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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By now, Gaza’s little “Qassam” rockets had been replaced by larger and more deadly Grad and Katyusha missiles.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?

Apr 12, 2015 | Jerusalem Notebook, Jews and the Jewish State

Sundown on Friday, April 10 marked the end of 2015’s weeklong Passover season in Jerusalem and beyond. It was a momentous Jewish celebration that celebrated the ancient Israelites’ miraculous journey of deliverance from enslavement in Egypt and their new beginning in Israel, the Land of Promise.

Passover (Pesach) was significant in biblical times when it, along with the Pentecost (Shavuot) and Tabernacles (Sukkot) feasts, was designated as a feast that called for pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Passover’s venerable tradition also serves to sanctify the family as the center of Jewish life. The Jews left Egypt family by family. And they are celebrating their freedom today family by family. The liturgy at Passover is not recited at the synagogue, but at the family Passover dinner – the Seder.

I have been included in several memorable Seders during my time in Israel. The first of these was strictly Orthodox and religious; others varied in their degree of formality, and one was not very religious at all. I don’t recall the names of everyone at every table and I don’t remember every special food or of the exact sequence in which they appeared. But all of these occasions touched me deeply. Despite their variations, they provided vivid impressions of the warmth and faithfulness of Judaism’s family rituals and of the timeless story of freedom that still echoes around the world during Passover.

The Seder focuses on Exodus 12, which teaches us about the Jews’ plight, God’s calling and ordination of Moses, Moses’ confrontations with a stone-hearted Pharaoh, the 10 plagues that were visited upon the Egyptians and – the most horrifying judgment of all – the death of Egypt’s firstborn. These plagues eventually changed the mind of Pharaoh, at least temporarily.

But as soon as the huge procession of Jews headed toward Egypt’s borderlands, Pharaoh had second thoughts. Why should he give up his invaluable work force? Disastrously, he ordered his army to pursue the fleeing slaves. The frantic soldiers tried to catch up with the Jews in the midst of the Red Sea, which had been supernaturally parted to provide dry land for the Israelites’ hurrying feet. The Egyptian soldiers were not so blessed; they were swept away and drowned when the parted waters suddenly broke over them like a tidal wave.

The epic Exodus tale of faith and freedom is recounted in the Haggadah – the “Telling” – which is the Seder’s liturgy. The “telling” is based on the commandment, “And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that which the LORD did for me when I came forth out of Egypt” (Ex. 13:8). Each Seder guest is provided with a copy of the Haggadah. And every child old enough to understand participates in the reading and ritual.

When I arrived at my first Seder, I had of course heard the Exodus story, but had little understanding of Passover’s traditions. That dinner was held in the home of a scholarly and revered rabbi. He is, by all accounts, a fine teacher and a man exceptionally beloved by his family, friends and students. More than two dozen people were seated at what looked like an endlessly long table. Many of those around me were the rabbi’s sons and daughters, grandchildren and extended family. But there were others there as well. One was a single mother, a battered wife who had recently received help and guidance from our host, hostess and a nearby synagogue. Others were relatives from abroad. An Israeli woman of more than 90 years sat near me; tiny and bent with age, she was still radiant with the joys of the feast. A Christian couple from Jerusalem joined us. And I was there, too – a friend of friends.

The Torah includes admonitions that the Jewish people should be kind to strangers and sojourners in their midst. “Remember that you were slaves in Egypt,” God instructed them. “That is why I command you to do this.”

Perhaps that’s one reason I was made so welcome as a Christian visitor.

The rabbi wore a knee-length black coat and a black velvet kippah (yarmulke). His son, who had recently been ordained as a rabbi, was dressed in much the same attire. Every man in attendance wore a kippah. The women had focused their wardrobes on modesty and muted colors. There was a quiet dignity to the affair. And, for me at least, one of the most beautiful aspects of the meal – which lasted more than four hours – was the singing of the father and son who enlivened the liturgy with their resonant and perfectly harmonized voices.

It was easy to “disappear” into that room and be a silent spectator. The lengthy dinner reflected the hosts’ devotion to the Haggadah and thus to the biblical tale. In a sense, as the rabbi’s wife and daughters cooked the meal (the amount of work they had done was almost unimaginable), they brought to life, in the form of food, the oral and biblical tradition of the Israelites’ harried flight from their oppressors.

