Lela Gilbert

Dec 18, 2014 | Christians and Minority Rights

Originally posted at www.lelagilbert.com. Used with permission.

The religious cleansing of Iraq’s Christians.

Iraqi

Mosul, Iraq/Saturday July 19: Terrified mothers and fathers carry their wailing babies and screaming toddlers, struggling to hold them close while rushing away from their houses as quickly as they can.

The handicapped and elderly – some of them very ill, others physically impaired – are ordered to get up from their beds and get out, leaving their indispensable medications behind. They are frantically pushed in wheelchairs – some by family members, some by total strangers – away from homes, hospices and hospitals.

Tear-stained children – their parents trying to quiet them and hurry them at the same time – hear no clear answers to their repeated questions: “Why did they make us leave? When can we go home? What about my friends?” Those who attempt to drive their cars out of town are abruptly halted at checkpoints that bristle with firearms. Terrorists summarily seize their vehicles and confiscate everything that is packed into them. Their orders to drivers and passengers alike are short and to the point: “Get out and walk.”

And so they press on, women, men and children, old and young, moving as hastily as possible towards some uncertain haven. They have left everything behind, with nothing to show for themselves but the clothes they are wearing.

Perhaps far worse, they have witnessed cruelties against friends, neighbors and acquaintances – torturous, terrible barbarism – that will never be erased from their memories.

The houses they’ve abandoned – where some of them have lived for generations – are marked in red paint with the Arabic letter nun: representing “Nazarene,” or Christian. In case that isn’t clear, the invaders have added further information: “Property of the Islamic State.”

This final, frantic activity started in earnest at midday on Friday, July 18.

Rumors had been circulating for weeks, and some families had left preemptively. But during those mid-July Friday prayers, the Islamic State (IS, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or ISIS) terror group announced in every local mosque that Christians must either convert to Islam, pay an exorbitant Muslim tax – the jizya, which amounts to protection money – or flee.

If the Christians didn’t conform to these demands by noon on Saturday, July 19, there would be “nothing for them but the sword.” And so it was that the nightmare scenario culminated that Saturday, when the Sunni terrorist group expelled the last Christians from Mosul and the surrounding Nineveh Plain.

Those cities, towns and villages had been Christianity’s heartland for 2,000 years.

First the Jews… Assaults on Christians have ebbed and flowed in Iraq since 2003, and from 2011, they spread across Syria as well, leaving behind a bloodstained wake.

Clinging to the faint hope that “this too shall pass,” both Syrian and Iraqi Christians failed to read the proverbial writing on the wall. Only a few foresaw the danger. One was Baghdad’s Monsignor Pios Cacha.

In 2013, the monsignor made a grim prediction. He said that his Iraqi Christian community was experiencing the kind of religious cleansing that had eradicated the country’s once-thriving Jewish community half a century before.

His prophetic words made headlines in Lebanon’s Daily Star: “Iraqi Christians fear fate of departed Jews.”

Father Cacha’s comments were tragically prophetic. As he knew very well, Iraq had, for millennia, been the homeland of some 150,000 Jews. They had been influential, wealthy and well-connected.

But from 1948 through approximately 1970, much like today’s Christians, they lost everything – fleeing the country with nothing but the shirts on their backs.

Today, fewer than 10 Jews remain in Iraq.

For that memorable reason, it isn’t so difficult for today’s Israelis to envision the distress of entire communities being uprooted and expelled – virtually overnight – due to deadly pogroms.

For Jews, such horrors are usually understood to be manifestations of anti-Semitism, combined with other political and religious realities.

And such expulsion wasn’t solely the fate of Polish Jews, or those in other Nazi-infested European nations during World War II.

Very similar stories are woven into the family histories of 850,000-plus Arabic- speaking Jews, who were cast out of the Middle East’s Muslim lands in the mid- 20th century. Many now live in Israel.

Since then, Jews have kept a solemn vow to themselves and their children: Never forget; never again.

It is Western Christians – and particularly North Americans – who struggle to imagine such a brutal ordeal in today’s world. Again and again they ask, “Haven’t we learned to live in peace with other religions and races?” “Hasn’t civilization moved beyond such barbaric abuse?” “Can’t we all just get along?” In short, the answer is “No.”

Saturday people, Sunday people Why? We’ll set aside, for this discussion, the unspeakable treatment of Christians in Iran’s Shi’ite regime.

Instead, let’s consider the substantial number of radicalized Sunni Islamists in the Middle East who are intent on reviving the “golden age” of the Ottoman Empire’s caliphate.

They believe that Islam lost its glorious historical epoch because of impurity and sin; only cleansing will bring restoration.

Thus, their sacred lands must not be defiled by the presence of Jews, Christians or other infidels.

When the Jews were driven out of Iraq in the 20th century, they had been in Mesopotamia and the surrounding areas for more than 2,500 years.

Likewise, today’s Christians are hardly newcomers to the area.

In the first century, two of Jesus’ disciples, St. Thomas and St. Thaddeus (also known as St. Jude), preached the Christian Gospel in territory then known as Assyria – including today’s Iraq. Christian communities established at that time continued, preceding the birth of the Prophet Muhammad by 600 years.

The heartland of Iraq’s Christian community was always in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain, and in recent years other Iraqi Christians have sought refuge there, after enduring escalating bouts of anti-Christian violence.

After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Islamist killers from various factions – sharing a common taste for bloodshed – carried out attacks on Iraq’s Christians. In fact, this reporter covered some of these assaults in the book Saturday People, Sunday People.

In January 2008, a set of choreographed bombings exploded within a few minutes of each other at four churches and three convents in Baghdad and Mosul.

In early March that same year, the archbishop of Mosul, Paulos Faraj Rahho, was reported missing. It was soon revealed that he had been kidnapped, and a ransom was demanded to spare his life. A huge amount of money was required, but the cleric was later found, beheaded, on March 13.

In May 2010, nearly 160 Christians were wounded – some seriously – when three buses carrying Christian students from local villages to the University of Mosul were bombed. A local man was killed by a blast as he tried to help the wounded. The buses were supposedly protected by the Iraqi government.

