My chronicle

It is the Eve of Christmas and even in our secularised society carols are heard everywhere.

"Christ was born in Bethlehem" followed by a bleak report from Manger Square: controlled by the Palestinian Authority but surrounded by the might of the Israeli Army.

I would weep if it were not the bitter anger which I experience. What kind of State is Israel? They have occupied the West Bank and Gaza for decades and do not care a fig about illegality. The United Nations passes motion after motion; Israel ignores them all supported by the United States. Can this really be a state which is based upon Judaism? If so, what has happened to Judaism?

Christ was born in an occupied country. Palestine is once more occupied. Who cares?

Jesus wept over Jerusalem; today he must also be weeping for the town of his birth and for an Israel which has learned nothing from the suffering of Jewish people. It refers to that suffering incessantly while carving up Palestine. What hypocrisy! No wonder Jesus weeps; but the day of reckoning will surely come.

Daylight is short the nights are long. However, the equinox approaches rapidly. This has not been an easy period for the wruter. Unexpected things have happened which have taken their toll.

But Advent is penitential; and the events to which it aludes also took their toll. Better the pregnant gloom of Advent than the spurious quasi-Christmas which reverberates in the Halls of Capitalism and the Temples of Mammon!