by Jake Wallis Simons, Telegraph
Islamist extremism is surely the greatest threat to Christianity in the region. But Sarah Mullaly only seemed to want to criticise Israel
Which country offers the strongest legal protections and lowest risk of persecution for Christians in the Middle East? Where do believers enjoy the greatest safety and the richest opportunities to flourish? The answer, of course, is Israel.
According to a US State Department report on international religious freedom, this is because “the country’s laws and Supreme Court rulings protect the freedoms of conscience, faith, religion, and worship, regardless of an individual’s religious affiliation”, and it “criminalises actions that damage or desecrate religious sites or restrict access to worshippers”.
Anybody following the new Archbishop of Canterbury’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land last week, however, would be encouraged to think rather less favourably of the Jewish state. Unlike Justin Welby, who in 2017 met leaders from both sides (yet was hardly free from Israelophobia himself), her schedule seemed to be rammed with set-pieces designed to cast a cloud over Jerusalem.
Several photo-ops, all liberally shared on the Archbishop’s social media platforms, sought to highlight “stories of the immense hardships” facing Palestinian Christians, apparently at the hands of Israel.
At the end of her pilgrimage, Mullally got political, releasing an open letter to Anglicans calling for an end to the “occupation” and a “viable two-state solution”, with Jerusalem as a “shared capital”. Strangely, she did not mention that Ramallah had previously rejected this precise offer, such as when Ehud Olmert tabled it in 2008. As a professional nurse rather than foreign policy expert, perhaps she had no idea.