Open Bethlehem: the campaign to free an occupied city
Every Christmas this site has focused upon Bethlehem, birthplace of Christ, historically a beautifully polyglot community where Christians, Muslims and Jews coexisted peacefully before the founding of Israel in 1948. Open Bethlehem is a positive campaign to raise awareness around the world about the plight of Christian and Muslim Palestinians in this historic holy city, and the fate of the city itself. The presentations featured in the embedded videos are also available to be downloaded and viewed in powerpoint from the Open Bethlehem site—this is recommended for viewing the slides in full screen, enabling the reading of the text clearly and at one’s leisure.
Previous posts on Christmas and Bethlehem can be found here:
- Bush and Blair banned from Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity
- Christmas in Bethlehem
- Occupation affecting Christians, too
- The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism
- Occupied Bethlehem: How children are faring behind the Wall
- Success! Bethlehem twins with local Sydney Council
Organisations
- Open Bethlehem
- The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem
- Twinning with Palestine Network — International Page
Cartoon by Leunig
Caption: “Look at that! Brilliant! You kill the leader and you nip the whole movement in the bud.”
Bethlehem Today–State of Emergency (download powerpoint)
Rachel’s Tomb (download powerpoint)
The Open Bethlehem Campaign (download powerpoint)
Some sixty year ago my government decided in their wisdom to send me over to this land of milk and honey” the Promised Land”. I was an eighteen year old young man from the town of Cambridge a seat of learning where problems of the universe were discussed and the outcome of these wise decisions spread throughout the world.
Imagine my dismay if you have the intelligence, to find that a wandering tribe from history wanted to claim the land of Palestine as their own home land and my duty as a soldier was to keep the invaders apart from those who had work and lived there for generations.
I had never experienced seeing death by boiling, dismemberment and suffocation before of other human beings and the agony that goes with it; in one hour or less it happened to me in this Promised Land of milk and honey.
I asked myself then and now after sixty years what was the reason for the gift of this Promised Land of death and destruction that is what it has been turn into by that wandering tribe who had the whole world as its home.
The maker of the universe whoever it is gave all humans the ability to communicate, and to create, what we are doing in destroying what was given to us. I believe it is the lack of wisdom and debate on the subjects that affects us all and outcome will be the destruction of the world as we all wish it to be a Land of Milk and Honey for all.
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