US denies visa to Palestinian pastors due to speak about Gaza genocide, Israeli settler violence
Father Issa Thaljieh, priest at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, was due to address a Christian gathering near the US Capitol on Monday.
Organizers said the State Department denied his visa for alleged “security reasons,” preventing him from describing Israeli attacks on Palestinian communities.
“A parish priest from Bethlehem, treated as a threat. That should worry all of us,” Laila Mokhiber of Orthodox Christians for Palestine (OCP) said, adding, “It means the people living through this are being kept from telling us about it.”
The second priest, Munther Isaac, head of Bethlehem’s Christmas Lutheran Church, was also denied a US visa last week.
He had planned to attend a Christian convention in Atlanta and address American evangelicals about the dangers of Christian-Zionist theology.
Isaac said the convention aims to bring Palestinian Christians before US audiences and challenge theology supporting the regime.
The Washington gathering would bring together Christian leaders from around the world calling for an end to US arms transfers to Israel.
They would read names from the Gaza Children’s Shroud, a 120-yard cloth bearing more than 20,000 names of children killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when the regime launched its genocidal war on the territory.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least 74,653 Palestinians have been killed and 176,007 wounded in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since the US-enabled genocide began.
The organizers will also demand that the Congress hold Israeli forces and settlers accountable for their attacks on Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Zionist regime’s forces and settlers have martyred at least 1,216 Palestinians and wounded 13,300 others, including since October 7, 2023.