Anti-Israel voices in the West are quick to spotlight any incident involving a Jew mistreating a Christian in the Holy Land. Tucker Carlson and others have made this a recurring theme: Israel, we are told, is hostile to Christianity and indifferent to the fate of local believers.
But what of genuine persecution of local Christians by local Muslims?
Last week, a young Jewish man assaulted a Christian nun in Jerusalem’s Old City. The incident made international headlines and went viral on social media. Israel was condemned, despite authorities arresting the offender and treating the act for what it was: disgraceful, criminal and unacceptable.
Days later, Palestinian gunmen attacked Israeli motorists and then used local Christians as human shields. Yet that story barely registered. There were no viral monologues, no sweeping denunciations of Palestinian society, and no demand that the Palestinian Authority explain how armed men were able to turn Christians into cover after an attack.
According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the incident took place Tuesday in al-Khader, an Arab village just west of Bethlehem. Palestinian attackers had hurled firebombs at Israeli civilians in Judea before fleeing into the Church of Saint George, where local Christians were gathered to celebrate the Feast of St. George.
The terrorists did not merely hide in a Christian holy site. They turned the people inside it into protection for themselves. And this is not the first time.
Israeli forces deliberately avoided entering the church in order to protect civilians and respect the sanctity of the site. In other words, the very restraint routinely denied to Israel in Western commentary was on display in real time: attackers used a church as cover, while Israeli forces held back to avoid endangering Christian worshippers.
Shortly afterward, clashes broke out between local Christians and Muslim residents in the village, as seen in video clips subsequently posted to social media.
Too often, violence against Christians in the Middle East is ignored. Yesterday it happened again in Judea and Samaria.
After hurling Molotov cocktails at Israeli civilians, terrorists fled into a church during worship – using Christians as human shields. Israeli forces… pic.twitter.com/18deaUaqOI
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) May 6, 2026
That, too, is part of the story so many commentators prefer not to tell. Palestinian Christians are not only caught between Israel and Palestinian nationalism. They are often caught within Palestinian society itself, where their numbers have declined dramatically and their vulnerability is treated as an inconvenience to the preferred narrative.
The demographic reality is difficult to ignore. Only about 33,000 Palestinian Christians remain in the three towns of the Bethlehem area, according to 2022 estimates. In Bethlehem itself, Christians now make up roughly one-fifth of the population — a sharp decline from 1995, when Israel transferred control of the city to the Palestinian Authority and around 80% of Bethlehem identified as Christian.
Read that again, Tucker: For nearly 30 years, from 1967 to 1995, Bethlehem had retained its strong Christian majority under the Israelis.
Once the Palestinian Authority took over, the Christians began leaving.
That collapse did not happen because of Jews spitting at Christians in Jerusalem, ugly and condemnable as such incidents are. It happened under Palestinian rule, amid social, political and religious pressures that Western Christian influencers seem remarkably reluctant to discuss.
So when attackers flee into a church after targeting Israeli civilians, and local Christians are placed in danger, the silence is not incidental. It is editorial, it is ideological, and it is precisely why this story matters.
The only honest conclusion is that many Western pundits do not actually care about the Christians of the Holy Land as much as they care about using them against Israel. If they did, they would condemn abuses consistently and proportionately. Spitting on or assaulting a nun is reprehensible and should be prosecuted. But armed men hurling stones at Christians and taking over a church is not a footnote. It is a far graver crime. The silence tells the story: Christian suffering matters loudly when it can be blamed on Jews, and quietly—if at all—when it exposes the brutality of Israel’s enemies.
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