Archbishop of Canterbury falls for anti-Israel lies.

Last week, in the lead up to Christmas, Israel was once again thrust into the spotlight courtesy of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who jointly published an article with Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem Hosam Naoum in The Sunday Times claiming Christians were being “systematically” driven out of the Holy Land.

Yet the statistics prove otherwise.

While any attacks that have occurred at the hands of Jewish extremists are reprehensible, and widely condemned as such by the vast majority in Israel, the truth remains that the safest place for Christians in the Middle East to be today is the State of Israel.

So where did the archbishop get this misinformation?

Earlier this month, a letter was released by the patriarchs and heads of churches in Jerusalem claiming, without any evidence, that Israel is unfairly discriminating against Christians with coronavirus entry restrictions.

While there have been some despicable incidents of vandalism against churches by Jewish extremists in the last year, there is no evidence or statistics provided for any physical attacks, or for the claim that Jews are driving Christians out of the Holy Land. There is however evidence of the opposite.

The facts are:-

-The Christian community in Israel actually grew by 1.4%. Not only that, but the community is thriving and successful.

 -Christians being among the most educated groups in the entire country, and with Christian women in particular having some of the highest education rates. Israeli Christians also outscore Israeli Jews on matriculation exams by 60% to 51%.

- Christians have the lowest rates of poverty and unemployment of any group in the State of Israel, including Jews, and a total of 84% of Israeli.

-Christians are satisfied with their lives in the Holy Land. While Israel undoubtedly has shortcomings, these are not exactly statistics that represent a population being “driven out” by the government.

-In Gaza, Christians have gone from the thousands to around 1,000 under Hamas. Not only that, but they have been subjected to murders and terror attacks on their homes and places of worship by Islamic extremists.

-In the West Bank, Christians have not fared much better with the percentage of Christians in Bethlehem, the very birthplace of Jesus, shrinking from 80% under Israeli control, to roughly 12% today under the Palestinian Authority.

In the Middle East, Christians have gone from 20% of the total population to 5%, and face regular attacks and harassment from extremists across the Arab world, in particular in Egypt and Iraq.

Presenting the issue without context as the Israeli church leaders and the Archbishop of Canterbury did is simply playing politics, and to the Christians of the Middle East who really are being driven out of their homelands like in the Gaza Strip, Egypt, Iraq or the West Bank.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has a responsibility as a major religious leader to examine the full picture before latching on to an intentionally misleading effort to score political points and distract from the true persecution of Christians throughout the Middle East.

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