I’ve said it before, and now Melanie Phillips says it – although much more skilfully than I ever could. Christmas seems to be replacing Holy Week as the Blood Libel Season.

English Church leaders are visiting Bethlehem, as part of what is turning into an annual Christmas ritual of demonising the Jews. Fr Madden, an English Catholic priest, indulges in an exercise in malice-with-a-caring-face, by replacing the Christmas crib with a replica of the Jewish anti-terrorist barrier.

Melanie Phillips writes about both these rituals of hatred in The Church and Israel

Quite apart from the lies and distortions embodied by these displays, what also comes across is a distressing echo of the most ancient prejudice of all against the Jews. For the replacement of the traditional nativity by Israel’s security fence carries the unmistakeable message that the Palestinians are the modern version of the suffering Christ, being persecuted by the Jews. It’s the crucifixion libel all over again.

Ruth Gledhill’s sane voice also cuts across the hypocritical whining noises, with the clarify of the child pointing out that the emperor has no clothes, in O crazy town of Bethlehem.

Yet when it comes to the undoubted plight of Christians in the Holy Land, it is strange that there is so little criticism of Hamas, under which a tiny minority of Christians are struggling to survive, and so much of Israel, where Christians in general flourish.

Both articles are well worth reading, and while you are at it, Dry Bones has his own personal experience of the dire effect of the Palestinian take-over of Bethlehem.