✝️ Priest to Palestinian Christians Spat On by Israelis While They Call Jesus "The Son of a Whore." This is Who American Christians Align Themselves With

Spit on. Assaulted. Jesus insulted. And American Christians keep cheering Israel anyway.

It is the day after Christmas, and I need you to watch the interview I’m embedding at the top of this post. A Christian priest in the West Bank describes being harassed and assaulted by Israelis on a regular basis. He shows footage of Israelis spitting on him, cursing him, and degrading Jesus with obscene slurs. And he explains something that matters just as much as the footage: this isn’t a one-time viral incident. It’s routine—and it’s getting worse.

Before I walk through what it means, I want to ask you from the heart to become a member today. I keep this work free for the world—for readers in Gaza, for students in public schools, for families living in deep poverty, for elders on fixed incomes—because a smaller circle of people who can afford it chooses to carry the cost. Please click here to become a member and click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. Your support keeps this work free for them, and even for you when you can’t afford to pay.

Now let’s talk to the American church.

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If you are a Christian in the United States who has been taught that the modern state of Israel represents your faith, your values, and your spiritual inheritance—then I need you to sit with what you’re about to see.

A Palestinian Christian priest standing in the land where Jesus walked is being spit on. Not once. Not “in a moment of tension.” He says it happens repeatedly. He says it is a regular pattern. He shows you the receipts, and he tells you it is escalating.

And it’s not just spitting. It’s contempt. It’s the kind of religious hatred that treats Christian clergy as something to mock and degrade. He describes being verbally assaulted with vile insults about Jesus. He describes harassment as a normal part of moving through public space.

Here is what makes this so morally unbearable: the world has been told, over and over, that Israel is defending “Judeo-Christian values.” That it is “the only democracy.” That it is “a beacon of religious freedom.” That Christians should align with it spiritually and politically.

But the lived reality for Palestinian Christians—day after day, week after week—is that they are treated as disposable. In Gaza, churches have been hit and the Christian population has been pushed to the edge of survival in a genocide that has gone on for over two years. In the West Bank, Christians live under occupation, checkpoints, land theft, settler violence, and routine harassment. In Jerusalem, Christians have repeatedly documented intimidation and assault—especially around holy sites and during religious processions—often with little to no accountability.

If you’re an American Christian and you’re still waving flags and cheering Israel without hesitation, I need you to ask yourself a question the New Testament demands:

Who is your neighbor?

Because the people who are suffering here are the very people your theology claims to love: families who trace their Christian presence in Palestine back centuries. Priests and nuns and lay Christians who live in the shadow of the very places you put on Christmas cards. People who have kept the faith in the birthplace of the faith while empire after empire rolled through.

And now they are being humiliated and assaulted, in the open, while the world’s most powerful Christian nation—America—keeps shipping weapons, money, and political protection to the state that presides over it.

It is outrageous.

It is a moral contradiction so loud it should shake pulpits across the United States.

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Let me say something very plainly: being critical of the state of Israel is not antisemitism. Wanting Jewish people safe is not the same thing as endorsing Israeli apartheid, occupation, or genocide. If your Christianity requires you to ignore a priest being spat on in the West Bank, then what you have is not the gospel—it’s political idolatry.

Jesus was not confused about this.

He was not impressed by temples when they were used as cover for exploitation. He was not silent when the powerful harmed the vulnerable. He did not side with empire because it promised stability.

And he certainly did not tell his followers to fund the humiliation of people who pray in his name.

So when you watch this priest describe being degraded, understand what you’re really seeing: not just personal harassment, but a system that allows it. A climate where certain people are trained to believe they can do this without consequence. A culture of impunity that has been nurtured by decades of occupation and now emboldened by a wider campaign of dehumanization that has reached its most lethal form in Gaza.

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To my Christian sisters and brothers: I’m not asking you to abandon your faith. I’m asking you to practice it.

Don’t hide behind Israeli propaganda while real Christians are being crushed. Don’t call it “standing with Israel” if what you’re really doing is standing with oppression. Don’t call it “biblical” to support policies that starve children, demolish homes, and treat clergy like trash.

If your faith means anything, it has to mean something when the victims are Palestinian—Muslim and Christian alike.

Because if you can watch a priest being spit on in the streets of the West Bank and still tell yourself that the State of Israel represents “Christian values,” then something has happened to your moral compass.

And if you’re not a Christian reading this, understand: this is not a “religious conflict.” This is an occupation and a system of domination that harms everyone it touches. Palestinians suffer first and most. But the lie that this is about “protecting Christians” collapses the moment you watch this video.

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I’m sharing this today—the day after Christmas—because the timing matters. American churches will be full of people still warm from candlelight services and choirs and nativity scenes. People who feel close to Jesus today.

Good. Hold onto that closeness. Then bring it to the people who are closest to Jesus geographically and historically—the Palestinian Christians—and refuse to let them be erased.

If this post helped you see more clearly, please stand with me so I can keep doing this work. Please click here to become a member and click here to join as a monthly, annual, or founding member. I keep this work free for the world, but I can only do that if some of you decide to carry it.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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