Tucker Carlson examines the decline of Christians in Israel—from 100,000 in Bethlehem to under 30,000 today—due to occupation, settler attacks (like a Christian woman struck with a rock near Jerusalem), and U.S.-funded restrictions, including limiting Gaza pilgrims to 1,500. Archbishop Hosam Naoum and Jordanian Christian Saad Mouasher contrast Israel’s instability with Jordan’s 2-3% Christian minority thriving under Hashemite leadership, citing shared holy sites like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (keys held by a Muslim family) and centuries of coexistence. Mouasher warns U.S. interventions—from Iraq to Gaza—create power vacuums that harm Christians, urging Western support for ancient communities over distant policies. [Automatically generated summary]
From where I'm standing right now, I can see all around me in a ring seven Christian churches.
We're not going to pan to see them.
You can see one behind me, but they're all on the ridges of this valley around me.
We are about 100 yards from the River Jordan and about 150 yards from the spot where Jesus, the Christian Savior, God on earth, was baptized by John the Baptist, famously the beginning of his ministry and the beginning really of the gospel.
John the Baptist lived famously in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey.
That was right here.
We are in the Holy Land, but on the political map, we're in an overwhelmingly Muslim country, a monarchy called Jordan.
And that's significant, particularly now, because the question of how Christians are treated in the Holy Land is a political question.
And it is because much of what happens in this region is funded by the United States, by its taxpayers, military action, but also the cultural and religious life of the region is funded to a great extent by American Christian churches.
And so the question that we've asked for some time now is, what's the outcome?
How are Christians in the Holy Land doing?
Are they thriving or are they suffering?
And the truth has become pretty obvious over the past couple of years, which is in Israel, they are not thriving.
Their numbers are not growing.
They are shrinking.
And there's a huge debate about why.
But the bottom line is there are fewer Christians now, far fewer, in absolute numbers and particularly as percentage of population than there were when the state was founded in 1948.
And there's a lot of evidence that in the last couple of years, particularly since the Gaza War started, and the whole tone of the conversation in this area has changed quite a bit and the rise of extremism, very noticeable, that those numbers have gotten even smaller.
And in Jerusalem, if you follow this at all on the internet, you see video clip after video clip of Christian clergy being spit at by religious extremists, not Muslim religious extremists, but Jewish religious extremists.
And that's something most Americans didn't know happened, didn't think could happen, particularly since the United States, the most important Christian country in the world, is funding this.
And anyone who's raised this question, this show has done that, has been dismissed out of hand as a liar or an anti-Semite or best of all, a secret jihadi, a secret Muslim.
And so we thought it'd be worth coming here to find out what the truth is, or at least getting closer to the truth, the truth being pretty elusive usually in political terms, but why not go ahead and talk to people?
Why not go ahead and talk to Christians and find out their side of the story?
Why aren't Christian churches doing this?
Why aren't American Christian leaders like Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz, people who invoke the Christian Bible to justify what they're doing?
Why haven't they done this?
We can only guess, but they haven't.
They have funded the other side.
So we thought, let's talk to them.
So we are about to play interviews that we just did about five minutes ago with two Christians from this area.
One was born in Israel, one was born in Jordan.
The one born in Israel was born, in fact, in Jesus' hometown of Nazareth.
His father was literally a carpenter, which is kind of hilarious.
He is now the Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, which is to say he's the representative of the Anglican Church, the global Anglican church, in Jerusalem.
Whatever you think of the Anglican church, it's not a small thing, and this is a very well-informed person, and you can judge for yourself whether he's telling the truth or not.
Our view is he absolutely is telling the truth.
And the story that he's going to tell you in just a minute is pretty shocking if you're a Western Christian, because it's a story of Christians being oppressed in Jerusalem by a government that American Christians pay for.
And the second person we're going to speak to is a businessman who runs a bank here in Jordan from a very prominent Christian family.
