Introduction

In a recent episode of The Tucker Carlson Show, Tucker Carlson met in Jordan with Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, Hosam Naoum, to discuss how Christians are doing in the Holy Land. As in previous episodes, Tucker Carlson and his guest served up a hefty dose of inaccuracies and misrepresentations, including:

• Falsely attributing Christian regional demographic decline entirely to Israel.
• Misleadingly suggesting Christians are not doing well in Israel.
• Misrepresenting Israel’s separation barrier.
• Distorting historical incidents: 
  • 1948 – 1948 War
  • 1967 – 1967 War
  • 2002 – Church of the Nativity
  • 2023 – Al-Ahli Hospital
  • 2025 – Taybeh Church
• Doubting Jewish attachment to the land of Israel.
• Denying Jewish peoplehood.
• Misrepresenting Christian Zionist motivations and behaviors:
  • Misrepresenting all Christian Zionists as eschatologically oriented.
  • Misrepresenting all Christian Zionists as preoccupied with Jewish conversion.
  • Misrepresenting all Christian Zionists as excluding Palestinians.

Falsely Attributing Christian Regional Demographic Decline Solely to Israel

Carlson and Archbishop Naoum misleadingly suggest that a decline of the Christian population in the Holy Land since 1948 has simply been the result of the establishment of the State of Israel. As Carlson states, “In Israel, […] their [Christians’] numbers are not growing. They’re shrinking […] [T]here are fewer Christians now—far fewer—in absolute numbers and particularly as a percentage of the population than there were when the state [of Israel] was founded in 1948.”

In fact, the trend of proportional decline in the region began before the establishment of the Jewish State, and as former CAMERA Christian Media Analyst Dexter Van Zile has observed, proportional decline in Israel in the past has been due to growing Jewish and Muslim populations. Contrary to the false impression created by Carlson and Archbishop Naoum, while the Christian population in the broader Middle East has declined, the Israeli Christian population has increased and prospered in the region’s only state where Islam is not the dominant religion. The historian of religion Paul Charles Merkley wrote along similar lines in 2001:

Israel is the only jurisdiction in the Middle East where, over the past half-century, the Christian population has grown in absolute numbers and has remained stable as a proportion relative to the whole population. To put it another way: Everywhere in the Middle East except in Israel[,] the Christian population is declining—in most places precipitously (italics in original) (Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, p. 58).

Reporting in 2009, CAMERA noted that since 1949, when approximately 34,000 Christians resided in the State of Israel, the Christian population of the State of Israel increased 345 percent. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of Christians in Israel stands at approximately 184,000 and is growing, with the percentage of the Christian population in Israel having increased by 0.7% from 2023 to 2024.

Carlson tries to frame Israel as primarily responsible for a declining Christian population in the Holy Land, but neglects to mention Christian population decline in Palestinian-ruled territory. For example, about 75% of the population of Bethlehem was Christian before the 1993 Oslo Accords, but after approximately three decades of Palestinian rule, Christians comprised about 10% of Bethlehem’s population by 2025. A decline in the Palestinian Christian population was already evident to Merkley back in 2001, when he observed that “the rate of decline of Christian numbers began to accelerate further” after Palestinians effectively began ruling in the territory (Ibid.).

The archbishop and Carlson also omit factors that have contributed to a decline in the Christian population of the West Bank and Bethlehem, including those identified by Elias Zarina of the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy:

Christians in these areas are subjected to a systematic policy manifested through harassment, violence, psychological terror, forced displacement, and the confiscation of property by extremist families driven by rigid Salafi ideology and supported morally and financially by states known for backing extremist movements, foremost among them Turkey and Qatar […] In this context, the Palestinian Authority appears either unable or unwilling to enforce the rule of law and protect the Christian minority.

Carlson tries to paint an idealized picture of Arab Christian and Muslim comity in the Holy Land, but this depiction obscures deeper fissures that a significant percentage of Palestinian Christians have perceived between themselves on the one hand and their Muslim neighbors as well as Palestinian leaders on the other. For example, public polling in 2020 by Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research as well as The Philos Project indicated that a sizable percentage of Palestinian Christians expressed the belief that “most Muslims do not wish to see them in the country;” a fifth to a quarter of Palestinian Christians reported that they “feel discrimination when searching for jobs or when seeking PA [(Palestinian Authority)] services;” and three out of ten Palestinian Christians indicated they “do not see themselves integrated or feel hated by the Muslim citizens.”

