For decades, the loudest Christian voices about Israel have come from the West, often American evangelicals quoting Genesis 12 and Romans 11 with zeal. But there is another voice, quieter yet deeply influential, that tells a very different story. It is the voice of Arab Christianity, a community rooted in Pentecost itself, shaped by centuries under Islamic rule, and one that often sees the Jewish state not as the fulfillment of God’s promises but as a betrayal of justice.
Their criticisms are familiar: Israel is an occupying power, Zionism is colonial, biblical land promises are obsolete. Many Western Christians, eager to avoid conflict, dismiss these claims as just “another perspective.” That dismissal is both dangerous and lazy. If we care about truth, and the unity and witness of the global church, we must understand why these views exist and confront them with history, reason, and Scripture.
This essay is not an attack on Arab Christians. They are our brothers and sisters, often faithful under pressure. But love does not mean silence. We must help the church unlearn narratives that distort history, obscure God’s purposes, and obstruct reconciliation. That begins by tracing those narratives to their roots, such as the stories, ideologies, and civilizational forces centuries in the making.
Case Study: A Contemporary Example of the Narrative
Rev. Dr. Jack Sara, President of Bethlehem Bible College and General Secretary of the Middle East & North Africa Evangelical Alliance, articulated these views most recently in his article, “It is a myth that in the Middle East Christians are only thriving in Israel” (Christian Daily International, September 30, 2025). Sara’s op-ed is useful not because its claims are true (many of them are only partially true or misleading), but because it shows the deeper ideas that shape a lot of Arab Christian talk about Israel. At its core, his argument shows how historical grievances, community pressures, and expectations of civilization are all mixed together into a convincing but false story. By portraying Zionism as a colonial intrusion rather than a movement of national restoration, the article reframes Jewish sovereignty as an aberration, an act to be challenged rather than a reality to be understood. This framing obscures crucial historical facts, such as the repeated Arab rejection of compromise proposals, the deliberate choice to wage war in 1948, and the massive expulsion of Jews from surrounding Arab lands, events that fundamentally shaped the context he critiques but never acknowledges.
Some scholars propose that Sara’s language may embody what is referred to as a “dhimmi psychology”—cognitive frameworks influenced by centuries of existence as a minority under Islamic governance. Because of this history, Christian communities often put stability first, stressed legal protections, and publicly followed the political stories of the time in order to stay alive. From that point of view, the idea of Jewish sovereignty, once almost unimaginable, can be scary, especially when it upends social hierarchies that have been in place for a long time. Sara’s repeated focus on recognition, legal status, and institutional authority may show that he is worried about more than just administrative issues; he may also be worried about how power is changing. At the same time, it’s important to recognize that such emphasis can also stem from legitimate worries about justice, representation, and equality, not simply from inherited psychology.
Lastly, the article shows how biblical language can be used in a selective way to make political views seem holy. The argument could make justice a one-sided project by asking for a “prophetic witness” against Israel while ignoring equally important calls for accountability in Arab states. This is more about taking away Jewish power than always following biblical morals. This is not a call to ignore the suffering of Palestinians or to silence valid criticism. Instead, it is a call to see how stories like Sara’s leave out important details and only tell part of the truth. When grievance takes precedence over historical truth and justice is exploited as a political tool, the result is not prophetic clarity but theological distortion.
The Deep Roots of a Persistent Hostility
Among Western evangelicals, support for Israel is woven into theology: God’s promises are irrevocable, Israel’s restoration foretold, and the state’s rebirth a sign of covenant faithfulness. Across the Arab world, even among evangelicals, the view is often the opposite. Israel is not a miracle but a menace, not fulfillment but catastrophe.
This divide is one of global Christianity’s least understood. It is often blamed on “different theology,” but that is profoundly inadequate. Arab Christian hostility is not primarily theological. It is historical, cultural, and deeply psychological, the result of centuries of political subordination, decades of nationalist ideology, inherited grievances, and powerful social pressures. It is formed less by Scripture than by story.
1948 and the Politics of Memory
The foundational narrative shaping Arab Christian attitudes is not biblical but historical: 1948. The Nakba, “catastrophe”, is the central trauma of Arab and Palestinian consciousness. The birth of Israel is remembered not as the return of an ancient people to their homeland, but as violent dispossession. Many Arab Christians still carry stories of lost homes, uprooted villages, and scattered families.
But this memory is selective. It rarely mentions that Jewish leaders accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan while Arab leaders rejected it, or that five Arab armies invaded the newborn state. It often omits that many Palestinians fled at Arab commanders’ urging, or that some 850,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands in parallel. In this curated story, catastrophe is always something done to Palestinians, never something partly chosen by their leaders.