And if you're an American, you may be surprised to learn that in Jordan, a country that is probably 97% Muslim, Christians, who have been here for, of course, 2,000 years, are disproportionately represented at the higher end of the economy, which is to say there's a large number of Christian families who are hugely successful in Jordan and have been for a long time since the creation of the state about 100 years ago.
That's not something you're going to see on CNN.
How would Christians thrive in a Muslim country?
We're not experts on this, of course, being not that well versed in Islam.
But we thought it'd be worth talking to a sincere Christian whose family's been here for 2,000 years and ask, how did that happen?
And what does it tell us about our understanding of what's actually happening in the Holy Land, in Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel, which again is right there.
We are 25 miles from Jerusalem.
And so with that, keep an open mind, listen carefully to what sincere Christians in this area have to say about what's happening here, and you may find a story that shocks you.
Archbishop, thank you.
You live in Jerusalem, but we're on the other side.
We're about 100 yards from Israel across the West Bank, across the Jordan.
It's not growth, it's not thriving, it's not accomplishing and achieving.
We are custodians of the Christian faith, and Jerusalem is the capital of our faith.
It's our spiritual capital as Christians.
But to see the declining numbers of Christians over the decades, and especially since like 48 and 1967, we have seen like challenging phases of Christians facing realities that we were not used to before.
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So in the United States, as you may or may not know, Palestinian is a synonym, is the same word for Islamic terrorist.
When people in the American media say Palestinian, it means someone who's an Islamist, basically.
But you're saying that a lot of those Palestinians, refugees, were Christians, Anglicans even.
Yeah, so I think, you know, like this, this is, again, this is like kind of killing the image of the Palestinian people by claiming that they are terrorists or they are uncivilized or they are savages.
You know, I think this is exactly just pushing an agenda where they just want to frame you so that Palestinians lose sympathy in the world.
What's striking to me is that that narrative, as you said, that image is being pushed not just by Jewish supporters of Israel, but in the United States, heavily by Christian supporters of Israel.
Christian supporters of Israel in the U.S. are dismissing their brother Christians in this region as terrorists.
And I have like really kind of two full answers to that.
The first one is about Jews themselves.
You know, as we know, like, you know, there are many Jewish people, people of faith, who see in these groups also as people who really don't work for their interest.
I know that politicians around the world, and especially the colonial thinking of bringing the Jewish people to the Holy Land or to the land of Israel, is something that can really kind of fit both agendas.
But actually, and we have heard this time and time again from many Jewish people who say that this agenda eventually, for all the Jewish people coming to their homelands, becomes again a kind of like a trap because they're all supposed to convert to Christianity or die.
So for them, this is an offense, you know, that thinking of Zionist Christian thinking and some narratives would be damaging even to Jewish people and Jewish faith.
Now, for us as Christians, of course, it's damaging because think about like, let me tell you a story, a real story.
I once was in a kind of a community visiting England, and I was speaking about how some Christians who have Zionist approach to the whole politics and the agendas, you know, can be damaging to us as Christians in the Holy Land.
And they say, how come?
I said, you know, because this agenda of money coming from the West, sometimes, you know, like they enable people, settlers, you know, to confiscate my own land.
Like we have lots of examples in Bethlehem where money that comes from around the world is invested in building settlements on Christian land.
You know what the answer was?
They told me sometimes we need to make a sacrifice for a better good, a greater good.
Yeah, Christian, you know, who somebody told me this, and I had a youth group with me.
I'm telling you, they were in tears.
They were in tears.
How can a Christian brother or sister around the world take me as kind of means, no matter what happens to me?
How can I really reconcile myself with this?
So from this story, I'm telling you that these views sometimes are damaging because they are exclusive.
I'm not judging Christian Zionists for their belief.
They can believe what they want to believe.
But when it comes to exclusion, excluding Palestinians, whether they are Christian or Muslim, I think this is where my problem lies in their ideology, if you know what I mean.
