World Jewish News

Israeli Arab Greek Orthodox priest says Israel is only Mideast country where Christians are not persecuted

.‘’Israel is the only place where Christians in the Middle East are safe,” Father Gabriel Naddaf, an Israeli Arab Greek Orthodox priest from Nazareth, told a session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva earlier this week.
“In the Middle East today, there is one country where Christianity is not only not persecuted, but affectionately granted freedom of expression, freedom of worship and security. It is Israel, the Jewish State,’’ he said.
Naddaf addressed the violent oppression facing Middle Eastern Christians and their widespread flight from the region in recent years, immediately after a panel discussion on the “Human Rights Situation in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories.”
“Across the Middle East, in the last ten years, one hundred thousand Christians have been murdered each year. That means that every five minutes a Christian is killed because of his faith. Those who can escape persecution at the hands of Muslim extremists have fled. Those who remain exist as second if not third class citizens to their Muslim rulers,” he declared.
He said it “is time the world woke up to the fact that those who want to destroy the Jewish state are signing the death warrant on the last free Christians in the Holy Land.
“Leaders of people, seekers of peace, end your witch hunt of the only free country in the region,” Father Naddaf added.
Father Naddaf , 44, belongs to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem, Israel’s second largest Christian community. He serves as the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Yafia, near Nazareth and also works as the primary spiritual advisor
and religious spokesperson for the Forum for Drafting the Christian Community, a civil society organization that works to support Christian Arab citizens of Israel to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
For his efforts to encourage Arab Christian integration into mainstream Israeli society, Father Naddaf has been denounced by Arab members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and has receives several threats of intimidation to himself and his family.

EJP