Key Takeaways:
- On the Tucker Carlson Show, Carlson sat down with Hosam Naoum and Saad Mouasher to discuss Christian life in the Holy Land.
- The guests and Carlson portray Christian life as threatened and diminishing, largely blaming Israel for these challenges.
- Despite this portrayal, the reality shows that Christians in Israel enjoy full citizenship, religious freedom, and legal protections, highlighting a stark contrast between Carlson’s narrative and the actual conditions on the ground.
Tucker Carlson is in the Holy Land. Well, at least part of it. Carlson went to Jordan to sit down with two prominent Christians to discuss their experiences as Christians in the Levant. Specifically, he set out to determine whether Christians in the Holy Land were thriving or suffering.
In conversations with the Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, Hosam Naoum, and Chairman of Jordan Ahli Bank, Saad Mouasher, one would think that Christian life in the Holy Land is one of suffering, through no fault other than Israel alone.
In the hour and a half long podcast episode, The Shocking Reality of the Treatment of Christians in the Holy Land by the US-Funded Israeli Government, Carlson goes above and beyond to ensure he tells a slanted story of the reality of Christians in the Middle East, and particularly those living in and around Israel. What he does not do, however, is portray the thousands of Christians living in Israel who enjoy the same rights, freedoms, and benefits of the state as any other citizen.
I am a native Aramaic Christian living in Israel, and I just watched Tucker Carlson’s propaganda aimed at deceiving Westerners and making Islam look appealing.
All Tucker cares about is attacking Israel in an unjust way, along with all Israel supporters, including Ambassador… https://t.co/4bYh0zdB6x
— Shadi khalloul שאדי ח’לול (@shadikhalloul) February 6, 2026
Though Carlson pretends this is a balanced conversation by speaking with Christians who live in Israel and Jordan, it is anything but. The episode immediately frames Israel as systematically targeting its Christian population, through the help of the U.S. From this framing, Carlson and his guests portray Israel not as a country where Christian life – alongside all minorities – continues to exist and flourish, but as the primary threat to Christian survival in the region.
184,200 Christians live in Israel, accounting for 1.9% of the total population. Contrary to what Carlson unfoundedly states, this number has increased by 0.7% from 2023-2024. Lying, of course, is much easier when it fits the narrative Carlson is trying so desperately to sell. By claiming the Christian population is decreasing in Israel while thriving in Muslim-majority Jordan, Carlson implies that Jewish sovereignty is inherently harmful to Christian life.
This messaging is further amplified by Archbishop Hosam Naoum, who suggested that there is a colonial pattern of thinking that led the Jewish people to return to Israel. It is not colonial thinking, but rather a thousand-year-long history that connects the Jewish people to Israel. The historic achievement of the Jewish people returning to their land ensured from the outset that the state founded would protect the rights of all peoples and religions.
There has been no mass call for the removal of Christians or other minorities from their towns. Still, the decline in the number of Christians in Nazareth is framed as a uniquely Israel-backed cause. After the War of Independence, the Muslim population increased in Nazareth. With a higher birth rate than the Christian community, the Muslim population soon outnumbered the Christians in Nazareth. This shift was not the result of forced displacement or state policy targeting Christians, but of differing demographic patterns over time.
It is similarly mentioned that the Christian population of Bethlehem has also been decreasing. Yet, despite no Jews living in Bethlehem, neither Carlson nor the Archbishop can critically discuss the real reason why that change is occurring.
Related Reading: History Repeating Itself as Bethlehem’s Christians Face Extinction
Beyond the claim that Israel is targeting Christian-majority towns, it is also accused of specifically preventing the freedom of Christian worshippers on their holidays. This accusation, however, omits important context. Israel is home to vibrant Christian communities that openly celebrate their religious holidays with public processions, church services, and pilgrimages. Due to sensitive areas, particularly in Jerusalem’s Old City, the Israeli Police take extra security precautions, as they do with every other religious group celebrating a holiday. It is not a practice of discrimination, but one of security, especially when it comes to Easter at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where crowd control is necessary to prevent potentially catastrophic overcrowding.
Framing such security protocols as religious persecution misrepresents their purpose, obscuring the reality that Israel remains one of the only countries in the Middle East where Christian worship is openly practiced, legally protected, and publicly visible.
Just as the facts are omitted from discussions around the Christian population, so too are they nowhere to be found when discussing the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. This is even though it was immediately found that the hospital explosion that occurred on October 17, 2023, was caused by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket, despite the Archbishop’s claim that there were two competing narratives, and he still did not know who was responsible. Indeed, as Joel Mowbray explains, the charge by the Archbishop, encouraged by Carlson, that the Christian hospital had been bombed several more times by Israel as apparent acts of malevolence, does not stand up to scrutiny.
🚨 EXCLUSIVE — Tucker falsely claimed that a “Christian hospital in Gaza… was bombed eight times by Israel.”
The truth? Israel never “bombed” the hospital.
The “bombings” included an aid airdrop damaging solar panels & an evacuation.
This is the infamous Al-Ahli hospital… pic.twitter.com/4bHIOSggSd
— Joel Mowbray (@joelmowbray) February 8, 2026
Tucker Carlson knows very well that there is overwhelming evidence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad abusing hospitals and civilian infrastructure at large to operate out of. By excluding this critical context, Carlson presents his audience with an incomplete narrative – one that assigns blame while withholding evidence that complicates his conclusion.
Before Carlson moves on to interviewing his next guest, the Archbishop mentions that Jewish youth are being taught in school to spit on Christians, and that their goal is to “purify” Jerusalem from Christians. While a handful of extremists have engaged in this wholly unacceptable act, it is not representative of the Jewish population as a whole, nor of policies in the Jewish state. When this did make headline news in 2023, the spitting incidents led to a public outcry, were widely condemned by both political and religious leaders and led to arrests.
There is no such education that teaches Jewish youth to “purify” Jerusalem of Christians. Presenting the actions of fringe individuals as evidence of systemic education or national policy is a false and deeply misleading impression.
In the second conversation of the podcast, Saad Mouasher and Carlson discuss similar topics. But as Mouasher grew up in Jordan, the context upon which the conversation is founded is different. Carlson subtly suggests that Christians in Jordan have more rights and are treated with more dignity than Christians in Israel.
Carlson specifically mentions that this discrimination is, in large part, caused by the capital of Israel moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. However, Jerusalem was declared as the capital of the country by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1949. After the Six-Day War, Jerusalem was reunited, ensuring all people and religions would be able to access the holy sites with full freedom. Thus, the “occupation” is not an “equal opportunity” system of discrimination, targeting both Muslims and Christians, as Mouasher and Carlson claim.
The 90-minute conversation concludes with the message Carlson appears intent on promoting from the outset: Israel is the sole party responsible for regional instability. Arab countries invading Israel in 1948 are overlooked. Bashar al-Assad and Saddam Hussein’s human rights violations? Ignored. And Hezbollah’s role in destabilizing Lebanon? Entirely dismissed.
There is no “anti-Christian theme” taking place in Israel as Carlson attempts to portray. Rather, it is a re-telling of history, where certain claims are elevated while omitting the broader historical and political context necessary for an honest and accurate understanding of the region. The reality is more complex than Carlson’s false portrayal of a system of hatred targeting Christians.
Like any democratic state, Israel is not without flaws. But these imperfections exist within the realm of a functioning legal and political system that guarantees freedom of religion, protects minority rights, and allows Christian communities to live, worship, and participate fully in public life. One only needs to walk through the diverse streets of Jerusalem to understand that.
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