No, they are, if there aren't fewer, let me say like 50 years ago, I think they have not grown.
Especially recently, like, you know, in the last maybe two decades, we have seen like an exodus of Christians even from Nazareth and Galilee in general, due to many reasons.
And we are talking now what is proper Israel today.
Now, in the West Bank, it's a different story because, you know, of the occupation, there is another narrative there.
But inside Israel, today there are so many pressures, not only on Christians, Christians or even some Jewish people who are also leaving the country for different reasons.
So Christian churches in the United States send more money to, say, Jewish settlements in the West Bank than they do to Christians in Jesus' hometown of Nazareth?
I don't know if you have visited Bethlehem before, but you would see that the city is surrounded by the wall, the separation wall that separates East Jerusalem from Bethlehem.
And the occupation and the kind of the wall that separates the two countries now and also measures, huge measures of restrictions, of movement and all of that is causing many people to leave the country.
And now, I think, imagine like 100,000 Christians in Bethlehem, let's say 50 years ago or so.
So the American Christian Church is, broadly speaking, the church, Christians in the United States, is by far the richest in the world and the biggest.
And why wouldn't they send help to Christians in the town where Jesus was born and the town that he grew up?
You know, I'm sure that people may have different answers, but I think my answer would be the kind of the big answer would be which could be shocking for some people.
That is that they would be concerned that they send the money and it ends up in the hands of the wrong people.
Well, if there's let's just say, and I think that's a concern for everybody giving money to charity, it's certainly a concern for me in general.
Yeah, but if there's, say, a church, the church of the nativity, the one that the IDF shot people in, I've been there and it's kind of falling apart.
And I remember thinking, where are the Christians around the world to support the Church of the Nativity on the site where Jesus, their Savior, was born?
But let me tell you something that, you know, an example, like how charity starts at home.
You know, we know that our king here in Jordan, King Abdullah, has donated substantial amount of money to the repair of the Nativity and the Holy Sepulchre.
And the same thing happened also, partially also with the Palestinian Authority.
And also there are money that came also from partners from Europe and other places as well.
But you know, the amount of money, as you said, like, you know, and the charity that you think that could be given to the Christian community to enforce and maintain its presence in the Holy Land, you don't see that in ways that you could imagine that sisters and brothers in Christ, siblings in Christ around the world would be giving to their church.
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So I think Americans watching this may be confused to hear that a Muslim king of Jordan is giving money to Christian holy sites in Israel and the West Bank.
Yeah, so there's something here in the Holy Land has been for a long time, what we call the status quo or the existing reality, especially on holy sites.
On Haram Sharif, many people in the West call it Temple Mount and also in the Holy Sepulchre and the holy sites in Jerusalem.
Yeah, which is the Church of the Resurrection, what we call in Arabic as well.
So For a long time, the king of Jordan, under the Hashemite custodianship of holy sites, the king personally is the custodian of holy sites of Christian and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
So I think, you know, like people like myself and the heads of churches, as well as al-Auqaf and the sheikhs in Jerusalem, we will be the manifestation of that reality, of that custodianship.
It's not only good, but I think for us, it saves the character of Jerusalem, where the three faiths, both Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, can exist side by side without any problems.
You know, we have, we have, let me give you an example where, you know, like the Holy Sepulchre, for different reasons, we, for a long time, during Holy Saturday, which is the Holy Fire, one of the most sacred days in the Christian calendar, of course, this is the night before Easter.
You know, yes, they are preventing Christians and pilgrims to celebrating Easter, you know, and the claim is, according to the police there, for safety reasons.
You know, but we telling them, like, you know, for almost next, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built in 300 something.
Okay, now that's 1700 years ago.
And we have always, you know, celebrated the holy fire.
We always celebrated and welcome Easter.
We didn't hear of somebody get burnt or somebody got standards.
And then, but, you know, now under the kind of Israeli law for safety procedures, they are restricting the number of Christians going into the Holy Sepulchre.