On Sunday, October 31, 2010 – remembered today as “Black Sunday” – eight terrorists stormed into the Assyrian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad just as Father Wassim Sabih finished the mass.

As the intruders started shooting, the priest fell to the floor, begging for the lives of his parishioners. His assailants silenced him with their guns, holding the rest of the congregation hostage.

A team of Iraqi security forces tried to intervene, but in response the killers threw grenades into the crowd and detonated explosive vests. The final death toll was 57, including two priests.

After these and similar episodes, Christian refugees from Basra and Baghdad crowded into the Nineveh region in search of protection. For a time, there was respite. But now – almost a decade later – they face an even more formidable foe.

On July 29, my Hudson Institute colleague Nina Shea wrote on Fox News: “Before casting out the Christians, Shi’ites and Yezidis, Caliph Ibrahim, as IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is now called, made certain to take all the possessions of the ‘unbelievers.’ “Cars, cellphones, money, wedding rings, even one man’s chicken sandwich, were all solemnly declared ‘property of the Islamic State’ and confiscated. A woman who gave over tens of thousands of dollars was also stripped of bus fare to Erbil.

“With temperatures in the area reaching a blazing 49°, the last of the exiles left on foot, carrying only small children and pushing grandparents in wheelchairs. Those who glanced back could see armed groups looting their homes and loading the booty onto trucks.”

So it was that a ragtag group of refugees, fleeing for their lives – robbed, raped and otherwise ravaged – were among Mosul’s last Christians. And at the time of this writing, no one can be sure how many other Christians remain today in the rest of Iraq.

What is IS? The IS fanatics who dispossessed Mosul’s Christians were acting under what they believed to be the divinely ordained leadership of Baghdadi, a.k.a. Caliph Ibrahim. A secretive, ruthless and strategy-minded jihadist, he rules over his self-described Islamic State with an iron fist.

Baghdadi has been described by David Ignatius of The Washington Post as the true heir to Osama bin Laden. Ignatius has noted that he is “more violent, more virulent, more anti-American” than Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s al-Qaida successor.

After a rocky start in attempting to fulfill his dream of a caliphate in Iraq, Baghdadi’s IS found a new venue. It gained success and stature in the Syrian Civil War, defying both Jabhat al-Nusra’s and al-Qaida’s radical factions by arrogantly displaying its bloodthirsty acts of religious cleansing, particularly against Christians.

In February 2014, the Syrian Christian community of Raqqa was confronted by IS with demands much like those recently faced by Mosul’s Christians.

Rather than flee, Raqqa’s Christians chose to sign a document subjecting themselves to dhimmitude (subordinate status as non-Muslims in an Islamic state) under IS rule, and surrendering to demands that they observe strict Shari’a, as dictated by their overlords.

The subjugation of Christians and Jews to dhimmitude has a long history in the Middle East, and throughout the greater Muslim world. Although it officially ended after the demise of the Ottoman Empire, its humiliating and unequivocal demands have never been erased from communities that suffered under it. And, in various ways, it is still enforced de facto in some modern Muslim states.

Meanwhile, the sadistic behavior of these invaders has defied every known human norm – rapes of entire families; multiple beheadings; mass executions; even crucifixions. More than enough of this has been captured on video and widely disseminated to friends and foes alike.

If terror was their intention, they have certainly achieved it.

When IS warriors swept across a large swathe of Iraq in mid-June 2014, they experienced little resistance from the Iraqi army. In fact, it was widely reported that the army simply melted away. Not only does IS have a reputation for gruesome atrocities, which was no doubt intimidating, the Iraqi military is also disorganized and unmotivated.

IS seems increasingly invincible. Heroic warriors, helping hands Clearly, the Christians that fled from Mosul and Nineveh had few options.

With no money, no vehicles, no passports and no cellphones, they understood that their best hope was to get themselves to Kurdistan, an autonomous region of Iraq that has its own government and practices exemplary tolerance for Christians.

Kurdistan also fields a notoriously ferocious military force called the Peshmerga.

According to Business Insider, “IS fighters stopped when they reached the borders of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.

They were facing an opponent that wasn’t going to back off from a fight: the Kurdish Peshmerga, Iraqi Kurdistan’s own highly trained and battle-hardened paramilitary force.”

Thanks to the Peshmerga, which may include as many as 190,000 fighters, many of the Christians who were driven out of Mosul and Nineveh were given safe passage into the Kurdish region. They have found provisional refuge there.

At the same time, Christian organizations with access to Iraqi communities also rushed to lend helping hands – documenting cases, providing emergency assistance and speaking out on behalf of the traumatized refugees.

One well-respected international organization, Open Doors, reported on its website that local churches “… responded rapidly as Christians fled Mosul.”

Raja (not her real name), herself a refugee from Mosul, was able to reach out to the others. She writes: “Shortly after the occupation of Mosul, refugees started coming to our church. When it was time to distribute the relief packages, the families quickly gathered around us. It was overwhelming.

I saw the desperate faces of the old men and the mothers that came to collect their food, and I felt so sorry for them.”

Open Doors’ blog goes on to quote Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of Interfaith Affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

“Too many of us thought that forced conversions and expulsions of entire religious communities were part of a distant, medieval past. There was little that we could do to stop this horrible episode. It is not too late to realize that many others – Christians today, but certainly Jews, Baha’i, Hindus, Muslims and others – are mortally endangered by a potent religious fanaticism that threatens tens of millions, and which can still be resisted.”

Efforts to religiously cleanse the Middle East have been going on sporadically since the seventh century.

Today, the jihadi slogan, “On Saturday we kill the Jews, on Sunday we kill the Christians,” is being increasingly executed, not only in Iraq, but in Syria, Egypt, Gaza and in several Muslim majority states far beyond – places where few, if any, Jews remain and Christians are, quite literally, under the gun.

Since 2011, thanks to the chaotic upheaval of the so-called Arab Spring, religious cleansing in the lands of the Bible – and particularly the cradle of Christianity – has been implemented with ever-increasing success.

