(LifeSiteNews) — Israel’s ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza, along with their decades-long military occupation of internationally recognized Palestinian territory, is dependent upon whether or not U.S. Catholics and Christians become politically active and put their government’s support for these ongoing crimes to an end, Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos conveyed in an August 11 interview with Tucker Carlson (Podcast, Spotify).

“I think certainly the Catholic Church in America has to do a lot more as an institution,” the nun from Bethany in the occupied West Bank told the former FoxNews host. “I mean, we should have a Christian AIPAC group,” she said referring to the flagship organization of the “incredibly powerful” Israel Lobby credited with fostering the current policy of genocide in Gaza.

While among Christians in the West there has been a slow growing awareness of the gruesome realities on the ground in the Holy Land, with a natural desire to intervene and help in some way, Mother Agapia said that while people should continue to send money “what we really need is political change.”

“Just like many Jews are protesting and saying, ‘not in our name,’ there has to be much more done by the Christians in America because these Christian Zionists are speaking in our name (as well),” she said.

“Someone like Senator Ted Cruz is saying and doing what he’s doing because he’s following a Christianity that is not the Christianity of the Holy Land,” the Russian-Orthodox nun continued. “It’s not the Christianity of a Catholic or an Orthodox or a traditional Christian. It’s a heretical belief,” she affirmed, stipulating that some of their reappropriated teachings had been already “condemned as heresy in 381 (A.D.),” likely referring to the First Council of Constantinople.

READ: Holy Land bishops reaffirm Catholic Church’s rejection of ‘Christian Zionism’

While the “current state of Israel … has nothing to do with the biblical Israel,” the heretical notions espoused by “Christian” Zionists, claiming a divine right of self-professed Jews to expel Palestinians from their ancient lands, equates to a betrayal of Jesus Christ, Mother Agapia said.

Because of such beguiling doctrines, these professed Christians “are willing to forgo the compassion that Christ talked about and allow people to be starved, and wiped out,” she said. This is “a new theology that has no basis in the foundations of Christianity,” is “far from the name of Christ, and it’s actually causing the end of the Christian population in the Holy Land.”

READ: Pope Leo needs to reaffirm that the Church is the true Israel of God

American Christians “have to wake up” and get politically active because the genocide of Palestine “is all in the hands of the United States. It doesn’t matter what any other country in the world does. If the U.S. protects Israel, this will continue,” Mother Agapia implored.

Apartheid Israel, Palestinians live in ‘gilded cage’ surrounded by checkpoints, travel restrictions

An American of Greek descent whose father is a Greek Orthodox priest in New York, Stephanopoulos described the severe life experienced by Palestinians, including Christians, under Israel’s ongoing illegal military occupation of Palestine, which she affirmed is “very much an apartheid system.”

“It’s sort of like you’re in a gilded cage,” she described, providing a perspective of the spreading of illegal Israeli settlements with their exclusive roads closing in the Palestinians. “You have checkpoints all around you” with Israeli military severely limiting travel. And thus, “a Christian who lives in Bethlehem cannot go to Jerusalem (5 miles away), to the Holy Sepulcher without a permit by Israel. And they don’t usually give those permits, especially now.”

READ: How do Christians in the Holy Land understand the Israeli occupation of Palestine?

The Orthodox nun went on to tell stories of Palestinian Christians she knows whose travel was restricted from even receiving medical care. And she echoed ongoing protests by the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem against Israel’s separation wall that “was built on Palestinian land, on Christian land,” and effectively closes off her order of religious sisters in Bethany from being able to go to their convent in Jerusalem. It also prevented some of her school’s families and teachers from being able to reach their school.

Israel regularly stealing Christian land, gradually ‘strangling the life’ of Palestinians

Mother Agapia, whose brother is ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, elucidated numerous examples of Israel and Israeli settlers stealing Christian Palestinian land in open daylight while heavily armed. One example was a “Christian home for boys that the Israelis just took over and cut up to make part of the wall.”

This wall was not built for security but “simply to expand the borders of Israel,” she explained. “It’s not separating Israel from Palestine, it’s separating Palestine from Palestine.”

In another story, she explained Israel’s confiscation of land owned by Christians in Bethlehem in order to build a settler-only road. She asked “how would you like to be the man” who had this land taken from you with Israel destroying “your grandfather’s olive trees” and “you’re not even allowed to drive on that road?”

