Orthodox Rabbis call on US government to save historic Middle East Christian communities
In a
Wall Street Journal editorial, two Orthodox rabbis, Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, have called on the United States government to step up and
save the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East, which are now threatened with extinction.
Islamist terror attacks like the ones in Paris
and San Bernardino, Calif., have underlined the need for more and better vetting
of refugees from the Middle East who seek safety in the U.S. But with tens of
thousands pushing at the gate, who should to get first preference?
In our view, as rabbis, any immediate admissions
should focus on providing a haven for the remnants of historic Christian
communities of the Middle East. Christians in Iraq and Syria have been suffering
longer than other groups, and are fleeing not just for safety but because they
have been targeted for extinction. In a region strewn with desperate people,
their situation is even more dire. Christians (and Yazidis, ethnic Kurds who
follow a pre-Islamic religion) have long been targeted by Muslim groups—not only
Islamic State, or ISIS—for ethnic cleansing. Churches have been burned, priests
arrested.
In the worst cases, Christians have been
tortured, raped and even crucified. Mosul, Iraq, which was home to a Christian
population of 35,000 a decade ago, is now empty of Christians after an ISIS
ultimatum that they either convert to Islam or be executed. In Syria, Gregorios
III Laham, the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch of the Church of Antioch, said
in 2013 that “entire villages” have been “cleared of their Christian
inhabitants.”
Unlike some others, Middle East Christians have
nowhere else to go. As a result of turmoil not of their making and beyond their
control, these Christians are the region’s ultimate homeless. Should some sort
of peace ever return, the likelihood is that maps will be redrawn, carving up
the pie among larger ethnic groups. There will be no place for Christians among
hostile Muslim populations.
The animosity toward Christians is illustrated
by a horrific incident earlier this year off the Italian coast. In April,
Italian police investigating events on a boat that had departed from Libya said
12 Christian refugees who were attempting to cross the sea to Europe were thrown
overboard by Muslim migrant passengers, and drowned.
The U.S. can do much good for Christian
refugees. Their religious heritage establishes an important basis of commonality
in the many Christian communities in our country.
When Secretary of State John Kerry
announced in September that the U.S. will accept as many as 100,000 refugees by
2017, many of them Syrian, the State Department provided a list of more than 300
agencies in 190 locations that would assist on the local level. Of those
agencies, no less than 215 are Christian. It makes sense to play to the
strengths of those agencies.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems to disagree.
Tragically, present policy does not take into
account the uniquely precarious situation of displaced Christians. Instead of
receiving priority treatment, Christians are profoundly disadvantaged. For
instance, the State Department has accepted refugees primarily from lists
prepared by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, which oversees
the large camps to which refugees have flocked, and where they are registered.
Yet endangered Christians do not dare enter those camps.
George Carey, the former Archbishop of
Canterbury, wrote in the Telegraph in Britain in September that a similar
protocol in the U.K. “inadvertently discriminates against the very Christian
communities most victimised by the inhuman butchers of the so-called Islamic
State. Christians are not to be found in the UN camps, because they have been
attacked and targeted by Islamists and driven from them.”
But the world is too busy focusing on the 'Palestinians,' who themselves have driven Christians out of towns like
Bethlehem. Where are the Christian demonstrators on behalf of their brethren in the Middle East? Darned if I know.
Labels: Bethlehem, Christian Copts, Christian flight, Christians, Christians in Israel, Christians in Muslim countries, Islamic Christian hatred, Palestinian Christians
Blasting Haaretz for attacking Netanyahu
Dexter van Zile
blasts Haaretz's Barak Ravid for
attacking Prime Minister Netanyahu's
Christmas message. This is from the first link.
I received a message from a colleague alerting me to Ravid’s piece in Haaretz
condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for radicalizing
“his traditional Christmas greeting into an attack on Muslims in Arab
countries.”
Whoah, that’s a serious charge.
Apparently, in his Christmas greeting, Netanyahu made the
unforgivable sin of stating the obvious: That Christian populations are
shrinking and are in danger in the Middle East.
Netanyahu then added
salt to the wound and reminded his listeners that Christians are safe in
Israel.