Apart from the Kurdish Peshmerga, there is little resistance and no intervention. World leaders intone “strongly worded” pronouncements, then fall silent. Religious leaders sign declarations; their laymen sign petitions.

And the rest of the world watches and waits, and wonders if anybody cares.

Why is there no opposition? Where will the brutality end? And who will stop it?

The writer is author of Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner and co-author of Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians. She is also author of the newly released novel The Levine Affair: Angel’s Flight. A fellow at the Hudson Institute, she lives in Jerusalem.

For more, visit: www.lelagilbert.com.

Follow her on Facebook and Twitter, @lelagilbert

Dec 23, 2014 | Jews and the Jewish State

Israel unrest: ‘Missing you in the bomb shelter’
Originally posted at foxnews.com. Used with permission.

The bomb shelter I share with my Jerusalem neighbors was uninhabitable when I first moved into our residential building five years ago. And that wasn’t surprising, since air-raid sirens hadn’t wailed over Jerusalem since the early 1970s.

Of course, Jerusalem wasn’t exactly peaceful all those years.

During the two Arab uprisings – intifadas – when terrorism cost Israel more than a thousand lives, no bombs, rockets or mortars rained down from the sky.

Instead, suicide bombers – many of them Hamas terrorists – blew up buses, pizzerias, coffee shops, wedding receptions and busy markets.

A heavy pall of sadness and silence falls across Israel at times such as this, and it includes sorrow for broken lives on both sides of the battle.

It was only in the early 2000s, after Israel began to install its unpopular but highly effective security barrier, that suicide bombings became déclassé with the local killers.

Then, in 2005, in an ill-starred land-for-peace effort, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon forced Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. More than 8,000 Israelis reluctantly left behind their villages, synagogues and greenhouses. The IDF also withdrew from Gaza, ending the “occupation.” But not the violence.

It was after the “Gaza disengagement” that rocket fire from Gaza replaced suicide bombing as Hamas’ primary weapon of choice against Israeli civilians.

Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, over the years some enterprising souls had turned their bomb shelters into dance studios, libraries or man-caves. Others used them to stash worn out sofas, ripped beanbag chairs and various other items that had seen better days.

In fact, the only reason our shelter got cleaned out was that it was subject to floods. And during one particularly intense storm, three kerosene space heaters floated onto their sides, dumping their contents and filling the building with pungent fumes.

A team of workers arrived, cleaned out the shelter, and swept away the unlucky insects that were left behind. And the timing was excellent.

Because in 2012, during Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, air raid sirens sounded in Jerusalem for the first time in decades.

By now, Gaza’s little “Qassam” rockets had been replaced by larger and more deadly Grad and Katyusha missiles. And some of them could reach Jerusalem.

Today, during this present Gaza operation, even longer-range missiles have been added to Hamas’ arsenal, propelled toward Jerusalem on several occasions.

The sirens have sounded again. But this time I’ve missed all the action.

Instead of sharing the danger with my neighbors, I’m receiving emails and texts with sly versions of “Having a wonderful time – wish you were here.” Or, more specifically, “Missing you in the bomb shelter.”

My reasons for leaving Israel for the U.S. were wonderful – my oldest son was relocating for law school in Washington; my youngest and his wife were welcoming their second child into the world.

I wouldn’t have missed either occasion for the world. Nonetheless, during the rocket fire and the ongoing ground operation, my heart was stretched tightly between my American family and my friends in Israel.

Being conflicted is nothing new for Israelis. As my good friend Ruthie Blum so eloquently describes in Israel Hayom, during times of war, Israelis are forever torn between parenthood and patriotism.

When rumors that the infantry was given the order to enter Gaza were confirmed, I was among many Israelis who heaved a huge sigh of relief. I even apologized to Netanyahu under my breath and on Facebook for having doubted the skillful manner in which he was handling Operation Protective Edge.

I simultaneously began to panic.

It is one thing to be convinced, as I was and still am, that a ground incursion (with Israeli soldiers going literally and figuratively door-to-door to snuff and stomp out terrorists and tunnels) is the way to go. It is quite another to cheer on such a campaign when one’s own child is taking part in it.

An infantry reservist, my son was called up on July 9. Contact with him has been sparse, as he has had limited use of his cell phone. Nor did I get a chance even to give him a hug before he left….And though he is a married man, in addition to being one of the most mature, capable, talented and dependable people I know, he is still my baby….

Near or far, when friends and loved ones face violence – whether in combat or enduring terrorist attacks – there’s never enough information, never enough analysis, never enough personal contact.

Meanwhile, a heavy pall of sadness and silence falls across Israel at times such as this, and it includes sorrow for broken lives on both sides of the battle. Too many of Gaza’s children have been caught in the crossfire – sadly, some of them are even placed there intentionally. Israelis love life; they grieve over the death of innocents. And they know all too well that those who survive are forever scarred by the conflict.

During these times, Israelis come together as one family. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be included in that big family for eight years, even while cherishing my own small family in the USA.

There’s no question that if I were in Jerusalem, I’d happily join my neighbors in our bomb shelter, chasing off the fear and cherishing the camaraderie and solidarity.

But how I thank God that my own children don’t have to jump with alarm at the sound of a siren, rush to safety, or – like Ruthie – watch their kids head off for military duty.

May heaven protect the young soldiers who are going door-to-door, tunnel to tunnel, gunfight to gunfight, trying to restore peace and safety to their beloved country.

May bomb shelters and Iron Dome defenses continue to keep several million Israelis safe – mothers, fathers, babies, grandparents, disabled and elderly – while those deadly and relentless rockets fall.

May the innocent be spared from those who love death.

Lela Gilbert is author of “Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner” and co-author, with Nina Shea and Paul Marshall, of “Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians.” She is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and lives in Jerusalem. For more, visit her website: www.lelagilbert.com. Follow her on Twitter @lelagilbert.

