Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally is facing criticism for championing anti-Israel activists linked to terrorist organizations and praising their “faithful resistance” on her pilgrimage to the Holy Land from June 19–24, 2026.
Mullally, a member of Britain’s House of Lords, met with Layan Nasir at her home in Birzeit, describing the Anglican Palestinian woman’s time in Israeli custody over the last five years as a “terrible ordeal” and assuring Nasir’s family of her prayers for the “unjustly imprisoned.”
The PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] opposes a two-state solution, and calls for the destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state through “armed struggle.”
The archbishop failed to note that authorities arrested Nasir for her leadership in the Democratic Progressive Student Pole at Birzeit University, the student wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The United States, European Union, Japan, Canada, and Israel designate the PFLP as a terrorist outfit. Not only did the PFLP participate in the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israeli civilians and celebrate the massacre publicly, but it also reportedly held hostage Shiri Bibas and her two infant sons, abducted by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz.
The European Council on Foreign Relations noted that the PFLP opposes a two-state solution, and calls for the destruction of Israel and the creation of a Palestinian state through “armed struggle.” It has carried out numerous attacks against Israelis, including airline hijackings, suicide bombings, a synagogue attack, and the assassination of Israel’s Agriculture Minister Rehavam Ze’evi.
A photograph posted on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s website shows Mullally praying in Nasir’s living room with the portrait of Layan’s great-uncle Kamal Nasser behind her. Nasser, a former spokesperson of the Palestine Liberation Organization, played a key role in the Black September kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
British-Jewish journalist David Collier noted that Nasir’s support was not just for the Democratic Progressive Student Pole but also for its parent body. “Her timeline is full of support for the ‘Front’—and it is why she can be seen alongside red PFLP flags or draped in the red tell-tale Keffiyeh,” he wrote.
Mullally also met Natalie Abu Diyeh, a Lutheran soccer player. Israel’s military said it arrested Diyeh, a Birzeit University student, on suspicion of “promoting terrorist activities.” Mullally also met a 25-year-old woman at the Jerusalem YMCA. The archbishop’s website labeled her a “child detainee in Israeli administrative detention,” and Mullally called her testimony “powerful.” What Mullally omitted was that the woman is Zeina Barbar, the daughter of Majd Barbar. A Nazareth District Court verdict said that Barbar, a PFLP member, served 20 years in prison for attempted murder, membership in a terrorist group, solicitation to commit aggravated assault, conspiracy to commit a crime and unlawfully carrying a weapon.
Barbar and four others transported a car bomb to Jerusalem and manufactured grenades. Police detained Zeina, a PLFP member, on suspicion of terrorism offenses and released her in February 2025 as part of a prisoner exchange.
Collier posted a picture of Zeina holding a PFLP poster in support of Samer Arbid, whose PFLP terror cell bombed Israeli civilians, murdering 17-year-old Rina Shnerb and injuring her father and brother in 2019.
“Britain’s most senior church leader chose to stand alongside individuals with publicly documented associations with the PFLP, ignore the Islamist persecution of local Christians completely, and resort to that age-old Christian failsafe when the going gets tough—she simply blamed the Jews for it all,” Collier wrote.
“In this context, the term ‘Christian’ really functions as a tribal and ethnic identifier, more than in the sense of someone who has made a personal commitment to Jesus.”
In a blog titled “The Church of England’s problem with antisemitism,” Ian Paul, an Anglican biblical scholar, lamented how Church of England leaders were “taking sides in a complex and contested issue.” Paul identified a portrait of Yasser Arafat on the wall of Greek Orthodox Archbishop Benedictus during his meeting with Mullally, noting: “Our archbishop has managed to be photographed in front of, not one, but two notorious terrorist leaders within the space of a couple of days—quite an achievement!”
Outsiders find it “hard to understand how ‘Palestinian Christians’ could be involved with anti-Israeli and antisemitic terror,” Paul wrote, explaining: “In this context, the term ‘Christian’ really functions as a tribal and ethnic identifier, more than in the sense of someone who has made a personal commitment to Jesus.”
Paul cited Anglican priest-theologian Giles Fraser, who warns of “a radical anti-Israeli side to Palestinian Christianity, to such an extent that parts of the Church have developed something of a distaste for the Jewish underpinnings of Christianity, including even the very presence of the Hebrew scriptures within the Christian Bible.”
British-Persian historian Bijan Omrani excoriated Mullally for recycling “the most pernicious lie about Palestinians,” noting that her call for peace rings hollow since it was not “accompanied by an equal demand for repentance by those complicit in Palestinian terror campaigns that have made peace less likely than ever.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury has not responded to a request for comment.
