AMBASSADOR GEORGE DEEK: The Christian Israel you are not being shown

Dec.18, 2021 shows a general view of Israel’s northern city of Nazareth and its Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation.(Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

Something interesting is happening beyond Israel’s borders as well.Recent polling inLebanonfound strong support among its Christian communities for peace with Israel: 77% among Maronites and 72% among Orthodox Christians.

Perhaps Middle Eastern Christians, after watching what has happened to ancient communities inIraq,Syriaand elsewhere, are beginning to ask questions that old political slogans cannot answer.

Perhaps Jews and Christians in this region have more invested in one another’s survival than generations of conflict allowed either side to admit.

None of this excuses a single act of anti-Christian hatred.A Jew who spits at a priest because he is Christian should be ashamed of himself, and Israel should make sure the law deals with him.Full stop.

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Israel has work to do.Enforcement must be stronger.Religious leaders must be louder.Education must be better.I am working inside government on precisely these issues.

But I refuse to give the extremist a promotion.He is an extremist.He does not get promoted to spokesman for ten million Israelis simply because that makes for a more dramatic story.

And yet that is effectively what some of the current coverage does.

The extremist is representative, while the Christian Supreme Court justice is an exception.

The spitting teenager is Israeli, while the Christian ambassador somehow is not.

How convenient.This works because a distorted picture does not require invented facts.It requires only a carefully chosen frame.Photograph one crack in a cathedral closely enough, and you can make the entire building appear to be collapsing.The crack is real.The picture is false.

There is a broader reason this matters.

Christianity was born in this region.Yet across much of the Middle East, ancient Christian communities have suffered war,persecution, political instability, emigration and demographic decline.

Archaeologists excavated a church in the Negev Desert to find the ancient art.(Israel Antiquities Authority)

Before Syria’s civil war, Christians numbered over two million, and today only a few hundred thousand are estimated to remain.Iraq’s Christian community has fallen from more than 1.5 million before 2003 to fewer than 200,000.

So the important Christian question of our age is not whether Israel contains unpleasant extremists.Of course it does.So do America, Spain and every other country.

The important question is:

Where in the Middle East will Christians still be living, worshiping, raising children and building a future fifty years from now?

I want the answer to include not only Jaffa, Jerusalem, Nazareth and the Galilee, but also Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and everywhere else Christians have belonged for centuries.

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A few days ago at Bethsaida, standing where Peter and Andrew once lived, I was reminded that Christianity’s story began here.Two thousand years later, Christians are still here.Not as archaeological artifacts or pilgrims, and certainly not merely as victims.

We worship.We raise families.We criticize our government.We build schools and careers.We serve our country and shape its future.

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Israel has extremists.They deserve condemnation and prosecution.What they do not deserve is a promotion.They do not get to define Israel.And those who are so eager to let them should ask themselves why.

Ambassador George Deek is a veteran diplomat with 18 years of experience.He most recently served as Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan and is the nation’s first Special Envoy to the Christian world.He is a recipient of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s Award for Excellence.He is a member of Jaffa’s Arab Christian community and has been active in the community from a young age.