Feb 16, 2015 | Christians and Minority Rights, Jerusalem Notebook

The expulsion of Christians from the cradle of Christianity in today’s Middle East, particularly in Iraq, has taken the western world by surprise.

Yet something amazingly similar happened long ago – in 587 BCE, to be exact – as recorded in the Biblical books of Kings, Chronicles and Jeremiah.

At first the story was only about the Jews. But now it has come to include the plight of modern Iraqi Christians.

Living at the Edge of Eradication

On Feb. 11, former United States Congressman Frank Wolf released a report following a fact-finding trip he had just completed. He ominously titled the report “Edge of Extinction: the Eradication of Religious and Ethnic Minorities in Iraq.”

For decades, Wolf was the U.S. House of Representatives’ foremost advocate for global religious freedom.

After retiring in 2014, he is still relentlessly pursuing his cause by co-founding 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a religious freedom group. And, with characteristic courage, his first stop in his new role was at the doorstep of the Islamic State, where he heard for himself about the shattered lives of the “caliphate’s” surviving refugees.

His report begins with a powerful warning:

Religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq are living at the edge of extinction. They are marginalized and under threat from the genocidal actions of the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq resulting in the purging of religious and ethnic minorities from their historic homes.

Loss of an important religious and ethnic minority has occurred in Iraq before. In 1948, the Jewish community numbered 150,000. Today, there are less than 10 known elderly Jews living in Iraq. An oft-repeated refrain remains grimly germane: ‘First the Saturday People, then the Sunday People.’

In the last decade, the Christian community has plummeted from approximately 1.5 million to 300,000.

The Babylonian Exile

As the saying goes, there’s nothing new under the sun.

In the 6th Century BCE, according to biblical, Babylonian and Egyptian sources, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon “exiled all of Jerusalem: all the commanders and all the warriors – 10,000 exiles – as well as all the craftsmen and smiths; only the poorest people in the land were left.” (2 Kings 24).

An stunning new exhibition at Jerusalem’s Biblelands Museum, titled “By the Rivers of Babylon,” opened Feb. 1, displaying for the first time the Al-Yahudu Tablets, a collection of cuneiform records and other artifacts documenting in detail the story those Jewish exiles. The exhibition’s title recalls a beloved Psalm:

By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down and wept,
When we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst of it
We hung our harps.
For there our captors demanded of us songs,
And our tormentors mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”
How can we sing the Lord’s song
In a foreign land?
(Ps. 137)

During a media tour, the Biblelands exhibition’s curator, Filip Vukosavovie, explained that after a time of mourning, those captives gradually wiped away their tears and established a comfortable and even prosperous community. They bought, sold, married and bore children, and, according the records, continued to live as Jews, despite being in a “foreign land.”

After the exile ended, as recorded by Ezra and Nehemiah, a throng of priests, Levites and others made their way back to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and the Holy Temple.

But many other Jews decided to not leave Babylon. They remained behind and continued to prosper. Ultimately, demonstrating profound devotion and diligence, their religious scholars penned one of the most important texts in Judaism – the Babylonian Talmud.

First the Saturday People …

At this point in the story, Vukosavovie pointed out that the last of the exiled Jews left Iraq in the mid-20th century, 2,500 years after their expulsion.

In fact, until the early 1950s, Jews had little desire to leave what was, by then, Iraq. They saw their communities, situated “by the rivers of Babylon,” as their own ancient homelands. Wealthy and well-connected, many were active participants in culture, commerce and creative endeavors.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t long before they were Jewish exiles once again, driven out by vengeful Muslims who had once been their neighbors and friends. Most fled with little more than a small suitcase and the clothes on their backs.

As Wolf pointed out, fewer than 10 Jews remain in Iraq today.

I have interviewed a number of those Iraqi-Israelis in Jerusalem. One elderly gentleman was particularly worried about Christian friends in Baghdad with whom he had lost contact. He shook his head and with a shrug explained, “We tried to warn our Christian neighbors that they would be next. First us Jews, and then it would be their turn. But they didn’t read the writing on the wall.”

… Then the Sunday People

Like the Jews before them, Christians have a long history in Iraq. Their church was established in the first century CE. According to church tradition, two of Jesus’s 12 disciples – St. Thomas and St. Thaddeus (also known as St. Jude) – brought the Christian gospel to what was then Assyria.

Of course, there were periods of grave danger after that early church took root. But today, perhaps for the first time, Iraq’s Christian community faces extinction. Of the 150,000 believers who fled in 2014, most are living in camps and other temporary dwellings in Kurdistan. Mercifully, Kurdish Muslims are far more tolerant than the radical Sunnis who comprise ISIS.

In October, with a colleague from Hudson Institute, I was able to visit those refugees. We heard for ourselves how they had fled their neighborhoods with only minutes to prepare. How they’d hurriedly packed their cars and headed north from the Nineveh Plain, where they prayed they’d find shelter.

Unfortunately, their efforts to salvage their belongings were futile. ISIS had set up checkpoints on the northbound roads. Terrorists blocked the cars at gunpoint, ordered everyone out, seized passports and other personal identification, and confiscated money, vehicles, medication, clothes, bedding, baby formula – everything.

They then sent tens of thousands of Christians away on foot – young, old, sick and disabled, toddlers and nursing mothers – into the scorching summer heat with no food or water.

And now? The tragedies my colleague and I saw and heard in Kurdistan are echoed in Frank Wolf’s report.

The Wilberforce delegation travelled within 1.5 miles of the Islamic State frontline … interviewed dozens of displaced Christians and Yezidis. The delegation found that six months after fleeing the Islamic State’s murderous march through their lands, Iraq’s displaced religious minorities feel abandoned and they implore the international community to help.

A Future and a Hope

The “By the Rivers of Babylon” exhibition in Jerusalem reminds us that history continues to repeat itself – with eerily similar brutality – in the Middle East.

It also affirms biblical authenticity. The predictions of ancient prophets are being fulfilled before our very eyes.

Today, many of the exiled Iraqi Jews have returned to Israel – a re-gathering in their original homeland that was prophesied thousands of years ago.

