Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar appointed veteran diplomat George Deek to a newly created role as special envoy to the Christian world, in a move “intended to deepen Israel’s ties with Christian communities around the world,” the ministry announced Thursday, amid a series of damaging scandals.
“The State of Israel attaches great importance to its relations with the Christian world and with its Christian friends around the world,” Sa’ar said expressing confidence that Deek will help repair those ties.
Deek, who most recently served as Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, was the country’s first Christian ambassador and is a member of the Arab Christian community in Jaffa.
Deek’s father, Youssef Deek, served as Chairman of the Orthodox Christian community in Jaffa and Israel, the ministry said.
Despite Israel’s protestations that it values relations with the Christian world, recent months have seen a string of embarrassing scandals and attacks on Christians that have strained Israel’s relations with the Christian community, and highlighted a lack of clear policy.
The incidents also threaten to undermine Israel’s ties with the Evangelical Christian community, who are among Israel’s most ardent supporters internationally.
This was brought into sharp focus last month when Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the top Catholic official in the Holy Land, and other senior clergy were barred by police from Palm Sunday worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre due to wartime restrictions.
Amid a global outcry, authorities quickly backtracked and a framework allowing limited prayer at the holy site was later approved with the police after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed that Pizzaballa be granted “full and immediate access” to the church.
And last week, an Israel Defense Forces soldier was photographed smashing a statue of Jesus with a sledgehammer in the southern Lebanon village of Debel, an act that drew widespread condemnation in Israel and abroad.
The soldier involved, along with another who documented the incident, was removed from combat duty and sentenced to jail following an investigation.
The incident was condemned by the leaders of the Catholic churches in the Holy Land as “a grave affront to the Christian faith and adds to other reported incidents of desecration of Christian symbols by IDF soldiers in southern Lebanon.”
Netanyahu posted on X, condemning the destruction of the statue of Jesus, attempting to portray Israel as a haven for Christians.
“Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population and standard of living is growing.”
“Israel is the only place in the Middle East that adheres to freedom of worship for all,” he said.
However, recent months have also seen attacks against Christian communities in the West Bank by extremist settlers and more frequent assaults against Christians in Jerusalem’s Old City, including incidents of spitting.
A 2024 Annual Report by the Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue documented 111 reported cases of attacks against Christians, including 46 physical attacks, 35 attacks against church properties, and 13 cases of harassment.
According to the report, most perpetrators appear to belong to the ultra-Orthodox and national-religious communities. The majority of the victims are clergy or people wearing visible Christian symbols.
Israel’s Christians account for 1.9 percent of the country’s population, and grew by 0.7% from 2023 to 2024, Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics reported in December.
Some 184,200 Christians currently live in Israel, according to the CBS. Nazareth has the largest Christian population with 18,900, followed by Haifa (18,800), Jerusalem (13,400) and Nof HaGalil (10,800).
