Visual created to reflect the themes in this article

Jumu’ah Al-Hazeeni (جمعه الحزيني)… Sorrowful Friday.

In Arabic, Jumu’ah is Friday, the day of gathering and prayer, and Al-Hazeeni comes from sorrow, a deep, honest sadness, so when we say Jumu’ah Al-Hazeeni, we are really saying “the Sorrowful Friday”, and I’ve always felt that the Arabic holds the truth of the day. It lets it be what it is.

As a Palestinian Christian, this day has never felt like something in the past. It always feels like sliding doors, like time is layered and moving alongside us, like what happened then continues to echo and unfold in different ways now. Maybe it is because these are not distant places we are talking about. They are home, they are real, they are places like Nazareth, Jerusalem, Haifa, Akka, Gaza and everything in between, where the story of Christ is something you feel in the ground beneath you. It’s in our DNA.  It’s a lesson about human behaviour that keeps repeating itself.  The only difference is that today, with technology, we see it for exactly what it is, and it will impact the globe. When we don’t address issues locally that are a result of global power, it will spread………

جمعة حزينة، الله يعطيكم السلام والصبر

And here’s something the world seems to have forgotten: as Palestinians—whether we are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, whether we converted, reverted, or are now secular—we all share something sacred. We are all descendants of the same land that gave the world one of its most transformative figures: Jesus Christ. Palestine didn’t just receive Christianity—it gave it to the world. It is one of the biggest exports in human history. And yet somehow, somewhere along the line, the world forgot that. Or chose to forget it. The land that cradled Christ is now being bombed, erased, and buried under rubble, while many who follow his teachings remain silent.

Every morning, we wake up to another unimaginable horror—yet it's all become disturbingly routine. Another hospital bombed. More health care workers killed while trying to save lives. More children buried beneath rubble. More settlers taking homes that don’t belong to them. More journalists deliberately targeted for daring to report the truth. More people silenced, threatened, and vilified for simply speaking out. And still, all aid has been stopped. There is no food. No medicine. Barely any electricity. The infrastructure is destroyed beyond recognition. What we are witnessing is not just a crisis—it is the systematic dismantling of life itself.

The question on everyone’s mind is: When will this end?

History is watching. And so are our children.