The Last Christians of the Holy Land
Episode Stats
Words per minute
116.5547
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Toxicity
5
sentences flagged
Hate speech
16
sentences flagged
Summary
The Holy Land is not merely a region, but a spiritual compass point, the meeting place of God, history, and identity for billions of people across the world. For the Jewish people, it s the ancestral homeland promised and fought for since antiquity. For Muslims, Jerusalem holds a profound significance as well. The Al-Aqsa Mosque stands as Islam s third holiest site, tied to the Prophet Muhammad s night journey in early Islamic history. For Christians, the same land is the setting of the life and ministry of Jesus.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
One day this small light will explode and will light all the area in the Middle East and the world.
0.92
00:01:00.000
For billions of people across the world, it's not merely a region, but a spiritual compass point.
00:01:06.840
The meeting place of God, history, and identity.
00:01:11.060
For the Jewish people, it's the ancestral homeland promised and fought for since antiquity.
00:01:16.840
Jerusalem was the heart of the ancient kingdoms, the seat of the first and second temples,
00:01:24.160
It remains a cornerstone of Jewish identity and longing.
00:01:28.460
For Christians, the same land is the setting of the life and ministry of Jesus,
00:01:37.520
It is where the central events of the Christian faith unfolded,
00:01:41.580
giving the land a sacred geography that has shaped a global faith.
00:01:46.580
For Muslims, Jerusalem holds a profound significance as well.
00:01:50.980
The Al-Aqsa Mosque stands as Islam's third holiest site,
00:01:55.120
tied to the Prophet Muhammad's night journey in early Islamic history.
00:01:59.740
These layered claims, religious, historical, and emotional,
00:02:03.880
have made the Holy Land one of the most revered and contested places on earth.
00:02:25.120
On October 7, 2023, Hamas militants launched a large-scale attack into southern Israel,
00:02:37.000
killing over 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages,
00:02:45.760
In response, Israel's military campaign in the Gaza Strip caused extensive destruction,
00:02:51.040
high civilian casualties, and widespread displacement.
00:02:55.120
A ceasefire in October of 2025 eased fighting and allowed some aid in, but violence and humanitarian suffering continue.
00:03:11.040
In December 2025, I was invited by the Israeli government to witness firsthand what the situation was on the ground.
00:03:17.700
As with any government, I was cautious about accepting an invitation
00:03:24.040
concerned that what I see would be one-sided propaganda.
00:03:35.580
So I'm in Tel Aviv now, in usual Air Canada form.
00:03:41.800
so i'm stuck uh in a desert country in my quasi snowsuit for the next few days and not expecting
00:03:51.720
to have uh my summer and desert gear for at least a few days so and we're out all my equipment's
00:04:01.640
in that bag so it's gonna be uh it's gonna be a rough start but we'll see how she goes
1.00
00:04:11.800
They did their best to show us a variety of perspectives, but generally from the Israeli side of things.
00:04:25.060
What I saw from the Israeli perspective should shock anyone who's been watching the news.
00:04:30.520
What they endured was terrible, but it was still just one side.
00:04:35.340
just down the road i visit the site of the nova music festival massacre
00:04:41.900
the scale of death there was unimaginable young kids just there to have a good time
00:04:47.560
were butchered i spoke with one of the survivors a young man probably in his late 20s or early 30s
00:04:54.140
barely made it out alive just days later he was mobilized by the idf to go into gaza
00:05:00.740
I thought about how I would feel in similar circumstances
00:05:07.980
And then being handed a weapon to go in and do justice to those who had done it
00:05:12.540
I can't help but suspect that I would not conduct myself according to the rules of civilized warfare
00:05:22.240
Wouldn't I want to hurt them just the way they hurt me?
00:05:25.280
many in the west understand this conflict through very two-dimensional lenses westernized jewish
00:05:34.820
israelis versus radical islamic palestinians western conservatives have generally seen in
00:05:41.080
israel an outpost of our civilization fighting back the barbarian hordes of radical islam
1.00
00:05:45.880
as constantinople held out against the ottoman turks free evangelical judeo-christians in
00:05:53.100
particular, they see in modern Israel a continuation of biblical Israel, with all the lands therein
00:06:00.300
promised eternally to the Jewish people. It's essentially how I understood the conflict from
00:06:05.300
my own upbringing in evangelical churches as a teenager until relatively recently.
00:06:16.220
Western leftists tend to view the struggle through the lens of modern post-colonial and
00:06:20.860
intersectional identity politics. Dark-skinned, poor, Arab Muslims oppressed by lighter-skinned,
0.58
00:06:28.640
wealthy Jews who are Christian adjacent. In their worldview, one side has more identity points than
0.54
00:06:34.860
the other, and is therefore more deserving of their support. With time, and now some limited
00:06:41.580
on-the-ground experience, I've come to see the Western cheerleaders on both sides as dangerously
1.00
00:06:59.000
Completely overlooked by both are the last Christians of the Holy Land. While
00:07:04.380
broadly considered to be Arabs today, many of them are the descendants of
00:07:08.260
intermarriage with Arabs and those predating the Islamic invasion of the
00:07:12.000
fifth century. They have lived there since Jesus began his ministry two
00:07:16.080
millennia ago. They have as much right as anyone to be there. It's hard to dismiss these people
00:07:21.440
as radical Islamists. The Christian population of the West Bank has declined only slightly since
00:07:27.300
the UN partition and the Israeli War of Independence in 1947 and 48, from an estimated 70,000 to the
00:07:35.280
current estimate of 47,000. Still, their proportion of the population has declined from approximately
00:07:42.120
11% to just 1% today. It is driven in considerable measure by the huge influx of Palestinian refugees
00:07:49.900
from what is now Israel proper into the West Bank at the significantly lower fertility rate
00:07:55.720
of Christians vis-a-vis Muslims. Many Christians have emigrated to Western countries through
00:08:04.160
their connections abroad and the advantage of their own superior ministry-run educational
00:08:09.000
institutions. And they're being driven to leave.
00:08:14.320
Rony owns a shop near the Church of the Nativity
00:08:17.140
in Bethlehem, producing and selling hand-carved
00:08:20.140
nativity scenes and other Christian imagery to pilgrims.
00:08:24.200
The Franciscan church can trace his family here back a thousand years.
00:08:31.900
Yes, my family is one of the old family who lives in Bethlehem
00:08:35.800
like over a hundred years ago you know how far can you trace your family back according to the
00:08:40.520
franciscan you have for the last 600 years very accurate the date of birth death and marriages
00:08:45.800
so you could trace you could trace your family back 600 years here yes for my father and my
00:08:50.120
mother's side that's not like ancestry.com hey that's just the franciscan records just the
00:08:54.200
franciscan but you can find some tombs with this with the carving for another 200 years wow
00:09:01.080
Rony says it's not Muslims driving Christians out, as many of us believe.
00:09:08.080
A lot of people tell you, like they tell you, sell your house, it can make you money today.
00:09:14.080
Tomorrow the Israelis will take it to you, they will not pay.
1.00
00:09:18.080
Or it will be destroyed at what happened in Gaza.
00:09:23.080
Look, I mean, the Israelis confiscated many lands and many property still now.
00:09:28.080
Now my family, we lost 70% of our lands for the Israeli building settlements.
1.00
00:09:34.340
We lost all the lands from between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, behind the town of Rachel.
00:09:38.720
It's all our family lands and we have British, we have the Turkish document and we just lost
00:09:44.940
They built the wall, we don't have access to our land and they took it.
00:09:48.020
The people of Bethlehem are often subject to random gate closing, which seals them off
00:09:57.260
Rony says it makes Bethlehem into a large open-air prison.
00:10:01.040
Seeing the walls and the guard towers for myself,
00:10:10.860
Most of the settlements are supported by Anglican
0.93
00:10:15.440
and these crazy new Christians religion in America.
1.00
00:10:23.540
We are the family who are living here hundreds of years.
00:10:28.760
And who is supporting Israel is the Christian community.
0.76
00:10:36.400
is made by the American Christians and European communities.
00:10:47.880
Taipei doesn't sit on quite the same holy ground as Bethlehem,
00:10:51.560
but it is the last Christian village in the West Bank,
00:10:57.200
Taipei is surrounded by five Israeli settlements deemed illegal under international law,
00:11:11.520
There are Christmas trees and Christmas lights on shops and homes as if I were back in Alberta.
00:11:17.600
I can hear jingle bells playing from a speaker in Arabic as I walk up the steps to the Greek
00:11:27.520
Father Jack is about the closest thing I've come
00:11:53.280
best oranges yes but i am here to serve our community the smallest in the village 200 per
00:12:03.440
people about 54 families unfortunately recently we lost two families that leave to
00:12:14.000
to the immigration, to the states, and to Guatemala.
00:12:19.000
We are sad because we are encouraging people to stay here
00:12:29.000
To be witnesses, as he says in the St. John Gospel,
00:12:35.000
you will be my witnesses from Jerusalem to all over the world.
00:12:44.000
During the summer's attacks, people in surrounding Muslim communities were killed.
00:12:52.460
Teba saw no casualties, but several were injured.
00:12:55.980
The Israeli government has done nothing about these attacks.
00:12:59.220
Father Jack has requested to give testimony against extremist settler attacks 15 times,
00:13:07.900
So when we make a statement for the attacks of the settlers, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin, the Orthodox and the Armenian adopt this statement and came to Taipei with a delegation of quietly 25 representatives of diplomatic representation in the area.
00:13:37.900
And everybody of these diplomats spoke about our problem in Taipei, our problem in the area
00:13:49.900
because not Taipei alone in this situation, because all the villages in east, northeast
00:13:58.900
of Ramallah were attacked by settlers, by kids of the hills, as they called them.
00:14:13.180
In Taipei, thank God, we don't have anyone killed by settlers.
00:14:18.880
But many of our people were each broken arms, open head, yeah.
00:14:32.780
with priests of the Greek Orthodox, Catholic, and Mechilkite churches
00:14:36.400
playing leading roles spiritually, pastorally, politically, and in education and medicine.
00:14:42.740
When they issued a plea for help, their senior patriarchs in Jerusalem took up the call.
00:14:48.320
They attracted some limited international condemnation from the Vatican and U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee,
00:14:54.380
although he walked it back under pressure soon after.
00:15:01.920
He takes no issue with Israel's borders as defined by the 1948 Green Line.
00:15:07.300
But he seems to have a deep understanding of what is driving radical Israeli settlers
00:15:12.020
beyond Israel's borders onto their land in the West Bank.
00:15:17.700
Who gave them the right to proclaim and to call God?
00:15:41.920
From here we can explain many things, theological.
00:15:51.920
I am not against Israelis, but I am against the policy
0.99
00:15:59.920
Hardline Zionism manifests itself in several ways, one of which is the settler movement.
00:16:05.920
Every single place, every single land, every little spot, everything is the truth.
00:16:11.920
Not only single things for other people, only for us.
00:16:14.920
And we won't give anybody else just for us. That's what we believe.
00:16:58.800
Both men live on illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, have unabashedly defended many cases of settler violence, including the murder of civilians, and support ethnically cleansing Arabs.
00:17:12.560
Most Westerners have no idea how truly extreme these men and their parties are.
00:17:18.260
Their parties are relatively small in Israel's Knesset, but many consider them the tail, the wags, the dog, and Netanyahu's fragile coalition government.
00:17:28.800
Even many Israelis I met, proud Zionists all, spoke the names of these two men with undisguised disgust.
00:17:36.980
These Israelis know that the extreme settler movement represented by these coalition partners makes peace impossible, if the Palestinians wanted it, and has done immense damage to Israel's image abroad.
00:17:49.980
But they remain key players in the government and exert considerable influence.
00:17:58.800
Father Jack says the Western belief that Hamas intends to eradicate all Christians
00:18:03.300
is Israeli-Zionist propaganda and not the truth on the ground.
00:18:11.580
Hamas is fighting for the liberation of Palestine.
00:18:23.240
I find it difficult to believe, but I'm not living there.
00:18:39.440
Perhaps he's correct, or perhaps he's speaking softly for fear of reprisal from Hamas.
00:18:44.920
I'm not in a position to judge what's in his heart, but he struck me as a genuinely authentic man.
00:18:51.300
He holds up Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent resistance to British rule in India as his template.
00:19:00.060
But for peace to happen, he says, the illegal settlements in the West Bank must go.
00:19:16.180
One day this small light will explode and will light all the area in the Middle East and the world.
0.92
00:19:27.400
Saving the Palestinian issue problem, all the world will have peace and serenity.
1.00
00:19:36.100
However much many Israelis stand against settler attacks,
00:19:40.100
there seems to be little appetite for dismantling the settlements themselves.
00:19:43.640
Like many moderate Israelis, Father Jack points to the cabinet ministers,
00:19:54.960
and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as implacable obstacles to peace.
00:19:59.120
it's a sad christmas in taba with its economy depressed by the war and the long string of
00:20:17.980
settler attacks that escalated in june 2025 like the vanishing christians of bethlehem
0.99
00:20:24.240
they desperately want the support of the west and the broader christian world
00:20:28.640
If Father Jack speaks for the Palestinian Christians, they feel utterly abandoned.
00:20:35.680
Support for Israel among much of the political left and the West collapsed some time ago,
00:20:41.220
and has cratered further as left progressive political parties have built Muslim diasporas into their voter coalitions.
00:20:48.800
Until recently, the Western right has been almost unanimous in its unqualified support for Israel's side in this protracted conflict.
00:20:56.540
This is reinforced by evangelical Christian Zionists who make up a critical part of the U.S. Republican Voter Coalition
00:21:04.240
and play a still important part in Canadian and other Western conservative parties.
00:21:10.220
There are signs that this rock-solid support is beginning to crack,
00:21:14.460
manifesting itself in heated schisms among American Republicans.
00:21:18.320
We hope that one day the Almighty God will send us His peace
00:21:24.420
and we will live together as in the Holy Bible said
00:21:37.400
that any mutually satisfactory compromise can be reached
00:21:49.240
I could understand the need for revenge and security
00:21:54.420
But their brutal military actions will only radicalize reasonable and moderate Muslims.
0.97
00:22:02.460
And forgotten in all of this are the Christians.
00:22:08.420
They're an ancient people and have a claim to their own land.
00:22:13.700
The Christians of Bethlehem and Teba are being dispossessed of their tiny patch of it.
00:22:19.520
God may not forget the last Christians of the Holy Land,
1.00
00:22:22.280
that they have been forsaken by their fellow Christians here in the West.
00:22:33.140
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
0.91