“IT IS because of you that we are free and safe to celebrate this season,” Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte stated in his festive message to troops on December 20.

But most of the world feels everything but “free and safe” this Christmas, and the biblical message of the angels heralding “peace on Earth” rings extremely hollow.

For a second year running, the municipal authorities in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank will not hold traditional events.

“It’s difficult to show any joy or happiness when so many Palestinians in Gaza are being killed and made homeless,” stated a priest at the town’s Church of the Nativity.

The redoubled efforts of the US, Britain, EU and their military enforcer, Nato, to retain control over the extraction of resources, cheap labour, strategic supply routes and markets of the world while ensuring that their economic and political rivals are debarred from doing the same, are bringing war, poverty and misery to millions.

Every means, from direct conflict, the fuelling of proxy wars, threats of escalating aggression, and the conduct of the most terrifying military exercises to the undermining of UN authority and international law, destabilisation of governments, creation and stimulation of sectarian divides, and imposition of catastrophic sanction regimes are levelled at any state that stands in the way of the US, its allies and their neocolonial, neoliberal plans.

And while the mass of people suffers and a doomsday scenario faces the world, the super-rich rake in war profits of trillions. This is why the World Peace Council is saying that it is imperative that we protest in the strongest possible terms at the Nato summit in The Hague in June under the slogan “Yes to Peace. No to Nato”

Every household celebrating Christmas may be receiving its share of dove-festooned cards, but just 45 miles from Bethlehem, Israel’s genocide in Gaza, in which the British government is blatantly complicit, continues despite every possibility of an immediate ceasefire and a long-term resolution through recognition of a Palestinian sovereign state.

Today, the death toll stands at more than 45,000, at least 17,400 of which are children. Most of the 2.1 million population have been forced from their homes and it is anticipated that 345,000 will face catastrophic levels of food deprivation by April.

Israel has attacked Lebanon with devastating results, and now Syria, following the West-supported coup which recently brought Islamist terrorists to power. The beleaguered people of Iran are clearly next in the firing line.

In Sudan, the civil war has become, according to the UN secretary-general, “an utter humanitarian catastrophe.” Eleven million people have been displaced within the country, and over three million have left as refugees. The level of gender-based violence is colossal, with 6.7 million women at risk, especially in war zones, including in Darfur, where rape is used systematically as a battlefield weapon of choice.

The profound tragedy is that the warring sides both stand accused of perpetuating parasitic capitalism through plunder of the country’s resources and the deepening of foreign dependence and are united in the desire to see the mass movement for democracy, justice and progress in Sudan quashed by whatever brutal means necessary.

For them, war is the perfect tool and the most reactionary forces in the world, including Britain, are happy and motivated to turn a blind eye.

The ongoing Ukraine war began in 2014 with the US/Britain/EU-backed coup in Kiev, attacks on the people of Donbass and the massacre of trade unionists in Odessa in May that year.

It, too, could end immediately, but Nato continues to provoke the conflict, not least through massive troop deployments along Russia’s long border with new member Finland and huge Nato exercises such as Steadfast Defender in 2024.

The latter involved 90,000 troops from 32 countries “to showcase Nato’s ability to conduct and sustain complex multi-domain operations over several months, across thousands of miles, and in any conditions, from the high north to central and eastern Europe.”

In Britain, the Starmer Labour government is committed to Nato. It has consciously taken the side of war, developing weapons of mass destruction, boosting military spending across the board, and gifting billions to Ukraine to keep on fighting. It openly backs Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the destabilisation of the Middle East and is flagrantly instigating a cold war against China, including through the deepening of the notorious Aukus pact.

Everything being squandered on war should rather go towards meeting people’s urgent needs, the funding of quality public services — health and social care, education and transport, and lifting people out of spiralling poverty. For our part, we need to win for the cause of peace against the poisonous barrage of the mass media, which insists that all is done in the interests of “the free world” and its values.

The peace movements of the world, including the mass movements of the global South, stand united against imperialism, recognising Nato as the root cause of wars. They stand too for lasting peace, not only on the battlefields but in our neighbourhoods and homes, our communities and societies.

Only in conditions of peace can the struggle for equality, justice, democracy and socialism succeed. Recognition of this gives the seasonal aspiration for “peace on Earth” a whole new meaning.