Ammar Awad / Reuters

Christian worshipers visit the Church of the Nativity, revered as the site of Jesus' birth, in the Bethlehem on March 14. Despite the city's importance to Christianity, practitioners are a small minority there.

News analysis

JERUSALEM — Bethlehem was a late addition to President Barack Obama’s schedule in Israel and the West Bank, and it focuses attention on another of the region’s appellations: the Holy Land.

The Church of the Nativity on Manger Square may be close to the Christian president’s heart, even while he has taken great care to talk of the common bonds that unite the monotheistic religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Nasser Shiyoukhi / AP, file

Palestinian Muslims take part in Friday noon prayers in Manger Square, outside the Church of Nativity, traditionally believed by Christians to be the birthplace of Jesus.

But as throughout his trip, what Obama does not see in the town may tell more than what he does. Bethlehem is a mirror of the region, where rapid and relentless change threatens Christians themselves. 

The American leader will be warmly welcomed officially, but on the streets the story is different. Bethlehem has been seething ever since it was announced that Obama would visit. Palestinian political activists were furious when the municipality removed a statue in Manger Square that showed Palestine without Israel and fought contractors to keep it in place. 

Obama posters have been defaced, American flags burned and activists set up a protest tent on the edge of town to show how Israel can build homes there but Palestinians can’t.

What Obama will not be able to avoid on the 10-minute drive from Jerusalem is the wall, more than 20 feet high, that cuts Bethlehem off from Jerusalem.  As he is driven through the gate into Bethlehem — a gigantic roadblock cut into the concrete security barrier —and past the walls he will read the graffiti cursing Israel and calling for a Palestinian state. 

Religion and politics here are sometimes indistinguishable.

Although Bethlehem is probably the most famous Christian place-name, celebrated in hymn and prayer, today it is no longer a Christian town. In 1950, 80 percent of the population was Christian. Today, 80 percent is Muslim. There are far more mosques than churches.

The image that best describes this is just on the other side of Manger Square from the Church of the Nativity, venerated by Christians as the site where Jesus was born. The main mosque, the Mosque of Omar, stands there, the muezzin’s call to prayer echoes across the rooftops, competing with the peel of the bells from the church across the square.   

So many of the faithful answer its call that at the week’s main prayers, Friday midday, they don’t all fit in the mosque and flow out into Manger Square, covering part of it.

The cause is partly a higher birth rate among Muslims than Christians, according to figures from the Palestinian and Israeli statistics bureaus. Figures from the agencies show that Muslim women in the West Bank were likely to have 3.8 children during their lifetimes, compared with 2.1 for Israeli Christians. Also it is partly because Christians seek a better life far away from the turbulent struggle between Jews and Arabs for control of their land. Although many Christians say this is their struggle too, the proportion of people emigrating is much higher among Christians than Muslims or Jews. Only about 2 percent of the region's population today is Christian.

Obama’s visit though will not focus attention solely on the birthplace of Jesus but on the plight of Christians across the whole Middle East. 

A report last year by the British think tank Civitas said that Christianity was at risk of being wiped out in the biblical heartland because of "Islamic oppression" and estimated that up to two-thirds of Christians had emigrated or been killed in the past century. They continue to be particularly persecuted in predominantly Muslim countries, not only in the Middle East but worldwide, according to the study.

Obama is on a mission to help bring peace to the Holy Land and may indeed find a moment of personal peace and prayer in the Grotto of the Nativity beneath the stone floor of the church. If he has any time to reflect at all, it must be that peace here is still a distant dream worth pursuing.

Martin Fletcher is the author of "The List,""Breaking News" and "Walking Israel."

Related:

'Not welcome': Disappointment greets Obama on West Bank visit

'People turned on Christians': Persecuted Iraqi minority reflects on life after Saddam

On the Brink: Palestinians, Israelis lukewarm on visit

Andrew Testa / Panos Pictures for NBC News

Father Nizar Semaan gives Holy Communion at Holy Trinity church in the Brook Green area of London.

