A Catholic procession on Christmas Eve in Bethlehem, 2006. Photo: Darko Tepert/Wikimedia Commons.

Despite the rain and a howling gale, more than a hundred people, most of them Christians, packed into a small hall below the St. James’ Church Piccadilly recently to hear Reverend Mike Fryer of Christians for Zion introduce Colonel Eiran Lermanan, an Israeli national security adviser, for a talk about Israel’s historic links with the Holy Land, and the security challenges facing Israel.

The event was co-organized with “Stand with Us UK,” an organization mainly designed to support British students faced with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish discrimination at universities.

Colonel Lermanan was asked how it was possible for Israel to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, a regime that last held elections in 2004 and appears to have no intention of holding any in the future. While acknowledging that the Palestinian Authority is a dictatorship, the Israeli adviser asserted that one must negotiate with anyone willing to sit at the table, however unpalatable.

His talk was followed by another lecture from a young Christian woman from Bethlehem who spoke of the extreme difficulties facing Christians living in the West Bank. They experience both threats to their lives and serious job discrimination, which have caused many Christians to emigrate.

St. James is the central London church that erected the notorious, anti-Israel “separation wall” last Christmas. Reverend Fryer expressed the hope that if the stunt is repeated next Christmas, even more protesters will hand out leaflets that tell the truth about the situation in the West Bank. The facts speak for themselves, he said: in Israel, the Christian population is thriving and growing faster than any other community.