Instead of 10,000, they are restricting that sometimes to 1,500.
And by negotiation, you can get them close to like 3,000.
This is by miracle, you know, if you're lucky.
You know, again, you know, for them, to be fair, they're saying that for safety reasons, we're not allowing people in.
And since that time, they were restricting more and more public worship.
And I will tell you an incident as well, you know, like where on the Mount of Tabor, which is the Transfiguration Mountain that the Holy Orthodox, the Orthodox Church celebrates every year.
Also, there have been restrictions there because of safety, not to allow pilgrims to go to the Holy Mountain for the celebration of Transfiguration.
This is the fourth year in row that they're not allowed pilgrims to go up for the celebration.
And we are also trying to kind of ask Hagabee and also the staff in the embassy to help the Christian community talk to Israel in order to enlarge the numbers of people who celebrate Easter.
You know, sometimes they are successful in raising the number, sometimes they are not successful.
But again, the issue, again, this is an internal matter.
Since the U.S. is funding a lot of this, have American politicians, Christian politicians called to ask you what they can do to help Christians in Jerusalem?
It is now kind of a condition that operates on minimal capacity.
I don't know, I'm sure that people have been following, I don't know how many people know about this, but it was hit at least eight times during the war.
On two incidents, there have been two big explosions.
The first one happened only two weeks after the, or even less than two weeks from the beginning, on the 17th of October 2003, where a huge rocket fell and it became really controversy.
Israel accused Islamic Jihad for a miss-rocketed missile.
In Gaza, they said, no, it was Israeli rocket that came in, and they were two narratives at that time.
Anyway, but this is the kind of thing that we have.
Again, you know, but as I said, you know, they say when they do that, that there is suspicion of terrorist activities in the hospital.
unidentified
You can see all these people here, they just came out of the dunes, there's got to be around 100 of them, and now a boat's going to try to come around and pick them up.
Now we know that, you know, I think I heard, I just read recently that even the government admitted that there are 70,000 who were killed, which they didn't before.
But I need to kind of, again, my sources are not kind of 100%, but at least from our perspective, we have heard and we have seen that there are 70,000 people who were killed.
Many of them are children and women, not terrorists according to Israeli categories.
Depending where you live, where you are, where you're walking.
So I think in many places in Israel you are respected, there's freedom of movement, I can go in most places.
There are places that are restricted to any civilian, if you know what I mean.
But in general, I can go in many places.
If I'm walking in the old city, for example, if I'm in my suit, all good and well, of course, the mosaic is so beautiful there, people living together, walking together.
You would enjoy the souk.
But sometimes if I'm wearing my cross and my cassock, I could be treated differently by some groups.
And in many cases, I have seen that, you know, like in many schools in the Jewish sector who have, this is the answer that I received, who have bad flashes of memories, of persecution.
The cross reminds them of persecution and expulsion and what have you.
So in the United States, after 9-11, we were told, and I think it was true, that there were these madrasas, these schools, Islamic schools, that were producing radicalism, true radicalism, against the infidel, Christians and Jews.
It sounds like something similar is going on in Jerusalem now, and you're the target of it.
I don't say on a daily basis, but it happens quite often.
Even an Israeli channel.
Did actually one time a kind of a secret investigation and they dressed somebody in a, in a cask with a cross, and they walked into the Old City with hidden cameras and you know they, they caught one like right right there on camera, and then they they, they spoke about it in in Israeli channels.
Yeah, of course, you know they they, they name some.
Sometimes, quite often, they name things but again nothing happens.
That's the, that's the problem, like you know, and that's why we have insisted on talking about reconciliation and building trust within the community.
You know calling the rabbis and you know the imams and the Christian leaders, you know, to teach their children about tolerance, about acceptance and to refrain from incitement, you know, and exclusion and alienation and demonizing the other.
You know, Jerusalem is such a beautiful place it's, it's a sacred place.
