US Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch supporter of Israel, said Sunday that he was “incredibly upset” by reported settler violence that reached the ruins of a historic church in the West Bank.
“There was a Catholic Church burned in the West Bank,” the South Carolina Republican said in an interview on Fox News. He was referring to a brush fire reportedly set by Jewish extremists that came up to the walls of the 5th-century Church of St. George compound in the town of Taybeh, as well as the nearby Christian cemetery.
Graham said he would send a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government demanding an account of the incident.
Graham is the latest longtime pro-Israel Republican to call out Israeli mistreatment of Christians. The Fox interview aired a day after Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, visited Taybeh and likewise demanded consequences for the fire, calling the desecration of houses of worship a “crime against humanity and God.”
Days earlier, Israeli tank fire damaged a Catholic church in Gaza and killed three people in what the Israeli military says was an accident, prompting an angry phone call from US President Donald Trump to Netanyahu.
“What’s happening in the West Bank bothers the hell out of me,” Graham said, erroneously adding that the ancient Taybeh church was “burned to the ground.” The site consists of the stone ruins of the 1,500-year-old church, and the fire reached the grass along the building’s remaining walls.
“I want to find out who did it, and I want them to be punished,” he said. “And if it was settlers from the West Bank, Israelis, I want them to be punished.”
Recent extremist settler attacks in Taybeh have sparked outrage and calls for accountability from Christian leaders in Israel, who went on a solidarity visit to the town last week. Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem and Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa called the attacks a threat to local Christian heritage and requested an investigation of Israeli law enforcement’s response to them.
“The Council of Patriarchs and Heads of Churches calls for these radicals to be held accountable by the Israeli authorities, who facilitate and enable their presence around Taybeh,” Theophilos and Pizzaballa said in a joint statement.
In his statement following his own visit to Taybeh, Huckabee demanded that “those responsible be held accountable with real consequences.”
Senator Graham, like Huckabee, is among the most vocal supporters of Israel in the Republican Party. He has visited Israel multiple times since the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, and urged President Donald Trump to join Israel’s June attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, which the US subsequently did.
In his Fox News interview, Graham, who entered the Senate in 2003, stressed that he is an “unapologetic supporter of the State of Israel” and praised Israeli religious tolerance.
“As a Christian, you can go to Jerusalem and worship safely,” he said. “As a Muslim, you can do the same. It’s a very religiously diverse country.”
In addition to decrying the Taybeh incident, Graham criticized the killing of Saif Musalat, a Palestinian-American who was allegedly beaten to death by settlers in a town near Ramallah.
“A young American Palestinian, 20 years old, was killed in the West Bank visiting his family,” Graham said. “This needs to stop.”
Huckabee also called on Israel to “aggressively investigate the murder” of Musalat, which he called a “terrorist act.”
The ambassador has taken issue with other Israeli actions toward Christians as well. Last week, in a letter that was leaked to the press, he threatened to declare that Israel no longer welcomes Christian groups to its shores over what he said was Israel’s failure to approve visas for evangelical missions. On Monday, the visa dispute was reportedly resolved in a meeting between Netanyahu’s office, the US embassy and the Interior Ministry.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.