Catholic leadership has been very supportive of the Palestinian cause. In 2025, a manger scene in Bethlehem had baby Jesus clothed in a keffiyeh. Church leaders singularly focus on what they perceive as Israeli abuses. While there certainly have been troubling Israeli incidents, Islamic actions have been a major cause of the collapse of Christian populations in Bethlehem. Most troubling, the Catholic press overwhelmingly ignores the substantial success of the 1.4 million Christian Arabs living within Israel.
Just this week, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled, “Spitting Attacks Show Rise of Anti-Christian Hate in Israel.” It reported:
"In Jerusalem’s Old City, a group of Israeli teenagers recently banged on the door of the headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church and asked if there were Christians inside it. They wanted to spit at them."
It never mentions that these youths are all members of Garin Torani, followers of the extremist Itamar Ben-Gvir. They periodically take provocative actions to demonstrate that Jews control the entire Old City. However, there is no documented evidence that they have physically-harmed individuals or caused church property damages nor does the article mention that there are no reported incidents outside the Old City.
A month earlier, a Washington Post article referred to the same Old City incidents, then discussed attacks in Teybeh, the one remaining exclusively Christian community in the West Bank. However, it cites only the burning of two cars and the harassment of a cement factory. Unlike the Washington Post and The Guardian claims, the exodus has been very modest. The Rev. Bashar Fawadleh, the priest at Christ the Redeemer Catholic Church in Taybeh, said “15 families — roughly 4 percent of the population — moved out in the past two years.”
It is deplorable that these Teybeh abuses go unchecked by Israeli authorities. However, in Bethlehem — a city that since 1995 has been completely under Palestinian Authority control — the Christian population share has declined from 28% to less than 10% in the last twenty years.
Francesco Ielpo, a senior Vatican official in Jerusalem, said he feared the growing influence of Israel’s far right will push Christians to leave. By contrast, Bethlehem priests reported, “Several hundred families left in the first two years of the conflict, many after direct threats or violent incidents linked to both Islamist militants and PA aligned groups.”
In their annual report, the organization Open Doors cited, “Islamic extremist militants are … present in the West Bank, causing Christians to fear being attacked.” “Though the Christians in the PA avoid saying so publicly, many of them fear — with good reason — that Muslim aggression against them will only escalate,” wrote Edy Cohen, a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center. “Such fears are all the stronger in light of the thunderous silence of the Western [and Israeli] media, in the face of the Christian minority’s ongoing disappearance from the PA and Islamic lands in general.”
One study presented evidence of discrimination and harassment of Christians, including clergy, by the Islam-dominated PA. Sana Razi Nashash from Beit Jala recalls being harassed by a man in the street who she later found out was a PA police uniform.
In 2008, the government initiated its social service option that Christian young women immediately seized since it provided social services to their communities and valuable government educational benefits. Other initiatives undertaken included increased funding that reduced school overcrowding, expanding transportation networks in Arab areas, and industrial parks that increased employment opportunities. Two subsequent five-year plans greatly expanded these policies and brought Arab citizens more deeply into the country’s fabric. The preamble to the first five-year plan quoted Zvi Jabotinsky, the founding father of rightwing Zionism concluded, "The political, economic and cultural welfare of the Arabs will thus always remain one of the main conditions for the well-being of the Land of Israel.”
Though sharp critics of the Netanyahu government, leaders of Sikkuy noted, “[A]n unprecedented increase in the employment rates of Arab women from 21% in 2010 to approximately 43% in 2022 and in the reduction of the poverty gap between Jewish and Arab families by approximately 19%.”
These advances have been most substantial for Israel’s Arab Christians. The Taub Center estimated that the household income of Christian Arabs was 26.7% and 15.6% higher than Muslims and Druze household incomes, respectively. Christian Arabs also have more upward mobility than Muslims. Among those born in the lowest income quartile, 11% rise to the highest quartile while 35% remain in the lowest quartile. For Muslims, only 7% rise to the highest while 48% remain in the lowest quartile.
Christian higher incomes and greater mobility reflect their higher levels of education and the occupations in which they are employed. Arab Christians represent 1.3% of all primary and secondary students but comprise 2.2% of those attending college. Almost 2.5% of the Christian Arab students studied medicine, in comparison to only 0.8% of all students; 10.1% of the Christian Arab students enroll in paramedical studies in comparison to only 4.4% of all BA students.
While Christian represent only 4% of the Arab schooling sector, they produce 34% of Arab university students, and 87% of Israeli Arabs in hi-tech have been educated in Christian schools. Thus, they are disproportionately in the high-paying profession, shunning training in education fields in which Muslim graduates predominate.
Christians have good lives as a result of their educational efforts and the openness of Israeli society. However, instead of focusing on these successes and the benefits Israel society provides, church officials only publicizing Israeli warts, often inflating isolated incidents; and these exaggerated claims are broadcasted by anti-Israel publications. Just as troubling, they remain silent on Islamic excesses that are responsible for the collapse of Bethlehem’s Christian population. Church leaders must confront these biases that buttress antisemitism.
Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate and author of Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? (Wicked Son Press, 2026).
