Wednesday will likely be the final Christmas morning in the little town of Bethlehem. For Christians anywhere near the conflict between Gaza and Israel, Christmas will come after 14 months of bombings, sniper fire, missile strikes on every church and Christian hospital, and the violent deaths of tens of thousands of civilian women and children. 

Israeli leaders and their backers in the Western world have made their intention blindingly clear: They mean to ethnically cleanse the region of its native populations – among them the Christians of the West Bank, including in Bethlehem, and now even as far as Damascus.

Gaza, keep in mind, is about half-populated by children. As Bethlehem’s Christians look on, they will no doubt remember that when they chant the Liturgy of the Holy Innocents during the Christmas season. 

“Conservative figures show that more than 6,000 women and 11,000 children were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military over the last 12 months,” reported Oxfam in September. Those numbers have grown considerably since then, and by some estimates outstrip the death tolls of all other wars in recent memory.

The common talking point from defenders of Israel’s actions is that in every single instance, the women and children killed by the Israeli military were being used as human shields by Hamas terrorists and that Israel is therefore not to blame for their own acts of killing, but their enemies are. After well over a year of unrelenting bloodshed, however, that repeated claim has been worn down to the point of absurdity. 

In the first place, the notion of terrorists systematically setting up women and children as shields ahead of every Israeli onslaught, day after day, week after week, hundreds and hundreds of times, to the tune of tens of thousands of dead civilians, is on its face a strained and far-fetched conspiracy theory given the numbers.

The obvious alternative description of what is happening—Israel’s military indiscriminately killing those tens of thousands—has now settled into every honest mind as factual.

But another factor that gets in the way of simplistic rhetoric is the number of Christians in northern Gaza—in a community with absolutely no connection to militants—who have come under brutal attack by Israel.

And here again, the most obvious explanation is likely the truth of the matter: Bent on a campaign of ethnic cleansing, Israel Defense Forces have found Christians in northern Gaza to be a particularly stubborn obstacle—and have therefore been obliged to target them in particular.

Snipers have killed unarmed Christian women on church properties. Missile strikes have deliberately gutted Christian locations housing refugees, including hospitals and, later, makeshift infirmaries harboring wounded survivors of past attacks. All because these Christians—natives with deep roots in the land—will not leave.

If it weren’t for these Christians, it would also be easy to spin a simple anti-Israel (or, to the most brutal, pro-Israel) narrative about this ongoing travesty. A story about Jewish colonizers oppressing and abusing the mostly Muslim people of Palestine in a kind of self-anointed Holy War against those they see as rejecting the one true God or refusing to adopt Western political values.

But if Christians are driven completely out by Christmas 2025, it won’t be thanks to Israel alone. In fact, if there’s any guarantee of that outcome, it lies in the West—in the silence of Christians who have forgotten their First Love, the God Incarnate, born in Bethlehem.

This is the Holy Land, remember, where the first patriarchs of what would become Christendom originally preserved and brooded hopefully on God’s promise: “You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”

It’s where the Semitic peoples who first accepted Christ have lived and worshiped since before the year 100 A.D. Their churches were built by Christian communities founded by Jesus’s handpicked apostles. St. Paul personally visited and wrote to them. They share more blood with the Jews who first embraced the Church than today’s Israelis do even with those who rejected it (see the work of Israeli-American geneticist Eran Elhaik).

Given the current unchecked aggression of Israel’s controversial and unpopular Netanyahu government, and the near-total silence of Christians in the wider world as their coreligionists face extinction in the place of Christ’s birth, I really believe this Christmas will be the last one Christians celebrate in the Holy Land for the foreseeable future. 

It’s a chilling prospect. Israel’s current campaign to rid the land of these people spells a future for Christians almost as black and foreboding as the situation of God’s chosen people at the time of His First Coming: seemingly bereft of the kingly line of David, with no earthly defenders, shrinking within the oppressive grip of global empire.

But there’s also hope.

Like the Christ who was first born among them, the Christians of the Holy Land have truly become a sign of contradiction—a complicating factor and a stumbling block to those who want quick and easy solutions suited to the interests of superpower nations.

But Christ also commanded us to treat the least of our brethren who follow Him as if they were Himself. And the Lord Who called Himself a stumbling block to the wicked also promised to be a rock of salvation and a source of God’s power and wisdom to those who believe—and who obey.