It must be wonderful to be in the Holy Land for Christmas

Thanks to Facebook many of my old friends know that I live in Israel. Most of them are not Jewish and have never been to Israel -- yet they have an idealized vision of Israel at Christmas.

It's actually very funny because most people who have never been to Israel (predominantly non-Jews) seem to think that you are going to get shot by a sniper the minute you exit the plane at Ben Gurion airport.... unless, of course, it is Christmas!!!! And then for a few days, I guess they just figure that we are all walking around (safely) singing Christmas carols, hugging our fellow man and waiting for the three wise men to show up, hot on the tail of a really big star. Does anyone out there see the flaw in this logic?

Bad news for you non-Jews out there who have never been to Israel: you are sadly deluded. This past Sunday, December 25th, while you were all home waiting for Santa and turkey, we in Israel were experiencing a regular old Sunday.

Sorry about that. There's just no nice way to deliver bad news.

This past Sunday I got up, walked the dog, did a few errands, visited with a friend from Canada, cleaned my house a bit, did a load of laundry, and so went the day.

Now it strikes me that somewhere in the Holy Land someone must have been celebrating Christmas. It all started here and I am sure there are some stragglers who want to recreate that time and all the special feelings that supposedly went with it. I mean, it is possible. I have seen the odd Christmas tree in Haifa in previous years and I am sure if you hiked to the top of Mount Tavor, the Greek Orthodox church up there must have been preparing for something, but the truth is that Bethlehem and Nazareth are Arab cities and rest assured they don't buy the whole Jesus thing. Well actually, in terms of tourist dollars, I am sure they can fake it, but when have you known Islam to be tolerant of people with different beliefs? Exactly.

According to the website www.ajc.com there were almost 100,000 visitors to Bethlehem this Christmas Eve. As for Nazareth, my Google check didn't up much although there are more Christians living in Nazareth then you will ever find in Bet Lechem (Bethlehem to you).

Here's what Wikipedia (my favourite source for miscellany) says: "Christians are the smallest religious group of the Abrahamic religions in Israel. Most Christians living permanently in Israel are Arabs or have come from other countries to live and work mainly in churches or monasteries, which have long histories in the land...

"According to historical and traditional sources, Jesus lived in the Land of Israel, and died and was buried on the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, making the land a Holy Land for Christianity. However, few Christians now live in the area, compared to Muslims and Jews. This is because Islam displaced Christianity in almost all of the Middle East, and the rise of modern Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel has seen millions of Jews migrate to Israel..."

So, there you have it. Jesus was Jew so of course he lived here. All the Jews lived here way back when ... Jesus was knee high to a grasshopper!

I hate to disappoint my old friends. Particularly the one who wrote to me on Facebook last Sunday after I sent him a merry Christmas message: "It must be wonderful to be in the Holy Land for Christmas."

Actually, it's wonderful to be here everyday.

Christmas in my Israel

Last Thursday I sent a business letter to someone I work with in Canada. Hours passed and I didn't hear back from him despite his normally prompt responses. I commented to someone in a second email that I was surprised by the first guy's silence but that person didn't write back either! Okay, I was now perplexed.

A few hours later, I received an email from the first guy telling me that he was in British Columbia (and not Toronto) with his family and he gave me another contact for my URGENT request.

First of all, it wasn't an urgent request but after I read between the lines (and yes, it took a minute or two) I realized what he was really saying: It's two days before Christmas, don't you have anything better to do with your time than bug me for work information?

In retrospect I couldn't agree more but at that moment I got my annual Christmas shock. Had Christmas snuck up on me again? Who the hell knew it was Christmas anyway?

The answer to the last question is approximately two or three billion people in the world. However, the truth was that I wasn't one of them.

Yes, I was embarassed. I wrote a profuse apology letter acknowledging that while I live within an hour's drive of both Bethlehem and Nazareth, I just had not realized that it was almost Christmas -- and yes, I would talk to him in January. For the records, he didn't write back. However, I started to think about Christmas ... for about five seconds. Maybe 10. And then I went back to my day.

Friday I went to the club to exercise. Not something I like to do at the best of times, but every now and then I run out of good excuses so off I go. Christmas didn't surface again until I was standing in the shower, tangentially listening to the music being pumped into the shower area over the loudspeakers. And then, there it was again. A Christmas tune. Not a Christmas hymn, but a well-known Christmas song.

By this point I was starting to feel overwhelmed with Christmas. I was up to two Christmas incidents in two days! In fact, I was so inundated with Christmas that when I finished getting dressed and left the change room at the club, I went to the office and said: "What's with the Christmas music? This is a Jewish country!"