LONDON -- Rana stepped out of church in Baghdad in December 2006 to find an envelope wedged against her car windshield. Inside was a bullet -- a message that meant she and her family were next on an assassin’s list. 

They fled the city the next day, leaving behind a business, a home -- everything.  

"I didn't like Saddam Hussein, but he didn't bother the Christians," said Rana, 29, after a church service in London. "He was a dictator. When he went, the gangs came from everywhere."

Rana isn’t alone: Bombings, kidnappings and generalized violence unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Hussein caused hundreds of thousands of Christians to flee their homeland.

While there is no centralized source of information on the number of Christians who have left Iraq, it is estimated that there were 2 million there in the 1990s. That number has fallen to between 200,000 to 500,000 today, according to church leaders.

 Rana, who like others interviewed would not give her last name because of fear for the safety of relatives still in Iraq, is now part of a congregation that worships at Holy Trinity Brook Green, a Roman Catholic church in West London.

The congregants -- Syriac Catholics whose services are conducted in Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus -- are part of the estimated 2,500 Iraqi Christians thought to live in the U.K. 

In a pew near Rana sat Wasseem, a 26-year-old who arrived in the U.K. five months ago. The murder of his friend Rariq haunts him, Wasseem said through a translator. Rariq, also a Christian, was a driver for American forces in Baghdad and was kidnapped on his way to meet Wasseem. Rariq’s dismembered body was returned to his family five days later.

Wasseem received a handwritten death threat himself. Terrified, he decided to stay in his village in northern Iraq, he said. While safe, the predominantly Christian area offered no jobs, and he soon fled the country.

Extremists haven't targeted only individual Christians and their families. On Oct. 31, 2010, gunmen stormed Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad during Sunday Mass, taking more than a hundred hostages. When security forces tried to free those held, the attackers detonated explosives. At least 58 people were killed, including two priests.

Related video: Baghdad church siege has bloody end  

A singer at Holy Trinity Brook Green lost her father in the bombing. Rev. Nizar Semaan, chaplain to the Syriac Catholic  community in the U.K., knew both of the murdered priests well. 

"They were very courageous people. It is not easy to do their job. And not easy to be a martyr," he said. 

Andrew Testa / Panos Pictures for NBC News

Iraqi children make up the choir at the London church.

Semaan’s support for Christians who have fled to the U.K. goes beyond the spiritual. 

"I try to help them find accommodation, I ask people to help in any way," he said.  "I call people to help them find a job."

Semaan said that he and his fellow priests refused to contemplate the extinction of the Christian community in Iraq, despite its falling numbers.

"Christianity can flourish again. It will grow back as an important part of the region," he said. 

Warina, who also attends Mass at Holy Trinity, is more downbeat. Like many of her fellow worshipers, she said life for Christians was better under Saddam Hussein.

"Our neighbors were Muslims. Our relations were friendly. We would visit them," said the dentist who fled Iraq in 2007. "Now it is just fighting. There are lots of churches and monasteries and places to worship in Baghdad -- but they are all empty."

"We love Iraq. It's our country, the origin of Christianity. But it is not safe," she added.

As Christians, Warina said, they are doubly vulnerable -- not only are they a minority, but they are perceived by some as having colluded with the invading American forces.

"After Saddam's death, people turned on Christians because they think the Christians encouraged the Americans to come to Iraq. Month after month, more and more are killed," she said.

Still, Semaan said he thinks a newly elected Pope Francis will act to support his threatened community.

"The pope will see the persecution and he will take care of us. He will not forget the church in the Middle East," Semaan said. "He is not a politician and he has no army, but he has good will and can encourage dialogue and maybe this can bring about a better situation."

Besides, Iraq needs its Christians, Semaan added.

"The Middle East without Christians would be a country without light," he said. "The future would be very dark." 

Related:

Did Iraq War accomplish what Bush vowed?