No such opportunity exists for the Middle East’s homeless Christians. There is no Israel for Christians.

Yet in today’s troubled world, the histories of Jews and Christians have become intertwined in ways that would have been unimaginable in centuries past.

Radical Islam – both Sunni (al Qaeda and ISIS) and Shia (Iran) – poses deadly threats to us all, fueled by ferocious hatred. We are awakening to a new reality: we are both at risk, Christians and Jews alike.

Every day seems to bring a new atrocity as Jews are slaughtered in Europe and Israelis are stalked throughout the world by radical Muslims. Meanwhile Christians in the Middle East and beyond are subjected to unimaginable brutality including crucifixion, beheading and sexual slavery.

Apart from prayer and passing on information, there’s little we can do. Thankfully, most of us still believe in divine intervention.

The Hebrew prophet Jeremiah made dire predictions about the Babylonian Exile. He warned of the coming invasion and the enormous suffering it would bring. In the process, he experienced his own persecution.

But Jeremiah also offered hope for the future to those who would seek the Lord:

‘I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’”(Jer 29: 14).

Today, the old prophet’s insights have vibrantly come alive in the land of Israel where Jews from every nation continue to return and resettle.

Jeremiah’s words cannot help but offer hope to Christians, too, whatever our circumstances. Although this present darkness may grow even darker, and although at times optimism seems almost delusional,

‘I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.

“You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”
(Jer. 29: 1-13)

Mar 1, 2015 | Christians and Minority Rights | 0 comments

I recently spent some time in New York City with Juliana Taimoorazy, a courageous and outspoken champion of the world’s Assyrian Christian community. Juliana’s lovely face frequently graces the TV for news interviews in which she usually finds herself describing yet another attack on her people.

Also known as Chaldean Christians, Juliana’s fellow believers – who comprise one of the world’s most ancient churches – continue to be targeted by radical Islamist groups in Iraq and in Syria.

Our conversations centered on Juliana’s personal story and on the book that we are collaboratively writing to document the Assyrians’ ongoing persecution in the Middle East and the response of the diaspora scattered across the globe.

This is a history of relentless abuse that spans centuries; a story that deserves to be told in rich detail.

During those conversations – held over hot Starbucks coffee during some exceptionally icy days – we discussed brutal attacks that took place in Iraq in the mid-2000s: kidnapped priests, blown-up school buses, beheadings and cold-blooded murders.

All these climaxed on Oct. 31, 2010 with a gruesome assault by the Islamic State of Iraq (the forerunner of ISIS) on Baghdad’s Our Lady of Salvation Assyrian Catholic Church. In this bloodbath, 58 worshippers, police and bystanders lost their lives; 78 were injured or maimed.

Stored in my computer are horrifically graphic photos of that massacre, sent to me at the time by a military friend. They are almost unbearable to look at, but I never had the heart to delete them.

Juliana, in turn, showed me videos of three devastated survivors of that same attack, interviewed just days after the massacre. Clearly traumatized, they choked on their tears as they recalled the shooting of a 3-year-old boy, a beloved member of their family, who pleaded with the killers, “Enough! Enough!” – even as they took his life.

Reviewing all this shook us both to the core. It also strengthened our resolve to tell the story as lucidly and thoroughly as possible.

Alas, there would be no shortage of material. In just over a week’s time, news agencies were reporting yet another ISIS attack on Assyrian Christians.

Beginning early in the morning on Feb. 23, ISIS terrorists abducted more than 150 women, men, children and elderly from their Syrian homes.

The weary world, still dazed by the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians the week before, watched in silent horror.

By Thursday afternoon, the number of kidnapped Christians in Syria had reportedly risen to 220. ISIS had continued its rampage through 11 Christian villages near the town of Tal Tamr, not far from the Syrian-Turkish border.

My Hudson Institute colleague Nina Shea wrote for Fox News,

The Islamist militants reportedly separated the captives, men from women and children – a pattern also seen when ISIS attacked Iraq’s Yizidi community on Sinjar mountain last August. The Syrian Christians’ fate is unknown but could include murder, enslavement, rape or being traded as a hostage. Churches in the seized villages could be seen ablaze from the opposite riverbank.

Syrian-Catholic Archbishop of Hasakah-Nisibi, Jacques Behnan Hindo, told the Vatican press Fides that the Christians feel like they are ‘abandoned into the hands’ of ISIS.

The Archbishop explained:

“Yesterday American bombers flew over the area several times, but without taking action. We have a hundred Assyrian families who have taken refuge in Hasakah, but they have received no assistance either from the Red Crescent or from Syrian government aid workers, perhaps because they are Christians. The UN High Commission for Refugees is nowhere to be seen.”

By the time all this happened, Juliana and I were in two different places. She had flown to a conference in Nashville where she would once again present her appeal on behalf of Assyrian Christians.

I had returned to Jerusalem, where reported atrocities against religious minorities in surrounding countries are all too common. In fact, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians live without fear of radical Islamist aggression.

Before long, the Middle East media reported that a respected bishop was placing the blame for the Assyrians’ abduction on the Turkish government. Jacques Behnan Hindo, the Syrian Catholic Archbishop of Hasakah-Nisibi, made the claim on Vatican Radio:

Every day, families are emigrating from Damascus by plane because of the blockade we have around us.

In the north, Turkey allows through lorries, Daesh [ISIS] fighters, oil stolen from Syria, wheat and cotton: all of these can cross the border but nobody [from the Christian community] can pass over.

Meanwhile, a typical ISIS response, reported by Reuters, was: Some people have tried to [reach their loved ones] by cellphone, the relatives that have been abducted, and they get an answer from a member of ISIS who tells that they will send the head of their relative.

“They are trying to terrorize the parents, the relatives in the Christian Assyrian community,” said Ishak, who is president of the Syriac National Council of Syria.

My own experience with the Assyrian Christians began in late October, when I visited some of the refugees who had fled from ISIS. They were among thousands of Christians who were driven out of Mosul and the Nineveh Plain in Iraq during in the summer of 2014. Tens of thousands of them found refuge in Erbil, Kurdistan.

