CAT ESP ENG FRA POR EUS POR DEU ITA GRE ÀRAB
Merry
Christmas! Every year I make a manger that is my interpretation of
where Jesus would have been born if he had been born that same year
2023.
This year I imagined that Jesus was born in Gaza. I hope you like it and help you see what Christmas represents.
I
have made a lively video of the manger with the narration. Here's the
video of the manger with English subtitles, and then you will find the
text.
Joseph and Mary have gone to the Gaza Strip to visit some Palestinian friends. They’ve been lucky, they were allowed to cross the border.
María is in an advanced state of pregnancy, but since it is just a quick trip and the meeting is important, it was worth going.
They woke up startled by the explosions. The day before there had been an attack in Israeli territory and many people had died.
The border is closed to everyone, and a bombing has started. There are no safe areas in the Gaza Strip and everyone is very afraid. They bomb schools, hospitals, and entire residential buildings.
They are told to leave the city, to go south, but the first to do so have died on the way from an attack. They are trapped, with all the inhabitants of the Strip.
The day of delivery is approaching, and Joseph and Mary continue searching for shelter, food and water, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find it because Israel has cut off all supplies. For now, it is impossible to return home. Bombs have fallen very close, many people have died, including a large number of children, but they were lucky and only have minor injuries. All the houses they could go to are destroyed. The bombings are massive and indiscriminate.
With the suffering of all those people, they are aware that for the government of Israel, right now, they are only a hindrance. It doesn't matter if they are thirsty or hungry, or if they have just lost the people they love most; not even if they are seriously ill or die. There is no truce. They are a number, or collateral damage. They're not even sure about that. They are poor and perhaps not even a number.
María notices labour pains and they don’t know where to go. Added to the fears of the first time giving birth is the anguish of knowing that no one will be able to help them because the bombs, the wounded and the fear leave no room to have a proper birth. And even less for the birth of an enemy, since it is their government that is massacring the population of the Gaza Strip.
It's getting dark and cold. They take shelter among rubble in a sunken building with a roof that miraculously remains intact. María goes into labour and the news spreads quickly around the area. Despite knowing that they are Jews, health workers show up to help. And water! (which someone must have hidden). And some food, even though everyone has been hungry for days. Under the rubble and the bombs, everyone returns to the only thing we should always be: people.
In the early morning the child was born. Miraculously the bombings have stopped because it is Christmas. The parents name him Jesus, which means "the saviour", since in the midst of this massacre of human lives a child has just been born and he has been the only one capable of making everyone forget where he comes from and what he is, to only worry about who he is. A child who will be salvation and who will work to end war and the absurdity of violence between human beings.
From Palestine 2023 years later, from the Gaza Strip, for TV Belén, Laia Bonet