10 years after invasion, US troops ask: 'Was it worth it?'

Then and now: Rephotography shows Iraqi sites 10 years after Saddam

Syrian fighter jets fired on rebel positions in the commercial capital of Aleppo on Wednesday, U.N. observers told The Associated Press, a development that could signal a significant escalation in the battle for control of the key city.

In a briefing on Wednesday, U.N. mission spokeswoman Sausan Ghosheh also said the United Nations had confirmation that the rebels now have heavy weapons of their own, including tanks.

On Tuesday, NBC News' Richard Engel reported from northern Syria that the rebels were now equipped with powerful shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, which could narrow the gap between opposition fighters and the well-equipped forces of President Bashar Assad.

The U.N.'s Ghosheh expressed concern over the situation in the northern city of Aleppo, where rebels have been battling government forces for the past 12 days.

Residents face shortages as Syrian army hits Aleppo

She described "heavy use of heavy weapons, including tanks, helicopters, heavy machine guns, as well as artillery."

Earlier, Reuters reported that government combat aircraft and artillery pounded Aleppo late into the night as the army battled for control for the fifth day, where rebel fighters said troops loyal to Assad had been forced to retreat.

The battle for Aleppo, Syria's largest city, has become a crucial test for both sides in the 16-month-old rebellion against the Assad family's four-decade-long grip on power. Neither Assad's forces nor the rag-tag rebels can afford to lose if they hope to prevail in the wider struggle for Syria.

EPA

Rebels arrest a man who they claim to be a traitor at an old military base in Sicco village, near Aleppo, Syria, on Tuesday.

Forces opposing the government estimate that about 20,000 people have died during the rebellion.

Assad cites 'internal agents'
Assad also said Wednesday that foreign enemies were using "internal agents" to undermine the country's stability.

Speaking to the army on the 67th anniversary of its founding, Assad said the armed forces are the "homeland's shield" against plots by criminal and terrorist gangs, using terminology the government often uses to describe the fight against the rebels.

He said the people see the army as a "source of pride" and a "defender of just causes."

The speech, which was carried by the state news agency but not broadcast on state television, was a rare comment from the president who has kept a low profile during recent fighting in the country's two main cities.

Fighting in Christian neighborhoods
Also Wednesday, fighting reportedly broke out between Syria's army and rebel fighters in near two Christian neighborhoods in the heart of the country's capital Damascus for the first time since the uprising broke out.

The pro-rebel Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the firefight erupted early Wednesday on the outskirts of Damascus' Bab Tuma and Bab Sharqi, two traditional Christian districts of the city.

UN: 200,000 Syrians flee fierce fighting in Aleppo

"This is fighting in areas where it has not happened before. These are areas where the rebels have so far not had access," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP news service.

While calm returned to the area later, the fighting underlined fears felt by many in the Christian community that they would be among the chief losers if the rebels were to overthrow Assads government.

NBC News staff, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report. 

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China Aid

Taking a page from the "million hoodies" campaign in honor of shooting victim Trayvon Martin, China Aid created this show of support for Chen Guangcheng, who is blind, with hundreds of people donning sunglasses.

Updated at 9:13 a.m. ET: After the dramatic nighttime escape of Chen Guangcheng from house arrest in his Chinese village, one of the first people to know that the blind lawyer was safe in Beijing was thousands of miles away — in Midland, Texas.

Pastor Bob Fu, 44, says he knew of Chen’s escape three days before the security guards surrounding the house discovered it. He says he was among the first to receive and post a 15-minute video of Chen, made in hiding, appealing to Chinese President Wen Jiabao to bring to justice the local officials who illegally imprisoned him and his family for months. Fu says he also had a hand in preparing U.S. officials for Chen’s escape and arrival at the U.S. Embassy, while also helping lay the groundwork for alternatives, the details of which he says he cannot divulge.

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Fu knows China’s security apparatus from personal experience. He made his own escape from China, arriving in the United States as a refugee with his wife and newborn son 16 years ago.