For the record, no one I talked to there would have been the least bit surprised to hear that Turkey was again being suspected of supporting ISIS.

At the same time, the utter losses that those refugees in Erbil had endured creased their fatigued faces. Not only had everything they had accomplished in a lifetime been stripped away, but some of their loved ones were nowhere to be found. And haunting atrocities were burned into their memories – cruelties they could never forget.

Today’s massacres, great and small, evoke the mass murder of more than 1.5 million Christians that took place in the early 20th century. Usually described as the Armenian genocide, Armenians indeed bore the heaviest death toll. But they were not the only victims.

In his landmark book The Lost History of Christianity, historian Philip Jenkins wrote,

Lord [James] Bryce alleged that the Turkish government was pursuing a “plan for exterminating Christianity, root and branch,” which equally targeted “the minor communities, such as the Nestorian and the Assyro-Chaldean churches.” Claiming to have lost two-thirds of their own people during their own wartime genocide, the Assyrians recall 1915 as sayfo, “the Year of the Sword.”

Two-thirds of the Assyrian Christian community was estimated as 750,000 dead. And as many as 3,000 more were slaughtered in the Simele massacre, carried out by the Iraqi government specifically against Assyrian Christians in August 1933.

Because of these seemingly endless assaults, some believe that the ancient Christian communities in the Middle East are finished, and that only tattered remnants will survive. Philip Jenkins wrote,

Middle Eastern Christianity will not become extinct in the same way that animal or plant species vanish, with no representatives left to carry on the line and no hope of revival. Even in the worst-case scenario, a few families, a few old believers, will linger on for decades to come. Millions of people from the region will also continue the tradition elsewhere. For practical purposes, however, Middle Eastern Christianity has, within living memory, all but disappeared as a living force.

But others, like Juliana Taimoorazy, have far greater hope for their beleaguered people. Juliana is quick to remind her listeners that there’s more to the Assyrian Christian community than meets the eye. These believers not only cherish a religious identity, but many also see themselves as a nation – a nation that dates back to the 7th Century BCE.

And more than a few have never given up the hope of rebuilding it.

The Assyrian Nation’s roots lie in the primeval soil of the Nineveh Plain where it all began a millennia ago. And the idea of a national resurrection is not lost on those who fear the demise of Christianity’s most venerable communities.

When I was in Erbil, conversations with refugees often had to do with their desire to return to their lost homes. Some wanted to go back; others did not. But all agreed that such a return could only take place if and when a safe haven were to be established for them – a protected Christian enclave.

And, of course, it would be founded on the Nineveh Plain.

In fact, twice in the early 20th Century, Assyrian Christians appealed to the world powers to establish a Christian “reservation” in Nineveh, governed by their Patriarch and protected by their own warriors. In both cases, the attempt failed disastrously.

Thankfully, for visionaries, it’s never too late.

It so happens that the safe-haven idea is being revisited by former U.S. Congressman Frank Wolf, the guardian of persecuted Christians and long-time advocate for religious freedom.

A report from Wolf’s newly-minted Wilberforce 21 Initiative proposed:

[T]he establishment of a Nineveh Plains Province uniquely designed for Christians, Yezidis and other besieged minorities. Despite the horrors they face, the majority of the religious and ethnic minorities want to remain as productive and peaceful citizens within Iraq and their historic homelands.

One Iraqi priest implored, “Help me to stay.”

Will his cry fall on deaf ears or will policymakers and people of good will be propelled to act?

It’s a provocative question. And for the besieged Assyrian Christian community – who breathlessly await word of ISIS’s most recent captives – an affirmative answer can’t come soon enough.

Mar 13, 2015

Back in my California days, I don’t recall hearing much about the Jewish holiday called Purim. Everyone knew about Passover and Hanukah, and our churches usually filled us in on the spiritual significance of Jewish High Holy days including Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

But Purim? Not so much.

But during my early years in Israel, I quickly learned to appreciate this springtime celebration – at least superficially. At first glance, it was comic relief. I looked at it as sort of a religiously sanitized version of Halloween – festive, but without creepy ghouls, ugly black-and-orange trimmings and vaguely demonic masquerades.

Purim festivities in Israel include pretty little girls in gossamer dresses, tiaras and other sparkling attire – all of them easily identified as depicting Queen Esther, the heroine of the Purim story.

Purim

Incongruously, pint-sized and rowdy Batmen, Supermen, Spidermen and occasional soccer heroes accompany their more demure counterparts to and from school and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, cookies called Hamantaschen appear in markets, bakeries and sidewalk sales. These three-cornered pastries are “filled with poppy seeds (mohn in Yiddish), fruit preserves, chocolate, or other ingredients that are traditionally eaten on Purim. In Israel during the weeks leading up to Purim, the aroma of freshly baked hamantaschen can be smelled on every block. Their triangular shape is thought to be be reminiscent of Haman’s hat or ears.”

Haman, of course, was the vile anti-Semite who plays the arch-villain in the biblical account of Queen Esther.

And it is Esther’s story that Purim celebrates.

More than a children’s Bible story.

Purim, by the way, isn’t just for kids. There are grownup festivities galore, sometimes involving copious amounts of alcohol. It seems (controversially among some more piously-minded groups) that this tradition reflects a Talmudic passage in which a celebrant is obliged to drink on Purim until he does not know the difference between “cursed be Haman” and “blessed be Mordechai.”

Mordechai, the hero of the Purim story, was Queen Esther’s cousin and guardian. Mordechai and Esther were Jews – part of a Jewish diaspora in the heart of Persia – although the king initially seemed to have been unaware of their origins.

As the story unfolded, Mordechai somehow overheard Haman’s dangerous plot to murder all the Jews in the kingdom. He warned the queen about it, inspiring her to gamble with her life in order to alert King Ahasuerus of the danger.

Perhaps the most poignant passage in the book of Esther relates Mordechai’s relayed warning to Esther (recorded in chapter 4), and her courageous response:

Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews. For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai: “Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!