The receptionist in the office just looked at me like I had come in ranting about the Messiah being at the front door of the Country Club. It was one of those 'what-exactly-is-your-crazed-religious-problem' looks? She told me that whatever it was about the music that was bothering me, I should take up with the radio station that was playing it. And the truth was, she was totally oblivious to my Christmas music concern. Living one's entire life in a Jewish country makes one totally desensitized to such things. All she heard was "music".

I soon realized that this was only a problem for me -- the ex-Canadian who was highly sensitive to Christmas in Israel. For the receptionist, it was simply Friday, December 24th.

Saturday I sat in synagogue as I do every Sabbath. No Christmas moment there. But when the Sabbath ended and I turned on my computer, there it was, in the Jerusalem Post and Ha'aretz. Fortunately, it was all good. After years of war and the resulting destruction of the Bethlehem economy, the tourists are flocking back for Christmas and the city is happy. So happy, in fact, that the people quoted in the Jerusalem Post article, wished hopefully for on-going peace.

Now THAT would be a Christmas miracle in Israel worth experiencing.

It never feels like Christmas here

After spending 40 years celebrating Christmas -- even if it was only tangentially -- it was surprising how quickly I forgot all about it the first year we lived in Israel. I remember the day very clearly. We were sitting in the kitchen having dinner and I had to check the calendar for some other reason. As I scanned December looking for the date I needed, I noticed that it was Christmas Day.

At that moment I just couldn't believe that Christmas had crept up on me completely unnoticed. Considering that in Canada everyone shifts into Christmas mode right after Halloween, I was amazed that it was dinner time on Christmas Day before I even realized it. And considering I live a hop, skip and a jump from both Bethlehem and Nazareth, it was rather ironic.

So here I am, eight years later, on the verge of my eighth Christmas in the Holy Land, and all I can think about it what is going on in my Holy Land (yes, as I said ... within a 90 minute drive to either of the two key locations in the Christmas story.)

First is the complex matter of Gilad Shalit. For those of you who don't know his name, he is an Israeli tank solider who was ambushed and captured by our good friends Hamas 1278 days ago. Normally Hamas and their likes prefer to leave us squirming in our lack of knowledge as to whether our captured soldiers are still alive or not. Usually, after we have released several hundred of their killers back into the world, they like to send us back our ONE or maybe TWO soldiers in pine boxes. So far, it hasn't happened like that this time, but I am not going into the details of why I think that is.

What I will address is the fact that, once again, on this regular December day, Israel is torn apart by what the best course of action is in the Shalit situation. What is best for all of Israel? Not an easy question to answer.

We have a chance to get Gilad back alive -- which is what every Israeli parent with an army-aged child wants. But the price of his release is so very high -- it requires Israel to free hundreds and hundreds of terrorists with blood on their hands. And we know full well that, with very few exceptions, these prisoners were not rehabilitated in Israeli jails and that, once they are back on the streets, they will inevitably kill more Israelis. Needless to say, all of those families who have lost members at the hands of terrorists are against the deal. They are already victims of previous attempts to get some of our soldiers back.

Each side has a legitimate argument and I do not envy the people who will have to make the final decision. Our enemies are not men of integrity. They do not value life. They are scumbags. (This does not include all the innocent people living under their rule.)

However, my second story for the day involves the Israeli scumbags. Yes, we have them too. Unfortunately.

In the midst of the holiday season I hate to discuss upsetting things but today, after reading the newspaper, I feel like I have no choice.

Yesterday's Jerusalem Post reported the most upsetting story I have read in a long time. A Florida family that recently came to live in Israel has just been through one of those ordeals that keep parents up at night worrying.

Their teenage son was arrested for some minor mischief and ended up in Youth Detention. While there he was physically and sexually abused by both the staff and other teenage inmates. When his father came to visit him he had just been through a beating and he begged his father to get him help.

The father tried everything that any normal panic-stricken parent would try to do to protect his or her child. He was ignored by the authorities and dismissed out-of-hand. He hired a lawyer who was so shaken and upset upon meeting the teenager that he could barely discuss it on record.

Together they have worked around the clock trying to get this kid out of juvvie. Needless to say, the family says they are leaving Israel as soon as they possibly can.

At the heart of problem is the fact that the parents are new immigrants and totally out of their element trying to maneuver through the Israeli Justice System. The details of the case appear tenuous although it is difficult to say for sure because the source of all my information is the Post. And heaven help anyone who relies on newspapers for accurate information.

I am an immigrant and although I have not had such a nightmarish experience (thank God) I do understand the helplessness an immigrant feels. A new system (that in some ways is inferior to the system you left behind). A different language. A different mentality. A different culture.

Israel is a wonderful country on many levels, however, at the end of the day, the one thing that North Americans naively expect is that it is a democracy similar to the one they come from. It is not. As I have said before on the odd occasion, Israel is a third-world country dressed up to look a first-world country.

So, as the Christian world enters a special time of their year, it is very easy to see why Christmas doesn't cross my mind anymore.