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The Taybeh Church Fire Libel: Retractions Don't Undo Damage of False Narratives

(Jerusalem Post) Zvika Klein - On July 14, Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III, flanked by Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa and 20 foreign diplomats, stood beside Taybeh's 1,500-year-old Church of St. George near Tulkarm and pronounced that "radical Israeli settlers" had tried to torch it. Within hours, wire services were selling the image of Israeli arsonists gleefully burning down an ancient church. Four days later, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee arrived to survey the "crime scene." There was one small problem: the Taybeh Municipality's own video showed that the supposed arsonists, teenage farmhands from the adjacent Jewish ranch, were running toward the flames to fight the fire. One of them was promptly rewarded with a hail of stones from the villagers. Binyamin Regional Council spokesperson Eliana Passentin, who is an archaeologist, decided to see the "charred ruins" for herself. She walked the perimeter with her cellphone recording and found nothing but a blackened strip of weeds. "I don't see any signs of a fire," she says in a video. "I don't see a church burned down here. Even on the outer walls, there are no signs of fire. Someone has an interest in making you believe Jews burned a church." Such fabrications corrode trust with Christian friends. Huckabee has since clarified on X that he did not assign blame and merely condemned whoever set the fire. But the damage had been done. Lazy journalism does more than mislead readers; it fuels diplomatic spats, hardens sectarian resentment, and distracts from the real persecution Palestinian Christians face inside the Palestinian Authority, where church lands are routinely expropriated, Christian history is scrubbed from textbooks, and believers are driven abroad.
2025-07-24 00:00:00
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