It was unlawful – literally at risk of her life – for the queen to present herself to her husband unless he summoned her, but Esther did so anyway. Thankfully, when she told her husband about Haman’s plot, the king was infuriated. According to the story’s happy ending, King Ahasuerus honored Esther, executed Haman, promoted Mordechai to high office and rescued the the Jews.

A speech with providential timing.

This year, Purim arrived on schedule but with more serious overtones than usual. The holiday took on special significance in Israel, not least because of the astonishing timing of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to the United States Congress on March 3 – the Eve of Purim.

On that day, Netanyahu warned the American people and their president about the dangers posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran – modern day Persia –to Israel, the Middle East and the rest of the world.

In his speech, Netanyahu referred specifically to the biblical story of Esther. He explained,

We’re an ancient people. In our nearly 4,000 years of history, many have tried repeatedly to destroy the Jewish people. Tomorrow night, on the Jewish holiday of Purim, we’ll read the Book of Esther. We’ll read of a powerful Persian viceroy named Haman, who plotted to destroy the Jewish people some 2,500 years ago. But a courageous Jewish woman, Queen Esther, exposed the plot and gave for the Jewish people the right to defend themselves against their enemies.

The plot was foiled. Our people were saved.

Today the Jewish people face another attempt by yet another Persian potentate to destroy us. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei spews the oldest hatred, the oldest hatred of anti-Semitism with the newest technology. He tweets that Israel must be annihilated – he tweets. You know, in Iran, there isn’t exactly free Internet. But he tweets in English that Israel must be destroyed.

In The American Thinker, writer Michael Curtis said,

Queen Esther was forbidden to speak to the king without being summoned. Netanyahu was not summoned by the U.S. head of state, who is unwilling to meet him, but only by the speaker of the House, John Boehner. She realized the plight of the Jewish people in Persia who were threatened by Haman’s plan for annihilation. Netanyahu recognizes the current plight of the Jewish people in Israel whose survival is endangered by the threat of annihilation from Iranian nuclear bombs.

Mordechai refused to bow down to the chief Persian politician. Netanyahu did not seek permission of the U.S. leader to speak his mind. Queen Esther managed to persuade the king to change his mind and save the Jewish people. Netanyahu is attempting to persuade the U.S. Congress to take action and save the Jewish people.

Observing “Esther’s Fast.”

Another unique aspect of the 2015 Purim events in Israel involved the one-day fast day that traditionally precedes the celebration. This recalls the three days of fasting that Esther requested of her people in preparation for her dangerous mission.

It seems to be little known outside of Christian circles – none of my Jewish friends were aware of it until I told them – that, this year, hundreds and perhaps thousands of Christians participated in the traditional “Esther’s Fast.” They did so, bringing Prime Minister Netanyahu before the Lord, seeking his protection and asking for success and blessing in his words to the world.

Christian speaker and teacher Christine Darg posted on her Jerusalem Channel-TV Facebook page, “Believers everywhere have the privilege to stand with the God of Israel by using the spiritual means of both fasting and praying to strengthen Netanyahu’s voice and the resolve of our leaders at this time. Will you fast and pray before, during or after this historic speech?”

Others more privately wrote to friends, church members and relatives on social media, suggesting the same.

So it was that both Jewish and Christian prayers ascended.

As it turned out, Netanyahu’s galvanizing speech was not only warmly received by nearly all who attended the session, but more importantly, has seemed to have had a lasting effect on policy makers and international leadership.

Extraordinarily, it was especially applauded in the Arab world, where Iran’s aggressive moves toward regional hegemony, potentially armed with nuclear weapons, are widely viewed as a grave danger.

Words of courage and celebration.

For the next two days following the speech – beyond the reach of news sites, political rhetoric and florid pre-election posts in the Israeli media – the streets of Jerusalem were beautifully ornamented with happy children costumed in a dazzling array of colors – sometimes accompanied by slightly embarrassed bewigged or masked parents.

The Mamilla Mall was adorned with hundreds of balloons in every color, not to mention signs offering “special sales,” while shoppers were serenaded by an array of buskers.

Purm
Jerusalem Purim

Meanwhile, the scroll of Esther – the whole megillah — was read and revered in every synagogue in town. Haman’s ears were gobbled down and his name was cursed and drowned out by noisemakers during Purim toasts.

Netanyahu concluded his speech to Congress with the emboldening words of Moses: “Be strong and resolute. Neither fear nor dread them.”

Capturing a similar sentiment, although perhaps with a little less reverence, there’s a saying in Israel that every Jewish holiday can be summed up in three sentences: “They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat!”

And – after all was said and done during Purim 2015 – so they did.

Mar 30, 2015

The Israeli election is, thankfully, over.

For a majority of Israelis, the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu as Prime Minister was happy news.

And although I couldn’t vote – I’m an American sojourner in Jerusalem — I thought Bibi’s success at the polls was excellent news too. His unyielding opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons agenda mirrors the concern of many – whether politically left, right or center.

Like my friends and neighbors, I went to sleep on election night as the ballots were being counted, assuming that the score was tied between Netanyahu’s Likud party and the Zionist Union (Labor) party, led by Isaac Herzog.

We woke up to a breathtaking victory for Bibi.

But that wasn’t the only good news. The very fact that the election was finally over felt like a breath of fresh air.

Or so it seemed at the time.

Truthfully, the 2015 election process in Israel amounted to the most stunning display of mud-slinging, rumor-mongering and skewed polls I’ve ever seen.

Not to mention unseemly American interference. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

First of all, a brief tutorial: Israelis don’t actually vote for a Prime Ministerial candidate, they vote for a party. And the party system, which determines the constituency of the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – is mind-boggling.

Journalist Lori Lowenthal Marcus did a heroic job of trying to explain this convoluted process in the Jewish Press:

Israeli voters choose parties, not individual candidates, which, among other things, means their national representation is ideological, not geographic, and the vote is proportional, meaning the 120 Knesset seats are divvied up in proportion to each party’s percentage of the total vote. There is a minimum threshold for a party to meet before it can sit in the Knesset. That minimum is currently set at 3.25 percent of the total votes cast, which translates into four seats.

