Appeal

The Bethlehem Association

Christmas Appeal - 2007

" For I was hungry and you gave me food… Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me."

Here's your chance to heed Jesus Christ's word in the very place and anniversary of his birth! Many children in Bethlehem are not getting enough nourishing food to eat. Marcelle Batarseh of the Arab Womens' Union and wife of the mayor told us about the school lunch program the women have organized for kindergartners in Bethlehem.

Fifteen hardworking women in the kitchen of the Arab Women's Union prepare 1,000-1200 nutritious meals which are then delivered to six schools in Bethlehem five days a week

While we overeat during our winter holidays, let's save something for these children and their families in Bethlehem. The Bethlehem Association will be sending money to various charities in Bethlehem this Christmas. Send us your contribution earmarked, if you like, for the Arab Women's Union. This lunch program is just one of the many needs that Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour face in these troubled times. The Wall has surrounded them like a prison and only half the people are employed. This is much worse than the Roman occupation of Christ's time!

This is the time everyone asks for your contributions. However, we feel Bethlehem, as the Christmas town in great distress, deserves first claim on your compassion and kindness. We must help them! We count on your generosity!

PLEASE
RENEW YOUR ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP
(IT ENDS DECEMBER OF EACH YEAR)
AND
SEND A CHRISTMAS DONATION FOR BETHLEHEM.

Although it is distressing, we would like you to look at the informative and moving power point slide presentation at this link. It shows the amount of damage and destruction that was inflicted on Bethlehem in 2003. You should review it to get an idea of the pain and suffering that the Bethlehem Area has been going through since 2001. It took a lot of time and effort to assemble it. (if you don't have Microsoft Power Point on your computer, download the viewer from here)

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Bethlehem Appeal - 2006

Dear Friends and Members of the Bethlehem Association:
(11/20/2006)
Six years have passed since the second millennium celebration of Bethlehem - birthplace of Jesus Christ. With the help of generous outsiders, the town was spruced up and new buildings erected in time for the celebrations. The town put a brave face on the reality of the Israeli occupation outside, a dire economy, and the encroachment of yet more Jewish settlements.

Much of the renovation work was destroyed in the four years of the Intifada. The town was under siege or curfew for months by the Israelis; the Church of the Nativity itself was besieged for weeks, Bethlehem University coped as best it could with many closures, and people had no income as the economy came almost to a halt.

Although it is distressing, we would like you to look at the informative and moving power point slide presentation at this link. It shows the amount of damage and destruction that was inflicted on Bethlehem in 2003. You should review it to get an idea of the pain and suffering that the Bethlehem Area has been going through. It took a lot of time and effort to assemble it. (if you don't have Microsoft power point on your computer, download the viewer from here)

It has been disheartening for us living in North America to see how bad things could get over there and still no criticism of the Israeli occupation or actions but plenty of blame for the Palestinians. But we must not give up. There have also been many honest people who have spoken up for Palestinian rights. The tide is turning.

As an indication of how much we care, members who attended the Bethlehem Association Convention in New Jersey gave more money than ever before to both the Charitable Fund and also the Scholarship Fund. As a result of this support from our members, we are able to send more to Bethlehem. We are sending $30,000 this month to different charities and needy families in Bethlehem and an additional $29,000 to support thirty scholarship students at Bethlehem University this year. Take a look at the charities elsewhere on this web site.

However, to be realistic, this is just a drop in the bucket in terms of the needs of the thousands who live in Bethlehem. We need to do so much more. Think of it when you do your Christmas shopping and allocate a small amount for your Association to send as a gift for Bethlehem where it all started!

Wishing you all a blessed Christmas and a fulfilling and peaceful New Year!

Edward and Joan Hazboun,
David & Michele Handal.

PLEASE RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP WHICH ENDS AT THE OF EACH YEAR, AND SEND A CHRISTMAS DONATION FOR BETHLEHEM.

Rainbow over Bethlehem and Shepherds Field on Christmas Eve 2000.
"An angel of the Lord rose by the shepherds, and the glory of the Lord shone about them, and they feared with a great fear. And the angel said to them, 'Fear not for behold, I bring you glad tidings of a great joy...for there have been born to you this day a Savior in Bethlehem... Glory to God in the highest, and peace upon earth among men of goodwill." St Luke 2

Bethlehem - The Manger Square area - December 2002

Dear Friends:

The land of Christ’s birth is still in turmoil. With Bethlehem residents under curfew again this Christmas, people are locked up in their own homes, with barely enough food to eat, and very little money to spend, Christmas celebrations have been cancelled.

I am sure you have heard and seen how bad the situation is. The constant curfews have worsened an already terrible situation: The Christians of the Bethlehem district, are facing economic disaster. 90% of the people are out of work; the hotels are empty and the shops and restaurants are closed. Many have had their homes destroyed or damaged. In the past 2 years in the Bethlehem district, more than 125 people have been killed and over two thousand six hundred wounded; many of whom have been permanently incapacitated and hundreds incarcerated. Two of the oldest churches in Christendom, Saint Nicholas and Saint Michael in Beit Jala have been badly damaged. The Nativity Church also suffered a lot of damage during a two month siege in April 2002. The infrastructure of the three towns - roads, electricity, water and sewage, have been severely damaged. All the construction and improvements made for the bi-millennium have been totally destroyed. Bethlehem University and many schools have been hit with rockets and machine gunfire. Even the girls hall of residence has been rocketed. See Reports and Photos.

We have received so many appeals for help - from the three Mayors, from the Churches, from various charitable organizations that we helped in the past, from clinics and hospitals and from many individuals. Without work or any income, they have no way to to help themselves. They are looking to you, their townspeople, relatives and friends, to help them in any way you can.

