Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind.(Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)
We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948) With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last.(Friends of Israel Initiative)
Showing posts with label Persecution of Christians in Islamic countries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Persecution of Christians in Islamic countries. Show all posts
"If You Will Not Stand With Israel & The Jews Then I Will Not Stand With You."
So declared Texan Republican Senator Ted Cruz to the Arab Christians who heckledhis stirring championship of Israel(see video here) in his speech at the "In Defense of Christians" dinner in Washington DC on Wednesday.
'.... Earlier Wednesday, the conservative Washington Free Beacon had reported that the roster of speakers at the IDC summit included religious leaders allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group. In a possible nod to that report, Cruz told the audience: "ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, state sponsors like Syria and Iran, are all engaged in a vicious genocidal campaign to destroy religious minorities in the Middle East."....
“Sometimes we are told not to loop these groups together ... that we have to understand their so called nuances and differences," Cruz said, as quoted by the Daily Star. “But hate is hate, and murder is murder. Our purpose here tonight is to highlight a terrible injustice, a humanitarian crisis.”
As the scene deteriorated, IDC's president, Toufic Baaklini, took the microphone and implored the crowd to listen to Cruz....
"I am saddened to see that some here, not everyone, but some here, are so consumed with hate," Cruz said. Members of the crowd shouted back at him "He should respect the Christians!" and "You will
The Lebanese ambassador to the United States, Antoine Chedid, was in attendance. Cruz's remarks prompted him to "withdraw in anger" from the room, the Daily Star reported.
Cruz released a statement after the event that accused his detractors of anti-Semitism.
"I came to this event tonight to help shine a light on the tragic persecution and slaughter of Christians by ISIS and Islamic radicals throughout the Middle East. American leaders have been far too silent as to this horrific evil," he said as quoted by Business Insider. "But bigotry and hatred have no place in this discussion. Anti-Semitism is a corrosive evil, and it reared its ugly head tonight."....' [Emphasis added]
Another stalwart supporter of Israel, British Colonel Richard Kemp,speaks here, and inter alia notes the world's silence regarding the persecution of Christians (hat tip: Ian):
The following is a guest blog by Professor William Rubinstein.
He writes:
Open Doors – an organisation of which I had not heard before a few weeks ago – is dedicated to helping Christians persecuted throughout the world simply for being Christians. It was founded in the 1950s to smuggle Bibles to Christians in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (who were, if caught, likely to go on a one-way trip to Siberia) and later extended its activities to Communist China.
Since the 1990s Open Doors has extended its activities to the Muslim world. So far as I know, this body is totally on the level in what it tries to do, is not a “Christian Zionist” body, and has no connections with the State of Israel or with the American government. One interesting feature of its website is a list, updated annually, of “the top 50 countries where persecution of Christians is the most intense”, which makes for enlightening reading.
Number One on the latest list, not unexpectedly, is North Korea. The next ten countries on the list are as follows (in descending order): Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Maldives, Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, and Sudan.
Every one of these, of course, officially totally or almost totally, Muslim. The next ten are as follows: Eritrea, Libya, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Qatar, Turkmenistan, and Laos. Five of these are predominantly Muslim, and two are residual Communist states. The persecution of Christians in Nigeria of course occurs in the predominantly Muslim north. The Central African Republic is a typical black African hell-hole, with a Christian majority, but wracked by civil war. So, too, is Ethiopia, a predominantly Christian state, where non-adherents of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are persecuted.
And so it goes: of the remaining 29 states on the list, 20 are wholly or almost wholly Muslim. One of the most interesting of these is number 34, the “Palestinian Territories”, of which Open Doors has the following to say:
“There is noticeably more pressure on believers in Gaza than in the West Bank because the authorities are increasingly under the influence of Islamic extremists… On the West Bank the situation is different: the ruling Fatah party is based on secular principles.”
Notably absent from Open Door’s list is Israel, which is given a clean bill of health. All in all, 36 of the 50 countries where Christians are most heavily persecuted are wholly Muslim, and many others (like Nigeria) have violent, terroristic Muslim minorities.
Can Islam coexist with secular, pluralistic democracy? It does in places like Turkey and in the Balkan states such as Bosnia where there are a plurality of Muslims; elsewhere, this appears impossible, despite guarantees of religious freedom in the constitutions of most (not all) of these states.
Even if the elites there favour toleration, the impoverished streets and small towns are hotbeds of anti-Christian bigotry, terrorism, and murder, as recent appalling cases in Sudan and Nigeria have shown.
“Political correctness” by the left must not stand in the way of telling the truth.
Adds Daphne:
While we are on the subject of persecuted Christians, a robust leading article in yesterday's The Times (of London) which concluded that
"A Vatican official speaks of 100,000 Christians being martyred every year, more, surely, than at any time in history. We cannot be spectators at this carnage"
has provokedthis worth-reading blogposton the website of grassroots members of the British Conservative Party. It concludes:
"It is not just politicians who are to blame. Many of the rest of us have been too reticient about the issue of international Christian persecution – not least in the media. This climate would now appear to be changing. The Times and The Spectator have helped to break the taboo. That is welcome but there is a lot of catching up to do."
