When former US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene walked out of a meeting with Bethlehem Mayor Maher Nicola Canawati on Sunday and posted on X that Israel is persecuting Christians in the birthplace of Jesus, she wasn’t breaking new ground. She was repeating a narrative that Tucker Carlson, anti-Israel activists, and Palestinian Authority officials have been recycling for years — a narrative that blames the Jewish state for a Christian exodus that the data shows has everything to do with Palestinian Authority rule. Greene, who resigned her congressional seat in January 2026, has now joined the ranks of American media figures who fly into the region, absorb one side of the story, and arrive home with accusations that collapse under the slightest factual scrutiny.
Greene announced on X that she had the honor of meeting with Maher N. Canawati, the Mayor of Bethlehem, who is also a Christian. She reported that the mayor informed her of Christian persecution happening in Bethlehem and also in Gaza, that Christians have been killed in bombings in Gaza, and that churches have been attacked.
Greene also transmitted the mayor’s claim that settlers “continue to take their homes” from Christian residents who only want to live in peace. And she added her own claim: “There are approximately 139 IDF checkpoints now in Bethlehem which one [sic] was 41 sq miles but has now been reduced to 7 sq miles.”
During the meeting, Greene was presented with an official commemorative medal, accompanied by a stone from the Church of the Nativity and a piece of wood from its roof.
There is one fact at the center of everything Greene said that she appears not to have known — or chose to ignore. Bethlehem is in Area A under the Oslo Accords, which means it is under full Palestinian Authority civil and security control. There is not a single Jew living in Bethlehem, only Christians and Muslims. That means that under the Oslo Accords, Israelis may not even enter Bethlehem. Jewish settlers cannot be taking Christian homes in a city where Jews are not legally permitted to set foot.
Former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman was blunt in his response on X. “Mayor Canawati was put in place by the Palestinian Authority, a brutally corrupt organization that has almost zero popular support. Bethlehem is run by the PA — there’s not a single Jew living there, only Christians and Muslims… If something is wrong with Bethlehem, blame the PA. They are in charge. Of course, this mayor will not blame the PA because it appointed him!”
Friedman added the demographic fact that demolishes the entire premise of Greene’s accusation: “Since Israel became a state, its Christian population has surged everywhere except within Bethlehem, where it went from 80/20 Christian/Muslim to 20/80.”
The demographic record is the clearest refutation of the Greene-Carlson narrative. According to data released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics on Christmas Eve 2024, approximately 180,300 Christians reside in Israel, making up 1.8% of the total population, with a growth rate of 0.6% in 2023.
That growth is consistent with a long-term trend. The Christian population in Israel has experienced constant growth. In 2021, their number rose to 182,000, up 1.4%, and in 2022, registered growth was 2%, reaching 185,000.
Israel is one of the few — if not the only — countries in the Middle East where the number of Christians has grown over recent years. The contrast with the rest of the region is stark. Among the top 50 countries in which Christians were persecuted in 2023 were Yemen, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern and Muslim-majority countries. Israel was not listed.
“In Israel, the Christian number is stable because there is freedom of religion,” said Pastor Petra Heldt, a leading Christian scholar who has lived in Israel 40 years. “This is not true of Muslim-majority countries in the region.” An Arab pastor in Nazareth, Pastor Saleem Shalash, was equally direct: “As an Arab pastor, I would prefer to live in Israel. The freedom we have in Israel we don’t have in the best Arab countries. We can practice our belief without persecution. And if there is persecution, we can call the police and they will protect us.”
In neighboring Iraq, before the American invasion in 2003, a Christian population of 1.5 million lived in the country. The ancient Christian community has since shrunk to an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 from a total population of over 40 million.
Bethlehem’s trajectory, meanwhile, follows the Palestinian Authority’s rule — not Israel’s. While Bethlehem and its surrounding villages were 86% Christian in 1950, by 2017 the Christian population had declined to 10%. The turning point was 1993. When Israel controlled Bethlehem, the city had a population of over 60% Christian. After the 1993 Oslo Accords, which gave the PA control of the city, the Christian population has since declined to about 12%.
The PA, to its credit, requires by law that the mayor of Bethlehem be Christian — a recognition that the community needs protection. But protection from whom? The PA’s own record of Islamization, corruption, and economic mismanagement drives the emigration that it then turns around and blames on Israel.
