Western Standard - HANNAFORD： As Easter approaches, Israel's Arab Christians face hardship

00:00:00.000 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Hannaford, a politics show of the Western

00:00:21.020 Standard. It is Thursday, March the 26th. In a week's time or so, it will be Easter,

00:00:26.920 when many Canadians reflect on the death of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem

00:00:30.900 and how his resurrection from the dead made possible the same ascension

00:00:35.220 for anybody who places their trust in him.

00:00:38.660 But one of the ironies of life in the Holy Land today

00:00:41.540 is that there are fewer and fewer Christians walking where Christ walked 2,000 years ago,

00:00:48.620 calling people to repentance and that reconciliation with God.

00:00:52.460 That is to say that 100 years ago,

00:00:54.460 about 10% of the people living in that whole area of Israel, West Bank and Gaza, were Christians.

00:01:01.020 Now, there are more Palestinian Christians living outside the area than in it. There may be perhaps 0.99

00:01:08.300 400 Christians left in Gaza, who really knows for sure. Bethlehem is virtually a Christian-free zone,

00:01:15.420 and in the West Bank, Israeli settlers in the last couple of weeks have been attacking

00:01:19.980 Palestinian Christians. What has happened? What is the outlook for these people?

00:01:25.420 With me tonight is John Naeem Snowbar. He is the Director of Advocacy for Palestinian Christians

00:01:33.660 in Australia. He's also the first grandson of the first Palestinian Anglican Bishop of

00:01:39.100 Jerusalem and until recently was a member of the Australian Diplomatic Corps. John,

00:01:45.580 welcome to the show thank you for having me nigel john so many questions have i overstated

00:01:52.700 the situation of despair for middle eastern christians not at all not at all i think it's

00:01:59.900 important to situate uh where middle eastern christians sit in terms of world christianity

00:02:05.660 firstly to say that palestinian christians are the first christians um it is from them that the

00:02:12.380 gospel came and it is through them and their the palestinian christian who were at that point 0.74

00:02:17.900 palestinian jewish apostles of christ that christianity um came to the world uh long before

00:02:24.940 brohn uh became christian um and certainly long before america canada and australia became

00:02:30.380 christian uh their situation uh is a uh particularly terrible one um particularly in the holy land

00:02:38.860 where christ once walked uh palestinian christians face settler attacks almost daily

00:02:46.380 around 10 a day palestinian christians are unable to access the holy sites including the church of

00:02:54.760 the holy sepulcher they are unable to pray much like their palestinian muslim brothers and sisters

00:03:00.600 um their uh homes are attacked uh regularly demolished by uh settlers and uh many of them

00:03:09.440 languish in israeli prisons uh the situation sadly is um not as not not as bad but still uh

00:03:17.600 that's still um quite terrible for uh christians in the middle east more broadly um i'll mention

00:03:25.000 for instance before the iraq war iraq had a vibrant community of over 1 million christians

00:03:31.240 um and now has just a fraction of that uh so the situation for christians in the middle east

00:03:37.080 that particularly in the holy land um is uh is a terrible one um and requires and deserves uh the

00:03:44.040 attention that you're giving it now john let me ask you this um to a casual observer it seems that

00:03:54.600 Christians in North America, the United States and Canada, are broadly sympathetic to Israel, to the Jews.

00:04:07.400 Why do you think the Jews are not reciprocating with the Christians who live among them?

00:04:14.280 What's this about? Land or money or loyalties? What's going on?

00:04:20.200 well it's a complex history uh as as you would know nigel uh i think that um what is going on

00:04:29.140 is that um the western church has decided um not to see um the through not to see christianity and

00:04:38.800 the faith through the eyes of the uh living stones of christianity itself uh the western

00:04:44.280 Church has decided to align itself really with a particular ideology, a dangerous ideology

00:04:52.260 in Christian Zionism that really practices the theology of supremacy over the theology 0.82

00:04:59.960 of tolerance and over the theology of compassion and mercy.

00:05:04.060 And you see that being intertwined really in an entire infrastructure in American evangelism

00:05:12.980 that is grounded in an expansionist worldview

00:05:17.080 that seeks to replace theology with foreign policy,

00:05:22.060 something that I saw very much firsthand as an Australian diplomat

00:05:26.720 where I served in Egypt and in Pakistan.

00:05:29.600 And even in Australia, that was something that was influencing

00:05:33.600 Australian foreign policy and indeed influences Western diplomats all over.

00:05:38.920 So what you have is a wrong framing, if you like, of Christianity itself, a framing that sees God as a real estate agent that hands out land to one group of people but not another, and that really misplaces the message of the gospel.