As Professor Rubinstein's post above reminds us, in eighth place on the list of “the top 50 countries where persecution of Christians is the most intense” is Iran, while Israel is not on that list at all.
How utterly bizarre it is, then, that Iran's notorious satellite propaganda channel, PressTV, has made a program excoriating Israel in the very field in which Iran (not Israel) is guilty, and that a certain Anglican vicar of this blog's acquaintance has taken a starring role in that program!
It would seem that Israel's enemies are so addled by the appearance in the West of Ms Christy Anastas that they are pulling out all the stops in an attempt to counter her brave veracious account.
"In terms of the sheer scale of the hatreds and sectarian rivalries, we are witnessing something on the scale of horror of the European Thirty Years War. It is the climax of a process grinding its way through the twentieth century – the effective extinction of Christianity from its birthplace." Thus says historian Tom Holland.
"Copts are the new Jews," argues Lela Gilbert regarding the persecution of "the Sunday People" after "the Saturday People" in Egypt.
"The global persecution of Christians is the unreported catastrophe of our time," asserts John L. Allen in a powerful new article in The Spectator (hat tip: reader and blogger Ian G)
And although Allen, who describes the horror facing Christians not only in the Middle East but in North Korea, for example, is no doubt right to point out that "anti-Christian violence is hardly limited to a ‘clash of civilisations’ between Christianity and Islam" it is undeniable that most of the persecution of and violence against Christians is perpetrated in the name of Islam.
Israel's enemies, of course, insist on laying the blame for the steady decline in Palestinian Christian numbers on the Israelis, and not on the true culprit, the intimidatory tactics of Islamic supremacists.
In Israel, by contrast, Christian numbers are rising, up from 154,000 in 2011 to 158,000 lat year.
It's encouraging to learn from this report that at a conference in Jerusalem entitled “Israeli Christians: Breaking Free? The advent of an independent Christian voice in Israel” prominent Israeli Christians voiced support affirmed "their own identity apart from Arab Muslims, and their support for Israel, described themselves as "not Arabs" but "Christians who speak Arabic," and explained that "their history, culture, and heritage have been hijacked by Muslim Arabs
in the region. They said they feel a closer affinity to Israel and the
Jewish people, which their culture and religion originally derived from."
The report continues:
'“The Christian public wants to integrate into Israeli society, against the wishes of its old leadership. There are those who keep pushing us to the margins, keeping us the victims nationalism that is not our own, and of a conflict that has nothing to do with us,” said Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox Priest and advocate for Christian enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces through the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, Israel Hayom reported.
Another theme at the conference was a reassertion of Christian identity in the region. Speakers blamed the Arab Invasions of the 7th century for gradually erasing their identity. A former Israeli Christian paratrooper, Lt. (ret) Shaadi Khalloul, said he has lobbied the Israeli government to recognize his community as Aramaic Christians, referring to the majority language spoken by Christians and Jews prior to the 7th century Arab invasion. Aramaic is still spoken by isolated communities today. Khalloul calls his group “B’nei Keyama,” which means “allies” in Aramaic.
“The typical Christian student thinks that he belongs to the Arab people and the Islamic nation, instead of speaking to the people with whom he truly shares his roots—the Jewish people, whose origins are in the Land of Israel,” Khalloul said.'
If you're disgusted with the canards against Israel that come from certain church groups, and you've 45 minutes to spare, have a listen to Dexter Van Zile, Christian Media Analyst for the CAMERA organisation, talking to a pro-Israel audience in New Hampshire earlier this year about the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.
Another fine, deeply disturbing, new video from the David Horowitz Freedom Center (see my previous post for the Center's one on Hamas)
A hard-hitting exposure of the persecution of the Cross under the Crescent. Something for all those Israel-demonising bishops and other clerics to concentrate their ire upon. To say nothing of all the secular "human rights activists" who ignore these vile crimes to concentrate on the supposed misdemeanours of Israel.
Here's a video that was uploaded to YouTube in October, but has not had as many hits as it deserves. It features an Arab Christian human rights activist, Majed El Shafie, now resident in Canada, who converted from Islam in his teens. In the course of a discussion about the hardship facing Christians in Gaza and the West Bank (particularly in the former, owing to fierce persection by Hamas of that minority of about 3,500 people there) Mr El Shafie notes that as soon as he fled from his native Egypt into Israel he "became a free man".
And here is a report, dating to 2007, regarding the seemingly inexorable dwindling of the Christian population on the West Bank. The video has a fleeting glimpse of a shepherd, so I recommend it particularly to the BBC's Jon Donnison and Yolande Knell, both of whom proved so fascinated by Palestinian shepherds this Christmas.
