Christmas Should Not Serve as a Political Weapon in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

For Christians, the message of Christmas is clear: in His love and mercy, God sent His only son to bring salvation to all nations.

Yet earlier this month, when Pope Francis hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican for their first in-person meeting in three years, Abbas lectured the Holy Father that the Christmas season is a time for Christians to “pay attention to the suffering of the Palestinian people” and their desire for an “independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.” 

The holiday should not be a prop for political leaders advancing their agendas, nor should church leaders encourage such regrettable behavior – especially from those with a long-record of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

While Christians should be concerned with the suffering of all people, Abbas only propagates hatred. Only last year, he claimed that Hitler did not persecute the Jews because he hated them, but because his victims were moneylenders. After all the work the Church has done to repudiate the antisemitic legacies of the past, giving Abbas a platform undermines such progress.

What’s more, his visit came just days after the Vatican unveiled a nativity scene featuring a manger draped in a keffiyeh, which the Vatican, after public outcry, removed without explanation of how it appeared in the first place. Clearly, some within the church do not understand the importance of rejected politicized approaches to the holiday.

And the problem goes well beyond the single incident at the Vatican. Amid the war between Israel and Iran-backed terror proxies, Palestinian “resistance” nativity scenes have popped up at Christian churches across the United States and abroad. That is why all faithful Catholics should be concerned that political messaging has infiltrated the beating heart of the Catholic world during the holy season of Advent. 

Advent is a time of immense hope, during which Christians prepare their hearts and minds for the arrival of Jesus, a Jewish man of King David’s lineage, as foretold by the scriptures. As Pope Francis recalled in 2013, “the Jewish people are still, for us, the holy root from which Jesus originated.”

Over the last half century, the Church has made strides in its relationship with the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel. To date, Israel remains one of the safest places in the Middle East for Christians to live freely and practice their faith. Yet, these hard-earned ties of friendship are endangered by political efforts to recast Jesus, a Jewish man, as a champion of Palestinian resistance just over a year after so-called resistance fighters from Hamas slaughtered 1,200 men, women, and children in southern Israel. 

Meanwhile, Abbas has shown little friendship to the Christians and Jews of the Holy Land during his 21 years in power after being elected to just a four-year presidential term. The Christian population of the West Bank has continued its steady decline under Abbas’ leadership and, according to a survey conducted in 2020, Palestinian Christians were twice as likely to desire to emigrate from the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank than their Muslim counterparts. A month prior to the October 7 massacre, Abbas said in a speech that Hitler targeted Jews due to their “social function related to money, usury,” a lie he has told on multiple occasions. He also insisted European Jews descend from a people known as the Khazars rather than ancient Israelites, a claim intended to undermine the Jewish people’s right to a state of their own. Abbas is also on record denying the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and a central part of both Jewish and Christian tradition.

I share the Vatican’s prayer for an end to war and suffering in the Holy Land—and I mourn the loss of innocent life, whether Palestinian or Israeli. However, I implore Pope Francis, and my fellow Catholics, to avoid turning the birth of our Savior into a political messaging opportunity while alienating our Jewish brothers and sisters in the process.

Shannon Walsh is the deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s National Security Network. Follow her on X: @ShannonSWalsh.