Rev. Munther Isaac's Testament of Misdirection (Edited and amended)
The Palestinian preacher and academic laid out a compelling narrative to Tucker Carlson, but it was riddled with inaccurate information.
This past week Tucker Carlson released an interview for his show Tucker Carlson Uncensored that has electrified the internet and is seen as a rebuke against the Zionist tendency within Evangelical Christianity and right-wing politicians like Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) who infamously proclaimed that Gaza should be condemned to the same fate as Nagasaki. The subject was Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem (yes, the original) and dean of Bethlehem Bible College. The topic was abuse and threats by Israel toward Palestinian Christians living in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel proper.
I have listened to the interview twice, and found Rev. Munther's presentation very impressive. However, I also know enough to dispute several of the assertions he makes. Firstly though, I want to note that I take no offense when people want to voice criticisms about US foreign policy with respect to Israel that challenge the prevailing narrative. Nor do I have problem with Tucker Carlson platforming them or voicing them himself as he does here. Also, I will not be making any conclusions here on whether Tucker Carlson or Rev. Isaac are anti-Semitic as the motive for their statements is less important than the substance.
The interview was conducted from the perspective of an American Christian confronting a contradiction in his country's foreign policy harming other Christians by providing aid and security cooperation to Israel. A trend is developing on the political right of influencers shifting their views on the Middle East, in particular on evangelical support for Israel due to the information being shared by activists like Rev. Isaac. Not helping this are the lazy arguments of pro-Israel activists and institutions that do not address those criticisms directly. Some of the criticisms such as the incidents of IDF forces harming Christians in Gaza have validity as even most Israelis would admit, while others do not. Here I will attempt to illustrate the misleading and narrow picture drawn by Rev. Isaac of how the Christian minority is being treated in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. If you want a more personal perspective, please watch the response of the Philos Project’s Luke Moon who does humanitarian work among Middle Eastern Christian communities. He critiques Rev. Isaac’s interview line-by-line. Or you may view the original video here.
Correction 1:
TC: . . . and again that was hardly the first time that fighting in that region [Israel and Palestine] killed Christians, you'll remember the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem almost 20 years ago.
This first error, by Carlson himself, was an egregious one referring to the siege of the famous church in 2002 in which Israeli troops trapped almost forty gunmen, some of them Palestinian Security Police, who took sanctuary there. The background for this was the IDF's Operation Defensive Shield, a large anti-terror maneuver undertaken in the West Bank's large cities including Bethlehem as a response to the Passover Massacre of March 27, 2002 in which 30 Israelis were murdered by a suicide bomber while celebrating the Passover Seder at the Park Hotel in Natanya. The bomber, a member of Hamas, had entered the hotel dressed in drag thereby evading the scrutiny of hotel security (at the time there had been very few female suicide bombers). Carlson glossed over crucial details by mentioning this saga in passing, including the fact that while the church had granted the gunmen sanctuary, it had been under the condition that they lay down their arms. Reports from during the siege (April 2 - May 10, 2002) demonstrate that the gunmen not only did not disarm, they engaged in firefights with the military from inside the church. Another contemporaneous report asserted that not only this but two other Bethlehem churches had been occupied by Palestinian gunmen including a commander within the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade which is an armed faction of the ruling Palestinian Fatah movement.
Carlson would have done well to read into what happened at the Church of the Nativity and recognize it for what it was: Palestinian militant groups, including not only Hamas but the "moderate" Fatah movement, using the privileged status of religious and cultural sites and institutions as a refuge for their military operatives thereby violating humanitarian laws when it is convenient for them.
Correction 2:
TC: It's very obvious to me that many Evangelical leaders in the United States care much more about the highly secular government of Israel than they care about Christian communities in the Middle East.