Of course, now that the Jewish Jesus is being so conveniently recast as a Palestinian by elements within the PA and their allies, and now that the presence of Palestinian Christians is proving an invaluable propaganda tool to the PA, their situation may have improved since the latter video was made. But, to quote from the original uploader's preface on YouTube to the first video (read it all!), citing Mr El Shafie:
'Bethlehem has become a "tourist zone" for the PA, he said. "Basically they don't want the Christians there but they want the Christian tourists to come and to take their money."'
A certain organisation in the UK that's composed of Jews constantly critical of Israel states as part of its platform:
"Human rights are universal and indivisible and should be upheld without exception" - but then goes on to say:
"There is no justification for ... Islamophobia, in any circumstance".
For reasons connected with the treatment of women alone - "honour" killings being just one - I find the latter statement curious.
And it's always struck me as odd, not to say despicable, the way certain leftwing organisations bash, bash and bash Israel, yet turn a blind eye to appalling barbarity in the Islamic world.
Some might attribute these double standards to antisemitism.
Some might call the reluctance to confront the excesses of Islamism denial, and even more might suggest that some sort of death wish to the West and its way of life and values is involved.
This video contains gruesome scenes, but I'm glad to see that, while much of the world shrugs, including certain clerics who seem to make a fetish out of trying to delegitimise Israel, some Christians are fighting for the world attention that the terrible persecution of their members so critically deserves.
The latest bloody outrages against Egypt's Copts, which have left a dozen people dead and 232 injured, are described in harrowing detail here: http://www.aina.org/news/20110508144114.htm (hat tip: Assad Elepty)
Even Al Beeb, which in that perverse way of the left-liberal "intelligentsia" so frequently turns a blind eye to the distress of Christians under Islam, has reported, if more cursorily, on them.
But it's so reprehensibly typical of the BBC that the continuing persecution of the Copts is presented as a sort-of evenhanded tit-for-tat feud between Muslims and Christians, rather than of a deliberate campaign of violence and extirpation by members of the former group against a small and essentially defenceless minority.
Al Beeb, in acknowledging the threat to secular democracy and to non-Muslims from fanatical, homicidal Salafists, downplays that from the Muslim Brotherhood; it's in keeping with their take on the situation in Gaza - Salafists dangerous extremists, Hamas misunderstood by the West, and in reality relatively benign. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13331628
Professor Barry Rubin observes:
"The remaining Christians in most of the Arabic-speaking world may be on the edge of flight or extinction. All of the Christians have left the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip which is, in effect, an Islamist republic. They are leaving the West Bank. Half have departed from an increasingly Islamist-oriented Iraq where they are under terrorist attack. Within a few years they might all be gone....
Egypt has more Christians than Israel's entire population. There have been numerous attacks, with the latest in Cairo leaving 12 dead, 220 wounded, and two churches burned. The Western media generally attributes this to inter-religious battles. Yet Egypt's Christians, so totally outnumbered and not having any access to the power of the state, have generally kept a low profile....
The Christians cannot depend on any support from Western churches or governments. Will there be a massive flight of tens or even hundreds of thousands of Christians from Egypt in the next few years?
The U.S. government has just announced that it will forgive about $1 billion of Egyptian debt at a time when the American economy isn't doing so well. You can just bet that there are no political strings attacked: no pressure over Egyptian backing of Hamas, growing anti-Israel policy, cutting off natural gas supplies, the increasingly difficult situation of Christians, opposing Iran's ambitions and nuclear weapons' drive, or anything else.
What will happen if and when an Islamist-dominated regime is in power in Egypt - which could happen as early as September? Will U.S. aid and support continue?
Up until now, the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood has been badly underestimated in the West. But increasingly it is also apparent that the strength of anti-Islamist forces has been overestimated.
I have noted that even Amr Moussa, likely to be Egypt's next president and a radical nationalist, has predicted an Islamist majority in parliament....
He is not creating his own party, meaning that a President Moussa will be dependent on the Muslim Brotherhood in parliament. Rather than the radical nationalists battling the Islamists these two forces might well work together.
That's how Canadian columnist and broadcaster Michael Coren (who says he's not interested in being "politically correct") describes Christians in the introduction to his programme on the plight of Christians in the Islamic world. Hat tip: reader Shirlee
Forget the realities of living in the Islamic Middle East in a state of dhimmitude. Forget the jizya tax. Forget the imposed humiliations and the mandatory occupations. Forget the caprices of Muslim rulers and “protectors” towards the Jews and Christians in their midst. Forget the periodic outbreaks of cruelty. Forget enslavement. Forget the kidnapping of girls, the marriages by capture, and the incarceration in harems. Forget the enforced conversions to Islam. Forget the expulsions. Forget the mass exodus of Jewish and Christian refugees.
James Watt, Britain’s Ambassador to Jordan, and Frances Guy, Britain’s Ambassador to Lebanon, seem anxious to convince us of an alternative “reality” of their own.
These two “gone native” envoys share an unfortunate track record of blunders in their blogs, which appear on the official website of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
Last year, Mr Watt (pictured), whom I believe it is fair to describe as an Arabist, displayed in several of his blogposts an outrageous denial of the facts of Jewish history and a concomitant lack of empathy with Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish People, and with the Jewish State.