Now, through his Midland-based nonprofit China Aid, Fu is one of the leading voices on behalf of religious freedom in China, connected with activists in his home country and respected on Capitol Hill.

"Bob Fu is one of the most credible people you’ll ever find about what is going on in China," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the Human Rights Subcommittee within the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. "He’s very well connected and knows people inside of China who are the agents of reform — people like Chen who (take action) because they want a better China."

According to tax documents, China Aid has raised several million dollars to fund legal counsel for "house church Christians," financial support for the families of jailed dissidents and publicity for human rights cases in China. In extreme cases, China Aid has helped fund "logistics" for an underground railway, Fu says.

In China, worship is allowed only in state-sanctioned churches, mosques and synagogues. Evangelizing outside those sites and worshipping in independent churches, often called "house churches," is prohibited.

China censors 'Shawshank' as Clinton heads to Beijing amid dissident drama

Fu’s activism goes back to the Tiananmen protests of 1989, when he led a group of fellow students from Liaocheng University in Shandong province to join the massive rallies in the capital. After the crackdown on demonstrators he was one of many student activists required to attend special political study sessions and write self-criticism day after day. He worried that he would be forced to leave his hard-won position at the university.

During this time, Fu said, he read a book given to him by American missionaries who were teaching English in China. It was the story of a famous Chinese intellectual who was addicted to opium in the early 1900s, but was able to shake the drug after he converted to Christianity.

"I was really, really struck by the story," Fu said, in an interview with msnbc.com. "I came to the realization if you want to change China, the first thing you need to do is change people’s hearts. And if you want to change other people’s hearts, you first you have to change yourself."

Jerry Huang / AP

Bob Fu of the Texas-based rights group China Aid in Midland, Texas on Monday.

Fu and his wife, Heidi Cai, began holding underground worship services and Bible studies, he said. At the same time, he was teaching English at the Communist Party School in Beijing.

"I was God’s double-agent," he said, chuckling.

In 1996, they were arrested and held in jail for two months, and then placed under house arrest, Fu said. Then they received word that they soon would be jailed again, he said, in the “sweep” that preceded China’s Oct. 10 National Day.

By this time, Fu’s wife was pregnant with their first child, he said, but without the necessary permission from the government, which controls when a woman is allowed to have her one child. If she had been found out, she would be forced to have an abortion, Fu said.

So in the dark of night, Fu escaped through a second-story bathroom window and Cai left in disguise, he said. They fled to the countryside, Fu said, where they were protected by "house church brothers and sisters."

Fu said that with the shelter of this network, the help of a Christian policeman and travel documents obtained by a highly placed businessman, they were able to join a tour that went to Thailand and then Hong Kong, which was still under British control. Just three days before the territory was transferred to Chinese sovereignty, Fu and his wife were give refugee status, and flew to the United States.

NBC sources: Blind activist is under US protection

Fu and Cai lived in a suburb of Philadelphia, where he started China Aid in his garage while attending Westminster Theological Seminary. They later moved to Midland, Texas, where they are raising their three children.

What prompted Fu to set up China Aid was a 2002 crackdown on a group of Christians in a house church in Hubei province that led to many arrests, among them five people who were sentenced to death, he said.

Fu and a group of contacts in the Christian, dissident and exile communities started publicizing the case and raising money, he said. Ultimately, Fu said, they used the funds to pay for 58 lawyers to defend the accused. They contacted the media, making the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

"That year, all the five death sentences were overturned," Fu said. "It was a major legal victory, and even the 'evil cult' charge was removed."

A group of activists who came of age as he did during the Tiananmen movement, are now human rights lawyers, many of them Christian, he said. Fu said he taps into this network, and links them to Washington by picking up the phone.

'Little ants'
Fu compares himself and fellow human rights activists to "little ants" forcing "one case after another into courts, moving around and mobilizing and going through all the technical procedures" in place under China’s laws, but often not observed or even taken seriously by officials. 

