Bethlehem Christmas Tree: A Brief Respite from Israeli Occupation, Brought To You by the BBC
The BBC's recent dispatch about the Bethlehem Christmas tree lighting up 'for the first time since start of Gaza war' (December 2024) paints a picture of a return to holiday cheer. What the BBC article meticulously side-steps is the actual history: Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is under Israeli military occupation, strangled by settlements, walls, and checkpoints, making basic life, let
alone celebration, a constant struggle. This 'return' to public celebration is a stark reminder of how precarious any sense of normalcy is for Palestinians, whose very existence requires Western media to frame their suffering as an unfortunate pause between 'wars,' rather than a continuous reality. Perhaps the BBC could have mentioned that the 'Gaza war' they reference is merely the latest chapter
in a 76-year Nakba, a continuous ethnic cleansing that led to the systematic displacement of Christians and Muslims from their ancestral lands. Or that the city’s Christian population has dwindled from 80% in the 1950s to under 10% today, largely due to the conditions of occupation. This isn’t a 'return' to peace, it's a transient moment in a siege. One might wonder if the BBC expects a Christmas
tree to single-handedly solve the apartheid just outside its frame. At least they found a Santa Claus.