On one post he mentioned that he was looking forward to reading Shlomo Sands’ The Invention of the Jewish People – a blueprint for delegitimisation if ever there was one. But he doesn’t seem to have needed any help from that book in accruing an anti-Israel attitude, comprising denying the right of the Jewish People to self-determination and of Israel to proper self-defence, for he’d already made such statements as these:
"No one is prepared – or very few – to take Zionist arguments at their face value any longer. Completely non-factual assertions – for example that a Jewish people was building Jerusalem 5,000 years ago - only serve to emphasise the absence of real content or reasoning. The strange thing is how long Western audiences tolerated such claims without challenging them: I think because they were hoping that a reasonable settlement with the indigenous Palestinian population would emerge in the course of things (and with some diplomatic heavy lifting)."
“The origin of the problem – the arrival of the Zionists in Palestine, with their commitment to avoiding any kind of integration into existing society, and their policy of importing their co-religionists from cultural and social backgrounds alien to Palestine, changed everything. So did the massive expulsion of huge numbers of Palestinians from their land. Their right to return, and to compensation, remains the central demand, backed by all Arab states and reflected also in the principles set out by the international community for peace."
“I offer my condolences to the families of those who were killed [aboard the Mavi Marmara], in what should have been an entirely avoidable tragedy... the entire world has had enough of the blockade of Gaza – a blockade which Israel should have long ago lifted under the terms of UN Security Resolution 1801, as well as other international law. And the world has had enough of the pretexts Israel uses to continue it.”
“Few observers would disagree with [David] Hirst [in the book Beware of Small States, which Watt had read with enthusiasm] that Israel has long committed itself to a policy of massive military deterrence, which is now becoming progressively more violent - and, by the account of its own officials, more ready to inflict civilian casualties on a large scale in pursuit of its political goals. Gaza showed that progression: more remote shelling and rocketing by the Israeli forces, with minimum risk to its own soldiers: ten lost their lives, and three Israeli civilians, while 1,330 Gazans (most of them civilians and 410 of them children) lost theirs. Compare that to the 43 Israeli civilians who died under Hizbullah rocket fire in July-August 2006, and 119 Israeli soldiers in the fighting, against over a thousand Lebanese civilians (one third of them children) and an unknown number of Lebanese combatants.”
As Melanie Phillips remarked when Watt’s blogposts came to public attention, thanks to a commenter on the blog Harry’s Place:
"Watt makes it clear he doesn’t think Israel has an overwhelming historic claim to its existence, thinks the Palestinian Arabs were indigenous to the land and that the idea that Israel was the Jews’ national home thousands of years ago is fanciful.
[H]e denies Jewish national self-determination .... [H]e denies Jewish and Middle Eastern history.... [H]e denies Jewish history and national self-determination and descends into rank bigotry....[H]e is peddling the Big Lie by Hamas, Hezbollah and the PLO that misrepresents Israeli defence as aggression and describes all Arabs killed by Israel as civilians whereas in fact most are terrorists .... [H]e is sympathising with the Turkish terrorists who were killed on the Mavi Marmara when they tried to lynch the boarding Israeli soldiers, and claiming that Israel’s reason for restricting the flow of goods into Gaza, that it is to prevent arms smuggling and weaken the grip of Hamas, is a lie ....
It is an old cliché that diplomats are sent abroad to lie for their country. But one inevitable effect of Watt’s demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel through such distortions and bigotry is to whip up yet more genocidal hatred throughout the Arab and Muslim world.
The British Government says it is committed to a two-state solution. Why is its Ambassador to Jordan suggesting that the state that already exists is illegitimate? Is this the British Government’s position? If not, why is it allowing its Ambassador to Jordan to represent such an obnoxious view? Will Foreign Secretary William Hague repudiate these distortions and the vicious hostility Watt displays towards Britain’s ally? Or are we to conclude that these are beliefs that he himself shares?" http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6132169/camels-were-never-this-vicious.thtml
Now, in the wake of the New Year’s Eve atrocity in Alexandria that left 23 Coptic Christian churchgoers dead and another 100 or so injured, Mr Watt http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/watt/entry/living_in_harmony reflects on the Arabic concept of al-ta'ayush (co-existence). Its spirit, he tells us, “is part of the human and cultural richness of Arab civilisation”. It ‘conveys clearly the sense of “living in harmony”, rather than simply “existing together’ and its spirit “is part of the human and cultural richness of Arab civilisation”.
Uh huh.
“It is a term in common use in those Arab societies where Christians and Muslims live together (and as Jews did too not long ago). Those societies treasure ta’ayyush. They know it is a prize that calls for daily efforts and constant care. They know the disaster and grief that follows if those efforts fail.”
