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| A Palestinian Christian girl decorates the Holy Family Church, as the community prepares modest Christmas celebrations after two years of war, in Gaza City on 9 December 2025 (Reuters) |
Meanwhile, Israeli extremists routinely spit on priests and harass clergy in Jerusalem, behaviour dismissed by Israel’s minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, as “an old Jewish tradition". Christian Zionists, who speak endlessly of "biblical values", respond with silence.
That silence is not accidental. It is inherited. The Crusaders, too, cloaked ambition in scripture, sanctifying violence while discarding inconvenient lives, including those of Eastern Christians.
Today’s Christian Zionists revive the same posture: not faith, but fervour; not devotion, but ideological zeal wrapped in biblical language.
They defend a state that bombs churches, kills Christian civilians, and drives Christian families from their ancestral land. They pledge to train tens of thousands of evangelists to serve Israel’s cause, while remaining wilfully blind to the erasure of the very Christian communities whose presence gives the Holy Land its meaning.
They cheer politicians and commentators who treat Christianity not as a living faith but as a useful relic. British commentator Melanie Phillips captured this contempt with startling frankness when she described Christianity as a "Jewish sect that got slightly out of hand".
Zionism, born of secular nationalism and often deeply suspicious of religion, discovered that religion could be pressed into service. Christian Zionists supply the passion, the theatre, the vocabulary of destiny, baptising military campaigns and sanctifying domination.
For this performance to succeed, Palestinian Christians must be written out of the script. Their existence punctures the myth of a "Judeo-Christian West" confronting a Muslim enemy."