According to Ravid, “Netanyahu did not specify in his greeting who is threatening to annihilate the Christians, but it’s clear from the wording that he means the Muslims.”
Earth to Barak Ravid: Netanyahu didn’t have to say who was threatening the annihilation of the Christians because we already know.
Unless they’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, most
Christians know that Muslim extremists throughout the Middle East have
been attacking Christians on a regular basis for the past few years.
Their churches have been bombed. Their pastors kidnapped, held for
ransom and killed.
And moderate Muslims and secularists in the region do not have the
power necessary to stop the attacks on their Christian neighbors. They
can’t even defend themselves.
Read the whole thing. Van Zile is right. Israel's Left probably has the most active Jewish guilt complex in the world.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Christian flight, Christians, Christians in Israel, Christmas
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Wednesday, March 14.
1) What's remarkable about Israel
On Sunday it was widely reported that during its air strikes against terrorists in Gaza, Israel had killed a teenage boy. Later it emerged that the explosion that killed him had nothing to do with Israeli air strikes. Later the AFP (which originally reported that there was no sign of an Israeli strike) added that the teenager had been killed by an explosive device he had been using. Apparently he had been attempting to shoot rockets into Israel.
Yesterday it was reported that Israel had evacuated an injured teenager from Gaza to an Israeli hospital.
The Arab teenager was seriously injured while preparing to launch a Palestinian Qassam rocket at Israeli civilians in Southern Israel, when the rocket suddenly malfunctioned and exploded. COGAT indicates that a second boy was killed in the attempted attack, and that the Palestinians tried to blame Israel for his death.
A few observrations:
1) The news agencies, which were so quick to accept the Palestinian claim that the first boy had been killed by Israel, have had little followup on the cause of the teenager's death. Certainly if the death of a schoolboy is newsworthy, the news that he died as he tried to harm others is newsworthy.
2) Even though the second boy was injured trying to kill (or at least frighten) Israelis, when he was incapacitated, Israel showed him its humanitarian side.
3) It's not clear whether the boys were firing rockets because they were assigned to or because they took the initiative themselves. But what does it say about a society that encourages teenagers to risk themselves in such a fashion?
4) What does it say about Israel, which is treating a terrorist who wished its citizens harm?
Two more semi-related news items:
The other day, terrorists targeted vehicles bringing aid into Gaza.
This morning, Palestinian terrorists fired three mortars on the Palestinian side of the Kerem Shalom crossing. The mortars struck a truck and a van on their way to deliver goods to the people of Gaza. Following the shooting, activity at the crossing was suspended for just a few minutes. After evaluating the situation, it was decided to continue operations at the crossing, where goods continue to be transferred from Israel into the Gaza Strip.
Also, Israel is backing the building of a desalinization plant for Gaza, and is willing to help build it.
"In Gaza, they have been responsible in its entirety for the underground aquifer since 1994," Landau said. "It is totally destroyed. That's why desalination for Gaza is highly important."
Landau said in response to a question that Israel would be "absolutely" willing if requested to lend its desalination skills to the project.
"Our expertise is available to all of our friends, including some of those who don't accept us there, which is the Palestinians. We would like to see their projects going on. They however say they want to take care of their own needs, which is fine with us."
The difference in attitudes and actions between Israel and its enemies is stark. So I'll leave this with one final question.
5) What does it say about the MUG complex that insists on ignoring these differences and maintaining a moral equivalence between Israel and its enemies?
2) What's remarkable about the Palestinian Authority
A few days ago, Ambassador Michael Oren wrote about Israel and the plight of the Mideast Christians for the Wall Street Journal.
The only place in the Middle East where Christians aren't endangered but flourishing is Israel. Since Israel's founding in 1948, its Christian communities (including Russian and Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Armenians and Protestants) have expanded more than 1,000%.
Christians are prominent in all aspects of Israeli life, serving in the Knesset, the Foreign Ministry and on the Supreme Court. They are exempt from military service, but thousands have volunteered and been sworn in on special New Testaments printed in Hebrew. Israeli Arab Christians are on average more affluent than Israeli Jews and better-educated, even scoring higher on their SATs.
