DISCLAIMER: I do not condone or support violence against Christian Arabs or non-Jews. While there have been attacks by Israeli settlers against Arabs and Christian Arabs, they are misrepresented and frequently misreported. This editorial is intended to explain a complicated issue that is difficult to understand from the perspective of American evangelicals.

I recently reported on two incidents in which the overwhelming narrative in the media claims that “settlers” attacked Arabs, the most recent claim being that Israelis set fire to a cemetery in the Arab Christian village of Taybeh. I worked hard to remain objective and report the facts. I remain convinced that in that incident, the fire was a case of Arab arson targeting an Israeli farmer, and the fire got out of control. Police reports and video evidence support this claim. In a previous incident in which two Arabs were reported to have been killed by Israelis, video evidence indicates that the Arabs attacked the Jews, and the Palestinian authorities refused to produce the two bodies to the Israeli security authorities.

When I reported on those events, I worked hard to be accurate, and I stand by my reporting. But even while writing the articles, I knew that there are settlers who attack Arabs, but the number is far smaller than reported, and it is almost always a response to Arab violence, which is overlooked and unreported.

When considering “Settler violence” (please see my note below regarding this terminology), it is essential to consider a comprehensive new report from the Regavim Movement, titled “False Flags and Real Agendas,” which investigates the widely circulated narrative of “settler violence” in Judea and Samaria. It exposes 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. 

So there are a few conclusions I would like to make at this point:

• Settler violence is a lie being promoted by anti-Israel media and political elements
• The recent events are probably being misrepresented in the mainstream media

The tricky part is dealing with settler violence that targets Christian Arabs. Settler violence does exist. While I do not condone it, I understand it. Israeli-born Jews are not passive. They cannot sit idly by while being targeted by Arab violence, while their friends are murdered, while the Israeli authorities politicize it, and while the media lies about it.

But attacks on Arab Christians are not based on faith.

Non-Israeli Christians should consider that in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Arab-Israeli Christians, for the most part, side with the Palestinians. They live among the Palestinians and share a language, culture, and history.

This counter-logical alliance is so strong that in 2002, when Palestinian terrorists took the Church of the Nativity and its clergy hostage, the Church allied with the terrorists, culminating in the IDF’s inability to arrest the terrorists. 

If there is tension between settlers and Arab Christians, it may be tinged with religious elements, but it is, for the most part, driven by the Middle Eastern credo that the friend of my enemy is my enemy. 

American evangelicals should also understand that Arab Christians are not religious individualists. The various churches are powerful political bodies that oppose Israel. There are few Arab evangelical Christians and even fewer non-denominational Arabs. While it is still unclear where the new pope stands, Pope Francis supported Gaza and Palestinian rule in Judea and Samaria.

At the same time, there is a growing element in Christian Arab society that is proudly Zionist, and even a growing number who serve in the IDF. Listening to the talks by Yosef Haddad leaves me in tears of joy and pride. My dear friend Amit Barak has been working on helping this grow. 

Settlers, by definition, love Israel. They sacrifice all to settle the land as a service to the God of Israel. They are vastly overrepresented in combat roles in the IDF. This is despite years of left-wing policies that have tried to alienate them.

I believe that it is this faith-based love of Israel that is the basis for the natural connection American evangelicals feel towards settlers. In this regard, American evangelicals share more with Torah observant settlers than they do with anti-Israel Christian Arabs.

To my great dismay, this love is not universally reciprocated by the settlers, and I write this in hopes that understanding will lead to reconciliation. But until this happens, I must admit that there are Torah observant Jews who hate Christians.

While many of my Torah observant friends, most living in Judea and Samaria, are reaching out to Christians, many are not. I understand them. 2,000 years of mainstream Christian history driven by Church-based replacement and anti-semitic theology is difficult to overlook. I can only suggest to my Jewish brethren that a prophetic vision of being a nation of Priests in the Third Temple and being a light unto the nations will dispel this past.

For my Christian friends, I must issue a warning of an impending danger. European Christians have (for the most part) supported the Palestinians. They have no political interest and, indeed, supporting jihadists is a suicidal effort. I believe this is driven by old-world Christian Jew hatred. There is no indication that the same Christian and Catholic based Jew hatred that led to the Iberian Inquisition, the expulsion from Britain, and culminated in the Holocaust has gone away. When the nations get together in the UN, their attention turns to destroying the one Jewish state.

It pains me to say this, but this old world  European faith-based hatred of Jews migrated across the Atlantic to the New World. Many American Christians cling to replacement theology. And, like their European co-religionists, they hate the Jews. It is unthinkable to them that the Jews are still in the covenant, that God brought us back to the Promised Land. They are horrified that the Jews have retaken our heritage from King David and built an army. These Christians long for the days when belief in Jesus was best expressed by killing Jews.

These old-world Christian Jew haters see the Palestinian-aligned Arab Christians as allies. This was manifested in Tucker Carlson’s horrifying interview with Pastor Munther Isaac, a rabid enemy of Israel. Any Christian who decries settler attacks on Arab Christians, I challenge you: Do you support Pastor Munther Isaac’s Christian beliefs? Tucker does.

These are the same Christian conservatives who opposed Israel’s elimination of Iran’s nuclear program even while the Islamist regime screamed ‘Death to America’. 

They support jihadis even though this will inevitably lead to the end of Christianity in this section of the world. 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.

This is even more true in Israel, where standing next to the worst elements of the Palestinians puts the Arab Christians in the line of fire. This is not a threat. Christians, like members of every other religion, are free to worship and enjoy full citizenship in Israel. It is painful to me that while some Christians are claiming that Israel is oppressing and attacking Christian Arabs, Israel is being called on to aid Druze and Christians who are being massacred in Syria.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Reporting on the Middle East has become a swamp of misused and made-up terms. West Bank, Two-State Solution, genocide, apartheid, and many other words have been twisted beyond recognition. In Hebrew, Hityashvut (settling) was replaced by hitnachalut (land grabbing) in the left-wing media. I don’t object to the term hitnachalut. It comes from the root meaning ‘to inherit’, which I feel is the case. The term Palestinian has also been politicized and twisted beyond recognition. Created by Hadrian (Syria Palestina) to separate the Jews from their ancestral homeland, it was adopted by Britain as the name of their mandate in the region, which came to include Jordan. Until Israel became a state in 1948, the Jews in the mandate were proud Palestinians, while the Arabs in the mandate violently objected to being labeled as such. They self-identified as Arabs and the term ‘Palestinian’ implied subjugation to the British. This changed with Yasser Arafat (an Egyptian), who started the terrorist Palestinian Liberation Organization, now the leading party in the Palestinian Authority. Ironically, Arabic does not contain the ‘p” sound and Palestinians loudly proclaim their ‘Falestinian’ identity.

As a journalist, I struggle with these challenges, frequently forced to compromise for clarity and to be understood in a media that is often mired in deception. In this case, ‘setters’ is a horribly biased term, but I am unable to think of an alternative. I am open to suggestions.