(RNS) — Right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson has famously broken with the pro-Israel Republican old guard over the past six months, forcefully questioning U.S. evangelicals’ fervent support for Israel.
Last week’s sparring match with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, an avowed Christian Zionist, was just another in a string of such interviews. (Carlson’s interview with Sen. Ted Cruz, also challenging evangelicals’ loyalty to Israel, drew 3.5 million views on YouTube.)
But on the day before the interview with Huckabee was released, Carlson also released a nearly two-hour interview with another evangelical — who has a wholly different perspective on Israel.
Fares Abraham, a Palestinian American born in Beit Sahour, about 2.5 miles east of Bethlehem, talked frankly and without rancor about the stranglehold that Israel has placed on Palestinians and especially on his community of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank.
“Christians are leaving, and there’s not a lot of debate about why they’re leaving,” Abraham told Carlson. “They’re leaving because of Jewish settlers moved into the town and … are driving out the Christian population.”
Abraham, who now lives in Florida, is the founder and CEO of Levant Ministries, which has established Christian youth centers across the Middle East, and soon in Bethlehem. He worries that Palestinian Christian communities across the Middle East but especially in the West Bank are in danger of disappearing. And he has dedicated his life to fighting for them to remain.
The town where Abraham grew up, Beit Sahour, is where, according to the Gospel of Luke, …