أصدر التجمع الوطني المسيحي في الأراضي المقدسة موجزًا عشية عيد الميلاد، أكد فيه على أنَّ دولة الإبادة الإسرائيلية قتلت ما يقارب 5% من مسيحيي غزة خلال العامين الماضيين من حربها الإبادية على القطاع، في استهداف موثق طال الكنائس والمستشفيات والمنازل، وأدى إلى تدمير جزء أساسي من الوجود المسيحي في القطاع.

وأشار الموجز إلى أن التطهير العرقي الإسرائيلي يمتد إلى القدس المحتلة وباقي أنحاء الضفة الغربية، ويشمل الاعتداء على رجال الدين، تدنيس الكنائس والمقابر، تخريب الممتلكات الكنسية، التضييق على المصلين، ومنع الوصول إلى أماكن العبادة.

الموجز في الرسالة أدناه:

Christmas Eve Brief

Israel Killed Five Percent of Gaza’s Christians

A Christmas Eve Brief on the Israeli Genocide Against Christian Life in Palestine

Issued by the National Christian Coalition in The Holy Land

Israel has killed approximately five percent of Gaza’s Palestinian Christian community.
This figure, confirmed by Gaza church authorities and reflected in independent international reporting, is not a metaphor, not a tragedy of war, and not collateral damage. It is a numerical measure of genocide carried out by the State of Israel against Palestinian Christians. One out of every twenty Palestinian Christians in Gaza has been slaughtered by the Israeli genocidal army, with many more wounded or permanently maimed. In a community already small, this scale of killing constitutes deliberate ethnic cleansing

This reality stands at the far end of a decades-long continuum of persecution imposed on Palestinian Christians since the establishment of the genocidal State of Israel. Across genocide-ravaged Gaza and apartheid-ruled occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, Israeli state institutions and Israeli colonial settler terrorist militias have operated in parallel to erode, terrorize, and forcibly remove Christian life as part of Israel’s broader campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people

Gaza and the Israeli genocide of a Christian community

The killing of five percent of Gaza’s Christians is the direct result of U.S.-supported Israeli military policy. It is executed by the Israeli genocidal army through sustained bombardment of civilian neighborhoods, churches, shelters, and medical facilities using Western-supplied weapons financed largely by Christian taxpayers. These murders occurred in homes, hospital wards, and inside churches that Israel deliberately bombed, while Israeli snipers targeted the faithful during mass, inflicting death and injury

The Israeli genocidal army struck the Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius compound, one of the oldest Christian churches in the world, targeting the forcibly displaced Christian and Muslim families sheltering inside. Israeli airstrikes destroyed and rendered non-functional Christian-run medical facilities, including the Anglican Church’s Al-Ahli Hospital, despite their protected civilian status under international law. The Israeli army also attacked the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza. During one of these genocidal assaults, Israeli snipers hunted the Christian faithful while they were praying during mass, murdering Nahida Anton and her daughter Samar Anton

These were deliberate Israeli murderous decisions, taken by Israeli war-criminal commanders, implemented by Israeli genocidal pilots and snipers, and justified by an Israeli state doctrine that treats the non-Jewish indigenous civilian population as collectively expendable

Palestinian Christians in Gaza were killed because the genocidal state of Israel bombed them. They were killed because they are Palestinians living under an Israeli genocidal military occupation. The five percent figure is the outcome of Israeli intent expressed through mass killing

Occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank under Israeli colonial terror

Occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank form a single territorial unit under Israeli military occupation. In this space, Palestinian Christians are subjected to continuous violence carried out by Israeli colonial settler terrorist militias and protected by Israeli state genocidal forces

Israeli colonial settler terrorists routinely assault Christian clergy, vandalize churches, desecrate cemeteries, and intimidate worshippers, particularly in occupied Jerusalem and Christian villages such as Al-Taybeh. These Israeli perpetrators are largely residents and leaders of illegal exclusivly Jewish colonial settlements across occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank. They belong to the same Jewish-supremacist networks responsible for sustained Israeli settler terrorism against Palestinian civilians, villages, homes, agriculture, and land

The Rossing Center documented more than 110 Israeli terrorist attacks against Christians in occupied Jerusalem in a single year. These attacks included physical assaults causing injury to clergy and lay Christians, spitting on individuals wearing crosses, spitting on church entrances, explicit threats, and acts of vandalism. Christian clergy were deliberately targeted because religious dress made them immediately identifiable. The attacks are largely concentrated in the Old City of occupied Jerusalem on Christian pilgrimage routes under constant Israeli police surveillance

