This campaign includes fake plots, media attacks, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel messaging, and incitement under the guise of religious discourse or human rights. By Amit Barak, Gatestone InstituteFrom Taybe to Tucker Carlson, Palestinians are trying to drive a wedge between the Christian world and Israel, while Israel’s government appears to be asleep on guard duty.In recent months, we have witnessed a well-timed campaign led by the Palestinian Authority, civil society organizations and anti-Israel Christian elements – some of them declared anti-Semitic – to undermine the relations between the State of Israel and Christian communities around the world, especially evangelical and pro-Israel Christians whose long-standing support for Israel is not self-evident.This campaign includes fake plots, media attacks, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel messaging, and incitement under the guise of religious discourse or human rights.Four notable events this year indicate the tremendous power of this campaign:The blood libel falsely alleging the burning of the Church of St. George in Taybe.An episode of the Tucker Carlson Show with an American nun who presented a series of anti-Semitic claims without any factual, historical or theological basis.The Declaration of the World Council of Churches in June 2025.A Palestinian food advertisement mocking Christianity.The plot of a church fire in TaybeIn July 2025, media outlets around the world claimed that “Israeli settlers set fire to an ancient Byzantine church” in the Christian village of Taybe in the Binyamin area.Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III, Jerusalem Latin (Catholic) Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and other senior officials in the churches held a press conference condemning the alleged arson, which was widely reported all over the world and in Christian communities in particular.Foreign ambassadors and various elements who joined the condemnation added fuel to the fire, and the culmination was probably the words written by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee:“Taybeh is a quiet Palestinian Christian village south of Jerusalem w/ a lot of American citizens that has been vandalized-including fires set at ancient church. I visited there today. Desecrating a church,mosque or synagogue is a crime against humanity & God.”Social networks and international media did not drop the issue for weeks, but slowly the cracks began to emerge: an independent investigation by the Press Service of Israel (TPS-IL) revealed that the fire was actually in an adjacent field and did not even touch the church, and featured videos in which Jewish shepherds run to put out the fire with blowers and other firefighting equipment. The report adds:“Furthermore, separate fires on July 7, 8, and 11 were documented in areas of pastureland dozens of meters away from the church compound. In all cases, a Jewish farmer whose farm is next to the church compound complained to the police that someone had torched the area where his shepherd was grazing. TPS-IL has obtained time-stamped documentation of these reports.”In the end, the Israel Police announced that the church was not damaged at all, and following the findings and the investigation, Huckabee retracted his remarks and even attacked the international media’s conduct in the affair.Such a case requires the use of government spokespersons skilled in “ecclesial diplomacy” that will appeal to church leaders, publish documentation in English and Arabic translations, and brief Christian writers.The resources exist, the personalities, the organizations, but in this case Israeli government ministries were silenced, and the lack of orderly action can be applied to Christian support bases in the United States and other countries.The individuals who did act to expose the truth were civil society organizations such as Regavim, TPS-IL, and independent Christian Israeli activists who worked behind the scenes, as well as the Binyamin Council.Tucker Carlson: How do American Christians support the Israeli oppression of Christians?On August 11, Tucker Carlson released an 80-minute-long episode on his podcast, interviewing Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, an American Greek Orthodox nun.Stephanopoulos claimed that Israel was practicing apartheid, persecuting Christians, and committing crimes against humanity, with a clear message: Christians should stop supporting Israel.The allegations in the interview also included theological distortions such as “Biblical Palestine” and “Palestinian Jesus” — long invalidated by historians and archeologists as well as countless Christian churches and organizations.This episode was watched by millions of people; the damage has been done, especially among American evangelical Christians.Here, too, instead of providing a fact-based rebuttal with the cooperation of Christian Israelis and supporters of Israel around the world, the Israeli government did nothing.Declaration of the World Council of ChurchesIn June 2025, the World Council of Churches (WCC), representing about 349 churches from various streams around the world, issued