This does not mean that Israeli Christians do not occasionally encounter intolerance. But in contrast to elsewhere in the Middle East where hatred of Christians is ignored or encouraged, Israel remains committed to its Declaration of Independence pledge to "ensure the complete equality of all its citizens irrespective of religion." It guarantees free access to all Christian holy places, which are under the exclusive aegis of Christian clergy. When Muslims tried to erect a mosque near the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Israeli government interceded to preserve the sanctity of the shrine.
I can't be sure but the op-ed may have been a pre-emptive strike against the Christian anti-Israel group, Christ at the Checkpoint that recently had a conference in Bethlehem. (Bethlehem's Christian population is now down to about 15% of the population, from 60% of the population in 1990.) Among the group's principles is:
For Palestinian Christians, the occupation is the core issue of the conflict.
The Palestinian Authority showed its appreciation for this support, as Dexter Van Zile reports:
A week after Prime Minister Salam Fayyad told an audience of Evangelical Protestants from across the world that his government respected the rights of its Christian minorities, officials from the Palestinian Authority have informed Bethlehem pastor Rev. Naim Khoury that his church lacked the authority to function as a religious institution under the PA.
The church can still gather to pray, for now, but the PA’s decision conveyed on Saturday will have a real impact on the members of First Baptist, which endured numerous bomb attacks during the First Intifada.
Apparently First Baptist is too supportive of Israel. I don't expect that members of Christ of the Checkpoint will be protesting their coreligionists' plight. That would be rather un-Christian of them, wouldn't it?
It is remarkable how immune the PA remains to criticism for the elements of tyranny (lack of elections, press intimidation and religious persecution) it employs.
Labels: Christian flight, Gaza, Palestinian Authority, Soccer Dad
Conference on persecuted Christians in the Middle East
I received this via email:
The Persecuted Church: Christian Believers in the Middle East -- March 12, 2011
Recent attacks against churches in Iraq and Egypt demonstrate that Christianity faces an uncertain future in the Middle East. More than a dozen church and human rights organizations are hosting a one-day conference to educate the general public about the ongoing threat to Christianity in the Middle East. The event, co-sponsored by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), will take place in Downers Grove, IL, on March 12, 2011.
Walid Phares, author of The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East , will be the keynote speaker.
Representatives from Christian communities in Iraq and Egypt will speak about the day-to-day threats faced by Christian believers in the region. Activists serving the persecuted church in Muslim-majority countries will describe their efforts to promote human rights in the Middle East.
The event will take place at the Doubletree Guest Suites & Conference Center in Downers Grove at 2111 Butterfield Road, Downers Grove, IL. It will last from 9 a.m., to 4 p.m.
Advanced registration ($20) is required. To register, call 888 736-3672.
Journalists who wish to cover the event should contact Dexter Van Zile at (617) 789-3672 or dexter@camera.org
CONTACT: Dexter Van Zile of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, +1-617-789-3672, dexter@camera.org
SOURCE Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
I suspect I know some people who will be interested in going.
Labels: CAMERA, Christian Copts, Christian flight, Iraqi Christians
Why the attacks on Christians in Muslim countries
For any of you who don't get it yet, Italian parliamentarian Fiamma Nirenstein explains
why Christians are being attacked in Muslim countries.
The heart of the problem is right here: the Islamist world is determined to build a world in which the other two main faiths are held in a state of cultural, religious and political subjection. And instead, in the last seven centuries the western world has been dominanting and, in the bigoted interpretation of vast organizations and even entire countries like Iran, this amounts to a declaration of war. This is the war that Islamism now wants to win. Not everyone in that world feels that way, but bombs make a lot of noise, while good will remains silent.
In 1919, the Egyptian revolution adopted a green flag with the crescent and the cross. Both Muslims and Christians participated in the nationalist revolution against British colonialism. But mostly since the assassination of Sadat, who had signed a peace agreement with Israel, the new élites left room to a process of gradual Islamization aimed at appeasing the most aggressive organizations, like the Muslim Brotherhood. The textbooks used in the schools today describe Egypt as an Islamic country only, and the children read also anti-Christian texts. As the Jerusalem Post writes, organ transplants between Muslims and Copts are prohibited by a decision of the physicians’ union. Labor unions indeed are often dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. The government recently halted construction of a stairway in a Coptic church and Copts are under constant attack (8 were killed also a year ago). Despite being no less than 10 percent of the population, they have no political representation.
