PHOTOS: A Faith Under Fire

Aviram Valdman

Aviram Valdman

Photographer at The Tower Magazine

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~ Also in this issue ~

~ Also by Aviram Valdman ~

From the Blog

Aviram Valdman gives us a glimpse of Israel’s Arab Christian community, as it reinvents its identity in an increasingly Muslim Middle East.

As Islamist-fueled conflict burns across the region, the Mideast’s Christians are facing a level of political pressure and violence not seen in generations. While some communities are fleeing and other hunkering down, in Israel, Christians are redefining their relationship with the Jewish State, where their communities have been untouched by the fallout of the “Arab Spring.”

From Jerusalem to Lod to the Judean Desert and up to the Galilee, centuries-old Arab Christian communities are finding new ways to thread the needle of a complex identity, in some cases by making a significant turn away from the trend of Palestinian self-identification, which took hold over the past decades, and towards a renewed embrace of what it means to be an Israeli Arab.
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Banner Photo: Aviram Valdman / The Tower