Note the dishonest comment about the Jews. Watt (whose second wife, Amal Saad, comes from an Arab family in Lebanon) implies that they lived alongside Arabs in harmonious paradise. He tells us nothing of dhimmitude, nothing of persecution, nothing of some 750,000 Jewish refugees from Arabic lands who fled to Israel.
Let him see this, for starters:
By coincidence (I assume) Frances Guy has been posting on a similar theme.
You may recall that in July 2010 Ms Guy (pictured), on her blog, blithely revealed her admiration for Sheikh Fadlallah, the Holocaust-denying Hezbollah terror merchant, who had just passed away:
“One of the privileges of being a diplomat is the people you meet; great and small, passionate and furious. People in Lebanon like to ask me which politician I admire most. It is an unfair question, obviously, and many are seeking to make a political response of their own. I usually avoid answering by referring to those I enjoy meeting the most and those that impress me the most. Until yesterday my preferred answer was to refer to Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, head of the Shia clergy in Lebanon and much admired leader of many Shia muslims throughout the world. When you visited him you could be sure of a real debate, a respectful argument and you knew you would leave his presence feeling a better person. That for me is the real effect of a true man of religion; leaving an impact on everyone he meets, no matter what their faith. Sheikh Fadlallah passed away yesterday. Lebanon is a lesser place the day after, but his absence will be felt well beyond Lebanon's shores. I remember well when I was nominated ambassador to Beirut, a Muslim acquaintance sought me out to tell me how lucky I was because I would get a chance to meet Sheikh Fadlallah. Truly he was right. If I was sad to hear the news I know other peoples' lives will be truly blighted. The world needs more men like him willing to reach out across faiths, acknowledging the reality of the modern world and daring to confront old constraints. May he rest in peace.”
Despite an outcry, she kept her job.
More recently, last September, Ms Guy blogged:
“There are nearly 60 Palestinian veterans in Lebanon who served with the British army during the 2nd World War. The tragic irony of their situation is heart-wringing. After loyally serving the Union Jack, in 1948 they were forced to flee their homes when the state of Israel was created. Some of them have been in refugee camps in Lebanon ever since. ... I am proud that a system is in place to give these brave men some comfort. I am less proud that 60 years after their flight from their homes, diplomacy has so far failed to find a solution to the Arab Israeli conflict. The Royal Commonwealth ex-services League is helping nearly 20,000 veterans all round the world. As they say, these people weren't forced to join up, they chose to. That's why the league is trying to help them. Their quiet dignity in the midst of hardship and poverty is to be admired and respected.”
In a speech made in Beirut on Armistice Day (reported in the Jordanian press and elsewhere in the Arab world), she was less guarded in her language, describing these men as being “chased out” of their homes by the Israelis.
I couldn’t help but think of that speech, and whether she’s been bamboozled, when I read in a newspaper report from 1945, as quoted by me in a recent post http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2011/01/palestine-government-did-its-best-to.html, that the Palestinian Arabs serving in units of the British Army proved restless and unreliable, mutinying often, deserting along with their rifles and ammunition, joining without authorisation a VE Day procession in Beirut in which they displayed a picture of the traitorous Mufti, and committing acts of hooliganism. After a subsequent similar disturbance they were discharged on the ground that “their services were no longer required”, so that whereas 15,000 Palestinian Jews remained under British arms, “few if any Arabs” did.
In her latest blogpost http://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/guy/entry/cedars_of_lebanonMs Guy has been pondering the symbolism of a celebrated arboreal species. “The Cedars of Lebanon as symbol is poignant,” she writes. “It is an indigenous species that is listed as endangered. Quite – where do so many different confessional groups live in relative harmony?”
Well, it’s not too clear from that strange phraseology what inspired the leap from plant to people, but it would appear Ms Guy is trying to spin us the fiction is that Lebanon is a country in which Muslims and non-Muslims get along just fine, better in fact than in any other country.
The facts fail to support her.
During the 1940s there were about 24,000 Jews in Lebanon, about 3000 in 1975, and there are virtually none today – only aged survivors. Although Lebanon was the only Arab nation whose Jewish population increased following the Declaration of the State of Israel (when Lebanon had a Christian majority, be it noted), many Jews left the country after the 1958 Civil War. The situation of Lebanese Jewry deteriorated with the coming of the Civil War that began in 1975, and in 1982 radical Islamists captured and killed eleven of the community’s leaders.
As for that country’s Christians, Brigitte Gabriel (who comes from that background) has given a harrowing account of how they were reduced from 65% of the population in 1975 to less than 20% today, owing to persecution by militant Islamists, including Palestinian incomers, massacres, and polygamous marriages producing numerous offspring. She tells how tolerant, multicultural, open-bordered, progressive, entrepreneurial Christian-majority Lebanon – “the Paris of the Middle East” – became “a terrorist infrastructure, a hotbed of Islamic Jihad”.
Ms Gabriel also describes the torture and murder of Christians in Lebanon (even of leftist Christians who had aided the Muslim cause) including the nicety of tying one leg of infants to their father and one to their mother and then separating the parents so that the infants were torn apart.