Yes, it is, but we have, you know like, groups and talking about, you know like.
You know uh, extremists.
You know like, in every religion there is extremists, of course, and we're not saying that you know like, only one um, our Christian history is not, you know like uh um, neither clear or pure of.
We've had some Christian extremists, for sure indeed um, but you know, that's why, you know today, I think, in the 21st century, it's important that we reconsider a lot of our views, even as religious people, how we view other people around us.
Yes, and I wish that that's my prayer.
You know, we have always said, you know, like the Holy Land uh, the Middle East Christians, Muslims and Jews lived together here for centuries.
Yes, this is not something that new that we're trying to understand.
No to how to live together or how to manage our relationships.
You know, but you know, unfortunately I don't want to kind of accuse anybody but outside forces have caused us to fight among ourselves.
Extremism, and I can see, and that's on every side.
Yeah, that happens.
The thing that you know, the more you have extremist group on one side, of course, the more you have the response of other extremists on the other side.
I wouldn't say like terrorist groups Christian, but you know there are some who have extremist views.
Yes we, we see pockets coming up every now and then, i'm sure uh, but we as heads of churches always say and talk to our children, um, you know, you don't forget that you are Christian and you have to abide by our Christian faith.
Um, you know, like anything, any engagement in violence or military or incitement is something that does not speak about our identity or our faith.
No, because they see themselves as first of all it's not compulsory for them.
So it's not compulsory for Arab citizens of Israel to serve in the army.
And therefore they don't.
But there are very few who do.
And again, you know, let's remember that the Arabs inside Israel, they are Palestinians.
By origin, at least.
They are Palestinians, you know.
And imagine, like, you know, I served Nablus, which is Shechem in the West Bank, the city in the northern part of Earth Bank.
And I was responsible for two congregations there.
And I got married from Nablus.
So my wife is Palestinian.
And imagine, like, you know, if I, you know, I would be like a soldier in the West Bank rather than a priest in the West Bank, how would I treat my own people?
Like, it doesn't make sense.
You know, for me, it's just to think about the matter is just kind of makes me, I don't know, faint, maybe.
In the West Bank, I think, you know, and we have seen over the past few weeks especially, and actually not only a few weeks, you know, even during the war, the escalation of violence of settlers in the West Bank has risen drastically.
And not only to kind of Muslim neighborhoods and villages, but also to Christian villages.
Yeah, I can give you an example of the two recent examples is one in the town of Taibi, where actually you mentioned the Ambassador Hakabi.
He himself went there to visit the village after these attacks of settlers burning and graffiti on walls and going into these farms to harass farmers who are Christian.
And recently also in Birzet near Ramallah, where we had an attack of settlers on a woman, they hit her with a stone head and then they arrested her son after that.
But the most recent attack where a Christian woman was attacked by settlers with a rock to the head and her son was arrested for trying to defend her, Ambassador Huckabee hasn't said anything about that.
You know, quite often, you know, I see on the TV or even in many reports, you know, many people when they see us in the streets sometimes, a few people who see us in the streets sometimes in Jerusalem or other places, they will tell us as Arabs, please go to Syria, go to Jordan, go to, why are you staying here?
And honestly speaking, sometimes, and I'm saying that sarcastically, of course, I think about it and I think they are right because when I come to Jordan, I feel more at home than being in other places inside my own home country.
No, I have a message, yes, to say that, you know, my dear sisters and brothers, in Christ and in humanity, I want you to think about these places as treasures.
Now these places, Jordan, Palestine, you know, the Galilee inside what Israel today, these are places that actually embraced the descent and the incarnation of our faith as Christians.
We need to preserve these places.
We need to support the people here.
Not only Christians.
I'm not saying that we need to be only looking at Christians, but supporting people who live here because your support, you know, ensures the character of these places to be a safe home for all the people who live here, whether they are Jews, Christians, Muslims.
One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you was even I was amazed to discover how many prominent, like truly prominent Christian families there are in Jordan.
