Orthodox nun urges US Christians to look past Israeli messaging on Palestinian Christians

Gaza’s fragile ceasefire is holding only barely, and the outlook for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including the remaining community of Palestinian Christians, remains uncertain. In an opinion essay, Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, an American-born Orthodox nun who has taught in Christian schools and led religious institutions in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, argues that American readers need to look past efforts to deny or conceal what she describes as systematic oppression facing this community.

Writing about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the United Nations earlier this year, the author says he claimed that when Bethlehem was under Israeli control, 80 percent of its residents were Christians, and that since the Palestinian Authority took control, that number has fallen to under 20 percent. The author says the statement used misleading statistics to suggest that Christians in the West Bank, where Bethlehem is located, are better off under Israeli control. Based on her experience, she writes, the reality is very different.

The author says she moved to Jerusalem nearly thirty years ago as a member of St. Mary Magdalene Russian Orthodox Church on the Mount of Olives. Before the wall was built, she says, her community regularly walked to Bethlehem during the Christmas season to celebrate Liturgy at the Church of the Nativity. She now lives at a convent in the United States but visits the Holy Land twice a year and remains in contact with teachers and students in Bethlehem, a city she describes as now fully encircled by a wall that Israel began building in 2002. She recalls that a wall built in 2001 separated her church in Jerusalem from a school she ran in Bethany in the West Bank. She describes visiting the Church of the Nativity today as feeling like visiting a prison complex.

She writes that Christians in Palestine are subject to the same restrictions and hardships as other Palestinians under occupation. In her account, churches are attacked, Christians are blocked from certain churches and holy sites because of the wall, schools are endangered, and religious objects are destroyed by IDF soldiers during checkpoint inspections. These are the author’s assertions, and she presents them as her own testimony.

The essay also refers to a filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which the author describes as legally mandated, in which she says Israeli officials outlined plans for “the largest Geofencing and Christian Targeting campaign in US History.” According to the author’s reading of the filing, the plan would create a digital perimeter around key Christian gathering places and deliver pro-Israel content, with the goal of combating low American evangelical approval of the State of Israel. She says the filing describes messaging such as “Israel protects Christians like no other nation in the Middle East” and “Israel is the birthplace of Jesus; come see Bethlehem for yourself.” Claims made in public messaging deserve careful testing before they are accepted (Proverbs 18:17).

The author urges American Christians to visit Bethlehem and see conditions for themselves. She points to the wall, which she says has been built on Palestinian land and separates families and farmers from their land, to checkpoints that restrict movement, and to Israeli settlements that she says claim much of the most valuable land and resources. She argues that American Christians should be informed about conditions facing their fellow believers, noting that U.S. tax dollars help fund the occupation, which she says marginalizes Christian and Muslim Palestinians alike.

In closing her argument for a path forward, the author calls for advocacy for a peaceful and just Israeli-Palestinian settlement that allows Christians to continue living in the region’s holiest cities. She names the Telos Group, which she has worked with, as an organization that builds communities of American peacemakers and equips them with tools to help address a conflict she describes as seemingly intractable.

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