"We want to move the pile of dirt with 1 million ants," he said.

"I had never envisioned or wanted to establish (a nonprofit) like this," he said, but now that China Aid is nearly 10 years old, Fu is gratified by some success. "We can help the persecuted, and we did advance rule of law," he said.

China Aid is doggedly following and publicizing many human rights cases around China, Fu said.

"You can write to imprisoned Christians to encourage them and to let them know that you are praying for them," through China Aid, the website says.

Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

Fu’s group also prints and distributes Bibles in China.

For Fu, the escape of Chen was a major triumph, but it also has generated new concerns — for the wife and daughter of Chen, and for those who helped get Chen to safety.

In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, Fu calls out the bravery of one such supporter, He "Pearl" Peirong, who drove Chen the 300 miles to Beijing after he escaped over a compound wall in Shandong.

"I am awed by the courage of those who helped Chen escape. Pearl told me she is willing to die with Chen because he is such a 'pure-hearted courageous person'," Fu wrote. "I was talking to her last week when she said 'guobao laile,'— that state security had arrived."

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Meredith Mandell / Special to msnbc.com

Scott Johnson, standing in gray sweatshirt, an evangelical Christian from Seymour, Tenn., hosts Israelis at his home.

Thousands of miles from their home in Seymour, Tenn., Scott and Theresa Johnson host Shabbat dinners in their Jerusalem apartment every Friday night for "lone soldiers" — as the young men and women who travel from foreign countries to serve in the Israeli army are known.

Typically, 20 or 30 of the soldiers join the Johnsons for a traditional meal and wine and to join in a rousing rendition of "Shalom Aleichem," an old Hebrew song sung to greet the Sabbath day of rest. Scott Johnson leads the song wearing a "kippah" — a traditional Jewish head cover — and standing beneath a painting of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held prisoner in Gaza for five years before being released in October.

The Johnsons, however, are not Jewish. They are evangelical Christians who live in Israel full-time, operating a U.S.-based 501 c(3) nonprofit, the Servants to Christ Corp.

Servants to Christ is one of scores of evangelical Christian organizations working in Israel on a variety of charitable missions. And its presence is just one example of the increasingly tight embrace of the Jewish state by both the leadership of American evangelical churches and organizations and their grass-roots supporters.

Pro-Israel rhetoric — fueled in part by increasing tensions in the Middle East over Iran's nuclear program and the threat it might pose to the Jewish state  — is a staple of many U.S. evangelical leaders' speeches and sermons.

It has likewise become a popular refrain among GOP presidential candidates looking to shore up their support with the party's conservative religious wing.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, for example, recently made comments calling the Palestinians an "invented people" and has said he would support Israel if it decided to attack Iran.

Israel asks US for arms that could aid Iran strike

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said such staunch support for Israel is fundamental to the evangelical movement.

"American evangelicals have it in their DNA: God blesses those who bless the Jews and curses whoever curses the Jews," he said.  "We want God to bless America and if America doesn't support Israel we don't have his blessing. It doesn't mean Israel is always right, it doesn't mean we don't remonstrate Israel, but we are going to have their back."

War for American hearts and minds rages over Islam

That broad backing for Israel is in part grounded in a widely held evangelical belief that the existence of a Jewish state is a prerequisite for the second coming of Jesus.

Many evangelicals believe that when Jesus returns, it will be to Israel. The purpose of his Second Coming will be to destroy its enemies and return to heaven with his followers in what is variously called the Rapture or the End Times.

'Islamaphobic'
Under this interpretation of the Book of Revelation, the Rapture can't happen if there is no Jewish state in the Holy Land.

But critics — including some within the evangelical movement itself — say that such devout allegiance to Israel is also being driven by a more worldly concern: fear of Islam.