Another similar story was conveyed regarding a “beautiful home with grape vines” owned by a woman who worked at the nun’s convent, the land of which was confiscated by Israel to build settlement homes, along with another Christian man whose property was invaded by Israel’s military, confiscated, and they destroyed his olive trees.

In the Christian town of Taybeh in the West Bank, where Jesus Christ is believed to have taken solace just before his crucifixion in Jerusalem, around one-quarter of the people’s approximately 8,000 acres of land “has been confiscated either by settlers and the army allowing them to take their olive groves.” And for these crimes these Christian families “have no recourse.”

READ: Holy Land bishops urge Christians worldwide to help defend faithful from Israeli settler attacks

“So little by little Israel just keeps taking over the land, confiscating it, building the settlements, adding the checkpoints and strangling the life of anybody living there,” the nun summarized.

95.8% of national governments oppose Israeli occupation of Palestine, Catholic, Orthodox churches confirm this judgment

Mother Agapia continued to emphasize this fundamental aggression of the ongoing conflict, the discussion of which is assiduously suppressed in the western media, and this is Israel’s 58-year illegal military occupation and colonization of internationally recognized Palestinian territory. These lands have been marked out for the implementation and realization of a full sovereign State of Palestine in a two-state solution

Currently, 147 of 193 United Nations member states (76.2%) formally recognize the State of Palestine, and thus, Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian territory. Additionally, France, the U.K., Canada, Australia, Japan and Malta have expressed their intention to make a formal recognition in September, with several other states, such as Portugal and New Zealand considering doing the same in the near future.

By implication, all of these UN states (80.3%) recognize that Israel is imposing a military occupation on the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

But the numbers are still much higher than this. Even the United States, Israel’s “greatest ally,” recognizes the occupation, and well-known political commentator Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who has also been a longtime special adviser to diplomats at the UN, says 185 of the 193 member states (95.8%) demands a two-state solution that means they recognize the Israeli occupation that was also confirmed as illegal by the International Court of Justice last year.

Consistently affirming and echoing this overwhelming consensus is the Catholic Church, including the unanimous and constant voices of her bishops in the Middle East, those from around the world, and with statements from the Vatican as well. Indeed, just last June, the Holy See commemorated the 10th anniversary of its formal recognition of the State of Palestine in 2015 after welcoming UN recognition of the state “with favour” in 2012.

In October 2023, after the breakout of the current genocidal hostilities, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, referred to the “decades of occupation” as the “root” evil of the conflict, and it would only be in bringing it to an end and “giving a clear and secure national perspective to the Palestinian people that a serious peace process can begin.”

‘It’s the Occupation, stupid,’ political change in the U.S. needed most

Mother Agapia confirmed this overwhelming consensus to Carlson, noting that while the Catholic Church has always provided some support for the Christian communities in the Holy Land, “we haven’t done anything politically.” And “ultimately, it’s not the money that’s needed now,” but the primary focus has to be political change. “We have to change the support of Israel,” and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine, in the United States.

She then recalled the well-known slogan from Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid,” to emphasize that “the problem with Israel and Palestine is not Muslim versus Jew, it’s the occupation, stupid.”

And unless the occupation is ended, and a legitimate sovereign Palestinian state is brought into being, where Palestinians can live in freedom out from under Israel’s de facto military dictatorship, with an ability to exercise their right of self-determination, developing their own country, “Christians will continue to leave,” and the Christian shrines will no longer be “living places of prayer” but will be reduced to “museums.” And this would “be a great tragedy, not only for the Christians, but I think for the whole world,” the Orthodox nun said.

Israelis blow up Christian property, shoot teen boys, vandalize with blasphemous graffiti and spit on Christian clergy

Highlighting the ongoing persecution of Christians in the Holy Land by radical Zionist Jews, Mother Agapia emphasized that generally speaking, Christian Palestinians are treated no different than Muslim Palestinians with regard to the affliction of the U.S.-backed Israeli occupation.

Examples included the Israeli military raiding a Christian-owned metal factory in Nablus in June, and without warning or presenting a permit, confiscating some of its equipment, and then two weeks later blowing up a good portion of the facility. And the Christian family that owns the factory has no recourse since they live under a de facto military dictatorship of the Israeli occupation.