00:05:58.060 Well, that of course, to a cynic, and I am not a cynic, but to a cynic, that might seem

00:06:03.980 like a reading of the book of Joshua, very much a handing out of land. But what you're talking

00:06:09.660 about there is some kind of liberation theology, and I understand what that's about. But for the

00:06:19.340 benefit of people who, we've only got 20 minutes, for the benefit of people who want to cut to the

00:06:25.020 chase what do the christians in that part of the world want do they want their own little piece of

00:06:32.940 sovereign territory is that the game well i think i can speak for palestinian christians and in that

00:06:41.740 way i also speak for palestinians more broadly including palestinian muslims what they want

00:06:48.300 is not a religious state they want to live in a pluralistic civil society that allows them to

00:06:55.980 practice their own religion something that they're not able to do currently under the auspices of the

00:07:02.060 state of israel which is they've not been able to do that for the last 76 years and that is something

00:07:10.300 that um they hold dear uh they want to the right to uh raise their children uh safely um to raise

00:07:19.180 their children um in a way that they're equal with other children regardless of where they

00:07:25.980 where they live or how long their ancestors have been there um i myself am lucky enough to live

00:07:31.660 in australia a country that i was proud to serve as a diplomat in where i am treated equally in

00:07:39.180 front of the law regardless of how long my parents have been here and my how long my family has been

00:07:45.340 here and i think that's a common shared desire that christians in the middle east have with

00:07:51.180 people in the west uh it is a desire to live a free safe and secure life with rights to be

00:07:58.860 citizens and to exercise political and economic rights well let me let me push you a little on

00:08:05.740 that within the borders of israel and i'm not including the west bank here which obviously is

00:08:11.500 a contentious point uh for anybody who believes in that christian zionist message that you're

00:08:18.300 speaking of but for those who live within the accepted borders of israel um more than a million

00:08:25.260 of them i do believe are palestinians they are arabs they are not jews they prefer to be there 0.52

00:08:32.940 sorry am i am i wrong on a point of fact i think all palestinians prefer to be in the holy land

00:08:41.620 in palestine or the state of israel um all palestinians uh wish to have a connection

00:08:47.460 with the land in which their ancestors walked in which the lord when he was here in human flesh

00:08:53.860 walked and so um you'd be right in saying um that there are christians uh who live in the state of

00:09:01.720 israel who are palestinian um and who are able to live there um as citizens although okay that's

00:09:09.880 actually where i was going with this uh john if the if the muslims can get along in israel

00:09:15.800 why can't the christians well i think the issue really is about um an apartheid system so you've

00:09:24.200 asked me a question about the people that live within the state of israel um however there are

00:09:31.000 millions of palestinians christians and muslims who live in the occupied west bank or in gaza or

00:09:39.000 indeed in the hundreds of refugee camps that are spotted around that region that house palestinian

00:09:46.920 christians and palestinian muslims and none of them have the rights that are extended to citizens of 1.00

00:09:53.480 the state of israel none of them can practice their religion freely or can move freely or in

00:09:58.840 factor even documented um the west bank would be the you know for those who live in the west bank

00:10:04.600 which is uh would it not be the palestinian authority that they would appeal to well they

00:10:12.440 would appeal to a broad political consensus among the palestinian people that the only body that

00:10:21.640 truly represents the palestinians um is the plo and um the uh and that is a broad consensus um

00:10:30.920 within the palestinian national movement and uh the palestinian authority of course arose out of a

00:10:39.080 much later set of agreements um that were done and so many palestinians would feel that the

00:10:45.720 the Palestinian Authority does not represent them. Well I'm sure they would feel that but

00:10:51.040 in terms of actually living out your life day to day being free to worship in particular

00:10:55.400 is the Palestinian Authority actively against them? I think it's important to put things into

00:11:03.500 context so what is happening in the occupied West Bank is that many Palestinians live under

00:11:11.340 the thumb of Israeli occupation.

00:11:13.720 Israeli occupation is administered by a department

00:11:18.040 of the Israeli state called Korgat.

00:11:22.100 Korgat administers the ability to move, 0.98

00:11:25.720 the ability to move, to work, to have work rights.

00:11:33.520 And so it really is the state of Israel

00:11:36.200 that exercises a system of domination and control 0.79

00:11:39.300 over Christians and Muslim Palestinians,

00:11:43.020 and really it sits with the state of Israel

00:11:45.520 as the occupying power to remove those restrictions

00:11:49.560 in order to allow Palestinians to live freely.

00:11:52.920 What would that actually, what are they not able to do?

00:11:57.260 Never mind elsewhere, but in the West Bank,

00:11:59.520 what are they not able to do

00:12:01.180 that is specifically prohibited by the government of Israel?

00:12:06.120 Well, let's take freedom of movement, for instance.

