It’s common to hear Arabic throughout Israeli media. Other than robust Arabic programs (something evident while scanning channels driving through the heavily Arab-populated mountainous Galilee), it’s not uncommon to hear Arabic used in national news and other popular programs.

Living in Israel, where one in five citizens is Arab, who are integrated and an integral part of Israeli society, it’s hard not to absorb aspects of Arabic and Arab culture among Israeli Jews. I have learned enough Arabic just from reading Israeli street signs in Hebrew, Arabic, and English, phonetically sounding out words, albeit in most cases not knowing the meaning. I smiled at my daughter’s wedding last month when the band leader while blessing my daughter and son-in-law, invoked the Arabic word “inshallah” for “God willing.”

I was taken aback this week when a commentator on the morning news started yelling in Arabic, looking straight into the camera while holding a picture of what’s become a controversial and deeply offensive slap at Christians and Christianity. I didn’t understand most of what he was saying, but it was clear that he was yelling at the people who created this image, calling them dogs.

This week, the Hebron-based al-Qasrawi food company published a marketing campaign bastardizing the iconic image of the depiction of the Last Supper, replacing the faces of Jesus and his disciples with the heads of sheep. They mocked Christians and Christianity by transforming a Passover seder that Jesus celebrated into a tool to sell their snack foods.

This rightly sparked outrage through Arab social media, with condemnation of the deliberate and offensive desecration of Christian symbols. Using the heads of sheep adds fuel to the fire because, according to Christian belief, during Passover, Jesus was the lamb brought to sacrifice and also going back to the binding of Isaac when, after testing his faith, God miraculously provided a lamb to be Abraham’s sacrifice rather than his own son who would inherit the Covenant.

Christians reportedly publicly burned al-Qasrawi products. If it had been a desecration of Mohammed, the streets would still be burning.

While the offending company is not under any Israeli control, I have long felt and written that Israel needs to do more to protect Christian Arabs in Israel. Only since the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967 have Jews, Christians, and Moslems all had equal access to their holy sites, albeit with often tense navigation of these between faiths and among different denominations.

The Jewish state owes it to Christians and Christianity to do so historically and as the protector of Christian holy sites in the Holy Land. We owe it to Christian Arabs, who are often discriminated against and even harassed and threatened by their Muslim Arab neighbors. (I have heard vile stories from Christian Arab friends that pain me that any Israeli citizen would not have equal protection under the law.)

We owe it to Christians because we both know that Christianity was born from First Century Jews and that the Bible that we revere makes up some 80 percent of the Christian Bible. Our past, present, and future are intertwined, like the roots of an ancient olive tree.

Unfortunately, Israel has little to no way of controlling or influencing how Christians are (mis)treated and abused within the Palestinian Authority, PA (some call it Palestine). I’ve initiated projects to support persecuted Christians in the PA, but don’t have a solution for what to do.

Since the October 7th Hamas massacre, Christians in the PA have been subjected to increasing pressure to support the “Palestinian” narrative against Israel, even to their own detriment and in contradiction to biblical history. Rather than celebrating Christmas, they have been forced to mute their festivity in “solidarity” with Gaza. Reportedly, this extended to public and private Christmas displays, including in Bethlehem, the very place where Jesus was born.

It’s ironic that this offense against and mockery of Christianity took place during the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha. This is when Moslems commemorate Abraham’s devotion to God and obedience in bringing his son as a sacrifice. The problem is that Islam has appropriated the Biblical narrative, claiming that Abraham brought Ishmael as the sacrifice.

Ridiculing Christians is bad at any time, but to do so on a holiday that alone flies in the face of what billions of Christians and Jews believe is a slap in the face of biblical proportion. Surely, the Palestinian Arab company promoting their snacks didn’t know or care that this also took place when Christians observed Pentecost. But I did. Rubbing salty snacks in the wounds.

I suspect that this was more than just a marketing swing-and-miss. While Arab Muslims know that there are Christian Arabs living among them, they do not know much about Christianity or the Bible. Probably most Palestinian Arab Muslims do not know that the Last Supper scene that they desecrated has anything to do with Christians or that it depicted a Jewish Passover seder, much less that Jesus was a Jew. This means that those who created the ad did so deliberately, degradingly, and maliciously.

A few years ago, I purchased beautiful coffee mugs for my Run for Zion program from a Christian Palestinian Arab from Bethlehem. I have also referred other friends to a Christian vendor in Bethlehem to purchase olive wood sculptures and crafts. When I asked my mug-making Christian Arab friend to take a picture together, he and his demeanor tensed. “Why do you want a picture,” he demanded as if I was threatening him. It turns out if such a picture of him with me, a Jewish Israeli “settler,” were to get out. Indeed, he would have been threatened. The vendor has since fled to the US.

This is despite the fact that in the Judean hills in which I live, from Bethlehem to Hebron, despite a century of Jews being attacked and slaughtered here by Arabs (Hebron 1929, Kfar Etzion 1948, and on the roads in between from the pre-state British Mandate until this century), there’s tremendous commerce between Jews and Arabs, often with mutual respect, and even friendships that have been born.

Bethlehem is more than a symbol. It’s the front line. In my old house, I lived on the opposite side of a valley from Bethlehem, with the city visible out my bedroom window. I saw the steeple of a church and heard the dominant Muslim call to prayer echo through the mountains five times a day. I also listened to the church bells pierce the silence twice a day, each time praying that I would hear the bells again. When the church bells of Bethlehem go silent, that is a stark warning for us all.

25 years ago, Bethlehem was 70-80% Christian. Since then, the number has dropped radically and is reported to be as little as 10-15%. Thousands, like my olive-wood craftsman friend, have fled because they cannot withstand the persecution in the PA and see no future for themselves or their children. Someone I know suggested recently that Christians need to come (back) to Bethlehem en mass and take control of this historic Biblical city.

The offensive al-Qasrawi advertising is a shot across the bow. Those who love the God of Israel need to be aware that this is much more than a poor advertising campaign, but the very delegitimization of Christians and Christianity in the Land in which Jesus was born.

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