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24. Dec 2006

Glædelig jul - dagen i dag

 
Bethlehem
Den 24. december er dagen, hvor vi fejrer, at en ung palæstinenser blev født i Bethlehem for ca. 2000 år siden.

I modsætning til flere af sine landsmænd gik den unge Jesus dog ikke ind i kampen mod besættelsesmagten (som i 70 e.k. førte til Jerusalems ødelæggelse og jødernes fordrivelse fra Palæstina - den jødiske diaspora havde dog allerede længe været større end antallet af jøder i det historiske Israel), men begyndte at opfordre folk til at omvende sig, thi Himmeriget var nært!

Dette førte til dannelsen af en ny religion under indflydelse af især Paulus, der som det vil være bekendt blev statsreligion i Romerriget og herefter kom vidt omkring. I processen måtte den dog aflægge sin oprindelige karakter af verdensforsagende mysteriereligion og dommedagssekt og i stedet tilpasse sig de politiske realiteter, hvorved man kan argumentere for, at den solgte dén sjæl, man stadig kan finde i ren form i Bibelens Nye Testamente.

Blandt andet grundlagdes i netop Bethlehem Fødselskirken, der er én af de ældst kendte kristne kirke - oprindeligt grundlagdes den i år 325, skønt de nuværende bygninger er af senere dato.

Endnu i dag er 12% af Bethlehems indbyggere kristne. I et område med en århundredelang tradition for fredelig sameksistens er der ingen konflikt mellem byens kristne og muslimske indbyggere, men de kristne tilhører traditionelt over- og middelklasse og har dermed haft bedre muligheder for at søge væk fra de mere og mere ubehagelige og ydmygende økonomiske og sociale forhold, som besættelsesmagten har pålagt områdets indbyggere i de seneste år.

The Independent's Johann Hari spørger, hvordan forholdene mon ville være for en palæstinensisk moder, om hun skulle bringe en Frelser til verden i Bethlehem i denne vor oplyste tidsalder:
a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.

Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. "What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured," she says.

Fadia clutches a set of keys tightly, digging hard into her skin as she describes in broken, jagged sentences what happened. "It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on," she says. She was already nervous about the birth - her first, and twins - so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.

They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. "Obviously, we told them we couldn't wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn't understand."

Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. "I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital," she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could "certainly" have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.

"Now Mariam is at an age when she asks me where her brother is," Fadia says. "She wants to know what happened to him. But how do I explain it?" She looks down. "Sometimes at night I scream and scream." In the years since, she has been pregnant four times, but she keeps miscarrying. "I couldn't bear to make another baby. I was convinced the same thing would happen to me again," she explains. "When I see the [Israeli] soldiers I keep thinking - what did my baby do to Israel?"
Under den kristne staffage er julen naturligvis en ret hedensk affære, en blanding af den romerske Saturnalia-fest med den gamle nordiske solhvervsfest, hvorfor nisser og andet godtfolk da også stikker deres hoveder ekstra langt frem i disse dage.

Insisterer man på den kristne forbindelse kan det som det fremgår af ovenstående være en god lejlighed til at fundere over, hvor mange fremskridt verden egentlig har gjort siden år 0. Gør man (som undertegnede) ikke, kan jeg blot ønske mine læsere en glædelig jul og ønske, de bruger højtiden til rent faktisk at tænke, pause og feste, og ikke blot lader sig rive med af den formalisme og materialisme, der i for høj grad præger jule-"ræset" i vore dage. Livsglæde og eftertanke fremfor sprut- og gavefræs.

Glædelig jul til alle!

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