birthplace of Christianity, churches and communities are coming under attack from Jewish settlers

Defence affairs - NBC NEWS

West Bank — The gleaming white ruins of Taybeh’s 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’s last majority-Christian town.

But after centuries of perseverance, the Christian community now faces a modern existential threat only a few miles from where its members’ faith was forged: regular, violent harassment by Jewish settlers 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’ crimes, according to rights groups and church leaders.

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 — blazes town leaders say were deliberately ignited by Israeli Jews during an anti-Palestinian arson attack on July 7. NBC News has asked the Israel Defense Forces and the country’s police force for comment but did not receive any response.

The settlers “feel that everything belongs to them,” Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, told NBC News on Monday. “Unfortunately, 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,” he added.