THE population of Israeli Christians has grown by 2 percent, according to reports.
A report released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in December said the Christian population increased by 2% in 2021. Israel’s population is 9.6 million.
Roughly 185,000 Christians live in Israel and make up 1.9% of the country’s population.
“In Israel, the Christian number is stable because there is freedom of religion,” Pastor Petra Heldt, a leading Christian scholar who has lived in Israel 40 years, was quoted as saying in Fox News Digital. “This is not true of Muslim-majority countries in the region.”
Reports said Christian communities across the wider Middle East have shrunk or even vanished. In Iran prior to the American invasion in 2003, a Christian population of 1.5 million lived in the country. The ancient Christian community has now shrunk to an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 from a total population of over 40 million.
Christians in Israel are relatively safer than in other Arab majority countries in the Middle East. In January, two teenage suspects vandalized a Christian cemetery in Jerusalem. The attack was condemned by Israeli’s foreign ministry, which called the attack an “immoral act” and “an affront to religion.”
Jerusalem’s Anglican Archbishop Hosam Naoum called it a “clear hate crime.” The British consulate said it was just the latest in a string of assaults on the Christian community in the holy city of Jerusalem.