In a shocking appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos — a Russian Orthodox nun and sister of ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, formerly White House communications director and senior adviser to President Bill Clinton— declared that Hamas is “totally misunderstood,” portraying the terrorist group as freedom fighters rather than jihadists. She also blamed “Greater Israel” for Christian persecution in the Middle East. Her remarks have ignited outrage from Christian leaders, pro-Israel advocates, and political commentators — and are now being weaponized by jihadists and pro-Hamas sympathizers, who are circulating clips of her rants across social media to bolster their false narratives and lies.
Born in America and raised Greek Orthodox, since no Greek Orthodox convents were available in Israel at the time she moved there, she trained as a Russian Orthodox nun.
Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos’s interview drew immediate backlash from Christian and pro-Israel voices, who cataloged many falsehoods they say she promoted.
Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos claimed Bethlehem Christians cannot enter Jerusalem without Israeli permits, omitting that Israelis are barred from entering Bethlehem under the Oslo II framework. She also claimed that Palestinians are ancient Canaanites with the primary claim to the land; critics counter that archaeological evidence links Jewish continuity to Canaanite ancestry and that Palestinians are largely Arabized descendants of the region’s peoples, including Israelites.
Stephanopoulos said Israel’s Christian population is shrinking, despite official data showing year-over-year growth—making Israel the only Middle Eastern country where the Christian community is increasing—while Christian numbers in Palestinian-controlled areas continue to decline amid pressure and discrimination
Most shockingly, Stephanopoulos characterized Hamas as a “resistance movement” and referred to the October 7 massacre as “the October event,” language critics say whitewashes terrorism and minimizes the killing of more than 1,200 Israelis. Stepanopoulos accused Israel of genocide in both 2002 and the current war, allegations her detractors say lack credible evidence and compared the Jerusalem–Bethlehem tunnel road to the Holocaust—“a living death,” she said and claimed Palestinians are barred from using it; in practice, Palestinians travel that route, while Israelis are restricted from entering Palestinian-controlled zones for security reasons.
Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos’s account of the 2002 Church of the Nativity siege placed blame on Israel but omitted contemporaneous reports that Palestinian gunmen looted property, abused clergy, and desecrated holy items inside the church. She previously circulated atrocity stories from 2002—accusing Israeli forces of rape, looting, and infant killings—that she later acknowledged she had not witnessed and that were never substantiated.
in the Carlson interview, Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos repeated several of those disputed narratives while disregarding testimony from monks and priests who identified Palestinian militants as the perpetrators of much of the violence in Bethlehem.
The interview triggered sharp reactions online. Supporters of Israel accused Mother Agapia Stephanopoulos of reviving debunked claims and fueling anti-Israel rhetoric; pastors and commentators condemned the segment as misleading and inflammatory. Critics say Carlson’s platform gave undue credibility to narratives that invert victim and aggressor and ignore documented facts from the Second Intifada through October 7 and its aftermath.
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