Two weeks ago, a brushfire in a cemetery of the majority Christian Arab village of Taybeh in Samaria led to condemnation of the incident as an arson attack carried out by Jewish “settlers”. Evidence is now coming to light that indicates a different cause: Arab arson targeting local Jewish residents.
According to sources interviewed by Israel365 News, there are reports that Arabs deliberately set the fire in an attempt to damage grazing land belonging to a nearby Jewish farm. Far from being the perpetrators, the farm owner and his team worked to extinguish the blaze and filed three police reports about the arson. Tragically, the fire spread unintentionally and reached a Christian cemetery.
The Israeli police have not commented, but the Binyamin regional council spokesperson confirmed the reports came from reliable sources. They also confirmed that videos show Jewish residents attempting to extinguish the blaze. It has also been reported that the farm owner filed three complaints with the police regarding the arson attacks targeting his fields.
Israel365 News presents the video that shows the Jewish settlers attempting to extinguish the fire in their fields. While it does not explicitly show anyone, Israeli or Arab, setting the fire, it does raise questions such as why the Israelis would set fire to their fields and why they would work to extinguish a fire they set.
The video shows Israelis attempting to extinguish a brushfire.
The police reports are unavailable as it is necessary to withhold the identities of the involved parties for their security.
In contrast, a video was posted to Twitter showing a room filled with church leaders and diplomatic representatives in Taybeh screening footage of the alleged Israeli settler attacks on the town. It is important to note that the video does not, in fact, show Israelis setting any fires or anywhere near the cemetery or church.
Naomi Kahn, the International Director of Regavim, an NGO which monitors the activities of the Palestinian Authority and foreign organizations in Area C, emphasized that there was evidence that contradicted the mainstream narrative that Jewish “settlers” set fire to the Christian cemetery.
“No evidence has been provided linking Israelis to the fire,” Kahn emphasized. “Yet this is the narrative being reported. No one is reporting on the fire damage to the Israelis’ fields or asking why he should set fire to his own field.”
While there has been much consternation over the incident, the actual damage to the cemetery was minimal, and no one was injured.
Kahn suggested that the incident was misrepresented and amplified at the behest of the Palestinian Authority.
“Islamic Palestinianism looks for the places where Israel is strong and tries to attack those sources of strength,” Kahn told Israel365 News. “The close cooperation and the shared values of Israel and the Christian community in America are something that drives the Islamists crazy.”
Kahn noted a recent Christian-led pro-Israel conference planned to be held last month in Texas that had to be cancelled due to Islamic threats.
“That conference was targeted because it represented the biggest threat to Islamic Palestinianism; an evangelical alliance with Israel,” she said. “This is even a larger threat than Jewish support for Israel.”
“They needed to attack this conference and the evangelical support because it’s a bond that speaks to everything that they hate. They hate those values. They hate the Zionist vision and the biblical vision that Christian Zionists share with us. That is the point they will have to keep attacking, and they had to create this Taybeh narrative as a weapon, create a narrative that Israel hates Christians. This is intended as a wedge to drive apart American Christian Zionists and Israel.”
Kahn emphasized that while the Christian population is declining in most Middle Eastern countries, Israel is the only country in the region where it is growing. The Christian population in Israel has seen a consistent increase in recent years, unlike the shrinking Christian populations in other parts of the Middle East. The Christian population in Israel has been steadily increasing, with a 1.3% growth in 2022, reaching around 187,900, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics.
One significant example of Christians under Islamic Palestinian rule is Bethlehem, the holiest city in Christianity. Historically, Bethlehem had a Christian majority, with Christians comprising approximately 86% of the population in 1950. Under Palestinian Authority control, the Christian population has dropped to around 8,000-9,000 out of a total population of roughly 30,000. This constitutes approximately 27-30% of the city’s population, and the city is now predominantly Muslim.
In Gaza, the situation is even more dire. The Christian population in Gaza, which stood at 5,000 before Hamas came to power in 2006, has fallen to just 1,000 in October 2023.
“Much of the media and organizations like the UN are biased, citing only the Palestinian narrative and data,” Kahn said. “The only ammunition we have is the facts and the truth. So we have to keep sharing it.”
If the claims of Israeli arson prove to be false, this misrepresentation is not an isolated incident. Just days earlier, Israeli sources uncovered that what had been reported as a violent clash between Jewish residents and Palestinians in the Binyamin region was, in fact, a carefully planned Arab terror ambush. Arabs armed with rocks, slings, and firebombs staged a confrontation designed to provoke Jewish self-defense, which was then falsely presented in international media as “settler violence.” A Jewish teenager was seriously injured, and a Jewish shepherd was murdered in the same area days earlier. A senior security official confirmed that the event was “a premeditated, organized attack with the clear aim of drawing in Israeli security forces and provoking a wider conflict.”