We tasted of the bitterness of Egypt in the form of bitter herbs; we recalled the suddenness of the departure from Egypt with the matzos (as the Jews fled, there was no time for bread made with yeast to rise). We ate a paste of apples and nuts that represented the mortar that had once set in place the bricks with which the Jews labored. We drank four cups of blessed, sweet wine. At the end, everyone sang together.

There was a sense of formality on that occasion, a careful adherence to custom and devotion and important details. It was a little like being in the midst of living biblical tableaux performed by the offspring of those who had actually experienced the story.

I attended another Seder a few years later, and it was as informal as the first was staid. The women were dressed colorfully, the men casually. Only one older gentleman wore a kippah. He had, however, neglected to bring his own, and asked to borrow one. As he self-consciously donned the ceremonial white satin cap, he explained quietly that he didn’t want to speak of Adonai – the Lord – without covering his head.

The food was served with no fanfare, and once each serving was eaten – along with slightly haphazard but sequential readings from the Haggadah – the plates were removed and more food appeared. There was a great deal of laughter and happy conversation between the readings, and a few restless young men went out to the balcony for a smoke. Yet, for all of the differences between them, the two Seders were in many ways alike, featuring the same symbolic foods.

In fact, at that informal table were some families who had come to Israel during the “Second Exodus” – refugees from Muslim lands who fled sometime between 1948 and 1970 due to persecution, abuse and expulsion. Doubtless they remembered well their own recent flight from harm (It is worth noting that today’s Christians are facing their own exodus from those same Middle East countries).

In the spontaneous spirit of the evening, instead of the precise and melodious singing of the two rabbis, the Haggadah was read aloud by the guests, one after another. Those who couldn’t read it in Hebrew – including me – read it in English. By the time we were finished, the old story had been told once again.

In attendance were some who are deeply involved in the functions of the present-day Jewish State. Their hearts and minds have long been tightly wound around discerning the best course for the young nation; their hope is to untangle its complex challenges. Some at the table even recalled the Day of Independence in 1948. I wondered: did they recognize the State of Israel as a promise fulfilled, or as an incomplete human dream, a work in progress?

As the Haggadah’s passages were read aloud, as at every Seder, the words recounted the unchanged story. They expressed the same hunger for a better life, the same need for divine intervention and human obedience, the same deliverance and the same hope for the future.

And, as always, everyone joyfully sang together at the end.

Rabbi David Hartman wrote, “Every year, Jews drink four cups of wine and then pour a fifth for Elijah. The cup is poured, but not yet drunk. Yet the cup of hope is poured every year. Passover is the night for reckless dreams; for visions about what a human being can be, what society can be, what people can be, what history may become. That is the significance of ‘Le-shanah ha-ba-a b’Yerushalayim‘ – Next year in Jerusalem.”

Next year in Jerusalem. For nearly 2,000 years, every Seder has ended with that prayerful promise. After the Jews were scattered among the nations following the destruction of Jerusalem and its Holy Temple in 70 AD, they endured homelessness, abuse, hunger, bloodshed and even slavery. But they never stopped praying.

During recent centuries, Jews have arrived in the land of their forefathers just as they did in the Bible story. In mass emigrations from other lands, leaving behind the ashes of destruction, they have entered Israel by the millions: one by one, family by family. Today they are home at last.

And at every Seder I’ve attended, in the heart of Jerusalem, we have renewed the Jews’ celebration of life.

For me, at least, it still feels like a miracle.

Portions of the preceding account of Passover celebrations is adapted from my book, Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner (Encounter Books).

Apr 23, 2015 | Christians and Minority Rights

In his Sunday sermon on April 12, “Pope Francis referred to the 1915 Turkish mass killings of Armenians as the ‘first genocide of the 20th century.’”

This papal declaration instantly flared into a diplomatic uproar. It absolutely infuriated Turkey’s Islamist President Tayyip Erdogan, who “warned” the Pope against repeating his “mistaken” statement.

