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Lighting the world with hope

Alexiei Dingli
4 min readDec 24, 2019

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‘Scar of Bethlehem’ by Banksy

Banksy, the famous British street and graffiti artist released a new nativity scene located in the Walled Off Hotel, called the ‘Scar of Bethlehem’. In this scene, Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus are lying underneath a piece of West bank wall which separates Israel from the Palestinian territories. Instead of the traditional star hanging over the crib, there is what appears to be a large bullet hole piercing the imposing wall.

The scene is compelling since it is depicting the events which happened 2000 years ago in such a way which resonate with the situation of the world of today. The holy family were refugees, in a similar way to the millions of people displaced from their country every year. The wall is the embodiment of those who think they are almighty, the barriers which are keeping people away from their homeland. The scar is a symbol that not all hope is lost. It shows us that the mighty walls can be perforated. It also captures our attention, precisely like the star did. That is where we have to look, that is where we have to intervene. But how can we do that?

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” — St…

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Alexiei Dingli
Alexiei Dingli

Written by Alexiei Dingli

Professor of #AI at @uniofmalta, @AIMalta, Co-organiser at #GDGMalta

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