Last Christmas in Bethlehem

With its Christmas displays cancelled, Bethlehem resident Christy Anastas writes about a bleak future for its Christian Palestinian community.

Christy Anastas

Christy Anastas is a Bethlehem resident. She is a Palestinian advocate for nonviolent ways of mediating a more stable Middle East.

A church gable featuring a cross, a Madonna and angel Christmas decorations.

2017 Christmas decorations on the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem

Jana Humeedat, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Religious minority groups, like Christians, represent about one per cent of the overall Palestinian population. We feel stuck between a rock and a hard place in this conflict. As a consequence of this war, many of us are already planning to emigrate once the opportunity arises. If this happens, Bethlehem will virtually become a non-Christian city. This would be a sad outcome given it was the birthplace of Jesus Christ and that in the early 1900s the Christian population used to be just under 85 per cent. Now Bethlehem's population is approximately five per cent Christian. After this war we fear that these statistics would decrease even more. The main source of income of the city heavily relies on tourism, with almost 70 per cent of Bethlehem’s GDP due to religious pilgrims from all over the world visiting Jesus Christ’s birthplace, especially during Christmas.

This is the first year for decades, when all Christmas festive displays have been cancelled in Bethlehem. This decision taken by Bethlehem municipality and the Palestinian church is a sobering and poignant one and comes with a financial heavy price paid by locals. Such traditions have been kept for decades, even during the second Intifada, so that between 2000 to 2005 a Christmas tree in Manager Square was still displayed each year. Even the Covid-19 pandemic did not stop Bethlehem from decorating the entire city. However, today many Palestinian Christians are not in a festive mood. The Israel-Hamas war is in its second month and has already a higher death toll than during the whole of five years of the second Intifada.

A ceasefire is what Palestinian Christians will be praying for during this Christmas, alongside praying against the perpetual cycles of death, violence, and destruction.

In my opinion it feels fitting to stand in solidarity with those who mourn, inspired by Paul’s letter to the Romans encouraging Christians to “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn”. During such devastating circumstances of the civilians in Gaza, Palestinian Christians are heartbroken at the enormity of lives lost and the desperate conditions experienced especially by children. The desire to celebrate the birth of the most important child in Christianity’s history is dimmed by the death toll of children in Gaza during this war. An ancient biblical proverb offers a powerful depiction of what it would be like for us Christians to celebrate Christmas as usual. It would have felt “like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.”

However, the announcement of the cancellation issued by the head of Bethlehem municipality, was made exclusively in honour of Palestinian “martyrs”, in Gaza and the West Bank. This disappointing statement distorts the church’s role in the region as a peace builder and the bridge amongst different communities and ethnicities. In fact, it is an utterly missed opportunity for the church to demonstration its ethics and values in the region, especially when confronted with losses of lives across all ethnicities and religions. A more inclusive nuanced statement that could have honoured the suffering of all, could have been worded along the lines of offering tributes to the devastating losses of lives in the Israel-Hamas war since the 7th of October, without any discrimination or prejudice. That old proverb continues to say, “if your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.”

The exclusivity of the statement's approach made by the churches was a lost opportunity to express a more authentic side of Christianity to the world revealed from its birthplace. It could have counteracted the way the church was portrayed in Europe during the Holocaust. It could have been the chance to respond in a less indifferent manner to the plights of the Jewish people in the region, rather than reiterate a similar stance of the European churches during World War II.

A ceasefire is what Palestinian Christians will be praying for during this Christmas, alongside praying against the perpetual cycles of death, violence, and destruction, inspired by what our brothers and sisters in Gaza have conveyed to us in private communication. Christians in Gaza are pleading for peace and stating that as a community, they oppose violence. The zero-sum approach towards this war has made it difficult for us Christians to be true to our faith without being condemned or oppressed for it. When we call for a ceasefire, we are accused of supporting terrorism and denying Israel’s right to self-defence. However, when we want to acknowledge the suffering of the Israeli side during the 7th of October, we are deemed to be traitors. Our objective isn’t to attempt to prevent Israel from defending itself; rather, to suggest that the consequences of inflicting violence and bloodshed in retaliation could reinforce a stronger hold for violence and extremism in the region.

Therefore, most Palestinian Christians do not feel they have the freedom to stand for their beliefs and the churches in the region are not portraying the best paradigm. In my opinion, this is one of the main factors behind the drastic decline of the Christian population generally especially in Bethlehem. It is also why they no longer hold as much power as they used to in influencing the culture and mindsets in the area. Their roles became more politicised which has gradually led them to neglect standing up for truth until it has become too dangerous to even express it. This could well lead to a reality where this would be the last Christmas in Bethlehem for a majority of Christian families.

Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Justice

15 October 2024

5 min read

Will clinicians and carers objecting to assisted death be treated as nuisances?

The risk and mental cost of forcing someone to act against their conscience.

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

A tired-looking doctor sits at a desk dealing with paperwork.

Francisco Venâncio on Unsplash.