Mubarak, by acting this way, keeps the Brotherhood at bay, and thus succeeded to marginalize it in the last elections. This is the way that Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Pakistan behave: they think they have tamed the tamer, who actually becomes stronger and stronger, thereby threatening even his leadership.
The Iranian, Lebanese and Turkish television have accused “Zionists” of the New Year’s massacre in Alexandria. Oh sure, let’s try to put at least some of the blame on the Jews once again! That is their style: from the Farhud pogrom of Baghdad in 1941, in which 180 Jews were killed, and then in Libya (130 dead) and also in Turkey (three attacks on the Nevè Shalom synagogue from 1986 to the present, with 47 dead), to all the violence that has caused the flight of almost all the Jews, the Islamic world has kicked out of the Arab countries between 800,000 and a million Jews. These are refugees that the U.N. has always refused to recognize, like the Christians in flight from the same countries, where the Christian population, once the native one and the majority, is now reduced to 6 percent.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Alexandria church terror attack, Christian Copts, Christian flight
Christians flee Iraq, UPI faults Israel as much as Muslims
UPI does a story on the increased pace of
Christian flight from Iraq in light of a massacre in a Roman Catholic church on Sunday in which 52 Christians were murdered. They go on to point out that this is a widespread trend throughout the Middle East, and throughout all Muslim countries. Then, they come up with this gem.
But Iraq's Christians aren't the only ones on the run. Across the Middle East, and indeed in the wider Muslim world as far east as Indonesia, Christians are in retreat and often under fire.
In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, reputed to be Jesus' birthplace, Christians once comprised 85 percent of the population. They're now 20 percent.
Land belonging to Arab Christians, along with other Palestinians, is seized by Israel in the name of security, then handed over to Jewish settlers.
What a lie! Christians have fled and continue to flee Bethlehem and its environs, but it's not because Israel is seizing 'Palestinian' lands. Christians are fleeing because of the manner in which they've been
brutalized by Muslims (like the priest in the picture at the top who was being held hostage in the Church of the Nativity in 2002 when the picture was taken).
Compare that with this description of Christian - Muslim relations which appeared in the JPost earlier this week:
In an 2005 interview with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JPCA), Steven Khoury, of Bethlehem's First Baptist Church, reported that the church had been attacked by Muslims from a nearby refugee camp "…with Molotov cocktails 14 times. Our church vans have been burned. The church was broken into and defaced with graffiti five times." Others have reported the shooting of the Baptist Church's pastor.
In 2006, the UK's Daily Mail reported on the struggle of two Christians from the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala who were facing continuous persecution for their faith. George Rabie, a cab driver, said that he had been beaten by a gang of Muslims visiting from nearby Hebron, angered by the crucifix hanging on his windshield, and that he experiences persecution "every day." Jeriez Moussa Amaro told the Daily Mail that his two sisters Rada, 24, and Dunya, 28, had been shot dead by Muslim gunmen. "Their crime was to be young, attractive Christian women who wore Western clothes and no veil…" A terrorist organization, al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, claimed responsibility for Amaro's sisters' murder.
OVERT violence isn't the only difficulty faced by Christians in areas under the Palestinian Authority. In recent weeks, Ramallah pastor Isa Bajalia, an American Christian of Arab descent, stated publicly that he has been threatened by a Palestinian Authority official, who demanded he pay $30,000 in protection money to ensure his safety. On November 11, Fox News reported, "Pastor Isa Bajalia is legally blind, yet he was also told by the official he would be crippled for life. The trouble started after church members held a prayer session for several Palestinians. Bajalia says he has been under surveillance and receiving threats." Isa Bajalia has since fled Ramallah.
Among the compiled JCPA interviews of West Bank Christians are reports of extortion by Arab Muslims, demands for protection money, seized properties, vandalized homes and shops, widespread rape of Christian girls, honor killings, and murders of converts to Christianity from Islam.
There's only one country in the entire Middle East where the Christian population increases year in and year out. Yes, you guessed it. Israel.
Shame on UPI.
Labels: Bethlehem, Christian flight, Iraq, Israel, media bias
