The Truth About Israel and Middle Eastern Christians

Israel is the only state in the Middle East where the Christian community is growing and thriving. That’s not an accident. Since its inception, Israel has viewed Middle Eastern Christians, first and foremost its own Christian community, as its natural allies and partners. Christians in Israel are commanders in the IDF. They are justices on the Supreme Court. They are diplomats and reality TV stars. And their prosperity is reflected in their numbers. In 1948, there were 34,000 Christians living in the State of Israel. Today there are 188,000. Christians are full and equal citizens in Israel. They have the same legal and civil rights as Israeli Jews. Their per capita income and education level are among the highest in Israel.

“Israel is the only state in the Middle East where the Christian community is growing and thriving”

The following chart from the Philos Project shows the decline of Christian communities throughout the countries surrounding Israel.

Although the percentage of Christians in Israel’s overall population has declined, this is not due to persecution of Christians. It is due to the massive increase in Israel’s Jewish population by successive waves of Jewish immigration. In 1948, 650,000 Jews lived in Israel. The first major wave of Jewish immigration after Israel’s establishment came from the Arab world. 800,000 Jews were forced from their homes and communities throughout the Arab world in a largely ignored massive ethnic cleansing. Equally, over a million Jews from the former Soviet Union immigrated to Israel when the gates of the Soviet Union were finally opened.

Today it is the Christian communities that are being pushed out of many Middle Eastern countries. As Ambassador George Deek, a proud Israeli Christian Arab has explained, “The ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East is the greatest crime against humanity of the 21st century. In just two decades, Christians like me have been reduced from 20 percent of the population of the Middle East to a mere four percent today.” (1)

“Today it is the Christian communities that are being pushed out of many Middle Eastern countries”

Christian communities are often compelled to keep their religion to themselves. Dan Burumi, a Jordanian convert to Christianity living in forced exile, recalled in a recent essay on X that last year, Christians in Fuheis, the last Christian majority town in Jordan, installed a statue of Jesus in the town square. “Within two hours, they were forced to remove it because it was deemed provocative to Muslims.” (2)

In recent months, on instruction from Prime Minister Netanyahu, the IDF stepped in to stop the massacre of Druze in Syria. He stated repeatedly that Israel remains committed to defending threatened Christian communities from Syria to Nigeria.

Those presenting false claims of Israeli state persecution of Christians and an equally false portrait of Christian life in the Muslim Arab world are distorting reality. If they are believed, they will make the world less safe for Jews. But as Israel has proven, the Jewish state is capable of defending itself. Those who will be truly harmed by these distortions are the people they claim to care for—the Christians of the Middle East.

¹) In 2018, George Deek was appointed Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan. He is the first Israeli-Arab Christian to become ambassador of the Jewish state. Deek emphasises that Christians in Israel enjoy unprecedented religious freedom, access to high- quality education, and professional opportunities that far exceed what is available in other countries in the Middle East, and he is convinced that Arab Israelis can be a bridge between Israel and the Arab world.

²) Some quotes from Dan Burmawi’s essay: “In 1930, Christians made up about 20 percent of Jordan’s population. Today, they make up only about two percent. Christians can practice their faith freely as long as they remain within the walls of their churches. Christians are allowed to legally convert to Islam and change their official documents. Muslims can never convert to Christianity. Leaving Islam leads to the loss of civil rights. Christians in Jordan have chosen security and sacrificed their freedom. That is the price of survival in an Islamic country. In Israel, Christians are sometimes spat on, but they enjoy genuine freedom and full civil rights.”

Would you like to learn more about the situation of Christians in Israel? In this interview with the American news channel CBN, Shadi Khalloul, an Aramaic Christian and founder of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Organisation, explains what it means to be a Christian in Israel: