ISRAEL'S CHRISTIAN Awakening - WALL STREET JOURNAL

Wall Street Journal

Israel's Christian 

Awakening

A Controversial New Movement Wants to 

Cooperate More Closely With the Jewish State

By 

ADI SCHWARTZ

Dec. 27, 2013 

As Christmas neared, an 85-foot-high tree presided over the 

little square in front of the Greek Orthodox Church of the 

Annunciation in Nazareth. Kindergarten children with Santa Claus 

hats entered the church and listened to their teacher explain in 

Arabic the Greek inscriptions on the walls, while a group of 

Russian pilgrims knelt on their knees and whispered in prayer. 

In Nazareth's old city, merchants sold the usual array of 

Christmas wares.

This year, however, the familiar rhythms of Christmas season 

in the Holy Land have been disturbed by a new development: 

the rise of an independent voice for Israel's Christian community, 

which is increasingly trying to assert its separate identity. For 

decades, Arab Christians were considered part of Israel's 

sizable Palestinian minority, which comprises both Muslims 

and Christians and makes up about a fifth of the country's 

citizens, according to the Israeli government.

But now, an informal grass-roots movement, prompted in 

part by the persecution of Christians elsewhere in the region 

since the Arab Spring, wants to cooperate more closely with 

Israeli Jewish society—which could mean a historic change in 

attitude toward the Jewish state. 

"Israel is my country, and I 

want to defend it," says Henry Zaher, an 18-year-old 

Christian from the village of Reineh who was visiting Nazareth. 

"The Jewish state is good for us."

LOOKING UP: Celebrating Christmas in Nazareth, 

December 2012 Reuters

The Christian share of Israel's population has decreased 

over the years—from 2.5% in 1950 to 1.6% today, according 

to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics—because of migration 

and a low birthrate. Of Israel's 8 million citizens, about 

130,000 are Arabic-speaking Christians (mostly Greek 

Catholic and Greek Orthodox), and 1.3 million are 

Arab Muslims.

In some ways, Christians in Israel more closely resemble 

their Jewish neighbors than their Muslim ones, says 

Amnon Ramon, a lecturer at the Hebrew University of 

Jerusalem and a specialist on Christians in Israel at the 

Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies. In a recent book, 

he reports that Israeli Christians' median age is 30, 

compared with 31 for Israeli Jews and only 19 for 

Israeli Muslims. 

Israeli Christian women marry later than 

Israeli Muslims, have significantly fewer children and participate 

more in the workforce. Unemployment is lower among 

Israeli Christians than among Muslims, and life expectancy 

is higher. Perhaps most strikingly, Israeli Christians actually 

surpass Israeli Jews in educational achievement.

As a minority within a minority, Christians in Israel have 

historically been in a bind. Fear of being considered 

traitors often drove them to proclaim their full support 

for the Palestinian cause. Muslim Israeli leaders say that 

all Palestinians are siblings and deny any Christian-Muslim 

rift. But in mixed Muslim-Christian cities such as Nazareth, 

many Christians say they feel outnumbered and insecure.

"There is a lot of fear among Christians from Muslim reprisals,

" says Dr. Ramon. "In the presence of a Muslim student in one 

of my classes, a Christian student will never say the same things

 he would say were the Muslim student not there."

"Many Christians think like me, but they keep silent," says 

the Rev. Gabriel Naddaf, who backs greater Christian 

integration into the Jewish state. "They are simply too afraid." 

In his home in Nazareth, overlooking the fertile hills of the 

Galilee, the 40-year-old former spokesman of the Greek Orthodox 

Patriarchate in Jerusalem is tall and charismatic, dressed in a 

spotless black cassock. "Israel is my country," he says. "We 

enjoy the Israeli democracy and have to respect it and fight for it."

That is the idea behind the new Forum for Drafting the 

Christian Community, which aims to increase the number of 

Christians joining the Israel Defense Forces. 

It is an extremely 

delicate issue: Israeli Arabs are generally exempt from military duty, 

because the state doesn't expect them to fight their brethren among 

the Palestinians or in neighboring Arab countries. Israeli Palestinians, 

who usually don't want to enlist, say they often face discrimination

 in employment and other areas because they don't serve.

"We were dragged into a conflict that wasn't ours," says 

Father Naddaf. "Israel takes care of us, and if not Israel, 

who will defend us? We love this country, and we see the 

army as a first step in becoming more integrated with the state."

According to Shadi Khaloul, a forum spokesperson, the total 

number of Christians serving in the Israeli military has more than 

quadrupled since 2012, from 35 to nearly 150. This may seem a 

drop in the ocean, but it was enough to enrage many Palestinian 

Israelis. Father Naddaf says that his car's tires were punctured 

and that he received death threats, worrying him enough that he 

got bodyguards. 

Hanin Zoabi, an Arab-Muslim member of the 

Israeli parliament, wrote Father Naddaf a public letter calling him 

a collaborator and accusing him of putting young Christians 

"in danger." "Arab Palestinians, regardless of their religion, should 

not join the Israeli army," Ms. Zoabi told me. "We are a national 

group, not a religious one. Any attempt to enlist Christians is part 

of a strategy of divide-and-rule."

Many Arab Christians don't see it that way. "We are not mercenaries," 

says Mr. Khaloul, who served as a captain in an IDF paratrooper 

brigade. "We want to defend this country together with the Jews. 

We see what is happening these days to Christians around us—

in Iraq, Syria and Egypt."

Since the Arab revolutions began in Tunisia in 2011, many 

Christians in the region have felt isolated and jittery. Coptic 

churches have been attacked in Egypt, and at least 26 Iraqis 

leaving a Catholic church in Baghdad on Christmas Day were

 killed by a car bomb. Islamists continue to threaten to enforce 

Shariah law wherever they gain control.

The Christian awakening in Israel goes beyond joining the IDF. 

Some Israeli Christian leaders now demand that their history and 

heritage be taught in state schools. "Children in Arab schools in 

Israel learn only Arab-Muslim history," says a report prepared 

by Mr. Khaloul and submitted to Israel's Ministry of Education, 

"and this causes the obliteration of Christian identity."

Some Israeli Christians even recently established a new 

political party, headed by Bishara Shlayan, a stocky, blue-eyed 

former captain in the Israeli navy who told me that he once beat 

up an Irish sailor in Londonderry who called him an "[expletive] 

Jew." 

The new party is puckishly called B'nai Brith ("Children of 

the Covenant"), and Shlayan says it will have Jewish as well as 

Christian members. Nazareth's mayor, Ramez Jaraisy, recently 

told the Times of Israel that Shlayan was a "collaborator" with 

the Israeli authorities.

"The current Arab political establishment only brought us hate and 

rifts," says Mr. Shlayan. "The Arab-Muslim parties didn't take care 

of us. We are not brothers with the Muslims; brothers take care of 

each other." 

Mr. Shlayan, who advocates better education, housing 

and employment for Israeli Christians, says he also dreams of turning 

Nazareth into an even busier tourist spot by erecting the world's 

biggest statue of Jesus.

Should this Christian awakening succeed, it would be yet another

 notable shift in the balance of power among religious groups 

in the Middle East.

—Mr. Schwartz is a former staff writer and senior editor 

for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.