A leading Palestinian evangelical figure has expressed concern that a high-profile visit to Israel by more than 1,000 American pastors and Christian influencers did not include any meetings with Christian communities in the Palestinian Territories.
Rev. Jack Sara, Secretary General of the Middle East and North Africa Evangelical Alliance, said the delegation’s tour of Israel highlighted global Christian solidarity with the Jewish state but failed to acknowledge or engage with Palestinian Christians who also live in the Holy Land.
Sara’s comments follow an unprecedented visit organized through a partnership between Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Friends of Zion Museum. According to CBN News, the gathering brought more than 1,000 pastors to Israel — a group which organizers described as the largest such delegation since the country’s founding. The initiative aimed to strengthen Christian support for Israel and mobilize pastors to counter rising antisemitism worldwide.
Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum, told CBN the effort was designed to “commission” pastors as ambassadors against antisemitism and to equip them to address what he described as an ideological campaign targeting Israel. Speakers, including former Arkansas governor and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, urged pastors to address antisemitism more directly from their pulpits.
The delegation visited the site of the Nova Music Festival, where Hamas militants killed 378 people on Oct. 7, 2023. Participants described the stop as one of the most emotional moments of the trip. The visit also served as a prelude to a global initiative planned for 2026 to engage one million pastors and churches worldwide.
Local Christians were overlooked
However, in an op-ed published on Christian website Come and See, Sara said he was troubled that such a large Christian delegation visited Israel without acknowledging or meeting with the historic Christian communities in Palestine — communities, he noted, that “still bear Christ’s name in the land where the faith began.”
Sara wrote that the pastors “walked where Jesus walked” but did not walk “alongside His followers who are struggling to survive here. You prayed at stones—but ignored the living stones who bear witness to Christ today.”
In the eyes of these local Christians, it was a missed opportunity that the group did not take time to hear from churches that have maintained a continuous presence in the region for centuries.
He also warned that spiritual solidarity should include concern for all who suffer. “If one member suffers, all suffer together,” he said quoting 1 Corinthians 12:26, adding that Christian leaders must be attentive not only to Israeli pain but also to “the wounded along the road” in Palestinian communities.
Sara said the omission of any engagement with Palestinian Christians left many feeling unseen during a time of displacement, shrinking freedoms, and humanitarian pressure. “Your visit could have brought encouragement, solidarity, and healing,” he wrote. “Instead, it resembled a pilgrimage to political power rather than to the kingdom of God.”
“Come and see”
His concerns echo those expressed in the Kairos II statement, issued recently by Palestinian Christians, in which they outline the realities they face and lament that many Christians are oblivious of the situation of Christians in the Palestinian Territories.
In the statement, they renewed their “appeal to Christians worldwide” to “come and visit the living stones, to witness and respond to what you see, and to help strengthen the steadfastness of the Palestinians and the Christian Palestinians among them. This is our call: ‘Come and see.’ Then tell what you have seen, respond to it, and stand with the steadfast Church.”
In his op-ed, Sara concluded with a call for repentance for “selective compassion” and for “ignoring the suffering of your brothers and sisters in Christ.”
“The doors of repentance are open. The witness of this land still calls out. The Spirit still convicts. And Christ still weeps over Jerusalem,” he wrote.