These Israeli colonial settler terrorist militias operate openly, frequently as state-sponsored and organized formations, within areas fully controlled by Israeli occupation forces. The Israeli genocidal army routinely shields the Israeli terrorist perpetrators, disperses the victims, and deliberately leaves Christian communities exposed to continued violence. At the same time, the genocidal state of Israel strictly prohibits Palestinians, including Christians, from possessing any means of self-defense, enforcing this ban through Israeli military law that imposes severe punishment, including sentences that can exceed a decade in Israeli military detention for possessing a handgun 

The United States Department of State International Religious Freedom Reports corroborate this reality, documenting repeated Israeli assaults on priests, vandalism of Christian cemeteries, and formal complaints by church authorities that harassment has become routine and normalized

Israel’s denial of freedom of worship

Alongside physical violence, the genocidal State of Israel enforces systematic denial of freedom of worship against all Palestinians through military orders, permit regimes, and movement restrictions.
Israeli military authorities categorically bar Christians from Gaza from praying in Bethlehem during Christmas and from attending Easter at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. These bans are U.S.-backed Israeli policy. They are permanent. They are enforced by Israeli genocidal soldiers and Israeli military checkpoints largely paid for by American Christian tax payers

Palestinian Christians in the West Bank face similar Israeli repression. Access to holy sites is conditioned on Israeli military permits that are routinely denied or restricted to a token number of individuals for single-day entry. Churches consistently report that the overwhelming majority of applications are rejected, tearing families apart and excluding entire congregations from their most sacred rites.
This Israeli denial of worship is imposed on Palestinian Muslims and Christians alike

Israeli economic warfare against Churches

In occupied Jerusalem, Israeli authorities wage sustained economic warfare against Churches and other Christian institutions. Israeli government authorities, including municipalities, impose punitive taxation on churches, freeze church bank accounts, seize Christian property, and coerce the reclassification of church assets. These discriminatory and illegitimate measures directly undermine Christian schools, hospitals, charities, clergy livelihoods, and the overall continuity of indigenous Christian presence in the holy city and the rest of the Holy Land

Christian land ownership obstructs Israel’s religious-supremacist territorial agenda. For this reason, Israeli authorities target church custodianship as an obstacle to be weakened rather than as a historic presence to be protected

Zionism as Israeli religious supremacy

Zionism functions as a religious-supremacist political system that subordinates all non-Jewish life to Jewish colonial domination over land, law, and sovereignty. Within this system, Christianity is tolerated only as a museum exhibit or tourist attraction, not as a living Palestinian community with national and civil rights

Palestinian Christians expose the falsity of Israeli propaganda designed to mask decades of genocide and apartheid behind Zionist institutions that deliberately adopt Christian names as political camouflage. Organizations such as Christians United for Israel, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Bridges for Peace, and Christian Friends of Israeli Communities function as ideological shields for Israeli genocidal crimes against Christians in Palestine, projecting a manufactured image of Christian endorsement while actively supporting Israeli genocide and colonial settlement expansion

The continued presence of indigenous Palestinian Christians dismantles this deception. It exposes the fabrication of a Jewish-Muslim binary designed to erase Christianity from the Palestinian national reality and to portray Israeli violence as civilizational defense rather than Jewish-supremacist colonial domination

Palestinian Christian life disrupts Israeli messianic settler ideology by its very existence and challenges the theological justifications advanced to legitimize land theft and mass killing

For this reason, Israel applies sustained attrition against Palestinian Christians through mass killing by genocide in Gaza and through terror, exclusion, and coercion enforced by Jewish-supremacist apartheid across occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank

Conclusion

On Christmas Eve, the record is unmistakable. The genocidal state of Israel killed five percent of Gaza’s Palestinian Christians in the past two years alone. The genocidal state of Israel bombed our churches. The genocidal state of Israel destroyed our hospitals. The genocidal state of Israel denied us worship. In occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, the genocidal state of Israel protects colonial settler terrorist militias that assault clergy, vandalize churches, terrorize worshippers, and arm them with state-supplied weapons

This is genocide in Gaza. It is systematic persecution and apartheid elsewhere in Palestine. It is carried out by the State of Israel through its genocidal army, police, municipalities, and settler terror networks

The five percent figure is not a headline for sympathy. It is an indictment of the genocidal state of Israel and of Western complicit governments, spearheaded by the United States of America. It is a measure of how far these crimes have already gone

Sources referenced

Rossing Center monitoring reports on attacks against Christians
• Statements by Gaza church authorities, the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, The Council of Patriarchs and Heads of Churches in Jerusalem 
• U.S. Department of State International Religious Freedom Reports
• UN humanitarian reporting on Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territory
• International humanitarian law documentation on attacks on protected religious sites