There was actually no mistake about it: The fact is, the Armenian Genocide cost 1.5 million Armenian Christians their lives, along with another million Assyrian and Greek believers.

And, thanks to the Pope’s pronouncement and Erdogan’s outrage, the rest of the world was effectively reminded of the approaching centennial of that genocide, which will take place on April 24.

A death march to nowhere.

The horror story began on April 24, 1915, when Turkish authorities arrested hundreds of Armenian professors, lawyers, doctors, clergymen and other elites in Constantinople (now Istanbul). These revered members of the community were jailed, tortured and hastily massacred.

That mass murder marked the initiation of a death sentence on an entire religious population.

As reports of the leaderships’ slaughter spread across Turkey, terror gripped Armenian cities, towns and villages, which in 1915 were home to approximately 2,100,000 souls. According to the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, by 1922, only 387,800 Armenians remained alive.

After killing the most highly educated and influential men in the community, the Turks began house-to-house searches. Ostensibly they were looking for weapons, claiming that the Christians had armed themselves for a revolution.

Since most Turkish citizens owned rifles or handguns for self-defense in those days, it wasn’t difficult for the Turks to find arms in Armenian homes. And this served as sufficient pretext for the government to arrest enormous numbers of Armenian men who were subsequently beaten, tortured and, like the others, mass murdered.

The family members who survived – mostly women, children, the ill and the elderly – were forced to embark upon what has been described as a “concentration camp on foot.” They were told they would be relocated; in reality, they were sent on a death march to nowhere. They were herded like animals, – with whips and cudgels and at gunpoint.

Armenian Genocide
Armenians deported in Turkey.

These captives were provided with little or no food or water. Old people and babies were the first to die. Mothers were gripped with insanity, helplessly watching their little ones suffer and succumb; more than a few took their own lives. Eyewitness accounts and photographs remain today, and they are heart wrenching. Corpses littered the roads; nude women were crucified; dozens of bodies floated in rivers.

On Jan. 5, 2015, Raffi Khatchadourian published a personal essay in The New Yorker about his Armenian grandfather, who somehow survived the Armenian Genocide. He described the brutality:

Whenever one of them lagged behind, a gendarme would beat her with the butt of his rifle, throwing her on her face till she rose terrified and rejoined her companions. If one lagged from sickness, she was either abandoned, alone in the wilderness, without help or comfort, to be a prey to wild beasts, or a gendarme ended her life by a bullet.

Another portrait of those terrible times, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, is a work of historical fiction written in the 1930s by Franz Werfel, an Austrian Jew. A meticulously researched account based on a true story, the novel relates the insubordination of a group of some 5,000 Armenian villagers who lived at the foot of a seaside mountain called Musa Dagh. Led by a courageous Armenian veteran of the Turkish army, the townsmen defied Turkish relocation orders. Instead, they fought for their lives and many of them survived; French ships eventually rescued them.

A portrait of defiance and courage, Forty Days of Musa Dagh inspired Jews in Polish ghettoes to fight to the death against their Nazi overlords. Unsurprisingly, Werfel’s book fed the flames of many a Third Reich book-burning.

Some Turks claim that World War II-era Armenian Christians had aligned themselves with Russia and were therefore a threat to Turkish security. But although the excuse that Armenian Christians were “enemies of the Turkish State” is still bandied about, German historian Michael Hesemann documented that they were killed for explicitly religious reasons:

In the end, Armenians weren’t killed because they were Armenian, but because they were Christians. Armenian women were even offered to be spared if they convert to Islam. They were then married into Turkish households or sold on slave markets or taken as sex slaves into brothels for Turkish soldiers, but at least they survived. A whole group of Islamized Crypto-Armenians was created by this offer to embrace Islam. But at least it shows that the Armenians were not killed because they were Armenians, but because they were Christians.

Indeed, the Armenian Genocide is described as a jihad in numerous accounts. Needless to say, that scenario is far from over. In fact the story of Christians being massacred by Islamist forces continues apace in the Middle East.

Not so long ago…

A little more than year ago, a nightmare scenario materialized in the Armenian town of Kessab, Syria. On March 21, Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists attacked Kessab, driving the Christian residents out of their ancestral homes in an assault eerily reminiscent of the 1915 attacks.