The Palestinian Territories were included in the Open Doors examination list of 76 countries where Christians are persecuted, ranked 57th. Israel was not listed.
Greene’s visit follows a pattern established in recent months by Tucker Carlson, who has made targeting Christian support for Israel a central project of his media operation. Carlson tries to frame Israel as primarily responsible for a declining Christian population in the Holy Land, but neglects to mention the Christian population decline in Palestinian-ruled territory.
Carlson’s method, documented by CAMERA and HonestReporting, involves falsely attributing Christian regional demographic decline entirely to Israel, misleadingly suggesting Christians are not doing well in Israel, and misrepresenting Israel’s separation barrier — while omitting that the barrier was built in response to a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings that murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada.
American Israeli evangelical Christian Joel Rosenberg warned that Carlson “clearly wishes ill against Israel and the Jewish people and all Christians who love and support Israel.” He cited Genesis 12, which makes clear that God will bless those who bless the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — and curse those who do not.
The reality is more complex than Carlson’s false portrayal. Like any democratic state, Israel is not without flaws. But these imperfections exist within a functioning legal and political system that guarantees freedom of religion, protects minority rights, and allows Christian communities to live, worship, and participate fully in public life.
Greene’s Bethlehem visit is Carlson’s template applied to in-person diplomacy: arrive, receive a commemorative medal, repeat the PA mayor’s talking points to millions of American Christian followers, and fly home without speaking to a single Christian who lives freely in Haifa, Nazareth, or Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
This is not the first time Greene has taken Israel’s side in a conflict and flipped it upside down. In August 2025, she became the first Republican lawmaker to call Israel’s war against the Hamas terrorist organization a “genocide,” tweeting: “Many of us, even though we are Christians, no longer want to fund and fight nuclear-armed secular Israel’s wars, especially when it leads to starving children and killing innocent people, including Christians. Of course, we are against radical Islamic terrorism, but we are also against genocide.”
She also claimed, regarding the June 2025 American strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, that “there would not be bombs falling on the people of Israel if Netanyahu had not dropped bombs on the people of Iran first.” The historical record says otherwise. On April 13, 2024, Iran launched around 170 drones, over 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles toward Israel and the Golan Heights. On October 1, 2024, Iran launched about 200 ballistic missiles at targets in Israel in at least two waves — the largest attack during the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict. Iran was not responding to Israeli aggression. It was pursuing its decades-long campaign to destroy the Jewish state.
Greene’s history with antisemitism goes back further. In 2018, she shared a video titled With Open Gates: The Forced Collective Suicide of European Nations, repeating the antisemitic white genocide conspiracy theory that Zionists are conspiring to flood Europe with migrants to replace the native white populations. The video features anti-Muslim propaganda and quotes an antisemitic Holocaust denier saying that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.” The video originated on the far-right message board 8chan and was celebrated by neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
A politician with that record visiting Bethlehem and accepting a commemorative medal from a PA-appointed mayor is not a fact-finding mission. It is a political performance.
Mayor Canawati’s framing of Bethlehem’s Christians as “living stones” of the Holy Land is not wrong in its sentiment. The Christian communities of Judea — Yehuda — are ancient and irreplaceable, and their disappearance impoverishes the entire region.
But Canawati has himself acknowledged that his city has “lost 4,000 people during these two years of war,” that business closures and families who have fled have devastated Bethlehem, and that his first major decision as mayor was to revive Christmas celebrations after two consecutive years of cancellations tied to regional violence and economic devastation.
What drives those families out? Economic collapse under PA governance. Islamist social pressure. Corruption. The absence of civil protections that Christians take for granted inside Israel proper. The Sages teach in Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, “Al taameen b’atzmecha ad yom motcha”, “Do not trust in yourself until the day of your death.” Certainty that is not tested by facts is not wisdom. Greene arrived in Bethlehem certain that Israel was the villain. She left without examining the one institution with actual authority over the city’s Christians: the Palestinian Authority.
American Christians deserve the truth about where their brethren can worship freely, build schools, serve in the military, and run for office. That place is Israel, not the PA-controlled territories, where the data, the demography, and the testimonies of Arab pastors all point in the same direction.
