July 18, 2025 (NBCNews.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By\u00a0Matt Bradley<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TAYBEH, West Bank \u2014 The gleaming white ruins of Taybeh\u2019s fifth-century Church of St. George Al Khidr stand as a testament to just how long the faith has endured in the occupied West Bank\u2019s<\/a> last majority-Christian town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But after centuries of perseverance, the Christian community <\/a>now faces a modern existential threat only a few miles from where its members\u2019 faith was forged: regular, violent harassment by Jewish settlers <\/a>who would like to force them and Palestinians of other faiths to leave, and an Israeli government that often turns a blind eye to the settlers\u2019 crimes, according to rights groups and church leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier this week, the ruins were fringed with ashes left from recent fires that scorched olive orchards abutting the church grounds and its next-door cemetery \u2014 blazes town leaders say were deliberately ignited by Israeli Jews during an anti-Palestinian arson attack on July 7.\u00a0<\/strong>NBC News has asked the Israel Defense Forces and the country\u2019s police force for comment but did not receive any response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The settlers \u201cfeel that everything belongs to them,\u201d Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem<\/a>, told NBC News on Monday. \u201cUnfortunately, it seems to me that the [Israeli] government is silent, if not supporting them, as we saw. So they feel free to behave as they want,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The attacks near the church were small and left no casualties but they play into a worsening pattern of deadly settler abuse of Palestinians, the perpetrators of which are rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities. The Israeli government had previously said that any acts of violence by civilians are unacceptable and that individuals should not take the law into their own hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Settler violence targeting Palestinians in the West Bank has spiked to unusually high levels over the past several months: The United Nations has reported more than 700 incidents<\/a> just in the first half of this year. It reported 216 attacks<\/a> by Israel settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank for the whole of 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some have blamed this on an upswell of anti-Palestinian anger in Israel following the Hamas-led terror attacks from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023<\/a>. But they had already been increasing after the most right-wing government in Israeli history took office in late 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSince the establishment of this government, you have [ministers] saying, \u2018Don\u2019t apply the law on settlers,\u2019\u201d Nadav Weiman, executive director of \u201cBreaking the Silence,\u201d an Israeli organization that reports on abuses by Israel\u2019s security services, said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see these videos from the West Bank and see full faces\u201d of the settlers, said Weiman, adding that they enjoyed so much impunity that many often no longer wear masks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last Friday, settlers beat to death Sayfollah Musallet,<\/a> a 20-year-old American from Florida who was visiting his mom, brother and sister in the village of Sinjil. A second man identified as Mohammed al-Shalabi, 23, was also killed in the incident, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Musallet\u2019s death sparked an angry reaction from U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee<\/a> \u2014 an evangelical Christian and longtime advocate for settlers\u2019 rights to colonize Palestinian land \u2014 who in a Wednesday post on X said Israel should \u201caggressively investigate the murder,\u201d which he called a \u201ccriminal and terrorist act.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Israel Defense Forces said last Friday that authorities were looking into the matter. Police told NBC News that several people from \u201cboth sides\u201d had been detained at the scene on suspicion of involvement in acts of violence, and that a joint investigation had been launched by the Israel Police and IDF Military Police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked for an update Thursday, the IDF said a probe by the Israel Police and the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division was ongoing. The Israel Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, settlers rarely face legal consequences for violence against Palestinians, according to a report last year<\/a> from the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, which found that more than 93% of investigations between 2005 and 2023 closed without an indictment and only 3% led to a conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In videos taken by eyewitnesses in Taybeh and elsewhere in the West Bank, the settlers appear to be almost exclusively young men in their teens and 20s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Palestinian observers say the settler group, known in Israel as \u201cHilltop Youth,\u201d are just foot soldiers fronting a sophisticated, coordinated effort to settle the West Bank in such a way as to make the formation of a Palestinian state impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Designating Hilltop Youth a \u201cviolent extremist group\u201d in October, the U.S. Treasury Department appeared to echo this assessment, saying it engaged \u201cin killings, arson, assaults, and intimidation intended to drive Palestinian communities out of the West Bank.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The settlers have also taken to grazing their cows and sheep in Palestinian fields. Leaders of the Church of St. George Al Khidr showed NBC News videos of settlers walking their cows into the town center, where they munched on the leaves of commercial olive trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rights groups including Amnesty International and the Israel-based Peace Now, B\u2019Tselem and Kerem Navot say the settlers\u2019 strategy is both to damage Palestinian agriculture and to incite conflicts with residents to create a pretext for violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both goals are intended to push the Palestinians out, the rights groups say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Girgis Awad, a chicken farmer in Taybeh, said Monday that heavily armed settlers recently attempted to carjack him as he returned home from work at night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are often constantly exposed to situations that make difficult our movement and our daily life,\u201d Awad said. He added that settlers were stopping him and others from traveling to their farms to transfer chicks or food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christianity is a constant presence in Taybeh, which is home to Greek Orthodox, Latin and Melkite Greek Catholic churches. Small shrines and steeples loom over its streets, which straddle a hilltop overlooking a pastoral expanse of olive orchards. It\u2019s also home to the Taybeh Brewing Company, one of very few beer companies in the Muslim-majority West Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Christian minority here is more endangered than perhaps any other Palestinian community. Since Israel\u2019s founding in 1948, the number of Christian Palestinians in what was once Mandatory Palestine has shrunk from around 10% of the population to less than 1%, with many emigrating to the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the settlers aren\u2019t targeting Taybeh for its religious identity, priests here say. They want to cleanse the West Bank of its non-Jewish population, regardless of their faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey don\u2019t differ between Muslims or Christians,\u201d said the Rev. David Khoury, the leader of Taybeh\u2019s Greek Orthodox Church, who said he was born and raised in the town. \u201cThe settlers, they are dealing with us the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Matt Bradley<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Matt Bradley is an international correspondent for NBC News based in Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Israeli settlers \u201cfeel that everything belongs to them,\u201d Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, told NBC New Video; https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/world\/middle-east\/israel-jewish-settlers-west-bank-attacks-christians-rcna218617 July 18, 2025 (NBCNews.com) By\u00a0Matt Bradley TAYBEH, West Bank \u2014 The gleaming white ruins of Taybeh\u2019s fifth-century Church of St. George Al Khidr stand as a testament to just how… Continue reading ![\"A](\"https:\/\/media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com\/image\/upload\/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best\/rockcms\/2025-07\/250714-west-bank-christian-village-taybeh-mn-0910-1910e9.jpg\")
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