In one article, which appeared on April 8, I quoted first-person statements from a few of Kessab’s residents:

“Before sunrise, we woke up to the horror of a shower of missiles and rockets falling on our town. Thousands of extremists crossed the borders towards our town. Missiles were fired from Turkey to destroy beautiful Kessab and to celebrate the approach of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Kassabtsi heroes defended the town with their simple hunting weapons…

“We had to flee only with our clothes. We couldn’t take anything, not even the most precious thing – a handful of soil from Kessab. We couldn’t take our memories…”

It was widely reported that the Turkish army assisted in this incursion or, at the very least, turned a blind eye to it. And certainly, as noted above, the residents of Kessab had not forgotten the genocide. In fact, they viscerally felt that their sudden expulsion and the ravaging of their homes and churches was a replay of the 1915 horrors, 99 years after the fact.

In Jerusalem’s Armenian Quarter, I attended the April 2014 remembrance of the genocide, which was followed by an impassioned demonstration in front of Jerusalem’s Turkish Consulate on behalf of Kessab. Dozens of protesters wearing “Save Kessab” T-shirts sang, chanted and demanded the rescue and repatriation of the town’s expelled population.

Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is observed around the world on April 24.

Of course the Middle East’s Christian persecution story didn’t end with Armenian Christians alone. And it continues with ISIS and other radical Muslim militias even now, as gruesome videos of beheadings and mass shootings continue to remind us.

I visited the Christian refugees in Erbil’s Christian enclave, Ankawa in November 2014. These mostly Assyrian Christians already knew about the Islamic State’s killing of Christians in Syria and Iraq. Then, suddenly, their own cities, towns and villages were given short notice – less than 24 hours, and sometimes just minutes – to get out or face death.

As I have written elsewhere,

The refugees lost their personal history, their identity. They were stripped of passports, birth and baptismal certificates, diplomas, national identification papers, commercial licenses and deeds of property. They handed over or left behind personal treasures like inherited jewelry, trophies, photographs and family memorabilia. The terrorists took their automobiles, cash, cellphones, computers, and business and personal files.

By the time they arrived in Erbil, collapsing in exhaustion in churchyards and on sidewalks, they had lost everything. They left their family homes with, as the saying goes, nothing but the shirts on their backs.

Their Christian faith was bruised and battered. In some cases, all hope was lost.

“Who speaks today of the annihilation…?”

It’s no wonder that Israelis ask me – some of them the offspring of Holocaust survivors – “Why aren’t you Christians doing anything about the persecuted Christians in the Middle East?”

They certainly have a point. Today’s fragmented global Christian community could learn valuable lessons from successful Jewish advocacy and activism. But the Jews’ insistence on paying attention to persecution – both their own and that of others – springs from a dark and haunted past.

In 1939, as he planned his “Final Solution” to rid the world of Jewry, Adolf Hitler notoriously said, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Of course he was very wrong. Today, during the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, countless voices will speak out in remembrance of Turkey’s murdered Christian population.

Armenian Genocide
Dzidzernagapert, the Armenian genocide Memorial in Armenia.

As Hitler implied, and as Pope Francis indicated with the words “first genocide of the 20th Century,” the Armenian Genocide became a prototype for the Third Reich’s Holocaust.

Yet despite the Genocide and the Holocaust – and despite a sorry world’s declarations of “Never Again” – Jews and Christians continue to pay with their lives for anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity and Islamist fanaticism.

ISIS rapes, plunders, kidnaps, tortures and murders Christians by the thousands. Iran repeatedly threatens to annihilate Israel, while pursuing nuclear ambitions and supporting deadly terrorist attacks on Jews.

While such diabolical ideologies persist in driving the world mad, what can we do but stand together in defiant resistance?

Let’s resolve to speak the truth boldly.

Let’s pray effectually and fervently.

And let us take the time to recall, with reverence and resolve, 100 years of unspeakable losses.

May 25, 2015 | Christians and Minority Rights, Jerusalem Notebook, Muslims and Muslim Majority States

One of the pleasures of living in Jerusalem is the ever-changing kaleidoscope of intriguing people and historic places that surrounds me. Especially when I walk around Jerusalem’s Old City, I am conscious of a myriad of Christian clergy, garbed in a multitude of various robes and head coverings.