For these reasons, Christian and Muslim families often make the difficult decision to emigrate, especially if they have adolescent boys as there is a high chance they could be shot for “look(ing) the wrong way” at an Israeli soldier. That “literally happens every day” in the occupied territories.

She told stories about the car of a traveling family being sprayed with bullets killing a 12-year-old girl she knew, a man being shot in the eye by an Israeli soldier just outside their school, the Israeli military stationing a tank in front of their girls’ school for two years, and Israeli settlers attempting to blow up their high school with hidden explosives in an episode ordered toward killing Palestinian children.

At one point while discussing these and other such racist crimes, Carlson asked, “was anyone ever punished?” to which the nun responded with a chuckle “of course not.”

Other acts of Christian persecution by radical Zionist Jews in Israel (which is in no way all) include blasphemous graffiti against Jesus Christ on Church property, the burning of sacred shrines, and Zionist Jews spitting on Christian clergy and religious like Mother Agapia herself who affirmed  to Carlson, “of course!” she had been spit on by these people.

Surprised by the nun’s ability to laugh off this gross offense, the well-known host said, “What do you mean, ‘of course’? That’s disgusting,” to which she replied, “yeah, well, but that’s the least of it.”

READ: Israeli investigative reporter spat on, harassed in Jerusalem while dressed as a Catholic priest

Israel’s bombing of Christian churches no accident

Mother Agapia also assured Carlson that when Israel has bombed churches or shot tank shells at them, as they did in July, striking Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza, killing three and injuring nine, this is no accident.

These parishes get bombed by Israel because they serve Palestinian Christians, she said, and despite claims from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that this latest episode involved “stray ammunition,” she replied again with a laugh, “No, nothing is an accident.”

In light of a long history of the Israeli army having a policy of deliberately desecrating and destroying Christian churches in Palestine, the orthodox nun also cited the fact that at Holy Family Church the shell pierced the façade just inches from the cross at its pinnacle, indicating the soldier firing was aiming for the cross itself, though slightly missed.

Referencing another similar incident at the monastery in Nablus, Palestine, that is built around Jacob’s well, she says the tank shell from a previous assault was targeted at a cross as well but missed. “So don’t tell me these soldiers make mistakes.”

Despite propaganda to the contrary, Christians and Muslims in Palestine share peaceful fraternity

Mother Agapia also clearly surprised Carlson with her description of the harmonious coexistence, mutual respect and fraternity shared between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.

“They’ve all grown up together, the Christians and the Muslims, and there’s a certain amount of commonality and respect,” she explained. “Pious Muslims are not jihadists … (in) other parts of the world that may be the case, but in Palestine it’s simply not the case, nor in Syria, Lebanon or Iraq.”

“Permeated even with Palestinian Muslim culture is the sense that Christians lived here and they recognize Jesus as a prophet, so they respect him,” the nun explained, noting how both cultures in her community respect the fact that Jesus, Martha, Mary and Lazarus walked on the same grounds as her school, which hosts ancient monuments to this sacred history.

Like Catholics and Protestants in America, Muslims and Christians in Palestine “can have their differences, but overall, the Palestinian culture is infused with both,” Mother Agapia explained.

This witness echoes a 2014 public correction issued by the Catholic bishops in the region who responded forcefully against attempts by the Israeli government to register Christians as something other than Palestinians with an “aim to divide Christians from their Muslim compatriots.”

“Christians and Muslims and Druzes together (and some Jews too who always lived in the land) insist that their shared common identity, which has developed over centuries, is Palestinian,” the Holy Land prelates affirmed at the time.

Common culture: An overwhelming majority of students educated by Christian schools are Muslim

In response to the nun’s witness, Carlson observed these largely unknown facts are “a very different story from the one that we’re told in the American media that Christians are imperiled by Muslims in the Middle East.”

Christians “are not imperiled by Muslims in Palestine. That is an absolute fact,” emphasized Mother Agapia, who went on to reveal to the popular host’s surprise that in her Orthodox Christian girls’ school, icons, crosses, and pictures of saints are on the walls in every classroom, yet 98% of their 350 students are Muslim.

Additionally, around half the teachers in the school are Muslim as well, and these types of numbers are typical “all throughout Palestine” with regard to Catholic, Orthodox, and Lutheran schools.

