(LifeSiteNews) — Palestinian Christian leaders have issued an urgent appeal to churches worldwide “to rise to their moral, spiritual, and ethical responsibilities” in coming to the immediate aid of Christians and other native populations in their land who are suffering under an escalating campaign of Israeli settler” terrorist attacks against their ancient communities.
The Higher Presidential Committee for Church Affairs in Palestine issued an urgent international cry for help on Sunday requesting “sustained international pressure to ensure effective protection for Palestinian civilians, including Christians,” and to hold the Israeli “occupying power accountable for its crimes under international law.”
They further call on Christian churches “to firmly reject all policies that enable forced displacement and the erasure of the ancient Palestinian presence” in their internationally recognized territory.
With the Holy See, 157 of 193 national governments (80.3%) in the UN formally recognize the State of Palestine. And around 185 such nations (96%) call for a two-state-solution at least implicitly recognizing the illegality of Israel’s 58-year military occupation and colonial settlement enterprise in the West Bank.
The strongly worded message of the Church Committee warned that the “sharp rise in settler assaults,” including “brutal physical attacks, arbitrary detentions, land theft, and the aggressive expansion of illegal settlement outposts,” pose an imminent and “direct threat to the historical and living presence of Palestinian Christians on their land.”
Let’s stop calling it settler violence. It is settler TERROR. These criminals roam the West Bank with impunity, and the world stays silent. https://t.co/s94k3tLDy0
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) January 28, 2026
These violent attacks against civilians, the Committee stressed, “are part of a systematic and deliberate policy aimed at forcibly altering the demographic and geographic character of the land and driving its indigenous inhabitants from their homes.”
With the settler violence supported by the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation army in the region, this “organized campaign of terror” is sustained with “total impunity,” the committee release explained.
Citing a report from the Colonization & Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian governmental body, the Church Committee reported how illegal settler terrorists executed “more than 4,723 attacks in 2025 alone, alongside 720 additional assaults involving direct participation of (Israeli) occupation forces.”
by the way, today another attack happened in masafer yatta. the victim, qussai, 17, isn’t an oscar winner, so people won’t hear about it, but here’s the video of masked settlers beating him with metal rods as his mom screams in the background, just in case pic.twitter.com/7Wh16Ugg7J
— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) March 28, 2025
The committee also referenced a report presented by a United Nations official in December that affirmed “relentless” illegal Israeli settlement-expansion reached its highest rate since the UN began tracking these developments in 2017. These actions continue to defy the International Court of Justice which in July 2024 required Israel cease all new settlement activities, evacuate their settlers who are living on stolen Palestinian land, and promptly end its illegal presence in the internationally recognized Palestinian territory.
Palestinian Christians ‘deeply shocked’ by silence of many western churches
Holy Land Churches, religious and Christian organizations in Palestine have often desperately repeated this call with one voice, particularly to brother and sister Catholics and other Christians in the United States and the broader West.
Just last November, the largest Christian ecumenical organization in the Holy Land, called Kairos Palestine, launched its second major document calling for continued non-violent Palestinian resistance in the face of Israel’s occupation and genocide while crying out to Christians worldwide for solidarity and assistance.
READ: ‘Faith in a Time of Genocide’: Holy Land Christians call for solidarity, repudiation of Zionism
Supported by the various Catholic and Orthodox Rites in the region, along with Anglican and Lutheran denominations, they wrote in their Kairos II document how as Palestinian Christians they are “deeply shocked by the positions of many churches that either adopted the (Israeli) colonizer’s narrative or remain silent in the face of the genocide of our people.”
“We repeat and emphasize our appeal to the churches of the world — working together with both religious and secular coalitions — to pressure their governments to isolate Israel, hold it accountable, impose sanctions, boycott it, and to ban the export of arms until it complies with international law, ends oppression and tyranny, and adheres to the principles of justice and peace,” the Holy Land Christians wrote.
‘As the Church in the United States remains silent about this devastation, it shares in the responsibility for our suffering’
In a stirring open letter to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) last April, the Kairos board of directors, which is chaired by former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, desperately cried out for help as they face a “war of extermination” being waged against them by the “powerful apartheid state” of Israel that is “supported militarily and financially by the United States.”
READ: Holy Land Christians demand USCCB denounce Israel’s genocide, oppose US military support
“Today, the Palestinian people in Gaza and in the West Bank are enduring what can only be described as a war of extermination, a genocide and ethnic cleansing,” the Kairos board wrote at the time. “Entire families have been annihilated. Homes, churches, and hospitals have been destroyed. Over 50,000 people, the majority of whom are women and children, have been killed.”
“This is not a conflict between equals. It is a campaign of destruction carried out by a powerful apartheid state, supported militarily and financially by the United States and a number of European countries,” they clarified.
“As the Church in the United States remains silent about this devastation, it shares in the responsibility for our suffering,” the letter asserted. “American tax dollars and weapons fuel the war machine that targets us. It is not enough to condemn hate. You must also condemn the systems and powers that perpetuate injustice,” the Christians in the region implored.
Holy Land nun admonishes American Catholics to ‘wake up.’ Genocide in the hands of United States policy
They went on to beg the USCCB to “Recognize the suffering of Palestinian people including Palestinian Christians and publicly denounce the illegal Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide against our people.”
They also demanded the USCCB “Call for an end to USA military funding to Israel until it complies with international laws.”
Concluding the letter, the Christian leaders addressed Catholics in America, stating, “We call on our brothers and sisters in Christ to act now, not only in prayer, but in prophetic witness. Christ is Risen! Let Justice and Hope Rise with Him!”
In an interview last August with Tucker Carlson, Russian Orthodox nun, Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, said, “I think certainly the Catholic Church in America has to do a lot more as an institution” to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
READ: Holy Land nun tells Tucker: American Catholics must ‘change the support for Israel’ in the US
American Christians “have to wake up” and get politically active because the genocide of Palestine “is all in the hands of the United States. It doesn’t matter what any other country in the world does. If the U.S. protects Israel, this will continue,” Mother Agapia admonished at the time.
Silent Catholics will be responsible for the erasure of Holy Land Christians
In an interview last week with Christine Niles, Catholic humanitarian and Vulnerable People Project founder Jason Jones made the same point with challenging candor.
“The most unbelievable part” of this tragedy “is the silence of Catholics with influence and power,” said the pro-life advocate who spent significant time in the West Bank around the Christmas holiday.
“I normally don’t do this,” Jones warned, “but if Bishop Barron went on X and was telling the truth about settler violence on Catholics, or Father Mike (Schmitz), if the USCCB leaned in, if they were holding press conferences, flooding cable news shows, we would save the most ancient Christian community in the world.”
“So, when they are erased, we are responsible,” he concluded.
.@JasonJonesVPP: “@GovMikeHuckabee had the nerve to stand up to the ancient Christian communities of the Holy Land and say that their theology was wrong and that they don’t have the right to say what Christians believe, but HE has the right to say that the State of Israel has a… pic.twitter.com/rmaQDZUpNe
— Christine Niles (@ChristineNiles1) January 29, 2026
The Higher Presidential Committee of Churches Affairs in Palestine was formed by a presidential decree issued by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2012. The committee works with PA agencies, local churches and other organizations with a mission of preserving the Christian presence in the state of Palestine.
Concluding its message, the Committee implored that the land where Jesus Christ was born, lived, died and rose from the dead “must never be emptied of its people.”
And speaking to sister churches in the West and beyond, they admonished “that genuine faith is measured not only in prayer, but in courageous action, by standing openly against injustice and in defense of human dignity and justice.”
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