The Coptic monks who serve at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher are particularly easy to recognize because of their distinctive black hoods.

These koulla (Coptic) hoods are embroidered with 12 small crosses that represent Jesus’ 12 disciples, and one large one that signifies Jesus Christ. This symbolic array of crosses is meant to remind the monks that they, like Jesus and those who followed him during his earthly ministry, must leave everything temporal behind and look only to God.

Against the backdrop of today’s tumultuous Middle East, more and more members of the Coptic Christian community in Egypt and beyond – clergy and church members alike – are facing that very same choice.

Last Sunday, it was just such a koulla that caught my eye as I boarded a flight from Los Angeles to London. I spoke to the man wearing it: “You’re a Coptic clergyman, aren’t you?”

He smiled and nodded. “Yes, I’m the Coptic bishop of Los Angeles. My name is Bishop Serapion.” He went on to say that he was traveling to a Coptic Synod in Cairo, and for the next few minutes we talked about the plight of Copts and other Christians in the Middle East.

Later, while the plane taxied toward takeoff, I reflected on some of the recent catastrophes that have brought the Coptic community into the world’s focus.

Coptic Christians

Most notorious was the massacre of 21 Coptic Christian men on a Libyan beach, where the Islamic State’s executioners beheaded them in a choreographed bloodbath. Many of those faithful Christians – who refused to recant their faith – were murmuring or crying out the name of Jesus as the killers’ blades permanently silenced them.

This horrendous scene was broadcasted globally on YouTube, thanks to media-savvy ISIS’ ongoing campaign to terrorize the world while recruiting new warriors.

But infamous as it was, the massacre in Libya was far from the only attack on Coptic Christians in recent years. And ISIS has not been the only persecutor.

My colleague and friend Samuel Tadros is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and the author of the critically acclaimed Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity.

On May 20, Tadros testified before the United States House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa on the subject “Egypt Two Years After Morsi.”

In his testimony, among other matters, Tadros described what happened in Egypt following the massacre of the 21 Coptic believers in Libya:

In … Al Our village, home to 13 of the Copts beheaded in Libya by ISIS, a mob attacked Coptic homes on the 27th of March in order to prevent a church from being built. The construction of that church had been ordered by President Sisi to honor the Coptic martyrs and as a symbol of a new Egypt where Copts were to be treated as equal citizens.

Instead, the church became a symbol of an Egypt in which Copts suffer from violence because of their faith and are treated as second-class citizens. The mob attack involved rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Rather than upholding the rule of law by arresting and prosecuting the attackers, the governor organized a reconciliation session between both communities. Unable to walk back the president’s promise, the local authorities forced Copts to accept that the proposed church be banished to the village outskirts. The authorities’ actions naturally encouraged the mob further and on the 29th of April, the house of one of the ISIS victims in Libya was attacked.

The Copts’ historic Christian community – founded in Alexandria during the first century CE by the Apostle Mark – comprises between 8 and 10 percent of Egypt’s 83 million citizens.

The Copts’ bloodlines are even more ancient than their Christian faith; they date back to the pharaohs, centuries before the Arab invasions in the seventh century CE. The Coptic language, still used in liturgy, is the closest existing language to that of ancient Egypt.

However, despite their historical heritage, as a religious minority in a Muslim-majority state, the Copts have lived for centuries under the dhimmi status spelled out in Islamic Sharia law. Simply put, that means that they are treated as inferior citizens. Meanwhile, in recent years, Copts have suffered escalating attacks, as Islamist extremists have specifically targeted them.

Christians in Egypt suffered exceptional abuse during the brief regime of Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi. Then, in July 2013, in response to multiplied millions of Egyptians taking to the streets in protest against the Brotherhood, Egypt’s military removed Morsi from office.

This stunning turnaround offered some hope to Egyptians who were both wary and weary of the Brotherhood’s efforts to seize control of all branches of government. It also unleashed even greater violence upon the Copts.

