❶ Israeli forces raid charity, shut down prisoners’ rights group
❷ Christian Zionists prefer to ignore Bethlehem’s Palestinians
❷―(ᴀ) Bethlehem Celebrates another Occupied Christmas, By Latin Patriarch Emeritus Michael Sabbah
❸ Brazil Refuses Israeli Settler as Diplomatic Envoy
❹ Israel settlement plan revealed to target strategic Palestinian land
❺ Global Message from Bethlehem: Bethlehem is a beacon for humanity, by Vera Baboun, Mayor of Bethlehem
❻ Poetry by (Fadwa Tuqan)
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❶ MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAELI  FORCES  RAID  CHARITY,  SHUT  DOWN  PRISONERS’  RIGHTS  GROUP
Dec. 29, 2015
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces on Tuesday ransacked the Bethlehem headquarters of the district’s Palestinian Authority-run committee for charitable work as well as a prisoners’ rights group office in Nablus, destroying and confiscating property.
___The treasurer of the Bethlehem charity, Mahmoud Khalifa, told Ma’an that “occupation forces broke into the headquarters at 2:40 a.m. and ravaged the place, breaking down the doors of administrative and accounting offices.”
More . . .
❷ +972 MAGAZINE
CHRISTIAN  ZIONISTS  PREFER  TO  IGNORE  BETHLEHEM’S  PALESTINIANS
Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org
Dec. 25, 2015
Why does America’s largest Christian Zionist organization continue to ignore the plight of its co-religionists in Jesus’ birthplace?
More . . .
Related . . . BETHLEHEM  CELEBRATES  ANOTHER  OCCUPIED  CHRISTMAS,  BY  PATRIARCH  EMERITUS  MICHAEL  SABBAH,  LATIN PATRIARCH  OF  JERUSALEM,  1987-2008.
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.693394
❸ IMEMC NEWS
BRAZIL  REFUSES  ISRAELI  SETTLER  AS  DIPLOMATIC  ENVOY
Dec. 29, 2015
Brazil’s reluctance to accept an Israeli ambassador who is a West Bank colonist has set off a diplomatic crisis and led to concerns in the Israeli government that the clash could encourage pro-Palestinian activism against it.
More . . .
Related. . .    ISRAELI  WINDSURFERS  DENIED  VISAS  FOR  MALAYSIA  CONTEST
❹ THE NEW ARAB
ISRAEL  SETTLEMENT  PLAN  REVEALED  TO  TARGET  STRATEGIC  PALESTINIAN  LAND
Dec. 29, 2015
An Israeli anti-settlement watchdog has revealed that Israel secretly plans to build more than 8,000 settler homes in a strategic section of the West Bank near Jerusalem.
___Peace Now said the homes were among more than 55,000 settler homes on Palestinian land at various stages of planning by Israel’s Housing Ministry . . . .
___The Palestinians strongly object to settlement of the occupied area, saying it would separate a future Palestinian state in the West Bank from east Jerusalem, their hoped-for capital.
More . . .
❺ Opinion/Analysis
THIS WEEK IN PALESTINE
GLOBAL  MESSAGE  FROM  BETHLEHEM:  BETHLEHEM  IS  A  BEACON  FOR  HUMANITY
Vera Baboun, Mayor of Bethlehem
In Palestine, the land which yearns for peace and justice, I live the realities of my Palestinian nation; realities of hegemonic occupation, systematic land confiscation, brutal wars, and an Apartheid Wall. This has been the national saga that my ancestors have lived, we are living, and our grandsons will seemingly have to live. In Bethlehem, the City of the Cradle and the Capitol of the Nativity, we live a life that unceasingly oscillates between reassurance and anxiety, tranquility and panic, gain and loss, and mostly between hope and despair . . . .
More . . .

“TO  CHRIST  THE  LORD  ON  HIS  BIRTHDAY,”  BY  FADWA  TUQAN

But those husbandmen said among themselves, This is the heir; come let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours. And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard.
St. Mark’s Gospel XII: 7-8

O Lord, O glory of the universe,
crucified this year on your birthday,
are the joys of Jerusalem
silenced on your birthday?
O Lord, all the bells
for two millenia have not been silenced
on your birthday
except for this year:
the domes of the bells are in mourning,
black wrapped in black.

Jerusalem along the Via Dolorosa,
whipped under the cross of ordeal,
bleeding at the hands of the executioner,
and the world is a sealed heart
in the face of affliction.
In this hard indifferent world, O Lord,
the sun’s eye is smothered: the world went astray
and was lost.
In the ordeal it did not even raise a candle.
It did not even shed a tear
to wash away the sorrows in Jerusalem.

The husbandmen killed the heir, O Lord,
and raped the vineyard.
The sinners of the world fledged the bird of evil
dashing off to defile the purity of Jerusalem,
damned and infernal, hated even by Satan.

O Lord, O glory of Jerusalem,
from the well of sorrows, from the abyss,
from the depth of the night,
from the heart of plight,
the wails of Jerusalem are raised up to you.
In your mercy, take away from me, O Lord, this cup!

―Translated by Ferial Ghazoul

From: Smith, Michael. Ed. “Contemporary Palestinian Poetry.” Free  Verse. english.chass.ncsu.edu. 2008. Web.
About Fadwa Tuqan