She tells of the deliberate fouling of churches with human excrement and urine – and how the Bible was used as toilet paper.
The Bible as toilet paper, eh? Could that be why Frances Guy isn’t overly keen to give the Bible its due as a sourcebook for those Cedars of Lebanon?
There can be few people who grew up in the Judeo-Christian tradition who are completely unaware that the mighty Lebanese cedar is mentioned several times in the Bible. Cedar wood was used in the interior of Solomon’s Temple, for example.
This beautiful line from the Psalms is particularly famous: “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.”
Of the cedar Ms Guy writes: “It grows to be majestic and it has contributed to so many different civilisations; the Phoenicians used it for ships; the Egyptians for ships and its resin for mummification; the Ottomans and the British were more prosaic but the railways benefitted.”
Alarmed at the thought that Ms Guy believes that the ancient Israelites are as off-limits with her hosts as their descendants in the Zionist Entity are, I left the following comment beneath her post: “Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem was built of cedar, which figured prominently in Israelite civilisation, especially for building purposes, and there are numerous references to the cedar in the Bible.”
Short and perhaps not so sweet – from the standpoint of a British diplomat grovelling to the Arab world.
But fair dues to Ms Guy, for my comment has now appeared.
Around much of the Western world [writes Mr Akerman], Christmas hymns are still echoing in the ears of happy holidaymakers, but elsewhere, Christians, for whom Christmas is one of the holiest days, are being persecuted.
While Australian troops are dying in Afghanistan in a war with Islamist forces, the Afghan Government which our forces are supporting seems incapable of implementing policies that respect fundamental principles guaranteeing real religious freedoms.
Afghanistan is not alone. Islamic nations which regularly issue calls for the West to respect Islam and show tolerance for its traditions, rarely practise what they preach.
A 200-page study of religious freedom reveals that Christianity is under siege in the Islamic world and that the dwindling number of Christians still living in Islamic nations remain among the most oppressed.
Pope Benedict, who released the study last month, called for all nations to guarantee freedom for all to practise their faith publicly, with authentic respect for each person.
Although this freedom is assumed in Australia, the US, the UK and other European nations, it is paid scant regard in the Islamic world and across China. India is rife with divisions between the many religions followed.
But it’s the fate of Christians under Islamic rule that is most concerning, particularly as Islamic nations play a greater role within the UN and are granted an unearned tolerance by the Left in the West.
In calling for religious freedom to be respected, the Pope appealed for reciprocity - full rights for Christians in Islamic states where laws ban them from practising their faith openly. Such a call does not sound unreasonable. No Christian state bans the practising of Islam, but the 3.5 million Christians of all denominations who live in the Gulf Arab region, the birthplace of Islam, are barely tolerated and any form of non-Muslim worship takes place in private.
In Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites, the report notes, conversion of Muslims is punishable by death, though such sentences are rare.
The Vatican expressed particular concern about the fate of Christians in predominantly Muslim Iraq, where 52 hostages and police were killed last month when a church was seized by al Qaeda-linked gunmen.
"Armed groups go into neighbourhoods where Christians live and kill indiscriminately everyone they find in their way," Monsignor Philip Najim, representative of the Chaldean Church to the Holy See, reported.
"These are cold-blooded murders in broad daylight, before dozens of witnesses, as if these groups wanted to show that they can act with impunity; that they are in control of the city."
Monsignor Louis Sako, Archbishop of Kirkuk, Iraq, said: "We are the target of a campaign of violence and liquidation with political goals."
The West’s tolerant approach to religion is mocked by Islamic governments, most of which claim to observe the Universal Charter of Human Rights’ Article 7, stating that religions are “free to exercise their faith and perform their religious rites within the limits of the provisions of the law,” but also declare Islam as the state religion. This contradiction gives them a fig leaf whenever the issue of persecution of Christians arises.
In Afghanistan, courts apply Islamic Sharia law to the interpretation and judging of individual cases concerning, for example, blasphemy or apostasy - crimes which are not covered by the penal code.
Under Islamic law, the death penalty applies for these crimes. The same applies in Bangladesh, where Christians and Hindus suffer extreme violence and persecution.
Marriage between Muslims and non-Muslims is forbidden in Brunei and Iran, and any non-Muslim man who wishes to marry a Muslim woman must convert. The law of blasphemy is the worst instrument of religious repression in Pakistan, with the penalty of life imprisonment for all who offend the Koran, and the death penalty for those who insult the prophet Mohammed.
According to the report, accusations against alleged blasphemers are often false or motivated by petty interests, which result in scandals and encourage enraged crowds to inflict justice on their own.
Even if arrested on the basis of accusations from only one witness, the unfortunate person risks violence and torture inflicted by the police. Under pressure from crowds incited by local mullahs, a number of judges have imposed the death sentence even in the absence of any evidence against the accused.