A lot, and you're from one of the most prominent.
What's it like to be a Christian in an overwhelmingly Muslim country here?
I mean, this is a very special place, the baptism site.
It's very close to our hearts as Christians, not just here, but all over the world.
And can I say a little bit something about this site?
Because we're here at Tucker.
Yeah, so this baptism site, I mean, what most Christians around the world maybe sometimes forget is here we had the clearest manifestation in the Bible of the Holy Trinity right here at Tucker where you and I are today.
You know, if you remember from the Bible, the voice of God.
And Christ's official mission, right, started in Jordan.
So you can actually make the claim, this is not, you know, this is a biblical theological claim, that the mission of Christianity, salvation history, started right here.
I've been to this country before and I've always felt comfortable here.
And if you say that, in the West, people are either incredulous or they accuse you of being a secret Muslim or shihadi or something, which I'm not at all.
But I'm really struck that you said Islam is an integral part of the culture for Christians here.
There is a whole chapter in the Quran just dedicated for the Virgin Mary.
So you can see, and of course the same prophets, many of the same prophets, whether it's Elijah or Moses or Abraham or, you know, they're in the Quran as they are in the New Testament and the Old Testament.
So the faith traditions are very similar.
So that's why the Muslims are actually very accepting of the Christian faith traditions.
they are encompassing of the Christian faith traditions.
unidentified
So yeah, I mean- And you're saying this as a Christian?
So Christians are very well represented here, as you can imagine.
They're really part of the social fabric of the economy and the political environment.
So Christians are represented in the Senate, in Parliament, in government, in the military, in the private sector, even though we are a minority, right?
But that's never been a problem, I guess, because you do see minority groups around the world, as you said.
You know, the Indians in Uganda in the 70s, name a group, but the minority group often is disproportionately successful, and then they are persecuted for that.
I'll tell you, I mean, I mean, I was thinking about sort of why is Jordan a special sort of model for that, right?
Of coexistence, of interfaith harmony.
I think there's three things, Tucker.
And if these three things are there, you know, Christian minorities in the Holy Land, they will thrive.
Number one is we have constitutional rights as equal citizens.
It's in the Jordanian constitution.
You know, so Christians and Muslims here have the same rights, complete equality.
When it comes to even matters relating to Christian affairs, whether it's marriages and even some civil affairs, there are Christian courts that are different from the Sharia courts that there are for Muslims.
So there's, in that sense, there's this sort of coexistence.
But when it comes to, of course, civil and commercial and all of those kinds of laws, those apply to all of us equally here in Jordan.
I mean, yeah, there's in the Constitution, there's freedom of worship, freedom of religion in the Constitution.
So very importantly, if you want to protect Christian minorities or any minority in that regard anywhere in the world, constitutional rights have to be established.
And they're establishing.
They were established here from the very start, right?
You know, when the Jordanian tribes and the Hashemites agreed to form the Constitution.
And they've been there since then.
So I would say that's the first thing.
The second thing, which I really think is important, is stability.
And the moment you don't have stability, the first to suffer are the minorities.
Are the weak, of course.
Are the weak.
And, you know, stability is so important, economic stability, political stability, security, stability.
And that's why it's so sacred, actually, to ensure that there is stability in the region.
I would say the last thing is leadership.
We're very fortunate here to have His Majesty King Abdullah and the Hashemite leadership.
I mean, truly, really tremendously fortunate because the Hashemites have always been about interfaith dialogue, discourse, meritocracy, compassion, mercy.
So I think when you have great leadership, stability, and constitutional rights, yeah, a Christian minority can thrive, and that's what we have here.
And my job is not to talk up Jordan, but I've always wondered, and all of your neighbors, I've spent time in all of your neighboring countries, always say the same thing.