Acknowledging these facts does not dismiss Palestinian suffering. Their grief is real. But suffering does not confer a monopoly on truth. Narratives forged in pain can harden into myths that erase inconvenient realities. The Nakba remains the emotional bedrock of hostility, but as history it is partial, and profoundly misleading.
Nationalism and the Colonial Frame
A second force shaping Arab Christian attitudes is Arab nationalism, which emerged in response to Ottoman decline and European imperialism. Many of its earliest advocates, like George Antonius and Constantin Zureiq, were Christians. As nationalism matured, it found a unifying enemy: Zionism.
Nationalist intellectuals cast Zionism not as national revival but as colonialism, a Western implant meant to divide the Arab world. This framing still resonates deeply in societies marked by colonial rule. Yet it collapses under scrutiny. Zionism was not conquest by outsiders but the return of an indigenous people to their ancestral home, a people with an unbroken presence in the land for over 3,000 years. It was legally endorsed by the League of Nations and the UN. Nor was it a European project: most Israeli Jews descend from communities expelled from Arab and Islamic lands.
The colonial analogy is rhetorically powerful but historically bankrupt. Its power lies in its simplicity, oppressor and oppressed, foreclosing Israel’s legitimacy before the discussion even begins.
The Islamic Order and the Shock of Jewish Sovereignty
Understanding this hostility also requires deeper civilizational context. For more than a millennium, Middle Eastern Christians lived under Islamic rule as dhimmis, tolerated but subordinate, allowed to worship but denied political power. Over centuries, this shaped Muslim and Christian expectations: Muslim dominance was natural and immutable.
The reemergence of Jewish sovereignty in 1948 shattered that order. In classical Islamic thought, which shaped the region’s culture, Jews were subservient, tolerated but never sovereign. A powerful Jewish state, victorious in war, economically vibrant, militarily strong, was a civilizational earthquake. It overturned centuries of assumed hierarchy.
Arab Christians, though not the authors of this worldview, were formed within it. Many unconsciously share its assumptions. Jewish sovereignty feels “unnatural,” an inversion of history’s order. The result is a visceral hostility, less analytical than instinctive, that Scripture alone cannot dispel. The resistance is not theological. It is civilizational.
Minority Survival and Communal Solidarity
Arab Christians are also minorities within Muslim societies. In most Arab countries they make up less than five percent of the population, and their security, status, and survival have long depended on relations with the Muslim majority. In this context, criticism of Israel serves as a marker of loyalty. It signals solidarity with the wider Arab cause and protects vulnerable minorities from accusations of collaboration.
This dynamic shapes public discourse. Leaders who might privately hold nuanced views often speak in the language of resistance. Over time, pragmatic conformity becomes conviction, and narratives originally adopted for self-preservation harden into identity. Even those who question these narratives privately hesitate to do so publicly. Western evangelicals often misinterpret such rhetoric as ideological fervor when it is often a survival strategy.
The Inversion of Hierarchy and the Politics of Humiliation
The final layer is psychological. Under Islamic rule, a clear social hierarchy prevailed: Muslims on top, Christians beneath, Jews at the bottom. This structure shaped how communities saw themselves and one another. The creation of Israel inverted this hierarchy in a generation. A people once despised as powerless now wield power, define borders, and shape the region’s future.
This reversal is existentially humiliating. Arab armies, heirs to imperial glory, were repeatedly defeated by a state smaller than New Jersey. Jews, once symbols of weakness, now project strength and sovereignty. For many Arabs, this reversal remains intolerable. Even when Arab Christians speak the language of “justice,” this deeper wound often underlies their hostility. Israel is not merely a political fact but a cosmic insult.
The Final Word: Truth Stronger Than Narrative
Ultimately, this is not a debate about land or politics. It is about truth, and whether the church will have the courage to speak it. The rebirth of Israel is not a colonial aberration but a covenantal reality. It is not an accident of history but the fulfillment of promises written in Scripture and etched into the Jewish soul. And it is not a threat to the gospel but a testimony to the God who keeps His word.
None of this negates Palestinian suffering or excuses injustice. But pain cannot be the measure of truth, and grievance cannot be the lens through which we read God’s story. The church’s calling is not to choose sides but to bear witness, to proclaim a God who loves Jew and Arab alike, who judges injustice without partiality, and who weaves both into His redemptive purposes.
The walls that divide the church, historical, theological, political, will not fall through silence or sentimentality. They will fall when truth is spoken boldly and love lived sacrificially. And when that happens, when Arab and Jewish believers together proclaim the faithfulness of the God of Abraham, the world will see not just a political miracle but a spiritual one. It will witness the gospel’s power to reconcile even history’s deepest wounds and the unfolding of a promise made long ago: that through Abraham’s seed, the nations will be blessed, and the God of Israel will still keep His word.
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