Christian Persecution Reaches Israel

Friday: Christian Persecution

The Council of Council of Patriarchs and Heads of Churches of the Holy Land called on Israeli authorities to hold extremist settlers accountable for escalating attacks against Christians.

From OSV News:

“The attacks by the settlers against our community, which is living in peace, must stop, both here in Taybeh and elsewhere throughout the West Bank. This is clearly part of the systematic attacks against Christians that we see unfolding throughout the region. The attacks against Christians are only growing more frequent,” they said. 

They also called for prayers, attention, and action” from diplomats, politicians and journalists — especially from world Christians. 

From Vatican News:

Violence by Jewish settlers in Palestine has now also struck the residents of Taibeh, the only entirely Christian Palestinian village. Taibeh is the ancient Ephraim, the location mentioned in the Gospel of John where Jesus took refuge after the resurrection of Lazarus (Jn 11:54), and where the Christian community has extremely ancient roots. The village is home to three churches—Latin, Greek Orthodox, and Melkite—whose pastors, Fathers Bashar Fawadleh, Jack Nobel Abed, and Daoud Khoury, issued an appeal last night calling on Israeli authorities to prevent further settler violence, which so far has largely occurred in the presence of passive Israeli soldiers.

Yesterday, a group of Jewish settlers set fires near the Byzantine Christian cemetery and at the Church of Al-Khader (St. George), dating back to the 5th century and one of the oldest and most venerated places of worship for Christians in Palestine. These arson attacks follow a series of violent acts against the town’s Christian residents, which have been escalating in recent weeks. The settlers have also damaged olive groves—Taibeh’s primary source of income—and are preventing farmers from accessing and working their land.

The eastern part of the town, the three priests lament, “has become an open target for illegal Jewish settlement outposts that are quietly expanding under the protection of the Israeli army.” The priests are calling on the international and Church communities to send missions to the area to document the damages and the progressive deterioration of the situation.

From NBC News:

The gleaming white ruins of Taybeh’s fifth-century Church of St. George Al Khidr stand as a testament to just how long the faith has endured in the occupied West Bank’s last majority-Christian town.

After centuries of perseverance, the Christian community of Tab now faces a modern existential threat only a few miles from where its members’ faith was forged: regular, violent harassment by Jewish settlers who would like to force them and Palestinians of other faiths to leave, and an Israeli government that often turns a blind eye to the settlers’ crimes, according to rights groups and church leaders.