While crowds of anti-Zionists protested at Israel's 'criminal siege of Gaza' outside the Israeli embassy in London yesterday, Gaza's few remaining Christians concluded a very sombre Christmas.
In a report from Gaza City, The Guardian's Pheobe Greenwood said she had been told that by local Christians that after seizing control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas effectively cancelled Christmas, and that any open celebration of the holiday is met with threats of arrest or worse.
The manager of Gaza City's Bible bookshop was brutally murdered soon after Hamas took power.
'People here do not celebrate Christmas anymore because they are nervous,' Imad Jelda, an Orthodox Christian, told Greenwood. Fewer than 1,400 Christians now live among Gaza's 1.5 million Muslims.
Two brothers from another Christian family explained that most of their family had been forced to flee Gaza under threat of Muslim violence.
One of the brothers told Greenwood, 'This is not a Christian environment. There are no good universities [for Christians], there is no opportunity to work, no apartments to rent and so no way we can get married. We have no future here.'
Meanwhile, Israel's enemies continue to blame Israel for the dwindling number of Christians in the Holy Land.
Expect Israel's antagonists to gloss over and dismiss The Guardian's rare truthful report regarding the true reasons behind the disappearance of Christian communities in the region.
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