The report says the penal law, based on the Koran, punishes with floggings and stoning all behaviour incompatible with Islamic law, such as adultery, gambling or drinking alcohol. This law on blasphemy provides an example of one of the most sectarian and extremist forms of legislation, in addition to paving the way for a radical Islamisation of the country.
How is it possible for Christians, even nominal Christians who hum hymns and visit churches once or twice a year, to be so oblivious to the fate of those who stake so much more on their Christianity than many in Western countries today?
In large part it is due to the insistent demands for tolerance made by the political Left, a tolerance which embraces Islam, but denies Christianity the same comfort.
It’s obvious to the most casual observer that there are no refugees fleeing the West, but the same cannot be said for the Islamic nations, or the totalitarian Asian states.
The difference lies in the Judeo-Christian cultures which formed the core of Western culture, the source of rallying cries of freedom and liberty.
Standing up for those suffering persecution in oppressive nations because of their Christian belief is a small price to pay for the historic liberation this religion has bestowed on so many around the world today.
On 3 December the Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV issued a video with the following chilling transcript: “Allah, O Our Lord, vanquish Your enemies, enemies of [Islam] in all places. Allah, strike the Jews and their sympathisers, the Christians and their supporters, the communists and their adherents. Allah, count them and kill them to the last one, and don’t leave even one.” (Hat tip: Christians for Zion). The refrain’s getting to be a familiar one – and will not surprise those of us who know the genocidal antisemitism of the antisemitic Hamas Charter; now, it seems, the genocidal intent's been widened to include others besides Jews. Clearly, although we prefer to fancy otherwise, it's Jihad4Us. Yet the plight of the Christians in the Middle East is still largely overlooked by the western media – and especially that part of it that is preoccupied with undermining Israel.
In Egypt and in Pakistan Christians are being brutally persecuted. And so, too, in Iraq, as the following account (10 December) by a senior church figure working in Syria with Christian refugees from Iraq shows.
Released by the Barnabas Fund, and sent to me by reader Ian G (thank you, Ian), it reveals the desperate plight of the Christians still inside Iraq. Their situation has worsened since the major attack on a church in Baghdad in October, and in the wake of Al-Qaeda’s statement that all Christians and Christian institutions make “legitimate targets”:
Plight of Iraqi Christians; photo collage: Middle East Fellowship
"Their conditions are no longer bearable. The people are living behind locked doors, they are compelled to take long leaves of absence from work, in Mosul and other cities, as a result of the dangers they face at work.
The universities are almost empty of Christian students, as are the schools. In some of the cities even the streets are almost empty of Christians.
It is as if they are in prison: without work, without study, without Church meetings. Fear rules over all situations and in all places.
Threats and insults are daily occurrences, and offensive graffiti is daubed on the walls of the homes of these innocent people.
There is no getting around this problem nor is there a solution to it. The people are deprived of everything that could bring security to their lives; all they can do is depend on God’s mercy or leave for the north. However, travelling to the north requires great financial means for paying the very high rent of homes there, and meeting the cost of living.
If a Christian wishes to rent out his house and leave, the terrorists will force the person renting the house to pay the rent to them, because according to them this house is theirs by right. And, if he dared to sell it they would threaten the person who bought it, so in the end all the money would go to the terrorists.
Here are some examples of people's stories:
A family in the north received a knock at their door at night, and the head of the household went to the door, and found a bird, slain, nailed to the door. The message was clear: you will be slain like this bird.
Saad and Raad, two young men working in the industrial area in Mosul as blacksmiths, used to pay 300,000 Iraqi Dinars a month to the terrorists in order to be spared their lives. This however, in the end, did not prevent them from being killed in their workshop, leaving eleven people unsupported.
A 26-year-old man, who was working in a mini-market, had his shop entered by terrorists demanding some items. He was fired upon and killed, without warning. This took place in broad daylight in Mosul, at the beginning of this month (December 2010).
Many are thinking of leaving these tragic circumstances, but without any means of doing so.
This month three families have arrived from Mosul, fleeing the extremely difficult circumstances, and they are now in Hassake and Kamishly.
There are many other horrific stories of tragedy, which could fill pages and pages. They tell of terrorism, fear, unbearable living conditions and children being threatened, having their very lives coloured with deep blackness."
Dr Patrick Sookhdeo, the Barnabas Fund's international director, has called for immediate international intervention to help Iraq’s Christians, and for prayer on their behalf:
"This Christmas the Christians in Iraq face an unfolding tragedy. The past seven years of war have seen their community devastated. Now they face a wave of attacks that has reduced many of them not just to abject poverty, but also to terrible fear.
A senior Iraqi Christian leader recently asked if the time has now come to evacuate the entire Christian community from Iraq. Others have suggested that its only future lies in an independent homeland.
What is crystal clear is that the international community cannot wash its hands of this beleaguered minority. Intervention must happen urgently. Intervention should be now."
Blogger Ray Cook has written an absolutely stunning two-part series about British journalist Peter Hitchens’s recent visit to the Disputed Territories, which begins: “I’m not a great fan of Peter Hitchens but he has provided what is probably the most balanced view of the realities of life in Gaza.” Both parts are must-reads.