After a formal introduction to the House of Commons next Wednesday, MP’s will debate a draft Bill to change UK legislation on Assisted Dying. Previously, a draft Bill was introduced in the Scottish Parliament in March 2024, and is currently at committee stage. Meanwhile, in the House of Lords, a Private Member’s Bill was introduced by Lord Falconer in July and currently awaits its second reading. These draft Bills, though likely to be dropped and superseded by the Commons Bill in the fullness of time, give an early indication of what provision might be made on behalf of clinicians and other healthcare workers who wish to recuse themselves from carrying out a patient’s end of life wishes on grounds of Conscientious Objection.

There are various reasons why someone might want to conscientiously object. The most commonly cited are faith or religious commitments. This is not to say that all people of faith are against a change in the law – there are some high-profile religious advocates for the legalisation of Assisted Dying, including both Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain and Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Even so, there will be many adherents to various faith traditions who find themselves unable to take part in hastening the end of someone’s life because they feel it conflicts with their views on God and what it means to be human.

However, there are also Conscientious Objectors who are not religious, or not formally so. Some people, perhaps many, simply feel unsure of the rights and wrongs of the matter. The coming debates will no doubt feature discussion of how changing the law for those who are terminally ill in the Netherlands and Canada has to lead to subsequent changes in the law to include those who are not terminally, but instead chronically ill. The widening of the eligibility criteria has reached a point where, in the Netherlands, one in every 20 people now ends their life by euthanasia. This troubling statistic includes many who are neurodivergent, who suffer from depression or are disabled. It is reasonable that, even if a Conscientious Objector does not adhere to a particular religion, they can be allowed to object if they feel uneasy about the social message that Assisted Dying seems to send to vulnerable people.

“You will often find that legislation that provides a right to conscientious objection is interpreted by judges these days in a way that seems to treat conscientious objectors as nuisances”

Mehmet Ciftci

Conscientious Objection clauses can themselves send a social message. A response to the Scottish Bill produced by the Law Society of Scotland notes concern over the wording of the Conscientious Objection clause, as it appears to be more prescriptive in the draft Bill than in previous Acts such as the Abortion Act of 1967. In the case of any legal proceedings that arise from a clinician’s refusal to cooperate, the current wording places the burden of proof onto the Conscientious Objector, stating (at 18.2):

In any legal proceedings the burden of proof of conscientious objection is to rest on the person claiming to rely on it.

The Bill provides no indication of what is admissible as ‘proof’. Evidence of membership of a Church, Synagogue, Mosque or similar might be the obvious starting point. But where does that leave those described above, who object on grounds of personal conscience alone? How does one meaningfully evidence an inner sense of unease?

The wording of the Private Member’s Bill, currently awaiting its second reading in the House of Lords, provides even less clarity, stating only (at 5.0):

A person is not under any duty (whether by contract or arising from any statutory or other legal requirement) to participate in anything authorised by this Act to which that person has a conscientious objection.

Whilst this indicates that there is no duty to participate in assisting someone to end their life, there remains a wider duty of care that healthcare professionals cannot ignore. Thus, a general feature in the interpretation of such conscience clauses in medicine is that that the conscientious objector is under an obligation to refer the case to a professional who does not share the same objection. This can be seen in practice looking at abortion law, where ideas around conscientious objection are more developed and have been tried in the courts. In the case of an abortion, a clinician can refuse to take part in the procedure, but they must still find an alternative clinician who is willing to perform their role, and they must still carry out ancillary care and related administrative tasks.

Placing such obligations onto clinicians could be seen as diminishing rather than respecting their objection. Dr Mehmet Ciftci, a Researcher at the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics and Public Life at the University of Oxford comments:

You will often find that legislation that provides a right to conscientious objection is interpreted by judges these days in a way that seems to treat conscientious objectors as nuisances who are just preventing the efficient delivery of services. They are forced to refer patients on to those who will perform whatever procedure they are objecting to, which involves a certain cooperation or facilitation with the act.

This touches everyone, even those who (if the Bill becomes law) will still choose to conscientiously object. Therefore, it is important to consider that the human conscience is a very real phenomenon, which means that facilitating an act that feels morally wrong can give rise to feelings of guilt or shame, even if one has not been a direct participant.

Psychologists observe that when feelings of guilt are not addressed, if they are treated dismissively or internalised, this can significantly erode self-confidence and increase the likelihood of depressive symptoms. But even before modern psychology could speak to the effects of guilt, biblical writers already had much to say on the painful consequences of living with a troubled conscience. In the Psalms, more than one ancient poet pours out their heart to God, saying that living with guilt has caused their bones to feel weak, or their heart to feel heavy, or their world to feel desolate and lonely.

If the Conscientious Objection clauses of the new Bill being proposed on Wednesday are not significantly more robust than those in the draft Bills proposed thus far, then perhaps that is something to which we should all conscientiously object? There is much to discuss about the potential rights and wrongs of legalising Assisted Dying, but there is much to discuss about the rights and wrongs of forcing people to act against their consciences too.