On Aug. 27, 2013, I found a message in my inbox from Egypt’s Maspero Youth Union, an organization of young, outspoken Coptic Christians. It was a report about the widespread attacks on Coptic communities by the Muslim Brotherhood between Aug. 14 and 16:

38 churches completely destroyed, burned and looted
23 churches attacked and partially damaged
In addition, the following:

58 houses owned by Copts in different areas burned and looted
85 shops owned by Copts
16 pharmacies
3 hotels (Horus, Susana & Akhnaton)
75 cars, buses owned by churches
6 people killed based on their religious Christian identity
7 Coptic people kidnapped in Upper Egypt governorates
On Aug. 22, Kirsten Powers wrote in the Daily Beast,

The Muslim Brotherhood has been inciting violence against the Copts in an effort to scapegoat the religious minority for the ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi. The FJP Facebook page is filled with the rhetoric the Brotherhood leaders have been using in their speeches at the sit-ins: “The pope of the church is involved in the removal of the first elected Islamist president. The pope of the church alleges Islamic Sharia is backwards, stubborn, and reactionary.”

It’s true that Pope Tawadros and most Coptic Christians supported Morsi’s removal. But they were a fraction of the larger coalition against him.

Tadros told Powers, “These attacks are the worst violence against the Coptic Church since the 14th century.”

President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi was elected in a landslide vote a year ago, in May 2014. His election was welcomed by many Egyptians, and after his acceptance speech, Sisi was endorsed by several religious and political leaders, including Coptic Patriarch Tawadros II.

On Sunday, I asked Bishop Serapion if the Copts were faring better now, under Sisi’s presidency. Choosing his words carefully, he told me that there has been progress at the top levels of government, but that local authorities are still inclined to turn a blind eye to anti-Coptic persecution.

In his testimony, Tadros expanded on this theme:

President Sisi has undertaken some symbolic gestures towards Copts, such as visiting the Coptic Cathedral on Christmas Eve, and has developed a good relationship with Pope Tawadros II. Symbolic gestures need to be followed by meaningful steps. Despite repeated promises, the Egyptian regime has failed to pass a new law governing the building of houses of worship, which would streamline the process of building churches. Despite proclamations that all of Egypt’s citizens are equal, Copts continue to suffer from discrimination in government appointments.

Unofficial caps on Coptic representation in key state institutions such as the military and police force continue with several of them such as the intelligence service and the state security not having a single Copt within their ranks. President Sisi needs to change these discriminatory practices and develop a civil service based on merit and not one based on one’s faith.

In his speech to scholars of Al-Azhar, President Sisi underscored the need for religious reform. The fight against terrorism can no longer be limited to security means, but must be accompanied by a policy tool kit that addresses the root causes of radicalization and terrorism. He has stressed the need to change a religious discourse that has fueled hatred. While President Sisi’s call came as a welcome step, the Egyptian regime needs to prove its seriousness by beginning the process of reform.

For some Israelis, watching the abuses suffered by Coptic Christians stirs a feeling of déjà vu. According to historian Martin Gilbert, between 1948 and 1968, nearly 30,000 Jews fled Egypt in fear of their lives.

Rachel Lipkin and her family escaped Egypt in 1969 and she told me about their Coptic neighbors’ kindness and generosity during her father’s three-year imprisonment; they regularly brought eggs, milk and bread to her mother.

“I was just 11 years old at the time, but I clearly remember what they said,” she told me. “‘They are coming after you Jews,’ they told my mother, ‘and once they have driven you out of the country, then they will come after us Christians. We know this.’”

Indeed, Egypt’s Copts continue to brace themselves for the persecution that too frequently erupts against them, often without warning.

Leaders may come and go, but Islamists never stop targeting them.

“Like the Jews before them,” Tadros has written, “the Christians of the Middle East will be driven out of their homes, but, unlike the Jews, they will not have an Israel to escape to. The most fortunate will take the first planes to the U.S., Canada, and Australia, but a community of 8 million people cannot possibly emigrate en masse in a short time. The poorer Copts, the ones who face daily persecution, will be left behind.”

Following the example of their monks, who have taken a vow of poverty, Egypt’s beleaguered and defenseless Coptic Christian community is poised to leave everything earthly behind.