a statement at the closing of its conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.The declaration, along with praise it gave the South African government “on appealing to justice and responsibility through the International Court of Justice”, the World Council of Churches for Sanctions on Israel, included recommending an arms embargo, to remove the “blockade” from Gaza, announced its support for the “right of return”, the “resistance” of Christian Palestinian communities, and the investigation of Israel by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for “crimes against humanity” and falsely accused the State of Israel of apartheid.The WCC over the years has tried to wear the mask of a supposedly “neutral” organization.In light of the campaign, it seems that in this statement, the WCC has dared to say openly what it always wanted but previously did not dare to say.The WCC uses clear anti-Semitic messages, and the Entry into Israel (Article 2D) makes it clear that this is a valid reason for prohibiting WCC members into Israel.The expected response from the Israeli government was therefore to declare a ban on entry into Israel to any person who is a member of the WCC or to any activist in the illegal EAPPI program, which the WCC has been operating in Israel since 2002. But the government did not declare such a ban.The only body that responded to the matter was the “Jerusalem Initiative” (full disclosure: the writer is one of its founders), which works to integrate Arabic-speaking Christians in Jerusalem into Israeli society and consists of Christian and Jewish activists, clerics and academics.The Jerusalem Initiative published a public letter in English in response to the WCC’s declaration.The letter exposed the hypocrisy, ignorance and anti-Semitism behind it, and showed that it should be considered in violation of various laws prohibiting the boycotting of Israel in many of the countries that the WCC represents.Zero ToleranceFrom the Palestinian Authority, we can learn a lot about marketing messages to the world.While the Christian population is persecuted under the Palestinian Authority, outwardly it conveys a completely opposite image.Unlike official Israel with half a department (the Ministry of Religions that is responsible for all religions), an anachronistic approach at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and another half department in the Ministry of Interior, the Palestinian Authority invests considerable resources in messaging for the Christian world under the “Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine,” which operates from Bethlehem and Ramallah.In June 2025, Al-Qasrawi Food Products, a major snack manufacturer from Hebron, posted the “Last Snack” campaign: a poster with the “Last Supper” image in which the characters of Jesus and his disciples were replaced by sheep and the table was covered with the company’s products.Following a broad protest (including the burning of the company’s products) by Christians living under the PA and by Israeli Christians, the company deleted the content and issued an apology for “unintentional harm.”This anti-Christian campaign in the PA areas did not reach the wider world or the international media.But it is clear to all of us that if the opposite were the case, the Palestinian Authority would know how to use it well to its advantage. Israeli government ministries are probably unaware of the matter or don’t think out of the box.Systemic failure to deal with the anti-Israel campaign in Christian cloakThe events listed above are not accidental. They are part of a sweeping campaign run well by the Palestinian Authority, BDS organizations and anti-Semitic elements in global religious institutions, aimed at harming Israel’s relations with the Christian world, weakening the support of Christians for Israel, and, through the churches, isolating Israel in the international arena.The lack of an effective government response by the Ministry of Diaspora and the fight against anti-Semitism and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a large-scale anti-Israel campaign harms Israel’s strategic ties with Christian communities around the world, especially among evangelicals.Our failure is clear: lack of awareness, unwillingness, lack of tools and speakers, zero use of church language (ecclesial diplomacy), and ignoring the Christian partners themselves.The human resources exist – in Israel and around the world – but they simply are not mobilized.The ignorance and lack of acquaintance with the international and local Christian world — with the actors, the messages and the facts — creates an explanatory and diplomatic vacuum in front of Christian target audiences — and this space is easily perceived and filled by anti-Semitic and anti-Israel narratives.One Israeli Christian remarked:“Israel acts as if we do not exist. While others write her story, she sometimes does not write anything, or, when she does, it is hastily disparaged and swept aside by people who prefer their own misinformation to such inconvenient facts.”The post The Palestinian campaign to undermine relations between Christians and Israel appeared first on World Israel News.