"We definitely believe they (U.S. evangelical leaders) are Islamaphobic and that is hindering them from having the right approach toward Islam," said Munther Isaac, an instructor at Bethlehem Bible College who describes himself on his blog as a Palestinian evangelical Christian.

Obama accuses GOP critics of 'beating the drums of war' in Mideast

Isaac is a co-organizer of a five-day conference that began Monday in Bethlehem titled "Christ at the Checkpoint." The goal of the event, which is expected to draw up to 600 people, is "to equip the global church to understand Scripture as it relates to the Palestinian context, and to discuss the theological importance of Peace and Justice in an evangelical context." Among the lectures on the agenda is one titled "Loving the Muslim."

Isaac, 32, said many evangelicals and politicians who court them often make no distinction between radical Islam and the religion's mainstream: "The more we demonize Islam in our talks, in our books, in our sermons, the more we polarize them … it's like feeding the enemy and empowering the more radical voice, and we shouldn't do that."

But Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention, criticized what he referred to as "replacement theologians" within the evangelical movement who do not see the creation of the state of Israel as an act of divine intervention.

"Unfortunately, many people in the replacement theology crowd seem to give moral equivalence to Israel and her enemies and we do not see moral equivalence," Land said. 

He also rejected the notion that “Islamaphobia” plays any role in evangelical support for Israel, ticking off numerous deadly attacks perpetrated by Muslim extremists against Americans and others, including the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Texas and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

American Muslims come of age in post-9/11 era

"There is a dangerous cult loose within Islam called Wahhabism, and it's called Jihadism," he said. "It needs to be confronted for what it is and it needs to be defeated. When people are trying to kill you it's not Islamaphobic, it's reality."

Others are more direct in their criticism of Isaac and other organizers of the Christ at the Checkpoint conference.

"We think our support for Israel is a positive response from the heart, not out of a diagnosed or supposed phobia," said David Parsons, a spokesman for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, a nonprofit evangelical ministry. He called the Christ at the Checkpoint organizers "misguided" and "dishonest."

"They've not been honest about why the wall and the checkpoints are there, and they downplay the terrorists' threats to Israel, and they downplay the persecution of Palestinian Christians by their Muslim neighbors," Parsons said.

Political tumult
Mistrust of Islam and its adherents within the evangelical movement is well documented.  A survey published last year by the Pew Center Forum on Public Life indicated that 67 percent of more than 2,200 evangelical leaders surveyed expressed an unfavorable view of Islam and that 47 percent considered Islam to be a "major threat" to Christianity.

But many evangelical Christian Zionists point to the current escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran, which Israel says is trying to develop nuclear weapons, as well as the political tumult and violence in the Middle East arising from the continuing Arab Spring uprisings, as legitimate reasons to be concerned.

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Rebecca Brimmer, chief executive and president of Bridges for Peace, a Jerusalem-based evangelical group that operates the largest food drive in the country, said: "I don't hate any people or group. But, it's like with (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad saying hateful things — if I quote what Ahmadinejad says, does that mean I am Islamaphobic? Or does it mean I am a realist that says this is what this man is saying and we should pay attention." Ahmadinejad has been quoted as calling for the destruction of Israel.

That sentiment has spilled over into broader forums.

Conservative American political commentator Glenn Beck last year organized a gathering of more than 3,000 people in the ancient Israeli city of Ceasaria for what he called a "Restoring Courage" tour intended to highlight concerns that pro-Islamist governments were springing up throughout the Middle East and north Africa in the wake of last year's "Arab Spring" revolts. While Beck is Mormon, the event drew a heavily evangelical crowd and featured evangelical pastor John C. Hagee as a keynote speaker.

Republicans could give Obama green light on Iran

Hagee, a Texas minister and the founder of Christians United for Israel, revved up the crowd with these words: "People of Israel, we have come from America and the nations of the world as people of faith. God is with you. Fifty million evangelicals in America are with you. This time in history you are not alone. ... Your enemies are our enemies, and your fight is our fight. We are united, and we will prevail."

