'What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today?'

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 10:44 AM on December 24, 2006.

This Christmas card from If Americans Knew (HT: Sam Husseini), takes direct aim at the elephant in the room of Israel/Palestine relations: The Christian Zionists, whose lord and savior probably wouldn't have made it had he been born in today's political reality.

Actually, they would say that given his divine provenance nothing could've prevented his ascendancy, but still...

The Independent's Johann Hari visits Bethlehem this Christmas to retrace the storied steps of the Virgin. It's a sad tale:

In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.

Here's how it ends, but read the whole thing:

Merlin can only maintain these mobile clinics with your help. Leaning in the doorway of her bare clinic, Hindia Abu Nabah says: "Tell your readers that we need their help. There are no Hamas or Fatah foetuses. They don't deserve to be punished. I couldn't stand to look another anaemic woman in the eye and tell her that her baby will be underweight or malformed and we don't have iron supplements to give her. I can't go back to that. I can't."

Tagged as: israel, palestine, christmas

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.