Their eyes are fixed on God – and for good reason.

Where else can they turn?

Jun 3, 2015 | Christians and Minority Rights, Muslims and Muslim Majority States | 0 comments

My peaceful life in Jerusalem was interrupted by a hectic sequence of airplanes, meetings, interviews and speaking engagements in the United States from early April until mid-May.

The focus of all this activity was twofold: My first concern was highlighting the ferocious Christian persecution in today’s world – particularly in the Middle East. Second was discussing the terrible devastation persecution inflicts upon millions of innocent victims and determining what to do about it.

Of course I enjoyed visits with family and friends, which made for some heartwarming reunions.

But another blessing also emerged. For a writer like me, there is a big difference between public appearances and working in virtual anonymity behind a computer. As uncomfortable as “visibility” may be, my journey provided me with a number of opportunities to hear from real people in real time – face-to-face. And that was invaluable.

Some of those I met were hard at work in congressional offices or researching on behalf of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. A few operated alongside Christian relief and development NGOs. Some were lawyers or lobbyists – or both.

Others were busy, well-informed Christian and Jewish professionals – concerned women and men I might otherwise never have heard from except for the occasional Facebook like or Twitter retweet.

Without question, there is something to be said for listening. And hearing their thoughts and ideas was indispensable.

Christian Persecution: Tragedy in Today’s World.

To begin with, here is an all-too-brief summary of the issues Middle East Christians are facing:

Globally, the persecution of Christians has been on the upswing since the 20th century. But it has increased exponentially in the Middle East since the upheaval that followed the Iraq War in 2003, and – far more dramatically – since the so-called Arab Spring erupted in 2010 alongside the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011.

Today, the Syrian civil war and the emergence of the Islamic State have not only caught indigenous Christians in the crossfire, they have made these Christians primary targets for Islamist terrorists. Untold thousands of believers have died or disappeared, and millions more are refugees on the fringes of various nations or displaced persons within their countries of origin.

This is happening right now a region that, for 2,000 years, have been known as “the cradle of Christianity.”

During my trip to the U.S., I listened to various perspectives about Christian persecution – sometimes alongside the similar abuse of Jews that often preceded it. And the typical response I heard went something like this:

“I really care. In fact I’m deeply troubled by what I’m hearing. But I have no idea what to do about it!”

Naturally there were other, less encouraging responses, too.

One of the most distressing for me – an American Christian – is the rejection of Christian refugees by the U.S. government. I attended several meetings with Faith McDonnell in Washington, DC; she has detailed some hard facts in a powerful article published May 14 by The Philos Project. Faith wrote:

Evidence suggests that within the [Obama] administration not only is there no passion for persecuted Christians under threat of genocide from the Islamic State, there is no room for them, period. In fact, despite ISIS’ targeting of Iraqi Christians specifically because they are Christians, and, as such, stand in the way of a pure, Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East (and beyond), the U.S. State Department has made it clear that “there is no way that Christians will be supported because of their religious affiliation.”

Please read Faith’s entire article here.

Those of us who have had the opportunity to speak with Christian refugees know all too well their depth of despair. They have lost everything, including their loved ones, their personal identity, their past achievements and all vestiges of their personal possessions – much like the millions of Jews who were displaced in the 20th century.

As the saying goes, “First the Saturday People, then the Sunday People…” But alas, there is no Israel for Christians. And the U.S., as it did with many Jewish refugees decades ago, is refusing to receive them.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Those beautiful words were meant to welcome émigrés seeking to enter America and gain freedom, by the light of Liberty’s glowing torch. Emma Lazarus’s poem is sometimes quoted to include undocumented “immigrants,” but it no longer seems to apply to persecuted Christians.

“Deep Despair Everywhere…”

Robert Nicholson, the executive director of The Philos Project, visited Christian refugees in Jordan just last week. He wrote,

I sat in a crowded living room and listened to Ban, a young mother of two whose husband was kidnapped by ISIS and never seen again. I met Bashar, a doctor from Mosul, who had to flee with his children in the middle of the night when the church bells rang, warning of ISIS’s imminent advance into their city. I visited a church-school in Marka where almost 200 young refugee children are doing their best to make a life for themselves amidst the chaos.

