Christians in the Middle East are coming under renewed aggression, according to reports, whether from secular, Muslim, or Jewish authorities. Commonweal magazine (July 28) provides a running account of recent violent incidents. The latest wave of mass violence began in late June, when an extremist Islamic suicide bomber opposed to the new Syrian leadership opened fire and then bombed worshippers at St. Elias Greek Orthodox Church outside Damascus, killing 38 of them. In mid-July, Jewish settlers from Taybeh, the oldest Christian village in the West Bank, set fire to the fifth-century Greek Orthodox church of St. George. Calls for help from the parish priest and church members were ignored by the Israeli authorities, leading to protests from Orthodox and Catholic leaders, and even objections from the evangelical U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. A day after the violence at Taybeh, a mob attacked and burned St. Michael Melkite Greek Catholic Church in the southern Syrian town of al-Sura al-Kabira. It is still unclear who was behind the attack on the church. Al-Sura is in an area where clashes between the Syrian military and Druze militias have become increasingly frequent in a cycle of acts of retribution. On July 17, an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) weapon struck Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza, killing three people and wounding nine others. The IDF attributed the incident to errant mortar rounds that misfired in the direction of the church.
West Bank town of Taybeh
The blog Public Orthodoxy (July 23) focuses on the settler attacks in Taybeh, noting that the ancient Christian town and its Church of St. George have been subject to decades of encroachments from Jewish settlers. Mae Elise Cannon and Christopher Huth note that the attacks on the town, which is under the control of both the Palestinian Authority and the IDF, “increase the risk of further erasure of Palestinian life, and are emblematic of the broader pattern of homogenization of the Holy Land, whose religious pluralism is being increasingly erased.” The Christian population of Palestine is dwindling, with Christians making up just around 1 percent of the population in the Palestinian territories, a decline from roughly 10 percent in 1948. While some of this decline has usually been attributed to Muslim growth and discrimination, the authors point to “targeted violence by Israeli settlers, discriminatory policies, and the confiscation of Christian-owned land.” They argue that beyond the settlements, the Christian community within the Old City of Jerusalem, such as the ancient Armenian Quarter, is “under existential threat. A controversial land deal and legal proceedings could strip the Armenian Patriarchate of 25 percent of its land.” In the online magazine The Conversation (August 1), criminologist Arie Perliger attributes the growing violence against Palestinian communities to the growth of settler militias made of religious Zionists who are seeking to fill the void left by the IDF as it fights on other fronts.
(Commonweal, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/amar-christians-middle-east-israel-syria-gaza-pizzaballa; Public Orthodoxy, https://publicorthodoxy.org/2025/07/23/taybeh-under-attack/; The Conversation, https://religionnews.com/2025/08/01/the-quiet-war-whats-fueling-israels-surge-of-settler-violence-and-the-lack-of-state-response/)