She went on to explain that Catholic institutions, including schools and hospitals in Nazareth, are part of the “fabric” and “whole character” of the Holy Land, which may be endangered should Christian emigration continue.

Hamas a ‘resistance group,’ fighting for their people who have been displaced and trapped ‘in an open-air prison’ by Israel

The Orthodox nun also echoed assessments shared by experts on the region, as well as many of the nations of the world, that Hamas was formed as a resistance group in 1988 in response to 20 years of Israeli occupation in Gaza.

She further rejected the notion that they are “religious fanatics,” saying that while she is not “totally ingrained in the community,” she does not know any such Islamic people who are extremists.

“The vibe there isn’t one of wanting everybody to convert to Islam and forcing it upon them at all,” she explained. Rather, “Hamas are people who have had their homes taken from them (and their families)” by the Israelis in 1948, 1967, or at some other time. And, since they are in Gaza, they have also “basically been in an open-air prison for certainly the last 20 years” subjected to the Israeli army’s control of their borders depriving the population of even the ability to leave.

“I know people who wanted to try to go to school in America and couldn’t get out of Gaza,” she explained. They “had a Fulbright Scholarship and weren’t able to leave,” because Israel didn’t give permission. “So what kind of freedom is that?”

Gaza goes from ‘genocide by Chinese water torture’ to ‘genocide on steroids’

As early as 2002, she recalled telling her mother that the Israelis were subjecting the people of Gaza to “genocide by Chinese water torture,” and “now we’re seeing genocide on steroids” in the enclave.

Thus, “for the most part,” Hamas is “a resistance movement. They’re simply people fighting for their people, trying to protect their land,” Mother Agapia proposed.

READ: Israeli historian produces comprehensive record of his country’s genocide in Gaza

Additional reports have revealed that Hamas received massive support from the most unlikely of places, Netanyahu and his Israeli Likud party that successfully facilitated $35 million in monthly cash payments to them from Qatar for an extended period of time, amounting in total to well over $1 billion.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy”https://t.co/7lTQs9E5Zf

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) October 9, 2023

For these reasons and more, while other Palestinian Christians support resistance to the Israeli occupation, they “don’t see Hamas” as authentically serving this objective.

Sumud: Palestinians’ ‘quiet persistence’ and resilience which faces Israel’s sharp aggression with trust in God and a smile

Mother Agapia also spoke to some of the great practical and spiritual virtues of the Palestinian people describing them as resilient, educated, peaceful and as having profound faith and docility to the Will of God.

She referred multiple times to a deeply valued virtue characteristic of Palestinian identity called “sumud.” This concept means a certain resiliency or a “quiet persistence” that exemplifies this people’s enduring commitment to remain in the land of their forefathers, resisting occupation and displacement. “This is our land and we’re going to stay here,” the nun explained.

Relating a story from 2002 in the West Bank, Mother Agapia said “what Israel likes to do is destroy. Not only do they control the place, but they almost take glee” inflicting wanton destruction on Palestinian infrastructure and private property as well.

“They would go through the town of Bethlehem and purposely with their tanks … knock over the light poles or the things that are garnished with Christmas tree decorations” or use their bulldozers to smash cars.

“But again, that same resiliency of the Palestinians, the sumud” was consistently on display. One example she provided from that time was a memorable photograph of a Christian man simply “sitting on his car that had been smashed by the Israelis, just with a smile,” as if to convey “you’re not going to stop us. We’re going to carry on. You did this to me, but I’m going to carry on.”

It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is being killed by Israel. ‘How did we come to such a point of darkness?’

Finally, the Orthodox nun said that what she takes away from this people who have “really been suffering,” is “their real belief in God and that their life is in God’s hands. And there’s such a humility and obedience to their Creator and an understanding that this life is not the only one. There’s a real beauty to that that I think so much of the world is missing.”

The Palestinians are suffering horribly, those who have survived thus far “are literally going to be killed, but they have so much more courage and faith than you find in so much of America and in the West, which we’ve lost,” Mother Agapia observed.

From the time of Christ, the voices of Christian worship have remained present in the Holy Land, though this is now in the process of being destroyed by the U.S.-backed Israeli government.

With this ongoing genocide, it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ that is being killed, she said. And given the heinous daily Israeli war crimes being reported from Gaza throughout the world, the nun asked how people can hear it, “and still somehow have a blank face and think it is okay. How did we come to such a point of darkness?”

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