George Deek cannot speak to some members of his family about his senior role in Israel’s foreign ministry because it could put them at risk. That is not because his work is classified, but because many of Deek’s relatives are Palestinian refugees living across the Middle East.
Deek, 42, an Arab Israeli and devout Orthodox Christian, is Israel’s first special envoy to the Christian world. Before that, he was one of the country’s youngest ever ambassadors, serving in Azerbaijan.
His family story echoes that of many Palestinians; his grandparents fled their home in 1947 amid the upheaval surrounding Israel’s creation and settled in a refugee camp in Jordan.
Before the war, Deek’s grandfather worked at the Jewish-owned Rutenberg Electricity Company, where he befriended Jewish colleagues and learnt Yiddish. From the refugee camp, he made a decision that many around him considered unthinkable: he returned to the newly established State of Israel.
Crossing back into the Jewish state and leaving relatives behind in Jordan, he was initially arrested by Israeli border police. Deek’s grandmother went to his former colleagues, pleading for his release. His grandfather was freed and rehired, becoming the first Arab employee of Israel’s National Electricity Company.
“I’m sitting here in Jerusalem today as an Israeli ambassador because my grandfather had the audacity to make a decision that was unthinkable to others,” Deek told the JC from Jerusalem. “He chose to live among people who were supposed to be permanent enemies, and turned them into neighbours, friends and partners. My family was able to build a new future, to build a country, to be part of a country where their sons and grandkids are integrated.”
With this family history, it is perhaps unsurprising that Deek rejects what he sees as a culture of victimhood. “The tragedy of Palestinian people [is that they are] still being kept in the chains of resentment in refugee camps, being told that one day they will go back to Jaffa, Akka, Haifa and Safed... that the Jews are a colonial, temporary power that will one day disappear just like the Brits and the Ottomans before.”
He is particularly critical of the international community for reinforcing this and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Unrwa), which is the only UN agency for a specific refugee group. Deek’s relatives, born and raised in Arab countries (which he does not name for security reasons), are classified as perpetual Palestinian refugees and not accepted by the countries where they live.
“They are not even treated as citizens. They are refugees forever.”
Yet Deek is careful to acknowledge Palestinian suffering, including that of his own family.
“Atrocities in 1947/48 took place by Jews and by Arabs in parallel… There’s no doubt that the Palestinians have suffered tremendously – my family included. But at the end of the day, we need to build a future. We need to be able to live together and the mentality of victimhood... is holding us back.
“Every country that chooses the culture of blame, shame and victimhood descends into sectarianism, violence and corrosion from within. Every country that chooses to overlook that and to look to the future with hope, to build rather than destroy, to take responsibility for the future – like Israel, but also like the Emirates, Bahrain, Azerbaijan – these are the countries that prosper today, and this is the kind of Middle East I would love to see.”
After attending a French Catholic school in Jaffa, Deek was the only Arab student in his class at a Jewish high school. He later studied law and government at Reichman University before earning a Fulbright scholarship to Georgetown University in Washington DC, where he specialised in international law.
While serving as deputy ambassador to Norway in 2014, he delivered a speech explaining why he supported Israel as a Christian Arab. It was instantly hailed as the best speech ever delivered by an Israeli diplomat. In 2018, aged 34, he became Israel’s ambassador to Azerbaijan, making history as the country’s first Arab Christian ambassador and one of its youngest envoys.
Azerbaijan’s neighbours are Russia, Iran and Turkey, “So they really know what it means to live in a tough neighbourhood surrounded by empires, ex-empires or aspiring empires,” Deek added.
Now Deek is breaking new ground again as Israel’s first special envoy to the Christian world, a role that combines “my faith as a Christian and my passion for the State of Israel”.
He is also the incoming head of the Foreign Ministry’s Bureau of Religious and Diaspora Affairs.
“Israel is the only place in the Middle East where we see a growth in the number of Christians.
“Christians, Muslims and Jews serve together in government, hospitals, the military, business and high-tech,” he said. “It says a great deal about Israel’s diversity and pluralism.”
After nearly three years of headlines in the West detailing the IDF’s destruction of churches in Gaza, it is perhaps no surprise that the foreign ministry has created the new role focusing on the Christian world. His aim is to listen to Christian concerns while telling a fuller story about Israel and Christianity.
“We are seeing an organised effort to drive a wedge between Israel and the Christian world,” he said. The Catholic church and the Church of England have made damning comments about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. But Deek is critical of any statement that paints Israel as “uniquely evil”.
“People are using Christian language and identity to advance that narrative,” he added, noting that commentary about the damage to churches in Lebanon and Gaza during the war seldom refers to the terrorists who have co-opted Christian spaces.
“We do our utmost to make sure that we do not harm churches or any place of worship. But at the end of the day, Hamas or Hezbollah use churches as a human shield, as protection for terrorist activity – just last month, we found the tunnel dug under a church in Lebanon.
“These are incidents that show [Hezbollah] is cynically and purposefully using Christian sites to attack Israel because they know that either Israel will not attack back or will attack back, and then it can be used in a campaign against Israel in the Western world.”
The Religious Freedom Data Centre reported this month that 88 incidents against Christians have been documented so far this year, putting 2026 on course to exceed last year’s total of 181. Most occurred in Jerusalem’s Old City and included spitting, verbal abuse and grave desecration, alongside cases of vandalism and arson elsewhere in the country.
“These incidents are absolutely unacceptable,” Deek said of extremists spitting at nuns in the Old City. “They are an offence against Christians, against Israel’s values and against freedom of faith.”
He pointed to swift condemnations by some Israeli leaders against the harassment and the recent arrest of an Israeli soldier filmed smashing a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon as evidence that authorities take such incidents seriously.
Part of his mission now is to deepen Israel’s relationship with the Catholic Church. While acknowledging disagreements, Deek describes the Vatican’s recognition of Israel in the 1990s as a historic turning point and says he hopes to build on that progress during an upcoming visit to the city-state. He mentions the pope’s interventions on Artificial Intelligence as one area where Israel and the Vatican could work together.
Deek believes the years ahead present a significant opportunity for Christian tourism with several significant anniversaries ahead.
He hopes Pope Leo will be among the millions expected to visit. “We want Christians to come here and feel at home.”
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