This libel was documented in a comprehensive new report from the Regavim Movement, titled “False Flags and Real Agendas,” which investigated the widely circulated narrative of “settler violence” in Judea and Samaria, revealing that some 90% of incidents of “violence” attributed to Judea and Samaria Jews in recent years by the United Nations were fabricated. It exposed how this concept is often based on inflated or distorted data—primarily sourced from Palestinian testimonies and the UN OCHA database—with minimal independent verification. Over 98 % of flagged incidents stemmed from clashes involving the IDF or were legitimate security operations rather than Jewish civilian aggression. After filtering out non‑violent events—such as traffic mishaps, archaeological visits, legal infrastructure work, or self‑defense actions—the number of credible settler violence cases dwindles to a few hundred over several years—far below the claimed scale.
The report asserts that the narrative of “settler violence” functions as a political weapon and a modern‑day blood libel, designed not only to defame Israeli settlers but also to undermine the legitimacy of the State of Israel and its military. It points to coordination between left‑wing NGOs, international bodies, and even Palestinian authorities, all aiming to distort incidents for political ends, including securing global pressure, sanctions, and delegitimization of Israel. The report calls for transparent and accurate data, as well as a proactive public diplomacy campaign, to combat these false narratives. As it concludes, the concept of widespread “settler violence” is overwhelmingly a fabricated lie, repackaged as a propaganda tool in the broader struggle against Israel.
Amit Barak has an incisive insider’s perspective on the Christian Arab community. A licensed tour guide specializing in Judea and Samaria, he was recognized in 2020 as one of the seventy “bridge builders”—leading activists in Christian-Jewish engagement. He is one of the initiators of the historic movement to integrate Arabic-speaking Christians into Israeli society and the IDF. Barak is one of the creators of the educational game, the Way of the Patriarchs.
“When it comes to issues between Israelis and Christian Arabs, the Palestinian Authority is always a few steps ahead of Israel,” Barak lamented. “There’s no doubt that the PA used this case in Taybeh, manipulating the narrative to their designs. There is at least some evidence that the arson was set by the Arabs themselves. The PA used the anti-settler narrative to harm the relations between Jews and Christians in Israel and also between Jews and Christians all around the world.”
“In their war on the Jews, the Palestinians cannot win militarily, so they are fighting a war of narrative. In their war, the Palestinians have tried to set up a false narrative of settler violence. Big players are behind these campaigns: the Palestinian Authority, international progressive NGOs, and radical left-wing anti-Israel NGOs that have activists on the ground. There are Israeli activists and illegal foreign activists who penetrate Israel and are taking part in illegal actions, provocations against farmers, against settlers, against the IDF. They incite and even engage in violence against settlers and IDF soldiers. The UN is even pushing this campaign. So it’s very easy for the Palestinian Authority to use this campaign and to target the settlers and to use it to harm relations between Jews and Christians.”
“I feel sorry for the heads of the churches who are once again signing off on a false narrative without checking the facts,” Barak said.
David Nekrutman, an Israeli theologian and writer, has been bridging between Christians and Jews for several decades. As an Orthodox Jew, he learned in the Oral Roberts University online Graduate Theology program.
“For years, I have helped provide humanitarian assistance to financially challenged Christian Arabs living in Bethlehem,” Nekrutman told Israel365 News. “Covenant land comes with covenant responsibility. Therefore, in my work in Jewish-Christian relations, I have been called to help those born in the birthplace of Jesus to ensure they have the means to continue to remain in Bethlehem.”
Nekrutman was optimistic about Jews and Christians coexisting in Judea and Samaria.
“Nearly half a million Israeli citizens live in Judea and Samaria,” Nekrutman noted. “They are secular and religious, with over 99% wishing to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors. Jews should have the right to live in the biblical heartland.”
“At the same time, Jews who take the law into their own hands and cause death, physical harm, property damage, and vandalism should be prosecuted and punished under the law. The media’s rush to categorize everything that happens to Arabs in Judea and Samaria as ‘a rise in settler violence’ is an agenda that includes Israeli news publications.”
“In light of what Israel365 News wrote regarding the Taybeh arson incident, the reporting is very disconcerting. The evidence indicates at least the possibility that the arson attack began with Arab farmers trying to torch Jewish land. Yet, the church leaders did a press conference that inflamed an already volatile situation. This is not the first time some of these leaders created a mountain of negative press based on assumptions without the full details.”
“As part of my efforts to help my Christian brothers and sisters in the Holy Land, I have gone on record in condemning my fellow Jews who falsely use the name of Judaism to desanctify God’s name by committing violence against others. False gossip surrounding this case has already added to the fuel of negative press about Israel.”