Carlson often shows his perspective on the Middle East through the prism of how the US is overcommitted to funding and defending foreign allies there, including Israel. In this respect I am in agreement. I don’t believe that arrangement is sustainable over the long term. However, the portrayal of Israel as having a "highly secular government" is simplistic and untrue. In terms of population the majority of Israel's Jews were secular or non-practicing from the time of its founding up until recently which is why some believe that it is a secular country, but that is rapidly changing. Depending on who one asks among its critics Israel is either a totally secular state that masquerades as a homeland for the Jews in order to fool the world, or as Ha'aretz published this weekend a future theocracy. There are state-run religious institutions in Israel including the Chief Rabbinate which is the official (but not exclusive) authority on Jewish religious dietary laws in state institutions, family law courts among Jewish Israelis, and running a network of religious K-12 schools among other responsibilities. Within Israel's parliament the Knesset there are multiple religious parties and they serve in government. There is a military rabbinate to serve the needs of religious soldiers and officers. That being said, there are also many Jewish religious communities that take a dim view of the rabbinate and its approach to religiosity. The role of religion in Israel is not as simple as it is in countries that are true theocracies like Saudi Arabia (Sunni Islam) or have official religions like Cambodia (Buddhism). This is because from its founding Israel had significant Muslim and Christian populations, as well as members of lesser known sects like the Druze, Baha’i, Samaritans and Ahmadiyya Muslims. Their role as citizens has always been complicated, not just because they believe in other religions but the majority are Arab and have more in common with the peoples of the surrounding countries rather than the majority Jewish community. Ironically, an issue that Rev. Isaac later raises belies Carlson's statement about Israel being "highly secular" when he mentions that Jewish Israelis that convert to Christianity in Israel are impeded by the government. What he didn't mention is that the religious courts (batei din) which are state institutions of the Rabbinate that determine affairs of personal status like marriage or divorce, and they would not approve an interfaith marriage because Jewish law (halakha) does not recognize the conversion of a Jew to another religion. As such a Christian convert from Judaism in Israel would have their marriage legally challenged if conducted in Israel, and they often have to engage in cumbersome legal loopholes like getting an online marriage through the State of Utah. Most traditional religious sects of Christianity or Islam also do not recognize marriages with unbelievers unless they convert, and they also ostracize or excommunicate apostates, or as is done to Muslim apostates in the Palestinian Authority, executes them in an official process. As it happens, Rev. Isaac is a Lutheran and some Lutheran churches have an openness to interfaith marriage that diverges not only from Israeli legal processes, but the doctrines of other Christian churches like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Correction 3:
Rev. Isaac: Evangelism is illegal in Israel. It's against the law to evangelize.
Luke Moon strenuously objects to this statement, because it is a clearcut falsehood. Rev. Isaac acknowledges that the actual bill to outlaw proselytizing for Christianity was blocked by Prime Minister Netanyahu in 2023, so what is the actual problem? There are two laws dating from 1977 that prohibit providing "material benefit" to a person in exchange for religious conversion and also proselytizing to minors. Jews for Jesus, the most famous missionary group proselytizing in Israel, has branches operating in the open in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem with contact information and the identities of the preachers shared openly. I knew people that had been approached by the group when I lived in Israel. To be sure however missionaries deal with a high level of hostility in Israel, in particular from religious Jews. The restriction of proselytizing to children, which is completely ignored in this interview, should be completely understandable. Many Christian sects object to baptism during childhood until the person is old enough to consciously and comprehendingly make the decision, a viewpoint known as anabaptism, but Lutheranism is not one of them. A proper response to this accusation by Rev. Munther and other Christian critics of Israel should be to ask whether they would tell parents in their own congregation to shrug off attempts by other religions to proselytize to them. During my first year in Israel a pair of missionaries including one native born Israeli from the J*hovah's Witnesses visited the pre-military program I was at with the invitation of the director. After they left many of the students expressed deep anger at the director for inviting them without giving us notice as to who they were, but nothing was illegal about it.
Omission 1 - Christianity in Israeli vs. Palestinian ruled areas
Rev. Isaac: One element of of the situation - one of the biggest problems we're facing right now - is the deterioration in our number. . .People keep leaving because of the political reality. Life under a very harsh Israeli military occupation is difficult.