Your donations, no matter how small, are urgently needed.
Help lift their morale and replace despair with hope and may God repay your generosity many fold. Please GIVE NOW.

Appeal to Churches in the USA - December 24, 2002
- Sadly, many Americans in USA are not aware of the existence of Christian Palestinians.
  And when they hear of the term "Arab Christian", they often presume it's an Arab person
  who converted to Christianity, just like we hear of Americans converting to Islam. They are
  unaware that Christian Palestinians have served and protected the Christian Shrines in the
  Holy Land for centuries, and that many of them are descendents of the early Christians.
- A letter was sent to over 120 churches on the East Coast in the USA, demanding that
  they inform their congregation about the plight of Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem
  & the Holy Land.
- Go to our Appeal to Christian Community and
  Appeal from Jane Wolfe, Director of World Peace & President of International YWCA.

Christians in the Holy Land, By Albert E. Hazbun, KCHS

Presentation to the Catholic Leadership Conference,
(Philadelphia, PA., Oct 17-18, 2002)

BETHLEHEM NEEDS YOUR HELP :

If you have not done so yet, please click below to send your contribution and renew your membership. Unless you renewed recently, your membership lapses at the end of December each year. To be proud of this good work and to support the Association's activities please send your membership renewal now.

Edward A. Hazboun

President

APPEAL From His Beatitude Patriarch MICHEL SABBAH:
Christmas Message 2002
To our faithful and to all men and women of good will

Brothers and Sisters

1. Our Christmas message for this year is first of all an imploration to God and an act of worship before the unfathomable mystery of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God : "The Word became flesh, he lived among us " (Jn 1:14).

The message of Christmas is one of justice, peace and love. Yet our land is full of hatred and bloodshed. Not for this God wanted us in this Holy Land. It is not for making the Holy Places a field for our struggles. They should be rather a meeting point where together we encounter God, where we build together our dwelling and His dwelling. We must also realize with God, that in this dwelling, more holy than the places themselves is the human being whom we see today humiliated, deprived from his freedom and often from his life too.

Therefore our message is also an appeal to all persons of good will, to the international community, and to all our Churches over the world, to wake up and to come and help both peoples of this land to make peace, based on justice, equality and dignity. To all we say: Do not forget this land and do not abandon us to our fate.

Some might perhaps say: it is impossible today to live together. But we say: living and having peace together is still possible. What is impossible is to ask for security on one side, while the other is being oppressed, to have one people occupying when the other is under occupation. This is really impossible. But with equal justice for both sides, when the Israeli lives on his land and state, and the Palestinian also has his land and state, then living together will be possible.

2. Many people ask us: how shall we celebrate Christmas this year? What is the meaning of the interdiction to President Arafat to attend Midnight mass?

Our difficulties did not begin this year. Since generations we live in a bloody struggle. However we tell everybody: Christmas is first of all a feast for prayer and an act of faith. Our faith invites us to meditate on the mystery of God, the mystery of the Incarnation of His Eternal Word, and of His presence among us, as light and life for all: "What has come into being in him was life, life that was the light" (Jn 1,4). Therefore this year also, and despite all the difficulties, we will meditate this truth of our faith and we will raise our prayer to God, and we will celebrate the feast as usual.

3. As for the prohibition to President Arafat to attend Midnight mass we say that it is a useless measure; if the Israeli Authorities were on the real path towards peace they would have spared themselves issuing such inappropriate measure.

As for the siege and the humiliation imposed on the Palestinians of Bethlehem itself and on all the Palestinian towns and villages, and the demolition of houses and the killing of people, all these measures push us rather to renew our courage, our hope and our love even to those who make hard our life. Therefore we have to pray, may God put an end to all that and give us instead justice, dignity and love. The present difficulties will not compel us to cancel our feasts. Besides the sufferings already imposed upon us, it is not necessary to dispossess ourselves from the joy of the feast and from our duty to worship God and present Him ourselves with all our sufferings.

We address an appeal to the Israeli Authorities to take away once and for all the check-points around the Palestinian towns and villages. If they have to remain we say to our faithful: transform them in places of prayer. From places of humiliation, hatred and death, as they are now, transform them in places for worship. Call for prayer gatherings there, may God inspire intentions of justice and peace to those who ordered to establish them.

4. Our Christmas message for these days - as the siege is still imposed on the towns and villages, and as we face with death there as well as in the Israeli towns and streets - is an appeal to put an end to the siege and then to the occupation and an appeal to stop bloodshed on both sides, in the Palestinian towns and villages and in the Israeli towns and streets. If the present leaders do not succeed in making peace, there is only one solution: open the way to other leaders, perhaps they will succeed better where the present ones have failed. Our appeal is to make peace, to stop injustice, to reach the so much invoked security for the Israelis, to put an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, which is the source of all evils and all obstacles accumulated in the hearts of the leaders and the peoples in front of peace.

Christmas is faith and prayer, Christmas is light in the darkness and the oppressions we live. The angels have sung in the sky of Bethlehem: "Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to people of good will". We hope that this people will grow more and more so that the message of the angels given to humankind from our land will be also a message to us and transform us in peacemakers. We hope and we pray so that the feast which will come back next year will bring us better times with justice, peace and holiness for all of us in this "Holy Land".

Amidst all trials, I wish you all, brothers and sisters, and you especially inhabitants of Bethlehem, Christians and Moslems, I wish you a holy Christmas.

+Michel Sabbah, Patriarch
Jerusalem, 18.12.2002

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