How do you have this country with really no energy resources, it's not inherently rich, absorb all these refugees from the creation of Israel in 1948, enormous number, and then lose a huge part of its territory in 1967, absorb more refugees, and then absorb still more refugees through the years, including from the civil war in Syria, and now apparently are being pushed to absorb still more refugees from Gaza.
I don't think any country has ever been under this kind of pressure.
This is for the outsider perspective anyway.
How do you stay stable in the middle of all of that?
No, I mean, I think people feel very much like, you know, the refugees coming in here, there's this moral sort of, you know, understanding that we have to take care of our own.
And just to give you a story, maybe, from Jordan's history, if you want to go back even to the time of the earliest Christians, right?
Because we're the ancient Christians, right?
So we remember these stories.
One of the Christian holy sites here in Jordan is called Pella.
I don't know if you know about Pella.
So that was a city in the old Roman Decapolis, right?
And then the thing is, whenever you lose, whenever sort of there is a vacuum, that vacuum is always filled.
And sometimes it's filled with, you know, bad elements.
So al-Qaeda filled that vacuum in Iraq after 2003.
And then you had, which then of course later became ISIS, right, down the line.
So all of a sudden you had Muslim and Christians who were targeted.
A lot of them came into Jordan.
And, you know, I know a priest.
He specializes in really taking care of the, especially both Muslim and Christian refugees, by the way.
There's no selectivity there.
They are here temporarily.
They see themselves as being here temporarily until they can immigrate to other parts of the world.
So they receive financial assistance, schooling.
A lot of it is provided either by the state or even fundraised by the churches, the local churches, until they are able to emigrate to other parts of the world where there's more economic prosperity and stability and jobs.
I think there's an angle I'd like to focus on here.
So, you know, the Hashemites are very much the custodians of the Christian and the Muslim sites in Jerusalem.
And I think maybe that if you allow me, Tucker, I think that's something that people don't realize is that a lot of the restoration work that happens there is very much funded personally by the king.
I mean, the tomb of Jesus Christ in the Holy Sepulchre was restored by personal donations from King Abdullah.
There's another story on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
I think it's, I mean, it shows you just how old these traditions are in the region and how welcoming it used to be to people across all faiths, be they Jewish or Christian or Muslim, right?
In the past.
So since I think a thousand years ago, since Salah Din or Saladin, right?
Yeah.
The keys to the church of the Holy Sepulchre did not belong to any of the Christian denominations because they couldn't agree amongst themselves, right?
The Armenian, the Orthodox, the Ethiopian.
Ethiopian, Ethiopian, like who's going to have the key to the church, right?
And actually that key was handed to, at the time, Salahdin.
And even today, those keys are handed to a Muslim family.
It's, I think, the Sebe family of Jerusalem.
They open the church in the morning, you know, and they close the church at night.
So that's the kind of sort of, I mean, these are the stories we grew up with as Christians in the region, as Muslims in the region, even as Arab Jews, right, from the region.
This is sort of the faith and the common faith and cultural tradition we grew up with here.
So a lot of the stuff that we see today is very new.
These are lines drawn in the sand by colonial powers that really sort of destroyed that social cohesion and the social fabric that existed here.
My complete outsider perspective at the time when the official capital of the state of Israel moved from Tel Aviv, a city of recent creation, to Jerusalem, a city that, as noted, long predates the state of Israel, was that Jerusalem changed from an international holy site to a kind of government garrison run by a city-state, run by a nation-state.
Yeah, I mean, this is a city that belongs to all people around the world.
This is a holy city, especially people of the Abrahamic religions, as we say.
I mean, another story on that is, I mean, my grandfather, he was a merchant from Salt.
He started.
Where is that?
It's actually sort of used to be the old capital here in Jordan.
It's very close to here, very close to Amman as well.
It's an old city as well, Ottoman city, but also Roman city.
Originally, the word is Saltis, anyway, Roman city.
But he used to, he started the trade between Salt and Jerusalem when he was 13 years old.
At the time, it was, again, Ottoman Empire, so you could move around, right?
