Not for the first time, we see that the Times chose to highlight the plight of Palestinian Christians during Christmas in a way that shielded Islamic extremists from criticism.
Indeed, a nearly 1,000 word Times report about the challenges faced by Gaza’s tiny Christian community during the holiday (“The struggle to find Christmas joy for Gaza’s Christians”, Dec. 25) managed to avoid using the word Hamas even once. This is no small feat given the Islamist extremist group’s religious supremacist ideology codified in their founding charter, a belief that non-Muslims can co-exist in Palestinian ruled territories only if they accept Islam’s dominion.
In contrast to their erasure of Hamas from the story of Gaza’s persecution of Christians, the piece, by Amal Helles, mentioned Israel eleven times, including in a paragraph on the death of three Catholics as the result of an unintentional IDF strike on a Gaza City church.
Hamas’ role in starting and continuing the war is airbrushed from the story entirely, despite the fact that the impact of the two-year conflict – which, of course, began with the terror group’s massacre on Oct. 7th, 2023 – is presented as a major cause of Christians’ plight.
Helles, clearly wedded to a narrative which places Israel’s actions during the war as the key element of the story, also deprived Times readers of vital context concerning Christians wishing to celebrate Christmas in Gaza, such as Hamas’ effective ban on public Christmas displays and policies calling for Muslims to limit their interactions with Christians during the holiday.
The journalist’s determination to avoid mentioning Hamas’ discrimination against Christians can be seen in the sole paragraph even hinting at such persecution.
A Christmas tree has not been erected in Gaza City square — a predominantly Muslim area — since the second intifada 25 years ago.
Note that the Times writer avoids any information on precisely why “a Christmas tree has not been erected in Gaza City square”, save that it’s a “predominantly Muslim area” – an odd formulation given that Gaza is roughly 99% Muslim. The wording is also intentionally vague, with passive language whitewashing the role played by Gaza’s political and religious leaders in squashing the rights of the territory’s tiny non-Muslim communities.
Further, Helles gets the timeline wrong, suggesting that the end of public Christmas trees began in 2000, at the start of the second intifada. However, such public Christmas displays were permitted under Israeli rule. As even the Guardian acknowledged in a 2011 article, it was in 2007, when Hamas came to power, that Christmas was effectively “cancelled”.
Also erased from the story is the crucial fact that the population of Gaza’s Christians declined dramatically since the terror group took control of the territory during a violent coup in 2007, dropping from 5,000 to as low as 500 today.
Another telling fact about the dearth of religious freedom for Christians in the territory concerns the plight of converts from Islam to Christianity. So dangerous is the practice under Hamas rule that converts practice their Christian faith in utmost secrecy, with some Christian men growing beards to blend into the general Muslim population
There have also been credible reports of the forced conversion of Christians to Islam, with Bishop Alexios of Gaza stating, in 2016, that the Christians converting to Islam do so “under threats, coercion, compulsion, and force.”
Finally, the Times – by omitting Hamas from the article – fails to report another important element of the story of Christians in the region: the stark contrast between the persecution of Christians by Palestinian leaders and the freedom enjoyed by Christian citizens of Israel. Not only do Israel’s Christians enjoy unhampered religious freedom, but the community, by most empirical measures, while small, is growing and thriving.
Again, we see an illustration of the British media’s failure to assign Palestinian leaders agency, thus denying readers the information necessary to fully understand that the threat posed by Hamas is not limited to Jews, who the group’s pogromists murdered en masse, raped, tortured and mutilated over two years ago.
The Iranian-backed terror group’s continuing hold on Gaza also ensures that Palestinians – including, but not limited to, minorities and political dissidents – will remain enslaved by their totalitarian jihadist cult.