Misleadingly Suggesting Christians Are Not Doing Well in Israel

Carlson contrasts Christians’ experience in Israel with their coreligionists’ experience in Jordan, stating that Christians in the latter country are “disproportionately represented at the higher end of the economy, which is to say, there’s a large number of Christian families who are hugely successful in Jordan.” This description misleadingly suggests that Christians in Israel are not also disproportionately represented on numerous measures or satisfied living in Israel.

In fact, a December 2025 analysis by The Jerusalem Post of data on Israel’s Christian population recently released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics concluded: “The statistics paint a picture of a small but established community, one marked by high educational attainment, strong female workforce participation, and demographic patterns that mirror trends seen in Christian communities across the developed world.” In terms of education, “84% of Christian 12^th-grade students were eligible for a matriculation certificate, a higher percentage than the general population.” In addition, “Students who graduate from Christian schools consistently score highest on the country’s matriculation exams.” Moreover, the percentage of female Christian students (61.1%) enrolled in private and public school in the 2024-2025 school year exceeded the percentage of female Jewish students enrolled (58.3%). The number of Christians serving in the IDF has also increased, “tripling in 2025 compared to previous years.” A majority of Israel’s Christian population (60%) “reported being satisfied with life in Israel in 2024, and 24% very satisfied.”

Carlson alludes to incidents in which Israeli Jewish individuals have spit near Christians. These incidents should be condemned. However, in speaking of these incidents, Carlson creates the misimpression that these incidents are ubiquitous in Jerusalem when they represent a small minority of Israeli extremists. Israeli authorities have investigated such incidents and have apprehended suspects, while Israeli government leaders, like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog, have routinely offered public expressions of solidarity with members of Israel’s Christian population.

Brother Gilbert (Athol) Bloomer has indicated, “[T]he only people who physically spat on me for being a Christian were Muslims in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem where I lived with the Armenian Catholic Bishop, not Jews.” He relays this information not to deny that Christians have been subjected to Israeli Jewish spitting incidents, but rather to note why singling out Israeli Jews as uniquely responsible for these kinds of despicable acts contributes to a narrative that fails to adequately represent the lived realities of people on the ground:

This personal testimony does not function as a universal claim, nor does it deny Palestinian suffering or Israeli wrongdoing where it occurs. It does, however, expose the inadequacy of totalising narratives. Ideological frameworks that flatten all agency into a single villain and sanctify all opposition as righteous resistance, collapse when confronted with concrete human experience.

Villainizing only Israeli Jews while idealizing Christian-Muslim relations provides viewers with a distorted picture of the region. By failing to accurately represent realities on the ground in the region and demonizing only one party to the conflict, Carlson makes peace less, not more, likely.

Misrepresenting Israel’s Separation Barrier

Archbishop Naoum describes Bethlehem as a city

surrounded by the wall, the separation wall that separates East Jerusalem, Jerusalem from Bethlehem. And the occupation and the kind of the wall that separates the two countries now, and also measures, huge measures of restrictions of movement, and all that is causing many people to leave the country.

By omitting that Israel erected a separation barrier to prevent terrorist attacks following a Palestinian suicide bombing campaign that caused the murder of many Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada, the archbishop creates the false impression that Israel needlessly imposes restrictions on Palestinians. The archbishop’s description also omits how the separation barrier significantly reduced terrorist attacks in Israel.

Distorting Historical Incidents

1948 – 1948 War

In describing “the year [1948] that the political State of Israel was created,” Carlson states, “A huge percentage of the Arab population was expelled that year” without mentioning that Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria invaded Israel after the Jewish State declared independence.

He also falsely suggests that Israeli government officials were responsible for expulsions of Arabs, but no blanket orders to expel were given by Israeli government officials. In fact, the Israeli army at the government’s request clarified: “[I]t is forbidden […] to expel Arab inhabitants from villages, neighborhoods and cities, and to uproot inhabitants from their places without special permission or explicit order from the Defense Minister in each specific case.” While the Israeli military decided to expel Arab residents in some cases, such expulsions were mostly done to “secur[e] vital roads, prevent sniping, [and] prevent the use of villages as a base for Arab armies.” Israeli government officials at times overturned decisions to expel Arabs. Carlson and the archbishop fail to note that many Arabs fled given they saw Palestinian leadership doing so, to avoid areas with significant fighting, and in anticipation of fighting coming to their area.

The accounts provided by Carlson and the archbishop exclude cases where Jewish leaders pleaded with Arab residents not to leave, as the Jewish mayor of Haifa sought to do, assuring Arab residents that “they would enjoy equality and peace, and that we, the Jews, were interested in their staying on and the maintenance of harmonious relations.”

Archbishop Naoum falsely claims, “[W]hen we speak about Palestinian refugees today, they are all coming or came from what is proper Israel today.” In fact, the UNRWA definition of “Palestinian refugee” includes not only those who came from Israel proper, but also their descendants, a definition of “refugee” not applied to any other refugee population.

