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Tucker Carlson’s recent visit to Ben Gurion Airport, which Carlson billed as his “fact-finding” trip to Israel, has provoked a storm of criticism. He met with American ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, insisting that Israel mistreated Christians, and refused to listen to Huckabee’s rebuttal. Now one of the leaders of Christians in Israel, Shadi Khalloul, has also taken Carlson to task. More on his response to Carlson can be found here: “Israeli Christian Leader: Tucker Carlson ‘Doesn’t Want the Truth,’ Endangers Christians Elsewhere by Lying About Israel,” by Debbie Weiss, Algemeiner, February 19, 2026:
Firebrand podcaster Tucker Carlson drew a barrage of heat from Israelis after claiming he was “detained and interrogated” during a brief stop at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday, with former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett calling him “a chickens**t” and “a phony” and an Israeli Christian leader describing him as “an enemy of Israel” for lying about the country’s treatment of Christians.
Shadi Khalloul, founder of the Israeli Christian Aramaic Association and a former Knesset candidate, accused the former Fox News host-turned-far-right conspiracy theorist of “destroying Christian-Jewish relations” all over the world and “endangering the persecuted Christian community in the Middle East” by portraying Israel as hostile to Christianity.
“The truth is exactly the opposite,” he said, describing Christians in Israel as enjoying freedom and equal opportunity.
In Khalloul’s telling, Carlson is choosing scenes and storylines that travel well online, then skipping the reporting that might complicate them.
“Tucker Carlson doesn’t want the truth. The truth doesn’t exist in his lexicon,” Khalloul told The Algemeiner.
Earlier this month, Khalloul invited Carlson to a tour of Christian communities and holy sites in Israel, including a meeting with his brother-in-law, the head of the Maronite Church of Israel, but received no response.
“If he [Carlson] was really willing to help, he would come interview us, hear our views, our narrative,” Khalloul said, adding the podcaster would then be able to “expose the oppression of Christians in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Syria, and under the Palestinian Authority by a radical Islamic propaganda agenda,” rather than “talking about me and my community as being persecuted by Israel.”
Christians are persecuted, to varying degrees, everywhere in the Middle East save in one place — the state of Israel. It is only in Israel that Christians enjoy the same political, social, and religious rights as the majority population. But Carlson didn’t want to be confronted with the evidence of that equal treatment; he refused Khalloul’s invitation to meet with Christians and to hear their views on how they are faring as citizens of Israel. Ηis antisemitic mind was made up, and he didn’t want to hear anything that might undermine his views on Jewish malevolence toward Christians.
He [Khalloul] pointed to anti-Christian violence in Syria, including a recent church bombing in Damascus, and to the arrest of Maronite official Moussa el-Hajj in Lebanon after he was arrested by Hezbollah operatives at the Lebanese border carrying money and medicine sent from Israel’s Christian community.
In Syria, the Christian population has plummeted from 1.5 million in 2011 to 300,000 as of 2024, driven by persecution from jihad groups, including the Islamic State (ISIS). Anti-Christians violence, including church bombings, has occurred in Damascus, in Tartus, and in villages in the Suwayda Governorate. Attacks on Christians continue under the jihadist regime, and Christians continue to leave the country.
In Lebanon, Christians were the majority — 56% — of the population in the 1932 census, but the pressure from hostile Muslims has over time caused many Christians to leave the country for Europe and North America, and now Christians make up only one-third of the population.
Christians may not practice their faith in Saudi Arabia; no churches are allowed; expat nurses who quietly sing Christmas carols in their own apartments, behind closed doors, have been promptly booted out of the country.
In Libya, arsonists set fire to the main Coptic church in Benghazi, and a bomb destroyed a Coptic church in Misrata. Other major attacks on Christians took place in Tripoli. Libyan Christians have been sentenced to prison merely for possessing Bibles.
In Iraq, the Bishop of Irbil, Bashar Warda, has warned that the church in Iraq is “on the edge of extinction.” In 2003, there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq; that number has now sunk to 250,000.
In Egypt, the Christian Copts are not allowed to repair old, nor build new, churches, and Copts are subject to intense discrimination in hiring and promotion for jobs in academic institutions, in the government, and in the military.
In Gaza, when Israel handed over Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005, there were 5,000 Christians living in the Strip. Today there are only 500, a decline of 90%.
Most telling of all, in 1949, there were 34,000 Christians in Israel, while today there are 185,000, an increase of 550%. Christians in Israel are thriving.