Below I give the beginning of Part Two – a most important and illuminating post which in its entirety should be required reading for Methodists and others who seek to apply BDS to the little Jewish State. I recommend it, too, to those Christians and "peace activists" who are planning, this Christmas, to sing the carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" with Dr Stephen Leah's "alternative" lyrics that demonise Israel and the IDF.
Yesterday I wrote in (mostly) praise of Peter Hitchen’s recent MailOnline article about his visit to Gaza and the West Bank.
I covered his Gaza experiences but his West Bank one is equally as enlightening.
Hitchens begins describing Arab hospitality but soon we find:
once again I saw the outline of a society, slowly forming amid the wreckage, in which a decent person might live, work, raise children and attempt to live a good life. But I also saw and heard distressing things
‘Wreckage’? Not sure what he means here. The last war here was 37 years ago. Many Arab towns in the West Bank look like anywhere else in the Middle East. Presumably this is a psychological wreckage in terms of almost 40 years of direct conflict with Israel.
At least we see civil society beginning to form, and about time too.
Hitchens is quick to see the plight of Christians under Palestinian Authority rule:
I feel all of us should be aware of … the plight of Christian Arabs under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. More than once I heard them say: ‘Life was better for us under Israeli rule.’
Ah! Interesting.
One young man, lamenting the refusal of the Muslim-dominated courts to help him in a property dispute with squatters, burst out: ‘We are so alone! All of us Christians feel so lonely in this country.’ Substitute ‘lonely’ with ‘hounded’ and persecuted’.
It appears it isn’t just Jews some Muslims are uncomfortable with. Whilst denying any Jewish connection to the Land of Israel, they now want to end 2,000 years of continuous Christian presence in the West Bank it appears. Will it be that a future Palestine is not just judenrein but christenrein as well.
This conversation took place about a mile from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where tourists are given the impression that the Christian religion is respected. Not really.
I was told, in whispers, of the unprintable desecration of this shrine by Palestinian gunmen when they seized the church in 2002 – ‘world opinion’ was exclusively directed against Israel. I will not name the people who told me these things.
I have also decided not to name another leading Christian Arab who told me of how his efforts to maintain Christian culture in the West Bank had met with official thuggery and intimidation.
There is no unsubstantial Christian presence in Bethlehem, as you might imagine. Hitchens tells us that it’s about 30,000 in the area but between 2001 and 2004 2,000 emigrated and if we assume that this migration will continue there may be no Christians at all in 10 to 15 years.
Arabs can oppress each other, without any help from outside. Because the Palestinian cause is a favourite among Western Leftists, they prefer not to notice that it is largely an aggressive Islamic cause.
Spot on, my man. This guy isn’t afraid to tell the truth.
Let’s digress here and look at the evidence for Christian persecution over many years. Let’s start with the Methodists current policy of a boycott of Israeli goods manufactured in the West Bank and their reason for it.
On their Conference website the most salient point for me is this:
The decision is a response to a call from a group of Palestinian Christians, a growing number of Jewish organisations, both inside Israel and worldwide, and the World Council of Churches. A majority of governments recognise the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as illegitimate under international law.
I’m not going to get into the argument that the settlements are or are not illegal, what strikes me is ‘a call from a group of Palestinian Christians’. The fact that there are Israeli groups which favour boycotts is none of the Methodists business, but the Christians are.
Yet the Methodists are fixated on what Jews are purported to be doing to Christians but makes no equivalent criticism or boycott of many egregious Muslim activities where Christians are being murdered or expelled or persecuted.
This very pertinent question – which is crying out for an answer –is posed by Professor Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal:
Christians in Iraq have been, and not for the first time, deliberately targeted in a major terrorist attack. Indeed, from Indonesia to Pakistan to Iraq, from the Gaza Strip to Egypt to Sudan to Nigeria, Christians are being assaulted, intimidated, and murdered by militant Muslims.
Yet virtually never do Christians in any of these countries – perhaps with some occasional exceptions in India – attack Muslims. In the West, there have been no armed terrorist attacks on Muslims or the deliberate killing of Muslims. There does not exist a single group advocating such behavior.
Have you seen any of this in the Western mass media? Have any Christian church groups – some of which find ample time to criticize Israel – even mentioned this systematic assault? Indeed, on the rare occasions that the emigration of Christians is mentioned, somehow it is blamed on Israel, as one American network news show did recently.
I'm not writing this to complain about double standards, since one takes this problem for granted, but out of sheer puzzlement. Presumably, much of the Western media and intelligentsia – along with a lot of the church leadership, assumes that it is impossible for a non-Western, "non-white" group to ever be prejudiced. There is also a belief that if one dares report the news about pogroms carried about by Muslims against Christians it will trigger pogroms by Christians against Muslims.
I also heartily recommend Robin Shepherd's recent blogpost on this very sad subject, in which he which he highlights the utter hypocrisy of the BBC's reportage:
