The Reality for Christians in Israel

Within the context of much being said on social media about the treatment of Christians in Israel, Raj Nair, of the Christian Broadcasting Network, interviewed Shadi Khalloul, an indigenous Aramean Christian who lives in Israel, to hear his perspective on the situation.

Shadi thanks God that the Arameans have the State of Israel today, because the state allows them to be recognised as native Christians after 400 years of Arab Islamic conquest, and occupation by different groups including the Arabs, the Mamluks and the Ottomans, all of whom treated Christians as second class citizens.

Indeed, it was not just that the indigenous Christians were treated as second class citizens, they were treated in a brutal way, experiencing a lot of ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide, some of which is still happening today. Christians in the Middle East experience oppression of their needs and their will to live in peace in their own villages. But in the state of Israel, they received recognition of their Aramaic identity, and finally have a state that allows them freedom, that allows them to thrive, to prosper.

Shadi says there were just 48,000 Christian people in Israel when it was established in 1948. And today there are 184,000 Christians. They enjoy freedom of worship, freedom of speech, freedom of movement. Their women can walk everywhere without being harassed by their Muslim neighbours, as they are in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank (including Bethlehem).

Shadi did admit that there are some Jewish fanatics in Israel, "a very tiny minority", but added that those fanatics are punished by the authorities - the police and the courts - they are not able to do things freely, as Muslims do to Christians in Arab countries with suicide bombings in churches, confiscation of lands, kidnapping women for forced marriage and conversion to Islam.