Seeing a prominent Christian minimize the killing of Christians is kind of a shock. That was the reaction of many when Joel Berry, managing editor of “the most popular satire site in the world,” the Babylon Bee (4.9 million followers on X), commented on the July 17 death of three people (two Orthodox, one Catholic) at the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza by Israeli tank fire. 

Berry, an American evangelical Christian and strong defender of Israel, went on an extended rant on the subject, including saying on July 19 that “this won’t be easy for people to hear, but there are only 200 professed Catholics still living in Gaza and they all support Hamas.” The tweet had 7.4 million views. 

Far from being apologetic, Berry’s next tweet seemed to imply that the Gaza Catholics weren’t even Christians: “Anyone who supports Hamas and the extermination of the Jewish people is not a Christian, no matter what they profess, or where they go to church.” 

For Berry, the only Christianity that exists in Gaza is underground. 

The uproar, waged entirely in English and seemingly mostly by Westerners, was fierce. One Catholic journalist called Berry a “human-shaped monster,” while the prominent traditionalist Catholic site Rorate Caeli called Berry “an idiot.” The controversy, as such things tend to do, raged for about 24 hours across thousands of comments. 

Seemingly bringing the episode to a close, Berry professed love “for my Catholic brothers and sisters,” and added, “I apologize for nothing. Go pound sand.”

Berry supporters online decried the attempt to “cancel” him, although the incident certainly had no discernible canceling effect on Berry or the Babylon Bee. The Bee has been the subject of considerable controversy through the years — banned on Twitter for its satire until Elon Musk allowed it back on, the site has been a frequent target of left-leaning, humorless “woke” media.  

That Christians are the most persecuted religion is a well-known fact for those who are interested in such matters. Persecution and harassment come in every shape imaginable, from the petty to the deadly, and at the hands of every type of persecutor — from criminals and communist and secular regimes, to Islamists and Hindu supremacists. 

Often, as seems the case in Gaza, Christians are caught in the middle, between Hamas attacks and Israeli responses. Many people — mostly Muslims — have been killed in Gaza. Most of the victims of the Hamas invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, were Jews. Both churches in Gaza have been hit by Israeli fire before. 

An Oct. 20, 2023, strike at St. Porphyrios Orthodox Church killed a Caritas worker, her husband, and her infant daughter. In December 2023, an elderly mother and her daughter, Nahida and Samar Anton, were killed by a sniper on the grounds of Holy Family Church. The Israeli military has repeatedly denied culpability while the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem blamed Israel.

In addition to the persecution, there is the blame game that uses both the persecution of Christians and the alleged prevention of persecution as political weapons. We saw this propaganda from Syria and Iran over the past decade, when the brutal Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the Iranian regime were portrayed as “defenders” of Christians. 

The reality is that both regimes persecuted Christians but also fought against Sunni Muslim Jihadists, who also persecuted Christians. In some cases, the overlap can be dizzying. 

For example, 20 years ago, the Syrian dictator participated in the shipping of thousands of Jihadists to Iraq (where they targeted Christians and other Iraqis) only to then have to fight some of the same Jihadists later during the Syrian Civil War.

To pose as a defender of Christians still has real currency in international discourse, as does its inverted twin — to defame others as persecutors of Christians. We’ve seen this discourse everywhere, in Russia and Ukraine, in Africa, and certainly in the Middle East. 

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel commentators will highlight anything they can to portray Israel in the worst possible light, including as anti-Christian. Some Israel supporters will point to worse incidents, such as the intentional bombing of churches in Muslim countries or the slaughter of thousands of Christians in Africa.

Christians, even in a secularizing West, still matter. And even non-Christians seem to instinctively sense that. Israel’s Foreign Ministry expressed “deep sorrow” for the most recent Holy Family Church incident, while the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it was investigating the situation. 

Everywhere, there are attempts to play up and weaponize “the Christian angle.” In Syria, the targeted killing of Alawite Muslims by forces of the Sunni Muslim government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa in March 2025 was somehow seen as having more credibility internationally when described as a killing of Alawites and Christians (or Christians and Alawites), even though the few Christian victims seemed to have been innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire between others. 

Syria’s latest massacres, in the Druze majority Suwayda region in July 2025, saw something similar. While an entire Christian family was massacred, most of the victims, by the hundreds, were Druze or Sunni Muslims. Druze supporters say that the Christian family, evangelical Protestant converts from the Druze religion, were killed by pro-Syrian government jihadists. The local Greek Orthodox archdiocese (most Syrian Christians are Orthodox) has called it a war of annihilation against Druze and Christians. Meanwhile, pro-government supporters online blamed the Druze for allegedly kidnapping Christian (as well as Muslim) Bedouins.  

There is tremendous real, daily suffering by Christians in the world today. There is also a constant, cynical gaming of that grim reality. Sometimes it goes up and sometimes it goes down.