Damascus and Beirut and Jerusalem, and that's what the merchants used to do.
I remember, and he said, and I asked him, what was it like?
And the first merchant he met in Jerusalem, the first products he acquired and sold and salt was in Jerusalem.
I'm like, what was it like when you visited there?
This is in the 30s, the 1930s or late 20s, I'm guessing.
He said, look, it's amazing.
I'm like, what do you mean?
Like, well, you know, there were the Muslims and the Jews and the Christians together in the streets playing backgammon, you know, just one community, and you can't tell the difference.
That's the Jerusalem that I think all of us long for is a united Jerusalem, one that's united for all faiths and the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims.
And I think I hope I'm prayful that we will get there one day, Tucker.
It's just interesting, and you know this because you spent so much time in the United States, that I don't think it would enter the minds of most Americans that a Christian could be better treated here in Jordan than in Israel.
But what makes it galling from an American perspective, I am American, I see everything through the lens of the United States and its own interests, is that America is paying for this.
So, I mean, we can all have different views about what our foreign policy ought to be, but I don't think many Americans are in favor of a foreign policy that oppresses their fellow Christians.
I feel shame listening to you, and I rarely feel shame, but I do feel shame listening to you that I didn't know more about this because I am a Christian, and I think we have an obligation to know what our tax dollars do to our fellow Christians.
And I just haven't spent enough time thinking about it.
And I think it's very odd that Christians in Jordan and in Israel aren't receiving help from Christians in the West.
If the Christians in the U.S. and in the West, right, if they really cared about sort of the minority Christian communities here in the Holy Lands, if they really do, and if they don't, you know, they have to really think about why they don't.
And if they do, they really have to think about stability.
And this is important to mention, Tucker, but possibly the most destabilizing thing happening in the region, right, is the situation in Israel-Palestine.
Without a just resolution, a just resolution for the situation of the Palestinians there, it's just, You know, it's going to be even more destabilizing for communities in Palestine, in Jordan, you know, across the region.
And clearly, I think, that's my personal perspective.
I'm not a politician.
You know, I'm a businessman, so I think, you know, pragmatically and morally about things, right?
They have to stay.
We have to rebuild their homes and their livelihoods, their communities.
That's the only solution, Tucker.
I mean, I don't see anyone that can accept morally, even politically, even just on a humanitarian basis, right, a forced expulsion of people from Gaza, from their native homeland.
Why did you, I mean, I don't even want to say the fancy schools that you went to, but you went to prominent schools in the United States and you could have stayed.
And to want to be part of that and to give back to that and to support that and to have my family and my children grow up in that sort of collectivist environment is really more important than money or anything else, Kirker, honestly.
And that's how I'm programmed.
I'm fortunate I can say that because I could also afford to come back.
You know, my father was a businessman, my grandfather was a businessman, so I could afford to come here and to explore sort of my career journey.
So some people can't, so they optimize working in other parts of the world.
I'm not on top of the figures, but I think there were a total of, at the time, I'm not sure if they all came to Jordan, but 600, 700,000 total refugees at the time.
Some of them went into Palestine and Syria, and a lot of them came into Jordan.
So that's the total number, if I recall, if my memory serves me correctly.
And it feels like decisions are being made in, you know, backroom doors by who knows who.
So there's honestly, I wish I could answer that.
And that's the thing is, if you want to create instability, you create insecurity because nobody knows outcomes.
I feel when it comes to Jordan, we have a strong leadership here.
We have strong security and defense here.
We have a wise people here.
I mean, you've seen this is one of the most resilient countries, I think, in the world.
I mean, who can come up and deal with the types of things that we've had to dealt with over the past couple of decades?
So I think, you know, we'll find a way through it.
But my concern is also for the wider region, right?
At what cost?
And my only concern, Tucker, I mean, when you have U.S. military intervention or any kind of military intervention, if there is a vacuum, it needs to be filled.