work towards the healing of people ravaged by conflicts.
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