Bethlehem, December 25 - A group of terrorists operating in the traditionally-accepted birthplace of Jesus interdicted the passage of St. Nicholas's reindeer-pulled vehicle tonight as it passed over the town, and have since kept him in an undisclosed location, a spokesman for the group announced today.
A masked man calling himself Abu Knaffeh released a video on the new Twitter account of an organization named Leopards of Al-Quds, in which he claimed he and his comrades had kidnapped Santa Claus. The two-minute clip showed a fat, bearded man in a white-fur-trimmed red suit and hat tied to a chair, the contents of several sacks strewn about the room as masked, gun-toting men rifled through them. Abu Knaffeh threatened to slaughter one reindeer each half-hour, and then Santa himself, unless Israel releases all Palestinians in its prisons.
Israeli officials vowed not to give in to terror. "Santa will be fine," assured Minister of Public Security Itamar ben-Gvir. "Reindeer are expendable, and Rudolph was always a suspicious character. Probably gay. As for this Santa character, I don't care much for pagan icons. Let him rot. Unless we can stage a dramatic rescue in which our guys kill a bunch of scum terrorists. We haven't ruled that out."
European progressives called the development unfortunate, but a predictable outcome of Israeli policies. "We've seen this before," lamented UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese. "It was only a matter of time before Palestinians felt they had no choice but to keep doing the very thing they've been doing for fifty-plus years because the West always relents and pressures Israel, which is the way things should be."
Eyewitness reports also indicate that the contents of Santa's sacks were now being sold at Bethlehem stores, alongside UNRWA-provided flour and rice marked "Not for Sale."
Experts noted that the once-strong Christian population of Bethlehem has contracted drastically since the ancient town, just to the south of Jerusalem, came under Palestinian control under agreements with Israel in the 1990's. "This wouldn't have happened under Israeli control," noted Dick Move of The Mideast Fallacy Purim, a think tank. "Areas under Israeli control are the only places in the Middle East where the Christian population isn't shrinking. Bethlehem is a powerful microcosm of the faith's fortunes in the region, where Islamist supremacist harassment has driven Christians elsewhere in huge numbers. Gaza, for example, is almost empty of Christians, and it used to be a stronghold. What's happening now, with Santa, is more or less the logical conclusion of a process that's been leading this way for a long time."
"Now would be a good time for a slay/sleigh pun," he added.
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