00:12:08.580 they're unable to move freely uh palestinians living in bethlem are unable to move and go 0.93

00:12:15.860 uh to jerusalem um without a permit without a um without direct permission by the state of israel

00:12:24.260 um they're unable to access economic opportunities many palestinians in the west bank um are unable

00:12:30.660 to travel to their ancestral homes in what was once palestine what is now uh termed the state

00:12:36.980 of israel and so just taking freedom of movement you can imagine the sort of restrictions that

00:12:43.620 that places on people being unable to reunite with families being unable to access properties

00:12:51.220 that were taken under the israeli absentee act right after the state of israel was formed

00:12:57.780 being unable to access in some cases medical services in some cases being unable to study

00:13:03.620 being unable to reach universities,

00:13:06.880 taking vast amounts of time to get between town and town,

00:13:12.220 between city and city.

00:13:14.000 Even small villages are unable to access one another.

00:13:17.940 There are villages and cities that are completely surrounded

00:13:21.180 by Israeli settlements where there are roads that can be used

00:13:24.520 by Israeli Jews that are not allowed to be used by Palestinians.

00:13:28.460 So even just taking that as one small example,

00:13:31.560 and indeed it's a large example, Palestinians are really living 0.88

00:13:36.860 under the thumb of a brutal occupation.

00:13:40.900 Well, okay.

00:13:42.800 The Israelis, if they were here on this program to speak for themselves, 0.92

00:13:47.160 would probably say, well, to the extent that what you're saying is true, John,

00:13:52.560 we just got tired of people wandering across borders wearing suicide vests

00:14:00.140 and taking the bus and taking everybody on the bus with them. So, of course, we introduced

00:14:06.380 restrictions and built the walls and had the permit system. But nevertheless, there are

00:14:14.860 more than a million people who are not Jews living within Israel, and they're not having to go home

00:14:20.860 every night across the border. They just stay there. They're citizens. They kind of like it

00:14:24.700 that way so because they got blown up as well so do you not concede that the state of israel had

00:14:32.700 some legitimate reason to be careful who they let in the core of the problem really is that

00:14:43.660 there's the proposition of creating a jewish country in a non-jewish majority country 0.93

00:14:49.660 and so the core of the issue uh from a palestinian perspective is that um if you are to create a

00:14:56.860 state which is an exclusively jewish state in a country that had a 90 plus non-jewish population

00:15:03.580 that that would necessitate the expulsion and indeed as we've seen the international

00:15:08.620 court of justice term uh recently a genocide and plausible case of genocide against the

00:15:15.020 inhabitants that live there that aren't jewish and so i think it's important to put that context

00:15:20.060 around your question um because yeah well to that point genocide i mean the jews know a little bit

00:15:25.820 about genocide so but i don't think they're running concentration camps so the courts may well have

00:15:32.300 said that i don't recall the details i'm relying on you for the facts in this case but if that's

00:15:37.500 what they said that was a rather imaginative use of language most of us would say and you say

00:15:45.020 Well, I mean, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza,

00:15:49.360 mainly women and children.

00:15:50.940 Nearly two million have been displaced.

00:15:53.140 There's been a total destruction of infrastructure,

00:15:56.600 including of the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital,

00:15:59.780 which my grandfather brought under the auspices of the Diocese of Jerusalem

00:16:03.340 when he was Bishop of Jerusalem.

00:16:05.700 There is genocide that's been confirmed by the International Court of Justice.

00:16:10.720 There is systematic torture and sexual violence, arbitrary detention.

00:16:14.640 I mean, all of these things are well documented by many international bodies, including the United Nations, Amnesty International, other groups.

00:16:23.820 And so what you are experiencing as a Palestinian living in the borders of the ever-expanding state of Israel is a complete system of domination and control. 1.00

00:16:40.180 Israel's 2018 nation-state law codifies apartheid and Jewish supremacy

00:16:48.280 and so Jewish rights are not the same as non-Jewish rights

00:16:53.940 and of course that's to be expected in a country

00:16:57.100 where you hope to establish a Jewish character

00:17:02.960 in a country that didn't originally have a Jewish character

00:17:08.080 and so um its emblems its flag its national symbols its parliament are all jewish

00:17:15.920 and for that reason and for that reason the palestinians are excluded because they are not 0.99

00:17:21.360 jewish some of the majority you know you 10 seconds ago you said something that probably

00:17:28.960 has people say huh and that would you said um in a country that never had a jewish character

00:17:35.520 well of course israel did have a jewish character it was began the program by talking about the

00:17:42.880 person of christ and the situation that he found himself when the jews were under roman domination

00:17:49.440 but they were a nation and uh of of course of course and that is and that is a history

00:17:55.600 um that um i as a palestinian christian descendant of nazarene jews um and proud of i never said

00:18:03.760 that Palestine did not have a Jewish history. Of course, there's been a continuous Jewish

