The network of the pro-Palestine bands has scored success in creating an ever-increasing and constricting terminology framework. There is ‘settler-colonialism,’ and there is “Zionism is racism.” There is “apartheid,” and there is “from the River to the Sea.” And there is “genocide”.
Their terminology frames all the arguments. That they use these terms and phrases in contradiction to their definitions and in contradistinction to the facts hasn’t hindered them at all.
Their language now dominates all academic research. It rules the legacy and social media platforms, and all the memes and posters we see. That is success-cum-victory in the rhetoric campaign waged against Zionism since the days of the Mufti as well as the Communist Comintern in the 1920s and 1930s.
In 2017, criminologist M. S. Hamm and sociologist R. Spaaij published their study of lone-wolf terrorism and suggested that the use of mass media to provoke random acts of ideologically motivated violence should be called stochastic terrorism, a term first employed by mathematician and risk analyst Dr. Gordon Woo, in that it approaches but does not cross lines of direct forms of incitement.
Nevertheless, the resulting violence is quite plausible. In fact, Hamm and Spaaij contend that digital communication technology has played an integral role in nearly all lone offender attacks. We witness that almost hourly on TikTok, X/Twitter, and Instagram.
After decades, it should be obvious that adopting a defensive strategy is limited in its achievements, to voice an understatement. One need not necessarily, then, set off on an aggressive counter-operation.
However, formulating a clever, broad-ranging, well-thought-out, assertive plan could provide more than just push-back. It could win back support and understanding for Israel and Zionism.
Consider this, for example, in connection with the term “genocide.”
The World Watch List is a site that ranks the 50 countries where Christians face the most extreme persecution. Of the top 10 countries, seven are Islamist. In two of the remaining three, Islamist terror groups are the guilty parties.
Another group, the International Christian Concern, also publishes a similar “Persecution Index” list, and on June 6, 2025, they published “The (Not So) Secret Discrimination of Christians in Islamic-led Countries”.
Lower percentage of Christians in the Middle East
Huma Haider of the University of Birmingham prepared a decade ago a report for the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID). She noted then that “a century ago, Christians in the Middle East comprised 20% of the population; today, they constitute no more than 3-4% of the region’s population.” That reduction should be referred to, to my mind, as a genocide.
Although many interested parties are attempting to clamp a media lid on the situation, what is happening to Christians, especially in the Middle East and mostly due to Islamists, is genocide.
In Israel’s backyard, Christians in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza experience persecution stemming from rising Islamist intolerance, including intimidation, land disputes, and assaults.
The Christian population has significantly declined due to this pressure, with many fleeing their homes. Incidents include church attacks and forced conversion pressures.
The key aspects of persecution the report identifies are a declining population, vandalization of churches, news of violent mob attacks and destruction of property, social coercion and intimidation of Christian women, property theft, as well as lack of legal redress.
On December 23, 2024, The Jerusalem Post published that violence and coercion have resulted in up to a 90% decline in the Christian population in areas under Hamas or Palestinian Authority control, according to a new study by the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA).
It was highlighted that in 1922, Christians constituted 11% of the population of the then Mandate Palestine area, whereas in 2024, that figure dropped to just 1%.
Open Doors International in February 2025 listed the main causes for persecution of Christian in the Palestinian Authority territory as Islamic oppression, religious nationalism, ethno-religious hostility, clan oppression, and dictatorial paranoia by Mahmoud Abbas’ bureaucracy.
Of course, if Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Patriarch of Jerusalem, is staunchly pro-Palestinian and the Protestant Bethlehem Bible College conducts biennial “Christ at the Checkpoint” conferences, then that could explain a hushing up the reality Christians face as well as the shifting, as much as possible, of attention away from Islam and towards Israel. Pope Leo XIV, too, has been avoiding the truth.
It is also unhelpful if Tucker Carlson hosts guest after guest Christians who are virulently anti-Zionist, such as Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos, Reverend Munther Isaac, and now, Alice Kisiya of the Save Al Makhrour Organization.
Kisiya appeared on April 23rd and claimed, “These settlers have been vandalizing our Christian symbols multiple times…They don’t like Christians. They hate us…they are doing this propaganda in order to um raise Islamophobia in the Western countries…” It gets more outlandish with Carlson feeding her what he wants her to say.
How bad is Carlson’s approach? Even Peter Beinart has caught on. In his New York Times op-ed on April 28, he termed Carlson’s charge that Israel’s “real target is not the mullahs in Iran. It’s us, [Christian, Western, white countries] as it always has been” as “preposterous.”
Beinart then added, “Israel’s punishment of the Palestinian people stems from something particularly Jewish – or ‘non-Christian’.”
Israel is the ally and even the defender of Christianity and Christians in the Middle East, those who are suffering a genocide, the real genocide.
That truth needs to be highlighted, prominently so.
The writer is a researcher, analyst, and commentator on political, cultural, and media issues.