The belief that a military conflict between Israel and Iran is coming explains why many evangelical Christians, like the Johnsons, are also big supporters of the Friends of the IDF (the Israeli Defense Forces, a charitable organization providing assistance to Israeli soldiers.

Pizza in the trenches
Scott Johnson, who calls himself an ardent "Christian Zionist," says he is not ashamed to take sides. During the Lebanon war in 2006, the Johnsons took a van and went to Ramban Hospital in Haifa to pick up wounded soldiers and return them to their homes. They also went to the Lebanon border and delivered pizza, falafel and shawarma to Israeli soldiers in the trenches. And on several occasions they have hosted barbecues on their terrace for entire units of the IDF.

"I believe Islam is a threat to the world. It's a threat to decent, moral human beings. Not 100 percent of them, but the ones in control," Scott Johnson said.

Observers say evangelical support for Israel gained momentum after Israel's Six Day War in 1967 against Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Many evangelicals viewed Israel's victory against its Soviet-backed Arab neighbors with admiration, reminiscent of the biblical story of David, the future king of Israel, defeating gigantic Philistine warrior Goliath.

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In 1980, after the international community condemned Israel for declaring Jerusalem the "eternal and indivisible capital" of the Jewish state and 13 nations shifted their embassies to Tel Aviv, Christian Zionists established the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, to show their support for the Jewish state.

During the 1980s, the Israeli government began to organize all-expenses-paid "familiarization" tours of the Holy Land for evangelical pastors in an effort to cement such support. Evangelical Christian Mission trips and humanitarian tours continue today, giving the country not only moral support but also a nice economic boost. During the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, for example, roughly 5,000 evangelicals visit Israel as part of the Christian celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, and 60 percent of Israel's 2.8 million tourists last year were Christian pilgrims, according to the Ministry of Tourism.

Historically, some Israelis have been suspicious of Christian groups inside the country, worrying that their aim is to convert Jews to Christianity. But given their staunch political support for Israel in recent years, most Israeli politicians now welcome them.

"I think why there is there such a strong connection between Jews and Christians, especially at the political level in Israel, is we saw during the (Palestinian uprising) intifada that one by one, the nations of the world were turning against us," said Joshua Reinstein, director of the Israeli Knesset's Christian Allies Caucus. "But Christians stood their ground and stood up next to us." 

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Update at 6:25 p.m. ET: Facebook has apparently taken down the account of at least one group threatening a New Year's attack on Egyptian Christians. An Arab-language Facebook page (not linked to in the story but monitored by msnbc.com reporters) no longer loads.

Original post: The Egyptian military said Friday that it was increasing security at churches across the country before the anniversary of a deadly New Year's attack on Coptic Christians in Alexandria.

The heightened state of alert before New Year's celebrations and the Coptic Christmas season came as anonymous threats against the Copts circulated on Facebook.

 One of those on Friday threatened a suicide bombing of an unnamed church in Egypt and said that the church's name would be posted at 11:50 p.m. local time Saturday just before the attack. A spokesman for Facebook said it was aware of the threat "and is investigating it."

The Alexandria attack occurred just after midnight Jan. 1 as worshippers left a New Year's Mass. More than 20 people were killed, making it the worst violence against the Christian minority in Egypt in a decade.

The military said that it would work closely with internal security forces, revolutionary youth groups and various political forces inside Egypt to ensure the safety of Christian worshippers across the country.

In addition to New Year's Eve Masses, Egyptian Copts are preparing for the Orthodox Church's Christmas on Jan. 7. This year's Christmas celebrations and mass at the cathedral in Cairo will be attended by a senior delegation from the Muslim Brotherhood. It's the first time in nearly 30 years that the church has invited the Islamist group -- outlawed during the Mubarak regime -- to attend the Mass and celebrations.

NBC News correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin reported from Amman, Jordan. NBC's Jacob Keryakes and msnbc.com's Suzanne Choney contributed to this report.