By LifeSiteNews (Politics) | Created at 2026-08-11 21:31:47 | Updated at 2026-08-12 00:28:50
3 hours ago
Tue Aug 11, 2026 - 5:11 pm EDT
(LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic priest in the West Bank spoke out recently to express the sense of isolation that Christians in the region feel due to the lack of support from fellow Christians worldwide as they face escalating and ongoing Jewish terrorist attacks from Israeli “settlers” facilitated and enabled by Israeli government officials.
“Do not forget Taybeh! Taybeh must not vanish into silence,” implored Father Bashar Fawadleh, a Latin Rite Catholic priest in the last fully Christian town in the West Bank.
Taybeh, with a population of around 50,000, has been inhabited by Apostolic Christians since Jesus Christ stayed with his disciples in this town — referred to as “Ephraim” in the Gospel of John — just before his passion, death, and resurrection.
Over the last year, Christians in Taybeh have been victimized by an intensifying trend of systemic and targeted attacks from Jewish settlers “designed to create a climate of fear and pressure Palestinian families into leaving their land,” Fawadieh told Vatican News in an interview released Monday.
During this period, heavily armed Jewish terrorists have committed acts of arson to Palestinian Christian agricultural fields, including igniting a fire near the fifth-century Church of St. George and its cemetery, hurling Molotov cocktails at homes and attempting to ignite a gas station.
They have set many vehicles ablaze and written threatening graffiti across private property, brought their livestock to graze on private Christian Palestinian lands, roamed the streets heavily armed while terrorizing residents, with reports of gunfire on Christian citizens, and more, all in a climate of impunity provided by the occupying Israeli army.
In the same interview, Father Fawadleh detailed an August 5 intrusion in which settler terrorists repeatedly broke into a newly prepared family home from his parish, occupied the land, cut through fencing, and drove a flock of sheep right up to the house. “As I speak to you right now, those same settlers have returned to pitch tents on the property,” he said, calling it “an incredibly difficult situation to endure.”
He stressed that such acts form “a deliberate strategy of harassment” affecting many families across the west, east, and south of Taybeh, with settlers routinely torching vacant land and hillsides while launching almost daily incursions, destroying farmland, imposing road closures, and applying relentless pressure.
“We feel forgotten, and we feel entirely alone,” the priest declared. Legal remedies, he explained, remain limited and ineffective, making international presence and political will essential for civilian protection.
Yet hope endures through faith: “While there is no political solution in sight, there is something very special keeping us going: our hope in Jesus Christ and our faith in the Church.”
Appeal to pope and ‘every Catholic diocese worldwide’ to defend brothers and sisters ‘living in terror’
Fawadleh urged the global Church to intensify prayers and support the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.
“I invite every Catholic diocese worldwide to speak out about the situation here, to talk about these Christian brothers and sisters who are living in terror. The birthplace of the Christian community must not vanish into silence,” the priest said. “Together, we can preserve this living testament of faith.”
He further appealed directly through Vatican News for Pope Leo XIV “to intervene for this last Christian village in the West Bank, so that these settler attacks cease and the occupation of our land stops. We simply want to live in peace, with justice and dignity,” Fawadleh affirmed.
As the Church prepares for the 2033 Jubilee marking two millennia since Christ walked the earth, Fawadleh insisted Taybeh remains “a vital, foundational symbol” that “stands on the front lines of preserving Christianity here in the Holy Land.”
🇵🇸🇻🇦✝️ Father Bashar Fawadleh, parish priest of the Latin parish in Taybeh, has appealed to @Pontifex to protect the last remaining Christian town in the West Bank, amid repeated attacks on residents’ land and property.
He explained that settlers recently entered a house that… pic.twitter.com/cFHhmVLr4D
— ☧ Milad ܝܠܕܐ (@PalCatholic) August 9, 2026
Colonial ‘settlers’ espouse ideology of Jewish supremacy, ethnic cleansing, building of third Temple
Jewish “settlers” in the West Bank are most often associated with the influential international heresy of religious Zionism that embraces an ideology of radical Jewish supremacy and thus a justification for the horrendous violent crimes of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Palestinian people as a means of taking over the Holy Land and building an exclusive Jewish ethno-state.
READ: Israeli extremist rabbis instruct soldiers heading to Gaza: ‘Kill all their children’
With the takeover of the land complete, they aim to build a third temple for animal sacrifice in Jerusalem and welcome their Moshiach (Messiah) of whom their expectations share a close alignment with what Catholic authorities expect from the Antichrist. And from Jerusalem, the religious Zionists anticipate this figure to subject all other peoples under Noahide Laws, vanquishing Christianity as “idolatry,” and even executing the death penalty against Christians for this supposed crime.
BBC audiences were recently provided a glimpse of the mentality of the Jewish occupiers — whose settlements and “outposts” on stolen Palestinian land are all illegal under international law — when Israeli settler lawyer Yehuda Shimon told a correspondent that “one Jewish life is worth 10 million” Palestinian lives.
VIDEO | “One Jewish life is worth ten million … Because God chose us. You are jealous.”
An Israeli settler lawyer who represents settlers accused of attacking Palestinians told the BBC that Israel should “kill everyone” in the villages of Tel in retaliation for the killing of… pic.twitter.com/fcYI0VKoRj
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 1, 2026
The illegal settler occupier communities also enjoy indirect financial support from billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars that support Israel’s military forces and thus serve to assist settlers and settlements to effectively expand in the West Bank. Private American interests also provide significant funds to further develop illegal colonies (“settlements”), paramilitary groups and IDF units that operate in Gaza and the West Bank as well.
In his first customary annual address to the Holy See’s Diplomatic Corps last January, Pope Leo XIV reaffirmed the Church’s support for a two-state solution, decried the increase in Israeli settler violence against the civilian population in the West Bank, and confirmed the right of Palestinians to live in peace remaining “on their own land.”
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