The latest attempt to undermine Israel? Exploiting Palestinian Christians

By Mitchell Bard

(JNS) — Nicholas Kristof, a longtime member of The New York Times stable of inveterate Israel-bashers, has taken a new angle in his ongoing campaign: using the plight of Palestinian Christians to turn American Christians against the Jewish state. In a recent piece, the columnist paints a picture of Israeli oppression in Bethlehem while ignoring relevant context that doesn’t fit his narrative.

Kristof’s op-ed appeared as a new Pew survey shows that 72 percent of evangelicals view Israel favorably. Evangelicals are typically more informed about Israel than the average Christian, whose views tend to be more divided. Kristof’s portrayal of Palestinian Christians as victims of Israeli persecution is meant to turn American Christians against Israel.

While Christians are unwelcome in Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia and most have been driven out of their longtime homes in Lebanon, Christians have always been welcomed in Israel and are treated as equal citizens. Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation where the non-Arab Christian population has grown—from 34,000 in 1948 to more than 180,000 today. Moreover, Christians enjoy the same rights as Jews in Israel and manage their own personal affairs, such as marriage.

The total number of Christians in the Palestinian territories has remained stable since 1967; however, the proportion has dropped from nearly 10% in 1922 to closer to 1% of the population today. Some 50,000 Christians are under Palestinian Authority rule in the West Bank, where there are nearly 3 million Muslims. The Palestinian Authority is responsible for almost every aspect of their lives, including their protection.

Kristof doesn’t bother to ask why the Christians of Bethlehem are now a tiny, shrinking minority in what was once a Christian stronghold. In 1950, Christians made up 86 percent of Bethlehem’s population. Today, three-fourths of them live abroad; Muslims are the dominant majority. According to Maurice Hirsch and Tirza Shorr, “Christian families are leaving Bethlehem due to systemic socio-economic hardships and instability, discrimination and harassment (including of clergy) by Muslim Palestinians and the Islam-dominated Palestinian Authority.”

He also omits key events that illustrate why Christians feel unsafe in Palestinian areas. In 2002, nearly 200 armed Palestinians seized the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield, taking priests and nuns hostage. Churches have been desecrated. The Maronite Church was vandalized multiple times and suffered an arson attack in 2015 that forced its closure for three years. That same year, Muslim extremists threatened Christian celebrations, prompting the P.A. to limit Christmas festivities. On Christmas Day, Muslim Palestinians stoned the car of the Latin Patriarch en route to Bethlehem.

Unlike Christians who enjoy the freedom of speech and religion in Israel, beleaguered Palestinian Christians rarely speak out. One Protestant clergyman lamented: “Christians feel unprotected due to the failure of the P.A. police to intervene on their behalf in confrontations with Muslims.”

As David Raab observed, “Out of fear for their safety, Christian spokesmen aren’t happy to be identified by name when they complain about the Muslims’ treatment of them. … [O]ff the record they talk of harassment and terror tactics, mainly from the gangs of thugs who looted and plundered Christians and their property, under the protection of Palestinian security personnel.”

The P.A.’s actions are calculated. “Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the P.A.’s image as an actor capable of protecting the lives and property of the Christian minority under its rule. Even less does the P.A. want to be depicted as a radical entity that persecutes religious minorities,” noted Edy Cohen.

One Christian who went public is Samir Qumsiyeh, a journalist from Beit Sahur who told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in 2005 that Christians were being subjected to rape, kidnapping, extortion, and expropriation of land and property. Qumsiyeh compiled a list of 93 cases of anti-Christian violence between 2000 and 2004 and specifically mentioned the case of a 17-year-old girl from his town who members of Fatah raped. “Even though the family protested,” he said, “none of the four was ever arrested. Because of the shame, her family was forced to move to Jordan.” He added that “almost all 140 cases of expropriation of land in the last three years were committed by militant Islamic groups and members of the Palestinian police.”

A 2020 survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 25% of Palestinian Christians had experienced religiously motivated violence and most felt unwelcome among Muslims. Additionally, 25% reported discrimination in job interviews, 30% encountered religiously based hatred, and a quarter said Muslims had urged them to convert to Islam.

Kristof’s piece highlights a Christian group in Bethlehem—the Tent of Nations—that advocates nonviolence. He fails to ask why Christians embrace peace, while Palestinians under the same pressures often resort to terrorism. Nor does he ask whether these Christians condemned the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, protested incitement or recognized Israel as a Jewish state. Do their children study from the same P.A. textbooks with antisemitic content and maps replacing Israel with Palestine?

The views of the people Kristof interviewed might be understood by their need to survive in a hostile Muslim environment. As Adam Garfinkle related, “Because Arab Christians are somewhat marginalized in majority Islamic culture, they have often gone out of their way to act more Arab than the Arabs, and that has sometimes meant taking the lead in anti-Western and anti-Israel advocacy.”

Kristof exemplifies what Cohen described as the “thunderous silence of the Western (and Israeli) media in the face of the Christian minority’s ongoing disappearance from the P.A. and Islamic lands in general—in striking contrast to the growth, prosperity and increasing integration of the Christian community in Israel proper.”

If Kristof genuinely cared about the fate of Christians in the Middle East, then why hasn’t he reported from Saudi Arabia, where Christianity is illegal? Why not write about Lebanon, Egypt or Iran, where Christians have long faced persecution? Shouldn’t American Christians be more outraged by the mistreatment and disappearance of Christians in those countries?

Instead, he focuses exclusively on Israel, the only country in the region where Christianity thrives. This is the double standard and demonization of Israel typical of antisemites.

Mitchell Bard is a foreign-policy analyst and an authority on U.S.-Israel relations who has written and edited 22 books, including “The Arab Lobby,” “Death to the Infidels: Radical Islam’s War Against the Jews” and “After Anatevka: Tevye in Palestine.”