The image of the baby Jesus, peace be upon him, wrapped in a keffiyeh in the manger, which was placed in St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, reminds us of the tragedy that the children of Palestine have been suffering in the Gaza Strip for fourteen months, who are being pursued by the “king,” who tracks their breathing, cuts off the oxygen to their nurseries, kills their fathers and mothers, and besieges, destroys and burns their hospitals, just as King Herod did more than two thousand years ago, when he ordered the killing of every child under the age of two born in the city of the Nativity and its surroundings, after he heard of the birth of Christ, peace be upon him, in the manger.

Herod's descendants are reproducing the incident, with the deadly tools of the age, and in doing so they are drawing from the first well, from which Herod and his followers drew their thoughts, and which shaped their behavior and feelings towards the indigenous inhabitants of the land, who have become targeted in their lives, capabilities, possessions, and even their existence, in the face of the ambitions of the colonists who have invaded their land.

The Pope’s initiative to swaddle Jesus Christ with the Palestinian keffiyeh is a resounding cry and an expression of the enormity of the crime against the children of Palestine, as they suffer their pain, suffering, bleeding wounds, hunger, thirst, and illness in the furnace of the incense burner that consumes their bodies while they are alive.

This year, Christmas comes with sadness for the tragedy that has befallen our hearts with the loss of loved ones in the hell of the raging genocide. The children of Gaza have not been spared from the death that pursues them in their homes, their displacement tents, and in the mosques and churches that they have taken refuge in to escape the “king” who is pursuing them in order to annihilate them.

Stop the genocide now...!