Christian in both Israel proper and the disputed territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem have identities that are threefold: religion (their church), ethnicity (overwhelmingly Arab with some other groups), and citizenship (Palestinian, Israeli). There are Christian Arabs living in Israel that identify as Palestinians and oppose Israel's rule over what they see as an Arab homeland. There are also those that serve openly and proudly at all levels of government including the military, police, supreme court and in the media. While most figures in the pantheon of Palestinian leaders have been Muslim, a few notable ones have been Christian including the anti-Zionist Mandate era writer George Antonius and militant group founders George Habash and Nayef Hawatmeh. Rev. Isaac mentioned that there is an exodus of Palestinian Christians, but what he failed to specify was that he means those living in Gaza under Hamas rule and the West Bank where they live under the civil rule of the Palestinian Authority. In Israel the Christian population is growing, albeit at slower rates than either the Jewish or Muslim communities as a result of lower birth rates. However Christians in the West Bank and Gaza are leaving in droves, allegedly due to Israel's occupation according to a report from Dar al-Kalima University. But just as with many issues covered here, the truth is more nuanced. According to the Philos Project, the real issue is economics. Interestingly, while the Christian population of Bethlehem has shrunk, the city's total population has grown in recent years to 30,000 from 28,500 in 2017. If the reason for Christians leaving Bethlehem was the occupation would there not have been a general drop in the population of all Palestinians irrespective of religion?
Rev. Isaac did not mention whether he was allowed to evangelize among Palestinian non-Christians, but if he was it would be interesting to see whether he would mention the 2007 murder of 31 year-old Rami Ayyad, the only Christian bookstore owner in Gaza. The store had been firebombed six months previously. In 2021 a 46 year-old Arab Israeli woman was murdered by her adult son for converting to Christianity from Islam. In January a Christian monastery and pilgrimage place known as Jacob's Well near the city of Nablus in the West Bank was attacked by a Palestinian mob. No injuries were reported, but extensive property damage occurred. In 2022 Amir Khoury, an Arab Israeli police officer and Christian from the mixed Arab and Jewish town of Nof Hagalil was murdered during a terror attack in Bnei Brak, Israel by a member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. More than one hundred ultra-Orthodox Jews journeyed to his funeral to pay respects to his family for his sacrifice to protect them.
Omission 2 - Christian institutions are growing and multiplying in Israel
I was curious to understand more about the Bethlehem Bible College where Rev. Isaac teaches, and was surprised to discover that it was founded in 1979, twelve years after Bethlehem fell under Israeli occupation. Another school, the Catholic Bethlehem University was founded in 1973 also under occupation. Since the foundation of the Palestinian Authority in 1993 however no new Christian institutions have been launched that have been in continuous operation. A program of his college in Gaza has been on intermittent hiatus owing to a series of difficulties since 2005. What Rev. Isaac also forgot to mention was that his institution operates another college in Nazareth under Israeli rule that has grown since being founded in 2007 with the merger of two smaller schools. And further undermining Rev. Isaac's claim that it is illegal to evangelize in Israel, a biblical seminary specifically targeting Hebrew-speaking converts was opened in the Jewish city of Natanya in 2010.
Omission 3 - By law, Christianity is a second-class religion in the Palestinian Authority.
Rev. Isaac made sure to mention to Tucker Carlson that Israel's Nation State Law discriminates against Christians by stipulating that Jews alone have the right to national self-determination in Israel. This law, passed in 2018, attracted a heavy degree of international scrutiny to Israel's legal treatment of minorities. However many would be surprised to discover that the Palestinian Authority constitution of 2003 contains the following in Article 4:
Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect for the sanctity of all other divine religions shall be maintained.
The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation.
Arabic shall be the official language.
An earlier version specifically "Christianity and all other monotheistic religions" would be "revered and respected". However in Gaza under the rule of the Islamist Hamas movement such guarantees are not necessarily reliable. In 2012 local Christians sounded the alarm that two adults and three children had been forcibly converted to Islam.
Tucker’s interview, while it garnered many views in particular on Twitter, but it relied on a source who exaggerated the problems for Christians in Israel, while obscuring those found among their fellow Palestinians. Please share this with a friend and email the Tucker Carlson Network to ask that Carlson correct the record.