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Father Hanna: This Week Is The Sacred Week Of Pain
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A
priest tries to help up a wounded man being carried out of the
Church of Nativity
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Report By Maha Abdul Hadi, IOL Palestine Correspondent
BETHLEHEM, April 29 (IslamOnline) – “Those who have tortured and crucified Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, are the same who are torturing and crucifying the Palestinian people now.”
With this statement, Father Attalla Hanna, the official spokesperson for the Orthodox Church in occupied Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories, began his talk with IslamOnline’s correspondent, describing the conditions under which Christians in Palestine and the Arab World are living during the Easter Feast.
“We will not give up because we have a strong faith in God and we believe that he is with us. We believe that the Palestinians will rise from their suffering and will defeat the occupation. We strongly believe that the day of freedom is coming soon and that oppression will not continue,” said Hanna.
He added that the ‘evil’ in this world is personified in the cruel Zionism and its racist regime in Israel, adding that this week, which starts from Sunday, April 28 to Sunday, May 5, is the sacred week of pain which Christians live, as they remember the misery of Christ by the hands of the Jews.
Hanna said that the Easter celebrations would be limited to religious rituals in solidarity with the devastated Palestinian families and in condemnation of the Israeli aggression and the siege the Palestinian people are living under.
He added that the all Christian organizations in the Arab world and abroad, have also informed them of their intent to limit the celebrations to religious rituals.
He prayed that God would help the Palestinian people and grants them the strength because the period the country is going through needs strength and patience only.
He added that there is a great need now to unravel all the conspiracies that are being organized around the Palestinian crisis and the Arab world and that is through extensive talk with the world on these issues, so that the world does not remain imprisoned by the Israeli media which distorts the facts.
Hanna and other prominent Christian figures have led Sunday’s celebrations in Palestine.
Fifteen Christians have prepared for a mass in a hiding spot in one of the old buildings in Bethlehem. Christians, of different ages, Catholic and Orthodox, have performed their rituals in an area not far from the Church of Nativity, where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born and which have been under siege by the Israeli occupation forces for nearly a month.
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