Could the story of the Nativity happen today in Palestine?
Unlikely.
For
would a poor young unmarried teenage girl in the West Bank, who had
just announced that she was pregnant, not become a victim of male
‘honour’?
Even
if she did survive, she and her new husband would have found it
extremely difficult to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to road-blocks
and travel restrictions placed on local inhabitants by the occupying
Israeli military; the shepherds would have probably lost their grazing
lands to compulsory acquisition for the erection of the ‘Security Wall’
and Jewish colonial settlements; and the three wise men from Iraq
(Mesopotamia) would have being denied entry visas.
But even if the
birth did manage to occur in Bethlehem, Israeli military border
controls would have probably barred Mary’s family from crossing into
Egypt to escape religious persecution thus sealing their faith.
Yet
there is no doubt that an adult Jesus of the New Testament and of a
modern Middle East would have ended their lives in a similar terrible
fashion. For anyone preaching a message of peace and love, a call for
people’s liberation from poverty and oppression, of respect for all
races and creeds, of freedom for prisoners, and an end to the oppression
of women would have made himself both an enemy of the state and of a
religious fundamentalism that preaches intolerance towards non-believers
and death to all apostates and blasphemers.
Yes, death would have come either
from an American-made laser guided missile or from execution by a Islamic death
squad.
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