None of these people can work under Jordanian law. None of them can return to Iraq. All of them want to emigrate to the West but few are getting through. There was a deep sense of despair everywhere we went…

Some Middle Eastern religious leaders who represent uprooted Christians cling to the hope that their flocks will quickly be able to return to their homes; that ISIS and other terrorists will be driven out; that a safe haven for Christians will be be created with trustworthy security protection.

Although that is a wonderful vision for the future, considering the dubious results of today’s military operations in Iraq and Syria, a safe haven for Christians is unlikely to happen any time soon.

In fact, the refugees themselves are not optimistic about returning to their towns and villages. For one thing, some of them have run for their lives more than once in recent years. I spoke to several who fled Baghdad during the anti-Christian terrorism in the early 2000s, resettling in Iraq’s Nineveh Plain. Then, last summer, they had to flee again. They managed to reach Erbil, Kurdistan, where most of them are living in squalor and uncertainty.

Tragically, other Iraqi Christians who fled Baghdad during those same upheavals made their way to Syria, where there was, at the time, a measure of protection for Christians.

Whatever Iraqi believers still survive – unlike the 250,000-plus Syrians who have already died in the Assad regime’s civil war – the majority of them are either hiding or hanging on to life in miserable refugee camps somewhere along the borders of Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey.

That’s not to say nobody cares. Several Christian countries, including Armenia, Georgia and, most recently, Poland, have declared their willingness to accept a few thousand Christian refugees. But they are not financially prepared to transport them, or in some cases, even to house them. And it is unclear how to proceed.

This situation is exacerbated by complex international documentation (thanks to United Nations bureaucracy), which is stipulated to make immigration and resettlement legal.

Getting Past Hopelessness.

Like Nicholson, I also encountered despair among the refugees I met in Erbil, Kurdistan in fall 2014. I felt it myself; the problems facing them seem insurmountable.

And recently, as I spoke to gatherings during my visit to the United States, I was asked the same question every place I went: “Why aren’t American Christians doing more to help their brothers and sisters in the Middle East?”

The answer to that question is complicated by several issues.

With a population of around 323 million, 77 percent of Americans self-identify as Christians. That amounts to nearly 250 million people. If they were united, they would be a virtually insurmountable bloc of influence.

However, they are fragmented – sadly so – by denominationalism, theological disputes, political alliances, local church concerns and, unfortunately, disinterest.

What would it take to bring a reasonable number of them together? To galvanize them into activism?

For one thing, most U.S. media does not report Christian persecution frequently, if at all. Just being informed requires a certain amount of effort.

Occasionally, of course, stories break through: 21 Coptic Christian men recently appeared on YouTube, marched to their deaths with knives at their throats and a dying prayer to Jesus on their lips.

For those who foolishly wonder if Copts, Assyrians, Chaldeans and other Eastern believers are “real Christians,” what more can be said? May we all have the faith to demonstrate such courage to the end.

But what to do? The process of bringing together a massive Christian grassroots movement in the U.S. – launching sizeable public demonstrations, persistent Congressional lobbying, media bombardment, etc. – requires stellar leadership, well-honed organizational skills and generous funding.

It’s long been my observation that Jews are far better at this kind of organization and activism than Christians. Sadly, they’ve had plenty of experience dealing with persecution and how to respond to it. Perhaps we should seek their help.

In the meantime…

We can organize or seek out upcoming events in our local areas.

One such occasion is “Justice for Assyrians” on June 6 in Chicago, featuring speaker Juliana Taimoorazy, with an after-party hosted by The Philos Project.

We can keep ourselves as informed as possible.

We can support trustworthy organizations that reach out to the persecuted.

We can pass the word via email and social media.

We can form our own information networks including friends, schools, churches, synagogues or other organizations.

We can write op-eds or letters to the editor.

We can demand action from our government.

And, of course, last but not at all least, we can pray.

“…The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.” (James 5:16)

So let us pray. And may the “wonderful results” of our intercession and intervention – genuine hope, new beginnings and brighter tomorrows – soon be evident among far-flung, longsuffering sisters and brothers.