1967 – 1967 War

Carlson only mentions the Six-Day War to note how Israel “increased the territory of the state, and the majority is now called occupied territory,” leaving viewers with the false impression that Israel waged war to gain territory rather than defend itself against an attempt to destroy the Jewish State.  In addition, the language Carlson applies to the area, “occupied territory,” not only misrepresents the fact that the territory is disputed between the Jewish State and Palestinians, but also omits the more ancient designation applied to the territory by the New Testament, “Judea and Samaria” (Acts 1:8), and by many contemporary Jews as well as Christians.

Neglected from Carlson’s description are Egypt’s expulsion of UN troops from the Sinai Peninsula and its blockade of an Eilat port, which constituted a casus belli according to international law and precipitated Israel’s military response. Carlson’s account also omits Arab leaders’ calls for the destruction of the Jewish State. For example, Egyptian President Nasser stated: “[W]e aim at the destruction of the State of Israel. The immediate aim: perfection of Arab military might. The national aim: the eradication of Israel” (Al Ahram, Nov. 18, 1965).

Carlson’s description also omits the fact that Israel reclaimed the Old City of Jerusalem after Jordan initiated hostilities against the Jewish State. Israelis had urged Jordan’s King Hussein not to join the war in 1967. Even after Jordan began firing on Israel, Israelis informed Jordan that were Jordan to desist, Israel would continue to abide by the armistice Israel and Jordan had signed in 1949. However, Jordan’s King Hussein declined, ordering his troops to cross the armistice lines.

2002 – Church of the Nativity

In the discussion, Carlson refers to “a church, the Church of the Nativity, the one that the IDF shot people in,” referring to an incident in 2002. Carlson’s description falsely suggests that Israeli troops cruelly opened fire on a church unprovoked. In fact, Israel’s military activities in Operation Defensive Shield were preceded by the murder of about 300 Israelis in Palestinian terrorist attacks over 1.5 years during the Second Intifada. A catalyst for Israel’s operation was a terrorist attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover Eve.

Carlson omits from his description the fact that wanted terrorists were present in the church and took hostage more than 40 Christian clergy and nuns. He also neglects to mention that accounts suggest the terrorists preplanned their use of the holy site and that this use of the site was tactically motivated.

2023 – Al-Ahli Hospital

In describing how Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was hit in 2023, Archbishop Naoum states, “Israel accused Islamic Jihad for a misrocketed missile. In Gaza, they said, ‘No, it was Israeli rocket that came in,’ and there were two narratives at that time […] I don’t know the answer. People asked me, and I said, like, ‘Do I look like a soldier to you?’”

The archbishop suggests there were two narratives at the time, and he does not know what happened, but he neglects to mention that Israeli Military Intelligence reviewed Signal Intelligence sources to determine what Hamas and the Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations knew, and a phone call was intercepted indicating terrorist recognition that a rocket had misfired while referring specifically to the Al-Ahli Hospital. Israel’s assessment that Islamic Jihad was likely responsible for the incident was shared by the US, Canada, UK, and France.

2025 – Taybeh Church

In his discussion with Carlson, the archbishop refers to “these attacks of settlers burning and graffiti on walls going out to these farms to harass farmers who are Christian” in Taybeh. However, the only evidence indicating settler involvement showed settlers attempting to put out the fire that also reportedly threatened an Israeli farmer’s land. A report even indicated an Israeli shepherd trying to extinguish the fire was attacked by Palestinians: “[H]e was in the field with his animals when a fire ignited a few meters away. He alerted the farm owner and tried to extinguish the flames with his shirt—only to be confronted by Palestinians emerging from the cemetery, shouting and throwing objects at him.”

Doubting Jewish Attachment to the Land of Israel

Archbishop Naoum suggests he agrees with a view that holds that Christian Zionists subscribe to

dispensationalism […] [B]ringing Jewish people to the Holy Land or the Land of Israel […] This agenda eventually for all the Jewish people coming to their “homeland” becomes […] kind of like a trap because they’re [Jews are] all supposed to convert to Christianity or die.

The archbishop appears to put air quotes around “homeland,” suggesting he doubts or denies the historical, religious, and cultural attachment of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland over millennia as evidenced in archaeological and genetic findings, biblical and rabbinic texts, and liturgical as well as other religious practices (What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It?: What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel, p. 99; The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 10^th ed, p. 1).

Denying Jewish Peoplehood

The archbishop’s apparent dismissal of a Jewish homeland could indicate that he thinks of Jews as a religious group, not a people. However, while Christians and Muslims, “two strictly religious communities, […] have a common holy land but no common holy land,” Jews are an ethnoreligious group who have “a combined homeland and holy land.” If the archbishop does, in fact, deny that the Jews are a people, this would be absurd, as Pepperdine University Middle East historian Scott Abramson explains:

Jews are not only one of antiquity’s few surviving peoples, they are the only one whose self-understanding, national consciousness, language, and culture show multi-millennial continuities. To deny that the Jews are a people is as impudent and irrational as claiming that the Democratic Party (one of the first modern political parties and the oldest continuously active one) is not a political party or that Britain’s Royal Society (one of the first learned scientific societies and the oldest continuously active one) is not a learned society.

Misrepresenting Christian Zionist Motivations and Behaviors

Misrepresenting All Christian Zionists as Eschatologically Oriented

While the archbishop suggests dispensationalism plays a central role for Christian Zionists, research conducted by the scholar of Christian Zionism Faydra L. Shapiro indicates that most of the Christian Zionists with whom she interacted grounded their Christian Zionist commitments in more expansive categories than dispensationalism:

[I]nformants overwhelmingly supported their Christian Zionism on rather broader pillars than dispensationalism. The first and most important of these is biblical authority. Taking the Bible seriously as an infallible and authoritative expression of God’s Word, and reading with a particular hermeneutical lens, means that passages are not simply historical but rather are felt to offer an eternal, timeless message and framework. Thus—for example—God’s promises to the people of Israel, and the role of Gentiles in their fulfillment, are true and ongoing. The second pillar used to buttress evangelical Christian Zionism is a belief in God’s faithfulness, that he does not change his mind or his word. Thus[,] promises made to the people of Israel are eternal and will be honored. Finally, my informants also made regular reference to the notion of Judeo-Christian values, also framed as the Jewish roots of Christianity, to support the idea that there is an inextricable link, and even a debt owed, by Christianity to the Jews (Christian Zionism: Navigating the Jewish-Christian Border, pp. 12-13).

The historian of religion Daniel G. Hummel has similarly observed that eschatological beliefs are less central to Christian Zionist activists than is frequently assumed:

In its most activist circles today, Christian Zionism is less about apocalyptic theology or evangelism than it is a range of political, historical, and theological arguments in favor of the State of Israel based on mutual and covenantal solidarity. In recent years, a type of nation-based prosperity theology, promising material blessings to those who bless Israel, has played a prominent role. In earlier decades, atonement for Christian anti-Judaism and Israel’s strategic importance in the Cold War proved decisive (Covenant Brothers: Evangelicals, Jews, and U.S.-Israeli Relations, p. 3).

Drawing on survey research, scholars of Christian Zionism Motti Inbari and Kirill Bumin similarly found a “relative decline of premillennialism” among young evangelicals supportive of Israel (Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century: American Evangelical Public Opinion on Israel, p. 163). Inbari and Bumin observed that 20% of young evangelicals expressing support for the Jewish State “gave political, historical, or foreign policy justifications” (Ibid., p. 152) for such support, not the “dispensationalist” justification mentioned by the archbishop. Moreover, among the 59% of young evangelicals supporting Israel who provided “religious arguments” for their support for the Jewish State, the top three arguments provided did not explicitly reference specific eschatological scenarios:

The most commonly used response among supporters of Israel was that “Israel is God’s people” […] The second most frequently referenced religious argument is related to biblical promises given to Israel and the Jewish people by God […] The third most common argument in the religious explanations was that support for Israel is justified because the land belongs to God, or it is a holy land, and even that it is “Jesus’ land” (Ibid., pp. 152-153).

In fact, Merkley calls the view put forward by the archbishop suggesting that Christian Zionists engage in their activities in anticipation of an eschatological slaughter of Jews a “canard” because it describes eschatological beliefs to which no major Christian Zionist organization subscribes (Christian Attitudes towards the State of Israel, p. 188).

Misrepresenting All Christian Zionists as Preoccupied with Converting Jews to Christianity

Furthermore, contrary to the inaccurate generalization that Christian Zionists aim to convert Jews that the archbishop shared in his interaction with Carlson, modern Christian Zionism’s emergence has in important respects been associated with the downplaying of conversion of the Jews among many prominent Christian Zionist leaders and organizations.

The historian of Christian Zionism Donald L. Lewis notes that the term “Christian Zionist” was used “as early as 1896” when Zionist founder Theodor Herzl applied the term to Anglican Chaplain William Hechler.  Hechler, Lewis notes, “affirm[ed] the nonnecessity of conversion of Jews to Christianity” (A Short History of Christian Zionism: From the Reformation to the Twenty-First Century, p. 128). In an 1898 letter composed to his friend in Jerusalem, Hechler wrote:

Of course, dear colleague, you look to the conversion of the Jews, but the times are changing rapidly, and it is important for us to look further and higher. We are now entering, thanks to the Zionist Movement, into Israel’s Messianic age. Thus, it is not a matter these days of opening all the doors of your churches to the Jews, but rather of opening the gates to their homeland, and of sustaining them in their work of clearing the land, and irrigating it, and bringing water to it. All of this, dear colleague, is messianic work; all of this the breath of the Holy Spirit announces. But first, the dry bones must come to life, and draw together” (The Politics of Christian Zionism: 1891-1948, pp. 15-16).

Lewis, based on Hummel’s observations, notes that a shift away from direct proselytizing of Jews is discernible beginning in the early 1950s:

From the early 1950s, […] evangelical missionaries in Israel shifted away from an evangelical theology that emphasized the proclamation of the gospel to the Jews in the hope of individual conversions […] [S]ome missionaries began to speak of a theology of “witness” that emphasized Christian brotherhood with Jews and abandoned any talk of conversion (A Short History of Christian Zionism, pp. 263-264).

Hummel observes that this view of “Christian witness, as it traveled from Jerusalem to Berlin into the highest echelons of postwar evangelicalism, prefigured the orientation of the later Christian Zionist movement” (Covenant Brothers, p. 33). Indeed, prominent Christian Zionist leaders, like Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) founder Pastor John Hagee, “publicly disavowed their involvement in Jewish missions,” while Hagee has declined to revise “CUFI’s position rejecting missions” (Ibid., p. 207). It should be noted that CUFI has been described as “the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States, with 10 million members” (Christian Zionism in the Twenty-First Century, p. 15).

Similarly, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, which has been described as “the most visible and best[-]known Christian Zionist organization in Israel” (Philosemitism in History, p. 271), has “categorically rejected proselytizing in Israel” as has the prominent Christian Zionist organization Christian Friends of Israel (A Short History of Christian Zionism, p. 293). Lewis conjectures that this shift among Christian Zionists from one of active proselytizing to one of witness might be due to the Christian Zionist focus on Jews as a collectivity rather than as individuals:

In the case of Christian Zionism, it may be that this shift was facilitated by their long-standing focus on the Jews as a “people” or “nation,” rather than the Jews as individuals. German Pietism had focused on the latter and promoted evangelism of the Jews, something nineteenth-century evangelicals had warmly embraced. Much of contemporary Christian Zionism so focuses on the Jews as a collectivity that it can lead to a downplaying or a sidelining of the focus on the conversion of individual Jews (Ibid., p. 266).

In any event, the evidence suggests that many prominent Christian Zionist leaders and organizations have not emphasized the conversion of the Jews and have even publicly disavowed involvement in mission work among Jews.

Misrepresenting All Christian Zionists as Excluding Palestinian Christians and Muslims

Archbishop Naoum claims that Christian Zionists have “exclud[ed] Palestinians.” If by “exclud[ing] Palestinians” the archbishop is suggesting that Christian Zionist advocates have not affirmed in principle the prospect of establishing a Palestinian state on territory in the Holy Land, data in the past have not indicated this is the case. As Stony Brook University Professor Stephen Spector has observed,

The claim that all Christian Zionists adamantly demand that Israel keep every inch of its biblical territory is vastly overstated […] Many born-again Christians have only a very vague notion of Israel’s role in the final days, and even among evangelical elites, there is remarkable diversity and nuance in their beliefs. That, in turn, allows flexibility about the principle of land-for-peace. Indeed, though it flies in the face of the common stereotype, 52% of evangelical leaders are in favor of a Palestinian state on land that God promised to Abraham, as long as it doesn’t threaten Israel! That may surprise people who fear born-again Christians’ obduracy on the question of covenant land. But the explanation, says the University of Akron’s John Green, is simple: They want to see peace in the Middle East (Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism, pp. 161-162).

In other words, many Christian Zionists have expressed a willingness to accept Palestinian sovereignty over territory in the Holy Land if the security of the Jewish State would not be threatened.

Conclusion

The above analysis has shown that Carlson and Archbishop Naoum made multiple inaccurate statements and misrepresentations, including falsely attributing Christian regional demographic decline entirely to Israel, misleadingly suggesting Christians are not doing well in Israel, misrepresenting Israel’s separation barrier, distorting several historical incidents, doubting Jewish attachment to the land of Israel, denying Jewish peoplehood, and misrepresenting Christian Zionist motivations and behaviors.