Christians in the region have little to celebrate this Christmas season. The spirit of the occasion is making headlines everywhere in the Middle East with the spreading of the commercialisation of Christmas and its symbols.
Celebrations can be found in every shopping mall, corner store and community hall in many countries in the Arab world. But sadly, Christian Arabs, especially in Palestine and Iraq, cannot share the joy of the holidays. Israel continues to besiege the Palestinians and only Thursday Jerusalemite families were forcibly evicted from their homes in the occupied city.
In Iraq, Christians are under attack by extremists who aspire to a single-dimensional world. Even prominent Christian Iraqis like MP Younadim Kanna are being targeted by terrorist groups. He recently received a letter through his official mail in the parliament telling him to "leave Iraq immediately". But Iraq is his home and the ancestral home of hundreds of thousands of others like him who find it increasingly hard to remain there.
It is the collective responsibility of political and religious leaders and opinion makers to come to the aid of those victimised among us. We cannot celebrate the joy of the festivities while our brothers and sisters languish because of injustice and violence. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all.
