AMBASSADOR GEORGE DEEK: The Christian Israel you are not being shown

I grew up in Jaffa, going to church every Sunday with my father, the cantor of our Greek Orthodox church. I joined the Christian Scouts as a boy, later became a leader in the movement and even ran our marching band, a serious source of community pride. We marched at Christmas and Easter. We celebrated weddings, baptisms and feast days. We knew which grandmother made the best food and which family was feuding with which other family.

In other words, we were a perfectly normal Middle Eastern Christian community. Our neighbors were Muslims and Jews. We studied together, worked together, argued together and lived together.

I grew up Christian, Arab and Israeli. I felt rooted, safe and happy. Which is why I sometimes wonder whether the Israel I keep reading about is a different country.

Apparently, Christians here live under siege, Christianity is being pushed out, and Jewish hostility is making Christian life increasingly impossible. It is an alarming picture, and a very strange description of the country in which I actually live.

Let me make one thing clear: There have been ugly incidents of religious radicals spitting at clergy, verbally abusing Christians and vandalizing property. Such behavior is disgraceful. Israel should confront it forcefully through law enforcement, education and religious leadership.

But then comes the question that strangely disappears from much of the discussion:

Do those extremists define Israel? Because if they do, we are going to have to rewrite our descriptions of quite a few Western democracies.

In 2025, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in the United States, an average of 17 every day. More significantly, there were 203 physical assaults, the highest number the ADL has recorded since it began tracking such incidents.

Does that make America an antisemitic society? Of course not.

Then there is Spain.

According to Spain's Interior Ministry, hate crimes and hate incidents reached their highest recorded level in 2025, rising 23.6% in a single year. Antisemitic incidents rose 86.5% from 37 to 69 cases.

Should we therefore conclude that Spain itself is fundamentally anti-Jewish? Again, no.

Extremism exists in every democratic society. Sometimes it grows dangerously. Governments must confront it. But serious people understand the difference between extremists within a society and the character of the society itself.

Except, increasingly, when that society is Israel.

An extremist in Boston, Madrid or London attacks a Jew, and we correctly call him an antisemite. A fanatic spits at a Christian in Jerusalem, and suddenly we are invited to diagnose Israeli society.

That is not analysis. It is a double standard.

If you genuinely want to know whether Christians are flourishing in a country, there are better measures than the behavior of its worst citizens.

Start with the most basic question:

Are Christians disappearing?

In Israel, they are not.

In 1950, Israel was home to roughly 34,000 Christians. Today there are about 184,000, and the community continues to grow.

Then look at what Christians actually do here.

Consider one image that tells you more about Christian integration than a hundred government brochures.

Justice Salim Joubran was an Arab Christian justice of Israel's Supreme Court. He sat on the panel that sent former Israeli president Moshe Katsav to prison. Think about that sentence. An Arab Christian judge helped send the Jewish president of the Jewish state to prison.

And nobody in Israel regarded his ethnicity or reli