00:18:10.400 history in that land, but it does not serve to extinguish all the other histories that exist

00:18:17.120 there. One claim cannot serve to extinguish the rest. We're coming to, we don't have an awful

00:18:24.480 lot of time left, so I've got two questions. One is, what is it, you are the representative

00:18:32.080 in australia do you have direct links in that area of the levant at the moment

00:18:39.840 by whatever name you want me okay i'm i i was due to be there in may this year

00:18:48.480 however since since the israeli and u.s assault on iran and the flights situation um i'm reassessing

00:18:56.320 that but i do get there and i'm hoping in fact to be there this may what do you when you go

00:19:06.960 what is your purpose encouragement you bring you bring resources what what is your role well well

00:19:16.080 i i wear another hat and that is that i'm a theologian in training at bethlehem bible

00:19:20.480 college at present so um this particular trip uh my hope was really to uh attend uh the uh church at

00:19:28.160 the sorry i thank you pardon the christ at the checkpoint conference um happening in bethlehem

00:19:34.880 this year which is a conference of palestinian christian theologians um that brings together

00:19:39.920 christians um ecumenically um and so my hope was really to connect with um some of the theologians

00:19:47.600 and some of the lecturers and some of the Palestinian leaders there

00:19:50.840 to continue my studies.

00:19:54.660 So the last question then is what does success look like?

00:19:59.740 If you had the power to do it and you did it, what would you do?

00:20:07.360 Well, we would not have a religious state.

00:20:10.740 We would have a civil, pluralistic, democratic state

00:20:14.800 with full sovereign rights over borders and water and airspace

00:20:20.260 and we would dismantle the apartheid system

00:20:25.120 that currently affects Palestine

00:20:28.780 and which some people call the State of Israel.

00:20:32.540 There would be a right of return for all Palestinian refugees

00:20:35.700 that have been displaced either in 1948 or 1967.

00:20:41.560 For me personally, and speaking as a Christian,

00:20:44.800 um i would like to see a faith-based stance um something that speaks truth to power and that's

00:20:51.120 a truth about um the uh history of anti-semitism a vile history um that occurred in the west

00:20:58.480 uh to non-palestinian jews um but also alongside that a history of what happened to the palestinians

00:21:05.520 who paid the ultimate price for that anti-semitism just to be clear on the borders of this what would

00:21:10.960 be the borders of this entity well palestinians unfortunately palestinians unfortunately don't 1.00

00:21:18.000 have uh you know we we're not in a present position to be able to negotiate that um this

00:21:25.120 is this is the perfect world i'm asking you to just blue sky here and say if you could make it

00:21:29.360 right this uh this this non-sectarian state that you described uh what would be the borders would

00:21:38.640 Would it include Gaza?

00:21:40.980 Would it include West Bank?

00:21:42.360 Would it include parts of Lebanon?

00:21:44.120 You know, how big is the area that would be, in a perfect world,

00:21:50.880 would be this homeland for everybody?

00:21:55.020 Well, in a perfect world, I think you would have to also take into account

00:21:59.760 the reality, and the reality of that question is that a border change

00:22:05.420 to palestine israel will probably result in a border change um to the region and so i think

00:22:13.420 the question really needs to be looked at holistically in terms of some of the other

00:22:18.620 issues that are affecting the region as well um so i don't have an answer for you that i can say

00:22:25.020 well it should be from here to here um but realistically speaking palestinians were

00:22:31.180 were expelled from the entirety of historic Palestine and most Alistinian Christians would feel 0.63

00:22:40.260 that it is their right to return to that whole area. Okay, this is the last, definitely the last

00:22:48.400 question. I hope it lends itself to a short answer. When you return to the area in May,

00:22:54.660 if in fact you're able to do so, do you expect to be able to worship

00:23:01.160 with other Palestinian Christians in either West Bank or in Israel,

00:23:08.380 wherever it is that you're landing up?

00:23:10.780 I would hope so, although I note that this coming week,

00:23:17.440 with the beginning of Holy Week, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

00:23:20.880 has been closed by the state of israel as has the al-aqsa mosque

00:23:25.200 they have been closed since the israeli and u.s war on iran and so i would hope that the region

00:23:34.560 is settled down and that i will be able to pray with my brothers and sisters well i hope that for

00:23:40.660 you too sir thank you for joining us on the program i don't think we we could take several

00:23:48.600 hours and not get to the bottom of it but you have certainly offered us some insights from a

00:23:52.840 point of view that we don't often hear thank you again for that from perth australia thank you very

00:23:58.920 thank you very much nigel thanks for having me for the western standard i'm nigel hannaford

00:24:18.600 You

Western Standard - March 29, 2026

HANNAFORD： As Easter approaches, Israel's Arab Christians face hardship

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript