The video is horrifying, though it is the kind of horror now synonymous with the behavior of Israel, its military, its armed settlers, and society that has been conditioned to see the ‘other’ as subhuman.
However, this was unlike the usual videos circulating daily from occupied Palestine. This time, the victim was not Palestinian but an elderly French nun.
On May 1, a video emerged from Jerusalem showing a 36-year-old Israeli man chasing a French nun—a researcher at the French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research—and violently pushing her to the ground.
In a cruel act, the attacker did not simply assault and flee. After stepping away briefly, he returned to relentlessly kick her while she lay vulnerable on the ground.
What was even more disturbing was the apparent calm that followed. The assailant stayed nearby, chatting with another man who seemed completely indifferent to the violent incident.
The video briefly caught mainstream media attention, prompting superficial condemnation. Many framed the attack within the broader context of Israeli violence, pointing to the ongoing genocide in Gaza as a glaring example of this relentless aggression.
Yet, even considering the widespread violence, the question remains: why target a French nun? She is European, Christian, and not associated with any historical or territorial disputes that would typically provoke Zionist security paranoia.
Nevertheless, this episode was far from an ‘isolated’ event, despite Israeli officials rushing to dismiss it as a ‘shameful’ anomaly. On the contrary, the assault was motivated by her being Christian.
This prompts the question: why?
To understand, we must recognize how Palestinian Christians have been systematically erased from the narrative of their own land.
Palestinian Christians do not simply exist in the region—they belong among the most deeply rooted communities in Palestine. They are neither ‘foreign’ nor ‘bystanders’ caught in a supposed Jewish-Muslim religious conflict.
In fact, Christian Arabs have a presence in Palestine that dates back centuries before the Islamic era. They descend from ancient tribes that helped shape the region’s identity long before modern political categories existed.
The marginalization of Palestinian Christians is a relatively recent development, connected closely to Western colonialism. For hundreds of years, European powers invoked the protection of Christians as justification for imperial interventions.
This narrative portrayed native Christians not as sovereign Arabs but as wards of the West, thereby stripping them of their indigenous identity and distancing them from their own national narrative in the eyes of the global community.
Zionism compounded this erasure by positioning itself as a ‘protector’ of Christians to avoid alienating its Western supporters.
In reality, Palestinian Christians have faced the same systematic ethnic cleansing, racism, and military occupation as Palestinian Muslims. This stark reality is reflected in the dramatic decline of the Christian population.
Before the 1948 Nakba, Palestinian Christians comprised around 12% of the population. Today, their numbers have fallen to approximately 1%. During the Nakba, tens of thousands were expelled from West Jerusalem, Haifa, and Jaffa, their homes seized, and their communities dismantled.
A glance at contemporary Jerusalem and Bethlehem reveals a continuing erasure. Jerusalem is systematically cleansed of its original inhabitants, both Christian and Muslim. Restrictions on Christian properties and places of worship increase, while Bethlehem’s ‘Little Town’ has been encircled by illegal settlements and bounded by an 8-meter-high Apartheid Wall, turning the birthplace of Christ into a vast open-air prison.
Yet, the struggles of Palestinian Christians rarely reach global awareness. Instead, the world catches occasional glimpses of harassment—such as Jewish extremists spitting at foreign pilgrims and clergy in Jerusalem. This behavior has become so normalized that Israeli officials like Itamar Ben-Gvir have defended it as an “ancient custom” exempt from criminal prosecution.
The story of Palestinian Christians is seldom told because it does not fit neatly into the simplified narratives preferred by Western governments. These powers prefer to cast the ‘conflict’ as a Jewish state defending itself against a uniform ‘Islamic’ threat. Israel perpetuates this ‘Clash of Civilizations’ framing, positioning itself as the defender of “Western civilization” against Arab extremism.
Regrettably, some Palestinians—Muslim and Christian alike—have also internalized this narrative. Many Muslims see the resistance as solely a religious struggle, while some Christians inadvertently support the discourse that marginalizes them.
However, the genocide in Gaza reveals the flaws in this outlook. Despite targeting over 800 mosques, Israel has not spared Christian holy sites.
On October 19, 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit a building in the Church of Saint Porphyrius compound—one of the world’s oldest churches.
Eighteen Palestinian Christians were killed in this attack, their lives taken amid a sanctuary standing for over 1,600 years. This tragic event clearly showed that Israeli strikes do not discriminate between mosques and churches, or between Muslim and Christian blood.
The incident involving the French nun deserves all the attention it gained, as do attacks on pilgrims. Yet, as media interest fades, it is vital to remember that Palestinian Christians suffer collectively, linked deeply to the land of Palestine. They now face endangerment, with Israel responsible for their plight. Without their presence, Palestine loses a fundamental part of its identity.
Palestine can only be complete as a homeland where different faiths coexist, and Palestinian Christians have been central to this for two thousand years. Their survival is not merely a minority concern—it is crucial to the existence of Palestine itself.
Original article: znetwork.org
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