Especially for the Children of the World: A Christmas Prayer

Department

Art

Document Type

Editorial

Publication Date

12-23-2016

Abstract

Sixty years ago this week an Anglo-America group on a visit to the Holy Land decided to invite two Palestinian Christian children to participate in a narration/radio-recording of the Biblical account of Christ’s birth. To add local color (in the form of authentic live native props), the guidelines specified that the children had to be Jerusalemite Palestinian Christians. While the faces of the three-member committee appear as opaquely blurred portraits, to two eleven year old Palestinian children living in Israeli-occupied West Jerusalem the events that occurred on the morning of December 23, 1956 (60 years to the day) are as vivid today as they were sixty years ago.

And I can’t remember whether these Ajaneb (foreigners) were tourists, American/British missionaries, or members of a fact-finding ligation to the Holy Land.

In search of indigenous, native-born Palestinian Christian children to participate in a one hour radio program to be recorded and beamed on the BBC and The Voice of America on Christmas Day 1956, someone suggested that the Halaby twins fit the bill.

Publication Title

CounterPunch

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