To give you an idea of how complex the process is, no less than 26 parties started out in hopes of having representation in the Knesset. Only 10 succeeded.

That battle was bad enough. But, sad to say, the most notable and contentious contest was not between Israel’s myriad political parties.

The really divisive conflict the 2015 elections was the enormous effort on the part of President Barack Obama to unseat Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.

Obama’s distaste for Israel is nothing new. In 2008, I spoke to some young Palestinian activists in Ramallah, weeks before the first Obama election. They told me on no uncertain terms, “He’s always been our guy – even before he was a Senator. We know we can always count on him.”

Indeed, a recent speech by Senator Marco Rubio provided a detailed chronology of Obama’s adversarial actions against Israel. The Florida Republican accused President Barack Obama of “making a historic mistake” in his treatment of Israel. “If America does not stand with Israel, who would we stand with?” Rubio said.

Alongside Rubio’s carefully researched litany of snubs, it was reported a couple of months before Israel’s election that the Obama administration was putting together a media-savvy team of election experts to organize an anti-Bibi demolition squad.

Just days after the Obama White House accused House Speaker John Boehner of ‘breaking protocol’ by inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress, a team of up to five Obama campaign operatives has reportedly arrived in Israel to lead a campaign to defeat the Israeli Prime Minister in upcoming national elections scheduled for March 17.

The anti-Netanyahu, left wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports a group called “One Voice,” reportedly funded by American donors, is paying for the Obama campaign team. That group is reportedly being led by Obama’s 2012 field director Jeremy Bird.

To make matters worse, according a Senate investigation, it also appears that the US State Department poured American tax dollars into the anti-Bibi coffers. Just days before the Israeli election, Fox News reported, “A powerful U.S. Senate investigatory committee has launched a bipartisan probe into an American nonprofit’s funding of efforts to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the Obama administration’s State Department gave the nonprofit taxpayer-funded grants, a source with knowledge of the panel’s activities told FoxNews.com.”

The “One Voice” team’s tactics included personal attacks on the Prime Minister’s family, including such niceties as accusing Bibi’s wife Sara of pocketing refunds for plastic bottles – dubbed “Bottlegate” – a faux-scandal that Israel’s leftist news sites breathlessly reported day after day. And that was far from the only one.

The Israeli election was further complicated by an ugly uproar between Speaker of the House John Boehner and the Obama White House over whether it was appropriate for Prime Minister Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress before the election. Bibi agreed to do so, despite Obama’s disapproval.

Various versions of the messy tale have been told, denied and contradicted. The bottom line: President Barack Obama was sorely offended.

In the event, Netanyahu’s speech focused almost entirely on the ongoing (and never ending) nuclear negotiations. It was an impassioned plea for Congress to refuse any agreement that does not clearly prevent Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

Netanyahu’s appearance in the Capitol was more than a call to awareness. The crowd’s multiple standing ovations were a resounding affirmation of Bibi’s presence, as well as a confirmation of his message.

For me, it was a moving reminder of American good-heartedness, Israeli common sense, and faithful support for a long-time ally.

For Obama, it was an infuriating display of arrogance. It was an assault on his hoped-for legacy of rehabilitating Iran as an acceptable international partner. And his rage spilled over in red-hot waves of political agitation, both before and after the election.

David Bernstein reported in the Washington Post,

On March 6, less than two weeks before the election, a major Israeli newspaper published a document showing that Netanyahu’s envoy had agreed on his behalf to an American-proposed framework that offered substantial Israeli concessions that Netanyahu publicly opposed. Let’s put on our thinking caps. Where would this leak have come from? The most logical suspect is the American State Department.

So here’s the dynamic: Netanyahu, while talking tough publicly about terms for an Israeli-Palestinian deal, was much more accommodating privately during actual negotiations. Just before Israeli elections, the U.S. government likely leaks evidence of his flexibility to harm Netanyahu.

As a result, Netanyahu starts to lose right-wing voters to smaller parties, and the left-leaning major opposition party takes a lead in the polls, putting Netanyahu’s leadership in question, just as the U.S. wanted.

With that in mind, in the final hours of the election, Netanyahu made two statements that were quite a windfall for the propagandists in the US.

First, he telephoned members of Likud and told them that Arabs were heading for the polls “in droves” and that Likud’s constituency should make sure they cast their ballots.

Second, he said that in today’s climate there would be no “two state solution” to the Palestinian issue.

The Obama administration pounced on these two statements full force. The first was declared sheer racism. The second, a full frontal assault on the sacrosanct Two-State Solution.

In fact, The Economist – not a huge fan of Israel – even seemed taken aback by the heated response.

No sooner had Binyamin Netanyahu won the Israeli election, on March 17th, than Barack Obama told him he would “reassess” relations with the Jewish state. Mr Netanyahu, says the president, has all but destroyed his credibility and the chances for peace with Palestinians, and he has eroded Israel’s democracy. These are strong words coming from Israel’s best friend.

Much has been written since the election, including some clever satire (see Lee Smith’s epic rant in the Weekly Standard). But in his usual cut-to-the chase analysis, Charles Krauthammer summed up the situation concisely. As far as I’m concerned, he deserves the last word.

“Look,” he said,

… it is clear that Obama loathes Netanyahu more than any other world leader meaning more than the Ayatollah in Iran or Putin in Russia. And he did everything he could to unseat him but he failed. I think the message here is this was an election between Bibi and Obama. That was on the ballot because Obama was essentially saying if you want to reconcile with the United States, if you want your ally behind you you are going to have to get rid of Bibi. … But the regard with which Israelis hold Obama and the fear they have of the dealing with Iran is such that Bibi won. That’s the message. … And that is what I think Obama is having trouble swallowing.

On that note, it’s fair to say that the Israeli election is, as the saying goes, gone but not forgotten.

Netanyahu is still the Prime Minister of Israel. And Obama is still fuming.

What on earth will it take to change the subject?